Celebrate Tech All September Long!

To kick off our September celebration of all things tech, we asked various members of our team to send a message to the IT universe at large. Their responses struck several different tones. Some funny, some heartfelt – all genuinely grateful for the tech workers in their lives and the innovations they’ve made possible.

But before we lay out the September tech holidays and our team’s takes on them, a joke from one of our favorite developers:

Q: How can you tell if you’re talking to an extroverted software developer?

A: When they speak to you they look at your shoes.

9/12 National Video Games Day

One of the best experiences I’ve had in my life with any video game would have to be The Last of Us Part 2. The game came out during COVID quarantine so my wife and I had a ton of downtime. For three days we put eight-ish hours a day into this game. The game took us through such a rollercoaster of emotions that we were either yelling at the TV or in full-blown tears at various points in the game. It was a weird time in the world for the game to come about and something that truly showed how far gaming has come in terms of telling a story.

My wife loves watching me play story-based games, it's one of my favorite things that we connect on, and this game has set the standard for what we look to play together. No game has even come close and I recommend it to anyone who will listen to me talk. – Ryan Braunstein, IT Cloud Engineer

9/13 Programmers Day

To all the devs out there: Patching has come a long way, but we wouldn't be there without you! – Jay Goodman, Director, Product Marketing Manager

9/14 National Coding Week

if (youGiveUpTheAverage) {

youCanGetTheExtraordinary();

}

Code will play an instrumental part in defining the future. It is pivotal that young women start to learn early on to be a part of the extraordinary! – Cesile Johnson, Vice President, Engineering

For young women interested in coding (or those who know any young women or girls interested in learning to work with code), we recommend exploring Women Who CODE (WWCode).

Women Who Code prepares this generation of women in tech to be tomorrow’s role models. This global nonprofit started as a community group in 2011 and has since grown to include 320,000 members in 147 countries.

WWCode helps:

• Advance women in their careers, every step of the way

• Provide a community of 320,000 that has become a movement in technology leadership

• Build Global Leaders in Tech, effectively changing the industry

• Offer low to no barrier-to-entry programs, events, scholarships and more for women to build tech and leadership skills

To learn more, feel free to contact WWCode at contact@womenwhocode.com. And happy National Coding Week!

9/15 World Engineers Day

I’m not your typical engineer, and I didn’t have the most conventional path to engineering. In college, the engineering and computer science departments felt homogenous and intimidating. Plus, the lack of diversity among students was a turnoff.

When I graduated, I pivoted into cyber security in a sales engineering role and eventually security engineering. I learned how to use tools on the job. I loved to dissect things and figure out how they worked. Plus, problem-solving for those seemingly impossible fixes became a special kind of addiction.

Engineering, whether it be security or software engineering, requires steadfast perseverance and attention to detail that borders on insanity. You have to be willing to bang your head against the wall (repeatedly) before getting things to work.

As someone who never saw herself as the ‘typical’ engineer, I can say there’s a pretty steep learning curve. Still, if you have strong deductive reasoning skills and attention to detail, engineering is a worthwhile endeavor. Bonus points for those always willing to learn something new. – Marina Liang, Senior Security Engineer

9/18 National Day of Civic Hacking

As someone who has been working with public sector IT teams for many years, I’ve seen firsthand how much time, energy, collaboration, and passion gets put into ensuring our systems are up and running for our citizens. In the same light, National Day of Civic Hacking is another great way for IT talent across the world to come together, share ideas and give back to our communities. We thank all of you for taking your Sunday to make a difference.
– Jason Willadsen, Sales Manager, SLED

9/20 National IT Professionals Day