Introduction

Kim’s approach to problem-solving as a software engineer is to do what she has done since her childhood — spend as much time as possible gathering information before making a choice.

 “I remember being ten years old when I would finish watching a TV show. I would immediately go and look up all the characters online, I wanted to know everything. When I’m passionate I hyperfixate,” she says.

This is obvious by the way in which Kim speaks. She’s enthusiastic, gesturing and taking pauses to think before answering questions, such as just how she stays so motivated,“Off the record, it’s delusion,” she laughs.

“ “If you’re digging you don’t strike gold at first, but each shovelful g ets you a little closer”

But her modesty betrays a much deeper rooted determination. “I just don’t believe that the solutions I’m looking for don’t exist. If you’re digging you don’t strike gold at first, but each shovelful gets you a little closer,” she says.

It’s an outlook that is crucial to software engineering, which itself is endless problem solving and requires a resilience to succeed long term.

While her mindset is well suited to software engineering, and she currently plies her trade at charitable donation platform Classy, Kim went through a number of career changes before discovering Codesmith and gravitating towards coding.

Before software engineering Kim worked as a summer school teacher, in a grocery store, and most recently as a healthcare analyst. This last job left her burnt out and feeling “like a hamster on a wheel.”

Kim’s experiences in software and analytics could not have been more different. “Everything about being an analyst was terrible. I wasn’t passionate about the work and it felt pointless because I never really got to reap that reward for my input, compared to coding where you're building out a product that you can see being used.”

She explains that since graduating Codesmith she has found that software and tech companies are more focused on continuously reminding engineers of the work that they are doing. 

“There's a lot of all hands and team meetings in tech. As an analyst, there was no focus on that, such as “the work that you've done has allowed us to do this, has allowed this company to grow by X amount,” it was just “get to work.”

It was however the push she needed to look for a much needed career change.

Learning To Code And Problem Solving With The Community

In 2020 a friend of Kim’s introduced her to the idea of coding as a career change. “She was an opera singer before software engineering, she went through an immersive program and recommended I get into tech as well. 

“I decided to shop around for different routes as another friend of mine had also gone through the same program as her, but had some regrets and mentioned Codesmith was a great program I should consider instead. I checked it out and it had in-person free classes in JavaScript.”

She started attending Codesmith’s JavaScript the Easy Parts classes and enjoyed returning to learning. “It was 2020, I hadn’t been in school for a while, so it was fun feeling like I was back in classes again, I liked the structure of the classes.”

In the beginning, she approached coding like she does all things, with a spirit of curiosity and excitement over the potential of what she could do with the tools she was learning to use. But the more she learned the more questions she had. 

How did a developer make that graphic, why did they choose that programming language, and how did they arrive at this piece of front-end-facing logic?

“Pair programming and that was the number one thing that solidified my skills as you can learn so much about how you interview and handle thinking under pressure”

Kim was initially daunted by Codesmith’s pair programming sessions — where two programmers code together simultaneously talking through the code to solve problems and improve technical communication — and software engineering did not at first feel like a space open to someone like Kim. However, when she found her work in these sessions was going to be evaluated by another woman of color she felt a sense of safety. 

“Software engineering previously felt like a locked door to me, then I realized I could knock on it.”

It didn’t take long for her to feel she wanted to go further into coding. “I started doing JavaScript for Beginners three months into Codesmith, because I felt like I was at a point where I was ready to commit.”

After graduating to JavaScript the Hard Parts, “which was really hard” soon Kim was spending her Monday and Wednesday nights at Codesmith, adding pair programming to her training.

“It was still in person at that point in time and it was a great experience. I did a ton of pair programming and that was the number one thing that solidified my skills as you can learn so much about how you interview and handle thinking under pressure. I used that to get into the immersive.”

However, that transition wouldn’t happen as soon as Kim hoped as the world ground to a halt due to the pandemic.

“As I was still working as an analyst at that stage, work became more strenuous, so I put coding to one side for a time.”

It meant needing to relearn many things when she had time to return to code but, in what Kim sees as a stroke of luck, her employer in healthcare ended up letting her go during lockdown.

“I got laid off during COVID, and it was great, it gave me time to focus again on coding. At this point I was used to pandemic life. I spent a couple of months relearning the things I had forgotten.”

Following this she joined the Los Angeles Full Time Remote Immersive program, despite living in Brooklyn, New York. “The immersive was challenging, but it was great for me. My cohort was amazing, we hung out a lot virtually and even have met in person since we all graduated.”

The hours were long, she admits, but they didn't feel that long. “Once you're in it, you just grow accustomed to it and I was so glad that it was online because I would have hated commuting.”

Although she had never imagined she may end up with a career in software engineering, Kim is enamored with the systematic problem-solving nature of coding. “It was a pleasure that I stumbled into all this, rather than it being something I was searching for,” she says. 

Looking back she says she has even been surprised by how social the world of coding turned out to be, in contrast to the stereotype of quiet coders thrashing away at a keyboard in the corner of a room.

It was this strong sense of community within coding that Kim has found a way to solve the neverending problems that arise in her work. 

Today she solves problems best by sourcing information from the crowd, and today when facing a tough challenge she usually starts to solve it by throwing some debugger statements into her code.

“I just don’t believe that the solutions I’m looking for don’t exist”

Then she “chases the rabbit,” stepping through functions to see what’s calling what, who’s calling who, playing telephone to see if some data is getting passed incorrectly.

From there, she follows the knots in her thread until she finds the big tangle, but if she can’t find it, or she’s not sure how to untangle it when she does, she turns to the community.

“I’m the type of person who wants to see a problem from every angle, and it’s hard to do that by yourself, so I go to my peers for help,” she says. 

Whether that’s in person or on online forums like Stack Overflow, of which she declares herself a disciple, “all of her decisions are basically a smoothie of everyone’s advice that I blend together to work for me.”

“The style of engineering work I love could be done a million different ways, and I have to find the unique one that works for me”

“The style of engineering work I love could be done a million different ways, and I have to find the unique one that works for me”

From Codesmith to Classy and Changing Charity

Since graduating from Codesmith, Kim has worked as a software engineer for Classy, “it took four months to get my job, which in 2021 in comparison to my cohort mates was a very long time.” Classy is a platform designed to change the way charitable donations are made.

“It used to be a fundraising organization themselves, but now we create software to help fundraising organizations,” says Kim. The pivot saw her engineering focus change from backend work to frontend work.

“I am a classically trained full stack engineer and used to work in more of a full stack role leaning towards the backend, but after a big change at the company I’ve been part of the design systems team since February this year.”

Classy’s mission is to “mobilize and empower the world for good.” and they accomplish this by using technology to connect donation givers with the causes they personally care about. It was established after the founder’s mother survived two battles with breast cancer and prompted them to engage with the “frustrating” experience of charitable donations.

Beginning with a single donation to cancer research, it grew to be the largest giving network in the world raising over $30 billion for social causes, before pivoting to being a platform that creates software for smaller non-profit organizations, allowing users flexible payments to help raise money quickly. 

“A lot of nonprofits don't have very tech savvy people on their teams, beyond perhaps knowing how to post on Instagram or link to a GoFundMe page,” she explains.

“If an organization uses Classy, they can have a button that takes their donors to the pages we’ve built to enter their payment information, process payments, and keep track of all their records in one place.”

Coding for a company created to force positive change in the world was also a strong reason for Kim to work at Classy.

“Prior to my career in tech, even in college, I was interested in nonprofit work. I went to a university focused on giving back with midnight runs and community focused work.”

After her disheartening experience in analytics, with its lack of empathy or tangible sense of achievement, Classy presented the perfect opportunity to work in a career she cared about for a company aligned with her own values.

“Software engineering previously felt like a locked door to me, then I realized I could knock on it”

Backend vs Frontend At Classy

When she worked on the backend focusing on Classy’s features, Kim’s favorite problems were those that involve moving vast amounts of user data, and code that involves myriad SQL sequel queries. 

It’s this type of work that happens on the backend that makes for a good user experience on the frontend. A strong frontend experience is something Kim is enthusiastic about, given her education prior to Codesmith being predominantly in artistic disciplines.

She explains that synthesizing massive data sets into an elegant solution for the user is something she finds engaging as a backend engineer, because there’s no right answer, and so it allows her to fall back on her penchant for information gathering from different resources, both online and her peers.

Now she has switched to the design systems team and is working directly on the frontend, where she works almost exclusively in React and Typescript, she has a clearer view of how to enhance the user experience.

“The goal is to make a more user-friendly experience for these companies that are not tech savvy and that want to raise a lot of money and also manage those funds.” She says this often boils down to methodology and making simple solutions to consistently occurring problems.

“If you are building a house with 10 levels, the big problem is how to get from Level 1 to Level 5. The solution is to build stairs, you make stairs once and can reuse that solution over and over. So I create simple UX and UI-focused solutions that everybody else can access to create a consistent looking product for users.

“The style of engineering work I love could be done a million different ways, and I have to find the unique one that works for me,” she says. 

Inspiration for a unique method often strikes while she looks at the sky while walking on a break from work. “It’s usually when I’m taking my dog to the park that I’ll get hit by a moment of brilliance,” she says, “the Notes app and I are best friends.”

Her approach to the code-building process, whether frontend or backend,  also involves exploring whether other engineers have approached the problems she is facing similarly before. 

“I take a different tactic than someone who’s been doing this for, say, ten years. I have to dissect a problem from all sides, as opposed to someone who can see straight through it,” she explains. 

Part of the reason Kim takes this approach is because dissecting problems in her code helps her to advance more quickly. “I tend to peel the onion rather than cutting the apple.”

But where there is always a benefit to one approach, there is also a con. 

“Sometimes applying a fix in one area might be a good solution, but it might also be a solution that can lend itself to bugs in the future just because it is open ended. It can potentially be what is input into the code, as often you can end up breaking things down the line based on the manner in which you've written out your code.”

Kim’s Work Setup

She laughs when describing her setup as “very sad. I use the same desk I’ve been using since I was at Codesmith, which I only got because I was tired of sitting on my bed and my back was starting to hurt.”

Like most engineers she has a dual monitor setup, but unlike most engineers she’s given up on using it. “I’m getting old and my eyes hurt. So now I just hang out on my laptop screen, it’s a lot of swiping. I have a keyboard and mouse but don’t use those either.”

The MacBook Pro M3 is robust enough hardware for her work and way too much if she’s not coding. “It’s fast for code, but if you’re not coding, you do not need this computer. It’s very fast for building apps and running them, which is great, but if you’re just a general user it’s unnecessary.”

In terms of software, apart from VS Code, she is a frequent Figma user, given her newer role focused on design and the frontend. “Before, when working on the backend I was using Postman as well as Sequel Ace for Classy’s database.”

She also confesses to using Notion “an embarrassing amount. I make my grocery lists there, fill it with unstructured thoughts, like a perfume I might want to try, and if I have serious thoughts and things to do, they go into Notion too.”

“People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job”

Side Projects

In addition to her work at Classy, Kim has also come full circle in her journey and now teaches JavaScript Beginners classes on Saturdays at Codesmith, where she says she often sees people that remind her of her earlier self overcoming early obstacles.

She acknowledged that the tech market has changed dramatically since she graduated, and that those she teaches are also aware of the challenges they face in this regard. But Kim says that it has also had an unexpected effect in that those coming to her classes are far more invested in the field of engineering for the same reason.

“People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job. The people I work with are very passionate about being a software engineer.”

Aside from software, Kim has also become an avid runner, the challenge of which shares some parallels to learning to code. “I went to art schools my whole life so I didn't do sports growing up. At first it’s really hard, actually. And then one day, you don't care. You just do it.”

It’s a rare opportunity for her to switch her brain off and she usually does it while listening to her favorite music. At the moment that’s Ghanaian-American artist Amaarae, who fuses pop, R&B, and afrobeats.

“I don’t listen to music when I code however, as I like to be in the zone, my flow state. But running is a rare brain-off moment for me.”