Editorial by Denver Saldanha
Vibula, a highly ambitious student from Stella Maris College, Chennai was a part of our summer internship program of 2021. In the many years of operations, we've had so many developers who've been a part of our teams, who worked on many projects around the globe. One tiny detail which did not occur to us, was the entire team was comprised of human beings containing XY chromosomes, (men!). In all honesty, we've always wanted to increase the ratio of men and women, but as we proudly advertise, gender (and many other factors that are considered a limitation) is not reason for someone to get/loose a job. "Qualecumque ingenium conducetur" (Latin: Talent will be hired, no matter what). This is a story of how Vibula Roslin as she takes us through how she became the first female developer at icrewsystems.
VIBULA ROSLIN, THE PHOENIX THAT ROSE OUT OF THE ASHES
Hello World! This is Vibula. So, I was a final year BCA Student from Stella Maris College, Chennai. Like any other student in my class, I wanted to enhance my skills, and I was told the best way to do that, was to do an internship and get hands on experience. When I was discussing this with my family, my sister-in-law had heard about this company "icrewsystems" from her coworker, where they offered a work-from-home based jobs for students. Honestly, there are a lot of companies that provide jobs like these, which is just a glorified data entry job masked as an internship. Thankfully, I did my due diligence and found out their website, and noticed that they were hiring for the summer internship. I called up the number on the site, hoping to reach the hiring manager, and boom, I was on call with Leonard, CEO of the company. As soon as I expressed that I wanted to do an internship, I was asked to write an e-mail and before I knew it, I was scheduled to have an interview with the Samay, Head of Engineering & Ayshwaria, Head of Human Resources
The most fascinating (and frightening) fact was, Leonard told me that I'm going to be the first female developer of the company. It was almost as if, I had gone to see the olympics, and then I was handed off the torch and asked to light the flame, and to top it off, it was my FIRST, EVER, INTERVIEW in my life. (heart beat intensifies)
As usual, I prepared well, prayed hard and got on call with Samay & Ayshwaria for my internship interview. I had assumed the worst, but thankfully, the interview was smooth. Thanks to my prayers and preparations. Soon after that, I received an email which literally read "You're in!". I was a part of a 11 member team, and I was the only girl there. Back of my mind, I was a little nervous, but I did not let any of it show itself during the onboarding. It was a bit overwhelming to hear about the entire team, where they're from, the projects they're working on and the lives they're changing. I couldn't believe that in a few month's time, I'll also be one of "them". As a part of our onboarding, we were also given the syllabus for our entire tenure. When I read that, 3.141592653589793238..... (and the other million decimal places of Pi) felt shorter. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but yes, it was indeed a long list. I had to learn PHP, JS MySQL, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Tailwind, Laravel, Eloquent ORM, Blade Templating, CRUD Operations and Vue JS. While I had some experience in using few of those languages in college, this was a long list, and it was made clear to me that the "learning" part is lifelong on the very first day. Thankfully, the team was very resourceful in putting together a self learning module with all the above, and then some more.
At this point of time, with all the overwhelming information, I also something else to take care of. My final year project. In the starting, it wasn't a problem, but it slowly started becoming one as the days went by. One one hand, I was trusted with very high profile projects, and on the other, I had the project that's going to decide the fate of my GPA. Both were equally important to me. To accurately describe my situation, let me paint a vivid picture for you: It was like writing an important assignment when the teacher was collecting it, WHILE studying for an upcoming test. Gosh, it was one of the hardest times of my life.
I'm not a quitter, I repeat, I AM NOT A QUITTER! but the situation was getting so bad and the pressure was just piling upon me to deliver quality inputs for the internship and also develop my final project....quitting started to seem like an easy option. I was at the brink of just calling up the HR and yelling "I QUIT", and soon enough, that day came. Thankfully, I did not yell, but I expressed to the HR that I will not be able to continue my internship. The HR team was professional, they asked me the reasons, and then told me I'll be informed of what to do next. I was feeling like I had let down the entire woman kind, because when I had joined, the welcome was given as such that everyone was aware that I was the first and only female developer on the team. It was not something that I was looking forward to. I had that erring feeling of "have I done something wrong?".
That night, to my surprise, I got a call from the CEO himself. It was a very lengthy call I remember. I was given a chance to express myself, and I was asked "I have a solution, are you interested in hearing it?" Normally, people I've heard that companies just force you to serve the notice period without 0 consideration, but this conversation started to disprove all of that. I was reminded of all the achievements I had done, and of the fact that I AM NOT A QUITTER! Along with all this, Leonard gave me a game plan as to what I can do, he even offered that the team could help with my final year project. I was overwhelmed by that gesture. That was all I needed to hear. The motivation that was spoken into me was so empowering, I realized, my actions today will become history for not just myself, but for all the girls who are going to follow my footsteps into icrewsystems. What bigger motivation could I ask for?
Make no mistake, it was HARD! It was not an easy task to manage my final year project as well as an internship. I had to make my sacrifices, as they say, "No pain, no gain". I think the challenges I had to face, made me a better developer. I was also informed that I was one of the first members of the team to be from the non-aviation fraternity. I mean, it was very obvious, from the terminology that was used in the meetings to the methods in which tasks are executed, you can make out that these people are professionals. I thought it was also going to be something that will always make me feel like I lacked something, but I'm lucky that I've had such good mentors who believed in "Give a girl a fish, and she'll eat for a day, but teach her to fish, and she'll eat for a lifetime". In essence, they never dumbed down anything, never lowered the bar just because of my shortcomings. I was always inspired to be a better version of myself, and I believe I am indeed a better version of myself.
I think I will always look back to that moment in my life, and think that I've done more, and through my journey, I have inspired some girl in the world to push harder! I thank the executives, my mentors, seniors and peers for all that they've done for me. In a way, they've made me immortal, "The first female developer of icrewsystems".
Signing off, a girl big dreams;
Vibula Roslin.
