Vanessa Henson

One of the hard fast rules of friendship is never dating the same person as your friend. Everyone knows that the outcome only brings heart break for everyone involved.  There is another rule that is slightly less known and unfortunately I learned the hard way.  That rule is not to apply for the same job as your friend.  I didn’t even realize my best friend was looking for jobs when I started my interview process. I couldn’t wait to tell her that I got an interview with an awesome company. Turns out she had an interview with the same company! How amazing, they had two openings and it was perfect, we could work together again. We studied and shared our tips and ideas with each other. It was both bonding and competitive at the same time, which brought up some strange feelings for us both.  We didn’t entertain any negative outcomes, only the possibility of being able to work with each other again.  Alas the interviews were extremely hard and we both bombed them,...

If only confidence was bottled or in pill form, life would be so easy. After all, most of the criteria for which we strive in order to have "successful life" are all tied to confidence.  Landing a job, starting a business,  changing careers, asking for a raise,  you name it and I guarantee the steps you need to take towards your goals are backed by confidence. You need the confidence to put yourself out there, get knocked out, kicked while you're down, gut punched and after all of that pick your bloody bruised ego up and do it all over again. Confidence is something that has never come naturally to me. The tactic that I have used the most in my life to break through the fear of not being smart/educated/talented/well-spoken/good enough is . . .  "Fake It Until You Make It".   The idea of acting as if you are confident, smart or whatever other feelings you need in your given situation.  The science behind 'acting as if' is that if you fake it long...

In the past 8 years of my career I have learned so many critical life lessons.  It has been a long journey... both as a woman in tech and a self taught Developer.  I came up with a list of things for you that I wish someone had told me at the start of my journey. You are smarter than you think you are. Coding is hard and there is always tons to learn. Don’t be afraid to ask questions , it is always better to ask than waste time being stuck. Write your questions down before presenting them so you can articulate yourself better. Pull requests can be brutal! Do your best to put your feelings aside. Treat pull requests as an opportunity to learn .  Constructive criticism will do so much for your career .  If you are having a hard time with it, remember . . . just because you have to change your code doesn’t mean that you did it wrong - you just did it a different way ( after all working code is good code - there are just more effect or clean ways to do ever...