Meet Shadi and Lisa — two ladies in “Tech”
Womanpower combined. Shadi and Lisa take us into their world and tell us why every woman should think about joining “Team Tech”.
Who runs the world? Women! We want to wish all the women out there a Happy International Women’s Day (IWD). This day was created worldwide to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It focusses on and raises awareness for issues like female empowerment and diversity.
An interview with Shadi and Lisa
We at BestSecret would like to take this day as an opportunity to introduce you to two particularily inspiring women. In addition to their combined womanpower and assertiveness, they share a great passion for the topic of “tech”. In our interview with them, we asked them to define their jobs and to tell us what inspires and pushes them, and what their opinion on topics like female empowerment is.
Shadi Kajevand, Software Engineer, Granada/Spanien
I always compare coding to painting or playing music. It has always been my way to express my creativity.
Shadi Kajevand calls herself a world citizen. Originally from Iran, she moved to Sweden when she was five years old. Attracted by the great weather and Spanish culture, she moved to Spain five years ago with her two children and husband (also a Software Engineer). Shadi has now been part of the BestSecret family for a month and is based in our office in Granada. At the moment she is working remotely.
Hello Shadi, and welcome on board. We are so glad to have you. Thanks for giving us some insight into your life and answering our questions…
How have your first days working at BestSecret been and how did the onboarding go?
It was new, interesting and I also had a lot of fun. I met a lot of new people that welcomed me to the company, and I could almost right away dig into work, because the onboarding process was very well planned. I liked that a lot.
In a nutshell, can you explain to us what a Software Engineer at BestSecret does?
As a Software Engineer at BestSecret, I work together with my team to maintain and add new features to the web shop. We work closely together with our Product Owner that is also a part of the team to decide what to work on. Before writing any code, the team reads the requirements together, creates a design and an approach on how to add the new feature to the web shop.
What key qualifications should a person in this postion have to be successful?
You definitely need to be a problem solver and be open to continuously learning new things, because you always have to keep up with the fast changes in technology. But most important, you need to love to work in a team. I have always had a very close connection to my team members because we work very tightly together. I have made many close friendships during my years as a software engineer. From my point of view, you also need to have a lot of creativity. I always compare it to painting or playing music, coding has always been my way to express my creativity.
Since when was it clear to you, that you wanted to pursue a career in tech?
When I was 18, my father said to me, “Shadi, you should become a Software Engineer, then you can always work from the beach.” And he was right. But joking aside. I was encouraged by my father to pursue programming since I liked math and problem solving in school. When I started university, I fell in love with programming and since then it has been one of my biggest interests.
While studying Computer Science and Engineering in Gothenburg, Sweden, you were one of 10 women with 100 men. At that time and now, how important was female impowerment to you?
The female community has always been pretty strong. The women became really close friends, and even today, 20 years later, we are still friends and have a private Facebook group where we talk, encourage and help each other with both our personal lives and our careers. It is amazing to see what career paths we have all taken. Some work in research, others are IT-managers, QA (Quality Assurance) engineers and software developers.
Women in tech are definitely on the rise. In your opinion, why should more women work in tech?
Because it is important to have diversity in the field. Woman can bring a lot of interesting point of views and solutions. I have felt a lot of times that a team split equally with competent men and woman accomplishes projects and company goals in new and different ways that have not been done or thought about before. But also, there is a very high demand for software engineers all over the world right now. If there are girls out there that might love working in the field and thrive in it, it is important to reach out to them and welcome them.
What’s your personal mantra?
If you want to reach your goal, try to do a little every day to come closer.
Lisa Bickerle, Lead Product Owner Mobile Experience, Munich/Germany
Success doesn’t make us happy — happiness makes us successful.
Lisa found her way into the exciting world of tech by following her gut instinct. She had applied for various dual degree programs and wanted to take the classic route into business administration. But when she was quickly offered a job with one of the most successful IT companies around, she listened to her gut instinct which told her to enter into the world of business informatics. Without any previous knowledge and in order to prepare herself for her studies, she picked up the book “Introduction to IT” and started her way from there, which led her to BestSecret 1,5 years ago. Here, she was recently promoted to Lead Product Owner in Mobile Experience.
Hello Lisa, first of all congratulations on your new job! Thank you for answering our questions…
The theme of last year’s International Women’s Day was #ChooseToChallenge. What challenges have you faced recently and what were your lessons learned?
The biggest challenge for me at the moment is the step towards becoming a manager, which is a path I have only just embarked on. For me, it’s important that I stay grounded. The most important thing I’ve learned so far is to try to create an optimal balance. This also means sometimes taking time away from my operational tasks.
What are you particularly proud of when it comes to your career?
First of all, I’m proud of the fact that I took the right steps towards IT through my studies. My last job in consulting didn’t make me happy, and I realised that and decided to pull the ripcord accordingly. That’s why I’m all the more pleased now to have found a job I really enjoy where I feel like I’m delivering value.
The position of Product Owner exists in many different companies. Can you briefly explain what you do as a product owner in eCommerce at BestSecret?
In the context of the online shop or the app, I first get a picture of the problems our customers or business stakeholders are experiencing (these can be for example, from the Payment Team or from Online Category Management). I prioritise these problems and look for solutions and ideas to solve them accordingly. The solutions are developed in close collaboration with the UI/UX (User Interface, User Experience) Team. Together with the team and if necessary also with the stakeholders, they are broken down into smaller work packages (epics and stories) and implemented accordingly.
In order to deepen our understanding here a bit more, can you give us a couple of concrete examples of topics you and your team are currently working on?
Yes, some very tangible topics include for example, the re-design of our home screen page, which we are currently working on. Or, revising the filters in the BestSecret app. More technical tasks include things like a version update for our search engine, which we use in the store and the apps, or the performance optimisations of the product detail pages.
What’s the best thing about your job?
I really enjoy being the intersection between business and IT. On the one hand, I love working with the software developers on a day-to-day basis and with the business stakeholders on the other. You really get to experience and shape ideas into solutions and features that our customers can use in the store.
You find balance in your free time by hiking in nature. How important is it for you to have a supportive network that you can exchange ideas with?
An exchange about topics that I’m busy with is very important for me in order to get a new perspective on things and to broaden my horizons. Especially during these times of with home office, I discuss a lot of things with my boyfriend and also with my girlfriends. They always give me new food for thought for my everyday life — both professionally and privately.
What does it mean to you to be successful in your job?
A nice quote comes to mind: “It’s not success that makes us happy — it’s happiness that makes us successful.” In my opinion, everyone needs to define for themselves, what makes them happy. For me personally, it’s when I close my computer in the evening or on Fridays and have the feeling, that I have accomplished and achieved something. This can be the release of a new feature or answering an AppReview but also giving feedback to others. In my eyes, you can only be successful if the team setup, the collaboration and everything around it works well. That’s why it’s a great success for me to be in an environment where I feel comfortable and can work on things together with my colleagues.
What’s your personal mantra?
Never Stop Exploring. If you only rely on what you already have, you won’t go any further.
If you’d like to learn more about this year’s #BreakTheBias theme and the work of IWD, follow this link.
