when i code it's actually like the one time that i like to write. the writing of the code is like the last thing you do. and for me what i really love is that whole process of problem solving right before. it's that going from, "oh i have an idea of what's going on here" to like, "oh i finally figured it out and i solved this." it's almost like act of creation. it's like you're creating stuff out of nowhere. it's pretty awesome. my name's jessica egoyibo mong and i'm a software engineer here at survey monkey. survey monkey is an online platform for people to send out surveys
and collect data to make better decisions. i work on the billing engineering team. we are in charge of the checkout pages and the pricing pages, and just making sure that our users have a great experience paying us money. so, i grew up in nigeria and we had a computer growing up. and at one point it got broken. so my uncle said he had a friendwho was a computer engineer that would fix it. but his friend never got sparetime, so i thought if i become a computer engineer then i wouldn't have a computer that would be broken. so every time anybody asks me what would you be in the future,
i'd be like i'm gonna be a computer engineer. in high school in nigeria i told the guidance counselor that i wanted to study computer engineering. so they put in electrical engineering courses. so that got me with hands on experience dealing with hardware. i got a full scholarship toattend claflin university in south carolina. i got into the computer engineering program with the department of computer science and engineering. and that's when i took my first software engineering class. it was basic algorithm design. and i remember when i took it, it kind of made sense. it was like, "oh yes, so the computer is a hardware and the stuff that runs on it is the software.
and so that really got me interested in software and just like exploring. i discovered through like applications to tech companies that i actually wanted to work for, that i didn't have much applicable experience in applying things i learned in the classroom. i knew computer science theory but i hadno skills in applying it. like i didn't know how to build web applications. so i took a step to a step to go to hackbright academy. hackbright is a programming fellowship for women to help them brush up on skills to be at least a junior web developer. that was a very big challenge because i couldn't afford to go to hackbright academy. so i came to the bay area with no place to stay with about $1,100 in my pocket. and $1,000 was for the deposit to start hackbright academy.
and by god's grace i was able to start class on monday. so my advice for people who would liketo be engineers is, if you love it stick with it. and then the second thing is building a network. i don't know where i would have been without having mentors who supported me throughout the times, the rough patches that i had. it's really great because they offer a good wealth of knowledge.