It’s Women’s History Month and we’re celebrating the women who are powering Dutchie’s rise with a series of Q&A posts. Check out the other posts here.
Hey Allie! Tell me a bit about yourself! Where are you located? What do you work on?
I’m a full stack JavaScript developer out of St. Louis, MO. I work on our Dankstronauts team, a subsection of our UI team that works on all things sales, promotions, and space-related Zahbah doodles. I also built the carousel components across the site.
What brought you to Dutchie?
Culture and tech stack were my two biggest drivers. I wanted a place where I could bring my full self to work and challenge the preconceptions of being a woman in tech. Oddly enough, I stumbled across a Dutchie ad on a Who’s Hiring post on HackerNews about a year ago. Apollo GraphQL? Cannabis? Remote-friendly company? Check, check, check. An engineering manager with a spotless HackerNews comment history to boot? Right on!
I was so impressed with everyone that I interviewed with and their honesty and sincerity around their evolving Diversity and Inclusion process. Being the first female engineer has never been new in my career, but I’ve never witnessed such a strong force of allyship that has enabled us to make a lot of progress in a short period of time. I quickly got to be involved in working on various initiatives within our Social Responsibility Committee and took an active role in bringing more diverse engineering applicants into our pipeline. It didn’t take long to become surrounded by an awesome group of women on all sides of our stack and we’re excited to keep pushing those numbers upwards as we grow!
What’s your typical day like?
Low on meetings, extremely few emails, high on Slack interactions, a bit of code reviews, several good chunks of focus coding time, and a spattering of subcommittee volunteering. All in all, it depends on the day, but I like to keep a healthy mixture to balance everything out.
What’s something about your Dutchie experience that’s different from other places you’ve worked?
It’s amazing how much faster you learn things and how much more confident of a developer you can be when you’re surrounded by approachable, communicative, down-to-earth humans. The people here really make all the difference.
Do you have a favorite Dutchie memory or event?
I was initially going to go with our Halloween pet costume contest, but dressing my cats in Midsommar outfits was nowhere near the hype machine that our last All Hands meeting was. What a crazy exciting moment to share with everyone.
What would you tell your younger self when you first started your career?
Immediately start applying for other jobs when you realize you’re in a toxic environment.
What advice would you give to women trying to break into the industry?
Network. Even if you’re an introvert. Reach out to other women in roles that you admire. Send them a friendly message or an honest question/concern that’s on your mind. Most of us actually really like to hear from you! Join some online communities like Elpha or Tech Ladies. They’re one of the best hugs on the internet if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed.
Learn about other amazing women at Dutchie!
