2025 EES Microsoft: Thriving as an Underrepresented Engineer

Good afternoon, good morning to all. Welcome to another amazing session. We have a great session today presented by Microsoft and it’s titled Thriving as the underrepresented engineer.

So let’s just do a little housekeeping rules. Okay. So we want to make sure that you all are asking questions.

Make sure you use you utilize the the the question and ask answer box. Also within the chat, we want to make sure that the chat stays consistent to what we’re actually consistent and relevant to what we’re actually talking about. Okay.

So, I’m not going to hold you all. I know you all came to speak with Microsoft. So, let’s let’s welcome our presenters.

Let’s bring Kirsten to the stage. He is an amazing engineer. You all enjoy.

Hi everyone. Welcome. Hope you all are enjoying the emerging engineer summit and making great connections.

Thanks for joining us our session we’ll be talking about thriving as an underrepresented engineer. So let’s dive right in. So first is the agenda.

So today we’ll be discussing belonging community employee resource groups as well known as ERGs and other companies have different names for them but they’re pretty much the same. Then we’ll discuss mentorship and peer support. Then we’ll dive into learning curves and then end with a Q&A.

So let’s do some housekeeping. So use the meeting chat to stay engaged. You’re welcome to talk with each other or drop any thoughts you have.

As mentioned by Anthony, keep it in on topic. Use the Q&A to submit your questions and up votes. The most voted questions.

We’ll try to pick as many as we can during the Q&A portion, but I believe you can write questions throughout the entire session. Last be present and inclusive and how we know you’re engaged reactions. Okay, so please have reactions so you can help us speakers like you actually like what you’re we’re saying or that we’re actually making sense.

It’s very helpful for our confidence. So let’s dive right in with intros. So first my name is Kira Naval.

I’m a software engineer here at Microsoft specifically working on Xbox experiences and platform commerce. I’ve been at the company for a little a little under four years now almost four years soon. I attended University of Florida studied computer science and engineering.

I am from Florida specifically South Florida. Some communities and ERGs I’m part of are black at Xbox which is the blackg within the Xbox. Then there’s the Xbox early and career lunch pad which I’ve been a part of ever since I joined which is basically a community of early career folks within the Xbox division who just meet up for lunches and coffee chats every once in a while just to share our experiences being early career and also just get advice from the folks are just at the cusp of in their early career journey.

Then there’s the bam pig sound which stands for blacks and microsoft pig sound which is specifically the Seattle chapter of blacks at Microsoft’s erg. Then some hobbies of mine are I’m a music afficionado. I love and breathe music.

If I could eat music, I would literally be fed for the rest of my life. I attend music festivals and concerts year on a yearly basis. I go I’m actually going to a No worries concert tonight.

And I attend about three to five festivals a year. Camp Faggna, Rolling Loud Miami, and Dreamville are like the ones that are my rotation. I’m a plant dad.

I have many plants. I think last I counted I was at like 20some. Right now I’m growing some potato, not potatoes, tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, and parsley.

Which is something new that I’ve been trying this summer, trying to grow crops. And I’m a vinyl record collector. I have almost 60 plus vinyls going as far as back as 1974, I believe, where Jimmyi Hendricks performed in Atlanta.

Yeah, passing over to Mayuna. I’m a software engineer at Microsoft. I’ve been at Microsoft for about a year now.

I just hit one year in August, which is like amazing and cool. I am in the M365 or if you’re like familiar with M365 platforms and different things in that nature. I work in the back end.

I’m on a team called Spartan. So, I do like code modernizing efforts for like the whole repo, which is really cool. But I recently graduated from Pomona College in May of 2024 where I got my degree in computer science and I also minored in cognitive science and media studies.

Some communities I’m a part of is like the BLAM 665 V team. So I help volunteer with that. The V stands for volunteer and but I’m also a part of the black women in software engineering and I also participate in a lot of early and career communities and also help with event planning for the with the engaged team at Microsoft.

Also, some hobbies of mine. I love reading, which I’ll talk a little bit more later. And also, I love writing.

I My first love was poems. I love writing poetry. And then also, right now, I’m writing a short story, which I’m really excited about.

I also love storyboarding because I hope to like direct one day. I love painting. Am I the best painter?

No. But I’m getting there. I’m getting to the point where I feel confident to like put things on my wall. So, that’s good.

And I love eating and trying new foods and then trying to like recreate them. I’m in like my postgrad era, so I’m trying to like expand my recipes. So yeah, that’s a little bit about me and I’ll pass it off to Terrence.

Thank you, Mayuna. And nice to meet everybody. Just real quick, big shout out to Mayuna for first year at Microsoft.

That is a really big achievement. So, congrats to you. For those that don’t know me, my name is Terrence Bunkley and I’ve been at Microsoft for about four years.

And I didn’t put it on this slide, but I’ve been in tech for about 20. So when I started, I did have hair. My background in includes I have a bachelor’s in computer engineering, super super traditional, and I just graduated with my degree in my master’s in business.

When it comes to the the roles I have at Microsoft, we all know primarily I’m a software engineer, but a little bit of a couple of the extra things that I do is that I’m involved with Blacks at Microsoft for the past couple of years. I’ve been leading as one of the technical instructors for Black at Microsoft and and we’ve released a number of we’ve released a video on and we’ve done several courses to get diverse students and and others their first Azure certificate or their first Azure to be certified in Azure. We we we had at least 50 graduates of that program.

So we got at least 50 people certified. Next is Toast Masters. I last year I served as the Toastmasters chapter president and that was super valuable when it comes to opportunities and moments like these.

And lastly, I’m one of the leaders for one of the community leaders for responsible AI. And that role mostly involves when it comes to what we’re doing at Microsoft internally with our customers. We try to make sure that we’re leveraging the best practice when it comes to using AI ethically, responsibly, and and all the things.

I listed I I wear a lot of hats. These are my top five, right? First and foremost, I’m a husband.

I’ve been married for for almost four years now, but me and my wife have been together for a while and that’s been super fun. Next, I’m a father. I have a little girl.

She’s two years old. So, she does all the things. And that’s my little princess.

I love her. And I have another one due in October. So, I may lose more hair wherever that is.

And and the last three, right? I’m a traveler. I love traveling.

I’m a I’m a speaker. I love to show up in panels, conferences, and and and talk about the topics that I know. Responsible AI, software, engineering, thriving as an engineer.

And lastly, I’m a servant leader. I I truly thrive on helping others be better. And I love helping others be better.

So, those are my those are my top five hats. And lastly, this this quote I live by, each day is unre is an unre repeated miracle. Today will never happen again.

So, we must make it count. I truly live by that because the things that we’re going to talk about in here is that we’re going to experience defeat. We’re going to experience the downside, but the moment that we have is always going to be our moment and we’re never going to get it back.

So, no matter how we feel, we just always have to push to be better even in the worst of moments. So, that’s that’s a little bit about me. And next, I will pass it to Mayuma.

Hello again. Yes, I want to get us started with our very first poll. I’m really curious, how connected do you all feel currently to like professional or student communities in tech and it can range from very connected to not connected at all or like you feel somewhat connected because like you participate a little bit.

So yeah, I’m curious to hear The pole is still going from what I can see. Okay. I’m hoping that we can like get those those results displayed.

One second. Okay. Hey y’all.

Thanks so much for bearing with our little poll technical difficulties. It looks like folks can’t see the results, but I can see them because I’m I guess so special. I can see them.

So thanks for voting. It looks like we had 161 votes. So amazing.

And really good question. It looks like the majority of people say somewhat connected. So they participate but they’re not super active.

Second place was lightly connected. I’ve joined but I haven’t really engaged yet. So it sounds like they could really benefit from all the knowledge you have to share today.

Thanks for voting everyone. Thank you. Okay, we can get we can get started.

Okay. Again, my name is Mim Muna and I’m excited to share my story about my first year at Microsoft as a software engineer and how books and that books that I read before I started at Microsoft and during my first year and different communities I joined and how they all came together to really help me build my confidence and also thrive in my first year. So, yeah, for sure.

Again, my name’s Muna and I’m originally from Chicago. I’m a first generation Nigerian American. I recently graduated from Pomona College in May of 2024.

I majored in computer science with a double minor in cognitive science and media studies. I chose that combination because I was really passionate about creative technology, but also analyzing the social impacts of technology and looking at it more holistically. But I’ll be honest, I didn’t always know I wanted to study that.

I actually came into the I actually came into college undeclared and during the pandemic which was a a unique experience to say the least. I actually took this class called digital media studies to satisfy our early education requirement. And I read this book called Algorithms of oppression by Sophia Noble.

And I remember in the book that she talked a lot about black women and their misrepresentation and over sexualization in media and in tech and how that kind of went handinhand with the lack of represent the lack of black women in technical roles. And that really motivated me to be like, okay, I want to be a software engineer. I want to be in tech.

And yeah, that kind of just like spearheaded like my the rest of my four years. And I remember she actually came and speak virtually of course like later in the seme in the school year and she talked about her work and she also talked about how she’s a big advocate for engineers not only just taking technical classes but also taking classes in like the social sciences. So that’s kind of how my minors came to be and yeah but I’ll be honest I Oh sorry I think we’re on the next slide.

Thank you. I’ll be honest. I was really nervous about transitioning from being a student to being an actual engineer.

And like that’s a big transition. It’s one thing to like study these things and write the essays, but it’s another thing to like have that be my day-to-day and actually be a quote unquote underrepresented engineer. And I remember vocalizing my my fears and my concerns to my adviser.

Shout out Profen. I love Profen. And she recommended this book called Unapologetically Dope by Professor A.

Nikki Washington, which as the subtitle can like says like lessons for black women and girls on surviving and thriving in the tech field. And I was I thought that I I love the book and I devoured it. And I remember reading it alongside like writing letters to my future self as a software engineer and also like doing audio messages and podcasts with my professors and just talking about like my hopes and my fears and my goals for being a software engineer.

And that really helped me build my confidence in preparation for this big transition. But yeah, I when I I remember like starting at Microsoft and just wanting to like discover community and I was really excited because I wanted to like find my own community and like luckily Microsoft had like a plethora of like different employee resource groups and shared interest groups and that’s a big tip that I have when starting in the in the workplace is like finding those different communities and finding those resources. The ones I gravitated to initially was BAM, Black at Microsoft, and WHAM, women at Microsoft, and also different early in career communities.

One in particular I was really excited to join was black women in engineering because I was like, "Oh my god, that took me back to like being a freshman in college and how I was really excited to meet different black women engineers and I was really excited to have a a monthly sync with them and talk about like the the different needs for the community." And that’s another tip I have. That’s tip number two. I know it could be really nerve-wracking to join a community and you want to contribute, but you don’t know how.

I kind of just started off with just like listening and hearing about all the different things that were going on in the community, all the different initiatives they had, all the different events that they were they were coming up with. And I remember that like a big priority that they wanted to work on in the future was building more community and having deeper discussions about things happening and how to navigate different things in the tech field along the lines of being like an underrepresented engineer. And I had this idea.

I was like, "Oo, what if we had like a book club and we read unapologetically dope?" Because I really liked the book and I thought that it had a big impact on me and I was like, "Okay, let me let me propose this idea." And I won’t lie, I was really nervous. I had a lot of anxiety. Like the if anyone’s watched Inside Out, I love that movie.

I felt like I had a lot of anxiety and I was nervous about that because I was like, I’m just this 22-year-old who started like a few seconds ago and I’m proposing this book club. I was like, they have busy schedules. Who’s going to read this book with me?

And I was like, guys, I’ll read the book. It’s only a 100 pages, I promise. Like each chapter is like five pages.

I’ll read the chat. I’ll read the book and I’ll even do summaries every meeting and I’ll come with guiding questions. All you have to do is show up.

Just just show up and participate and I’ll be really appreciated. And luckily people did show up and they did participate and people even read and someone even cited something. I was like, "Oh my god, they’re citing stuff.

This is crazy." And I remember just it really helped my confidence and not only just like in wanting to like volunteer, but also it helped my like technical confidence too because people were sharing their stories about the different ways they had contributed to Microsoft as a whole and that made me feel like oh yeah if they could do it I could do it and that just really motivated me and just like made me want to participate even more and volunteer even more. So I started volunteering even more throughout the year. I started helped out with the black black the BAM 365V team and we put on events like the black history month trivia and Junth events with the interns and highlighting different in different people in the org and I work with the engaged team at Microsoft which is a great team and help put on some early and career events by like being someone who like can advise that community about like needs that the early career people needed and also I was like I mentored and I was mentored and I did mentoring circles and I even did reverse mentoring where I mentored an architect on in our org which was cool because I was like I’ve only been here for like a year but somehow I’m able to give advice to someone who’s been here for a while and that was like a really cool experience and that really helped build my confidence and I highly recommend like looking into these different communities because you never know what opportunities it could lead to.

Like actually even this opportunity right here I heard about it from my BAM mentor and she was like oh and I was like thriving as an underrepresented engineer. I love that. That would be a cool opportunity.

I would love to talk about that. And so, you never know where it may lead you. So, I highly recommend and some another tip I want to leave you guys off with is checking out different like resources and communities.

For example, some books I recommend, I know, I know is Mindset. I actually just read Mindset. It’s all about the growth mindset.

Microsoft is very growth mindset forward. I actually read this book recently again with a group of interns this summer and it was really cool to like read this book with them as they were doing their intern journey and how it impacted their their journey. Also, The Clean Coder is a really good book especially transitioning to like professional programming.

Like it really helped me learn how to say yes and when to say no and how to estimate my time. That was really good. Dare to Lead is a really good book.

I’m actually currently reading that with my team. We also have a book club which is I’m in a lot of book clubs and we’re reading Dare to Lead right now and that’s facilitating so many interesting conversations. Also, if you like a lot of the topics I talked about today, Race After Technology is a really good book.

Ruha Benjamin is amazing author, amazing professor, amazing public speaker, 10 out of 10 love. And I’ll definitely recommend like looking into like communities at your school if you’re still in school and if you’re working currently like communities in your workplace and even outside of those two there’s like amazing communities like Copath this one the great network and also like another community that really helped me especially in my junior and senior year was brilliant black minds. It was really cool to be able to like do like mock interviews with different engineers in the field and get advice about not only just technical technical interview prep but also like hearing about their career and how they navigate it.

So that was really impactful and I highly recommend and I have a long TBR so I can definitely give more Rex and I’m excited to hear any questions you guys have later but yeah I’ll pass it off to Ken. Thank you. Hi everyone, I’m back.

So, I have a poll question that will be dropped soon. So, what’s your biggest challenge when it comes to finding or working with a mentor? Don’t know where to start.

Unsure what to ask for. I feel intimidated reaching out or and I’ve had great mentorship experiences. You’re able to pick multiples.

Okay. So, BART 138. It’s growing almost there.

50 I believe last was 170 or 180. So, I’ll wait once we get closer to that. Seems like we’re leaning on.

Don’t know where to start. Okay. Don’t know where to start.

Well, we’re going to dive right into that and talk about what it looks like. So, for example, this is one of a chat of mine from work when I first started. I think like eight, nine months later.

This was one of the black engineers in my organization. He was a architect slashpal at the time. And in my or at least we had like a list of people that wanted to be mentors and whether they still had capacity, how many mentors they were looking for.

And as you can see, my question, the way that I proposed the question was as simple and as I guess Jen Z as you could see. I literally just sent him the simple emoji and was like, "Huh, please." And with the screenshot that I saw his name on the list and he just inserted and said, "Hi." And yes, I’ll set up some time. And that’s literally how my first mentorship professional mentorship experience started here at Microsoft at least.

And ever since then, now he’s moved from being a mentor of mine to more of an sponsor kind of thing, which I’ll talk more about later. But this is an example I wanted to share. It doesn’t have to be intimidating.

It is a simple conversation or an actimate person. It depends on the style of the person or who they are. You could be as funny about it or as professional or as very like I guess structured about it.

All depends about you. So, let’s go and dive in now. So my mentorship journey to me it’s like building a personal board of advisors.

It’s like you’re building a boardroom of people that are looking to empower you and take you throughout your careers. People part of that advisory board keep you grounded when things are not going the way that you wanted or you get bad news or you feel discouraged learning something new. Help you pivot and identify growth opportunities.

Oh wow, I misspelled growth. Wow. Help you pivot and identify growth opportunities.

That’s specifically sponsors, managers, leads or past peers and etc. They help open doors celebrate you whenever you get new opportunities or you land that thing that you always wanted because they’ve seen you in because they seen you have worked with you over the years. So yeah, that is why it is very important. So now let’s dive into the importance of it.

So mentorship matters because they help you build your support system. As I said, they keep you grounded and you never know what could happen. Like our your career journey will be very up and down.

Sometimes you’re at the tip of the top of the Mount Everest and at another time you could literally be sinking underwater and not feeling like you can keep going. So you need to keep be surrounded with yourself with a mix of people. So to thrive as an underrepresented engineer, it means surrounding yourself with a mix of peers, those walking with you alongside you who you can bounce back ideas.

Maybe just just talk about how bad things are or how good things are. You never know. Near peers a few steps ahead of you, people that can give you advice that’s actually actionable because they just went through it.

Sometimes when you seek a mentor that’s like already a manager or etc. and you’re just now starting your career. Unfortunately, sometimes the advice might not be as actionable right now today because of outdated norms or just how the industry has shifted and etc. So, it’s good to also have someone that’s a near peer not too far away from you, just a few steps maybe two years or a year or just graduated the year before you, etc. Then a role model, someone who has reached your aspirational goals. It’s always it’s great to find that person that you feel has reached where you at least right now believe you want to go.

Of course that’s not set in stone forever, but for like now try to find that person who you think, oh, they’re doing something I would like to do in the future or would like to reach in the near future and those are role models. Then mentees, it’s always great to give back. Those who are behind you is great to u mentor them and also reach back because it helps you first find out like oh are the things that I know were the things that worked for me outdated?

Are they still working? And also gives you different perspectives and it helps you validate your own experience and etc because you you’re starting to hear questions that you possibly had a few years ago where you thought like oh am I asking the right question am I too slow or like am I just not good enough so having someone that’s like going through those same emotions like a few years before you etc helps you ground yourself and also build confidence because then you realize as you’re mentoring them and talking to them like oh I actually do know what I’m doing or maybe I am right for this because I’m able to help this person and your support system is your career safety net and launch pad especially during these times in the economy how the industry is all over the place through layoffs and etc. Your support system is your safety net whether it is for mental health and grounding yourself or if it is to find your next opportunity. Having a mix of people all all around the place is great.

Also don’t always feel like you have to network up. Sometimes networking across the aisle is good, especially like your peers. Networking across with your peers because you never know which of your peers in the future will be a manager happens or who’s who’s a founder and etc. And maybe they will be the person to hire you.

As you know, our growth and career journey is not something that’s linear. It’s up and down. So, you never know where they could be, where you could be.

So, be sure to go with people assign you. So now let’s talk about the different mentor types and their impact. So there’s really three main ones.

Skill coach, career guide, and peer buddy. I added a bonus one which is a very big thing here at Microsoft. I’m sure about other companies, but it is a thing that you should think about.

So skill coach helps you improve specific skills. So think about code reviews, mock interviews or specific frameworks such as like front-end development or React or it is a soft skill such as like being a great communicator or improving your other soft skills such as like time management, planning and etc. Those are people that are like that could be a skill coach for you. Then there’s career guides which offer long-term career advice.

Sometimes that is just your manager because that is part of your manager’s job is to also make sure that you grow throughout your career. And they offer help with like promotion preparation answering questions or helping you guide you towards your promotion role transitions if you ever decide to change roles or change teams. Sometimes it’s also it could be someone else that’s not directly your manager.

You just pick that person to be your career guide because you believe that the career journey that they’ve had is something that you would like to kind of go through. Then there’s peer buddy so provides emotional support and accountability weekly check-ins or someone that can you can bounce back ideas of or even just hear how things are going like hey I’m having this issue I’m not sure if I should bring it up to my manager or I should bring it up to my co-workers etc. you want someone to give you advice without it being I guess confrontational or anything, a peer buddy is always great to be that. Then the bonus, a sponsor.

The sponsor advocates for you in leadership spaces, connects you to opportunities. Sponsors are often in the rooms you’re not in, championing your growth based on your work ethic and potential. So the sponsor is really someone that’s in the place in the rooms that you’re not such as like the promote the rooms where promotions are being discussed where new projects are being talked about and planned and they’re championing you because they know your work ethic and you guys have built that rapport over the years.

Some you can’t you don’t just go ask someone to be your sponsor for one day and they just become your sponsor. It is a relationship you build over time and at one point you guys gain each other’s trust and they gain your trust and know that your work ethic is so good that they can advocate for you and will go to war to give you the opportunities or to advocate for you in the rooms that you don’t have the ability to be in because they’re in the leadership position. Now let’s to the next slide.

So I want to leave you guys with some actionable mentorship plan to get a mentor. Whether it is a skill coach, a career guide, a sponsor or a peer buddy. Nothing too stressful and it’s pretty simple if you try this three simple steps.

So identify three skills you’ll like to improve such as public speaking, Azure fundamentals, resume writing or anything else from the soft or technical skills. Then people to approach. Try to find someone that is good at that specific skill or that you believe is good at or you feel that they have mastery.

Whether it is like an upperassman that you heard or you have seen them post about it a lot or you’ve or you know they’ve taken a certain class and they mastered it because either they are taking the next level or graduated they could be a great person for that then maybe or if you’re employee already maybe it could be your manager or it could be someone that works like a customer success person that works specifically on Azure and might be able to give you pointers on how to ramp up and learn learn Azure fundamentals faster. And then resume writing. It could be someone from your ERG.

It could be your I know a lot of schools, at least my University of Florida, had a career resource office where there were specific people that were literally there to help with resume writing. Then the next step is approaching them. After you select a person, figuring out how should you make the approach?

Should it be a professional thing where you send them an email? Is it someone that you just follow on social media or LinkedIn where you could just simply reach out to them and send a simple message? And then outlining specific actions like what specific ask it is.

How often do you guys want to meet or is it a one-time meeting and what’s the is it feedback if it’s for example if it’s a resume hey at the end of this I will send you my resume so you can review my feed review and send me any feedback and etc. So be sure to be actionable using this three steps and find a mentor. Trust me it is not too hard to do and it’s always great to find mentors. You’re never know it all like even people at the senior at the LT level executive level usually have mentors it’s great now I’ll pass it all over to Terrence thank you Kerton and and great points on mentorship just to add to that real quick I do have about four mentors here at Microsoft and all of them are at different levels so to get started on my section, we have a survey up.

What is your approach when starting something new? Do you pick it up quickly? Do you struggle at first, but you eventually get it?

Do you sometimes feel like you’re behind everyone else? That’s that’s my life sometimes, most of the time. And lastly, I learn best when I have support from others.

I’m loving this dynamic boat feature. Okay. All right, we I struggle at first but eventually get it is leading the paces.

Cool. Well, I think that I think that one I struggle at first, but I eventually get it. I feel like that’s every engineer’s life, right?

You you you get new concepts and the first piece is the struggle and then you just you just keep working through it, working through it and you eventually get it. So that really cuts into the segue of what a learning curve really looks like. Quick reaction, how many how many people identify with this learning curve that we’re seeing on the screen?

Yeah. Yeah, I I I think that to to comment on the questions that to the survey that we just saw and also bring it to this slide, all of those are valid, right? We got we got some that we got some people that immediately get concepts and we got people that struggle and and we have people that also work to work together best as a group, right?

None of those are none of those are intrinsically wrong. And and and in fact that’s how everyone eventually becomes better because you you’re basically bringing your style forward in a way for you to be the most successful. But when we think about like what that curve looks like especially in software development personally speaking right when when it comes to coding or when it comes to even AI right the first thing is like okay what is this AI thing because you know some people think of AI is like Google maps but now we’re seeing AI in in in a variety of spaces and as we see on the chart like the first step is confusion like what do we use it for how am I using it vibe coding confusion right like whoa whoa whoa what are we what are we doing here?

And then we start see to see people pick up vibe coding. We start to see people leverage the tools and say, "Okay, I can start building stuff really quickly, but we saw in the news like a bad commit can take down entire systems, right?" And so that’s the big oops moment because somebody somebody probably used AI, copied and pasted some code inside of the solution and submitted it. So whoops oops, I brought down something.

And as we start to leverage AI and as we start to learn more about its capabilities and what we can do, we’re starting to see breakthroughs on how it’s how fivecoded or generated code are are making its way into production. And that’s where we see the breakthrough. And then we see the loop, right?

And the loop is like is literally what AI is doing in the space now. When you think about how we’re we learn and then people say it’s the next greatest thing and then we see a bunch of like Instagram and Tik Tok and LinkedIn videos about how this is the best way to do something and now it’s yesterday’s news next week. And so those continuous cycles are like, "Wow, there I thought this thing was great or I thought this thing was great." And it can lead to a lot of confusion.

And then usually there’s some point of aha moment to where you’re using where where you’re using GitHub or personally I’m using GitHub to to learn about really specific parts of Python or really specific parts of Dart or really specific parts of software development where I’m not the sharpest. It’s not my focus, but I really need help understanding some concepts. So that learning curve can be all over the place, but we can see that it’s it’s going to be a journey and as everybody as the majority of you already said that it’s going to be a struggle, but we’ll eventually get it.

Let’s go to the to the next slide. Next, I’ll talk about those oops moments. So, we’re all engineers or most of us are engineers.

We know the left side is a bug and it’s never a bug, it’s a feature. Right. Right.

But when we when we talk about those oops moments, a lot of us even even in my younger days, a lot of us really felt like I’m I messed this up or I I screwed up or I’m afraid to mess up. And and the reality is is that there’s always going to be room to mess up. There’s always going to be a typo.

There’s always going to be a mistake. And we’ve we’ve gotten so much better at implementing tools static code analysis, dynamic code analysis analysis. A lot of a lot of things around writing the code and building the code to prevent bugs, but some eventually get through and those that get through to production, you’re just like, "Oh man, I I can’t believe I committed that to the main branch and it and it broke and it broke XYZ." Right?

And and and those are the points when we feel the lowest because we’re super excited. Were super confident and and like a edge case that you didn’t even see coming blew up the whole system and and sometimes and out of personal experience it’s like concurrency right like it’s concurrency or some type of garbage collection back in the day it was just like oh my god I can’t believe I let that pass so so but it all it all really falls on is how do you respond to situations like that do you now do you let that do you let that make you not really want to code as deeply. Does do you lose some of your passion to this mistake?

And and and at those moments, it’s always going to be how do you respond as an engineer? How do you respond as a person? And that’s what this the light bulb reflects, right?

You you you take you take the you take the loss, but you also have to take the lesson from it. And that’s why I harp on when it when it comes to testing code. Like writing code is great, but but the biggest win you can get is automating of the the testing of that code.

You go from unit test, you know, to system test to integration test. Like those those are those start to be some of the fundamentals of engineering is how are you testing? How are you validating your code?

How are you validating your deployments? How are you validating the UI? Like how are you how are we building these tools?

And how are we leveraging these things? Right? And that’s where the big aha moment.

That’s where the light bulb truly goes off for a lot of engineers because we’re we’re understanding where the actual lesson is is in the bug, right? And the goal is to make sure that that same bug never happens again. So when we think about like mistakes that we’re going to make, when we think about being afraid of making a mistake, like when we think about just even even speaking on stage, right?

Like our our panel is super awesome. Like we we we may make mistakes as speakers, but we we take these moments. We take the time and say, "Okay, what did I mess up on?

Let me let me take a step back and say where where’s the lesson here? Was it a lack of preparation? Did I was I trying to push something into production as a hot fix when it should not have been a hot fix?

Did I did I skip a test that I should have skipped?" Right? Like am I paying attention paying attention to the right things? So that constant state of reflection when you make mistakes is truly what opens up the door to to growth mindsets.

And I and I say that because and I say and ultimately you start to become one of the best engineers because now you’ve made the mistake and so you can tell everybody before they even make the mistake, hey, watch out for this mistake or you can write some open source code for a tool that prevents this mistake. And now and now people start coming to you as the problem solver because you’ve made a lot of mistakes. And that’s been my whole life, right?

Like I walk in usually when I join a new team, I’m like, "Hey, I’m Terrence and I’m probably going to break half the stuff y’all wrote." And and and it’s like then that’s my that’s my place of saying, "Okay, I’m going to start writing some great tests. I’m going to build automation into it. We’re going to put AI into it.

And now we’re going to really have a robust solution that even I can’t break because, you know, I just show up and break things. But I I guarantee that I’ll learn it from them. And we’ll take it to one more slide.

I I thought this slide was super important because this this slide really covers actual feedback from myself Mayuna. I’m sorry I’m saying your name wrong. And and Kton like we we we have quotes from several engineers even on my team about this is what I felt when I was a new engineer on the team.

This is what I felt after I graduated and they gave me a project. This is what I felt on my internship and I wanted to prove myself but the person that they assigned to me is kind of like not really giving me all the details that I need. So I would like for people if you’re put a thumbs up if you can relate to identify can I get some reactions on some of these quotes if you’ve ever felt this way when you’ve walked on the team when you’ve been in the space or even just thinking about being in that space makes you super nervous.

Oh yeah, we’re seeing a ton of reactions. I think I think the one I relate to the most is do I have what it takes? And and it and it shows up in a variety of ways when people talk about imposttor syndrome and people talk about like am I am I overqualified?

Am I underqualified? And that that’s going to be that a lot of times that’s just going to be a life a lifetime thing if you truly embrace growth mindset because growth mindset head says hey I don’t know everything I’m super excited about learning everything and I’m not sure if I have the capacity the knowledge the intelligence to learn everything but the silver lining is that when it comes to when you look at what you’ve done in the past and if you’ve if you’ve accepted that you won’t know everything that really takes that stress off your back because now you’re saying I know I don’t know everything and that do I have what it takes starts to become a yeah I do because now I’m learning how I learn. I can I can now show up authentically.

I can show up as myself. I can tell you what I know and I can tell you how I’m going to get there. But I don’t have to know everything.

I have colleagues. I have peers. I have mentors that I can lean on to help me understand what I don’t know and I can build a path to what I want to know.

And so to wrap up this slide just just again right we’re all going to have those moments of doubt want to belong to a place wanting to fix something before anyone notices. It’s it’s common and you’re and you’re not alone. So never feel like you’re alone in the space and and you’re you’re the only one that feels that way.

And we’ll jump to the last slide. So, I have three takeaways. The first one is going to be seek help.

And like Kerton mentioned, ping a colleague, ping ping someone in the space, ping someone who’s been in the space and and the little phrase I had there is, you know, hey so and so, I’m working through this task and I’m hitting a wall. I really appreciate your perspective or any resources you found helpful while you were learning this. I literally sent that last week and it’s mostly because we’re working on some strategic efforts and I have I have people that are a lot smarter than me and they they can speak to such abstract topics that it just blows my mind, right?

And so I I tend to I tend to reach out on the side and and say, "Hey, can you can you help with this?" The second one is grabb time. I’m sure when it come attend networking opportunities, I’ve seen a bunch of connections on LinkedIn. Please connect.

Please grab some time. I’m super happy to to chat with a number of folks. And again, if you admire somebody you love what they do, try to schedule a 15-minute coffee chat.

And and if you have the funds, offer to buy them that coffee. Chances are they probably won’t take your funds, but they will take the time out of appreciation. And lastly, reframe your mistakes, right?

We’re going to make mistakes, but the the even bigger tragedy would be to make the mistake and not learn from it. So all if if it doesn’t go your way, if something breaks, always ask yourself, what did I learn? What did I miss?

And how what will I apply on moving forward? Usually for me, it’s a unit test or an integration test or some type of some type of thing I can code and put into the next step. So I don’t make that mistake and no one that comes behind me makes a mistake.

And next, I believe we have some I’ll pass it back to Kton. Hey, I’m back. So, now we’re doing questions, Q&A.

I believe we’re all doing them. Okay. So the first question is from sorry if I am saying your name wrong manrage s how can students find good mentors or sponsors when we are just starting out and don’t know many people in tech kin maybe that’s a good one for you.

Okay sure I wasn’t sure. Okay. So, I would say, which is actually what I was just typing to respond to Jose Romero, find communities nearby nearby that have meetups recurring meetups for sure.

So you can attend them and start meeting people. I think one of the first steps is just building community. You don’t feel like you have to rush and like just find a good mentor out of nowhere.

Find a community first. Join that community so you can build rapport with someone because you also want to know that the work that they do or that their career what their career journey and etc has been like. So websites like meetup.com event bright luma and others have meetups that they people from local communities host attend them try to meet people you’re if you’re still in school join organizations such as Nesby CodePath and etc. in some of these organizations tend to have mentor matching programs.

I think that should be your first step and then as you grow your career and you build your network, start identifying people that you feel like, oh, I like the work that they do. Let me reach out to them for a coffee chat. And after the first coffee chat, then see how that goes.

And then you can propose to them, hey, how would you feel if we meet recurrently like every quarter or every few months or however fits their schedule. That’s kind of how you start. Awesome.

Thanks, Ken. Terrence Mayuna, do you have any things to add? Maybe personal experiences of how you found your mentors or sponsors?

For sure. I can feel free to share. I can definitely add.

For me, I feel like in college, the biggest thing was like reaching out to like my adviserss or fellow classmates on anyone they knew that had like similar interests of me, like alumni that I could potentially reach out to. And that really helped me find people, especially cuz when I was transitioning and I was like, "Okay, I think I want to pursue this career." that was a really big help to like just get more clarity on like what is the tech field and what is it like to actually work here and also I I feel like throughout the years like going to different talks and conferences was a really big thing like just meeting people there and like hearing their stories and being like okay I think they’ll be a really cool mentor or even like sometimes there’ll be like people in audience who ask really cool questions and they like they like briefly say their bio and they say like what they’re working on I’m like oh they seem cool and I’ll just go reach out to them like hey I know you didn’t talk but I heard your question I really liked it and I was if you wanted to connect. That was really cool to me.

I love that. Terrence, any thoughts from your mentorships, experiences? Yeah.

Always ask always ask your manager who is the best at what I’m trying to do. And usually you’ll everybody has that top of- mind person that that is super helpful. So, just ask who is the best and you usually you usually find somebody.

I feel like that’s a great tip. Keep that handy. Awesome.

We can go to the next question. What advice would you give to those who are late bloomers, career changers, and or have worked random jobs, retail service industry, etc. before? Terrence, since you’re up on the screen, I don’t know if you want to take this one, too.

Any advice, personal advice? Yeah. I I I the funny thing is like now with with with AI the late bloomers and the career changers are at a at a super high advantage, right?

They you can build working productive code really really quickly and easily. I I think I think at the end of the day just just understand the fundamentals of software development and coding because it’s it’s easy to generate code but when it comes to explaining that code and talking about why you made certain decisions you made it it really shows who’s who’s in depth with what they’re doing versus who’s not. And and secondly all and and keep showing up to the meetups and keep showing up to the conferences the that where the the people that are hiring are actually in the space and in the room.

I feel like I feel like there’s a lot of opportunities to show show your expertise and show your knowledge but you know number one practice practice practice so you can speak to it at any moment but secondly like really really try to just dive in deep on some of the topics that you’re applying for. Like if it’s infrastructure, dive into cloud infrastructure. If it’s software development, choose a Python, TypeScript, Rust, and understand what shipping that code to production looks like.

And if you don’t know that, look up the software development cycle and see why this those particular stages are important. And I and I think that that doesn’t have an age to it, right? It just it’s really just being able to talk about the projects and talk about the pain points because you’re going to see pain points and it’s usually like a feature request that nobody saw coming or a deadline that nobody saw coming.

So it’s it’s always going to be more about the projects versus the actual code. And if you’re looking for projects, there are a lot of nonprofits, libraries, and places like that where, you know, they’re willing to they’re willing to let you come in and build something. I love that.

That’s really good advice. Thank you. I know we have a ton of questions.

So, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I would quickly add, use your other random jobs as a superpower.

So for a lot of those industries, there’s startups or upand cominging small businesses that are probably dealing with problems that you know the ins and outs of as an employee of that industry and you can find a digital solutions or help build a digital solution that will solve those problems. So use as a superpower like whatever industry you were in the longest try to find tech companies that work directly in that industry and apply for those because then you already have some experience even if it’s not technical you have experience in that industry and you know the problems that that industry has faced over the years. That’s a really good tip too.

Thank you for sharing that. Can I can I say something? Yeah.

Not not to this question but I’m seeing so many questions about like recruiting at Microsoft and appealing to the recruiters and recruitment at Microsoft and I I I’m going to say even internally right it’s hard to get our own people a person that we submit a referral for in the door and when you think about it there’s so many automated AI applications and so many like thousands of applications and I talked to several managers about it right sometimes it’s just a scaling problem. And so when it comes to like Microsoft and and things that I’ve seen, right, like make sure always just make sure you’re you set on your notifications and you set and you set and you try to apply as soon as possible with the correct resume that’s specific to the job. Like like don’t make it super broad.

But I just wanted to say that real quick because I’m seeing a lot of screening applications and things like that and sometimes it literally is Microsoft is like one of the top companies in the world. So recruiters literally have to go through thousands and thousands of applications and where, you know, systems may be used. I can’t speak to the how they do it, but I do know that they receive thousands of applications.

So it’s it’s it’s tough on both sides. Just wanted to acknowledge that because I’m I’m just looking at some of the questions. Yeah, thank you for touching on that because yeah, as a recruiter, I didn’t introduce introduce myself, but if you’re at EES ready, I presented from Microsoft.

I’m Chioma. And I’m a recruiter, so I can definitely attest to what Terrence mentioned. So, thank you.

And I actually posted about this on LinkedIn because that is like the most frequently asked question that I get as a recruiter is, "How do I get noticed? Why am I not getting selected?" so I’m just going to drop my link to my post. You can feel free to read it if you want, but yeah.

All right. This is a really good question from Kelsey. How do you all prioritize time for hobbies and fitting those in with full-time jobs?

I know there was some chatter about like how do you have time to be in three book clubs, Mayuna? So, if you want to touch on that, that’d be great. For sure.

One thing I don’t have homework anymore, so that was like exciting. So yeah, I was definitely excited to get back into reading. Audiobooks is a really big help.

I love to like listen also like during my commute I read because I I live in Seattle but Microsoft’s headquarters is in Redmond. So when I’m across the I’m going across the lake I’m usually like reading for pleasure also. Also some of the book clubs are like internally so like my one of the book clubs I’m in is with my team so we’re all reading it.

So technically I’m working when I’m reading that book. So that’s fun. But also just like for hobbies, I think it’s like really making sure to not only like it’s like the work life balance is finding that time to also like prioritize time for like family and friends and also making sure to like do things for my health like going to the gym and stuff like that.

So it’s definitely it’s a it is a journey. I feel like you get used to it. I feel like in the beginning I was it was a learning curve and different people have different ways.

Like for example, one of my mentors, she has like a class at like 6:00. So she has to get off the the the computer cuz she has to go make her class. And it kind of like tricks your brain to be like, "Okay, I need to get my work done before this time so I can make my commute." And it’s like another priority.

So it’s definitely every everybody has their different things and how they fit things into their schedule. Thank you. Maybe let’s go to the next question.

Oh, and this one will probably be for you too, Mayuna. So, Danielle was asking about tips and tricks on how to navigate a workplace if you’re the only woman on the team. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that specifically, being the only woman, but if you have anything to touch on on being a woman in a very male-dominated industry, that’d be great to hear.

Luckily, I haven’t been the only woman on my team. Funny enough, my current team is actually majority women, which believe it or not. And but in the time in my in the past, like in school and also like being an intern, I’ve had like majority male teams.

But I think like definitely re like being a part of like women at Microsoft has been a really big help for that. Like finding community and being part of different mentoring circles and that has been a really big help in finding community and being able to have very cool conversations and yeah I definitely recommend reaching out to different ergs or like any community groups and going to conferences like like Grace Hopper is a really great one and just talking to different women in the field has been really good at helping me build my confidence and if I can do anything I don’t care if I’m like the minority in team. I’m going to I’m going to shine on my own, right?

So, that’s just Yes. Go off. Thank you.

And I know there were so many questions and we wish we could answer all of them. But we do have to wrap it up sadly. We’ll miss you all.

But I wanted to let Kin summarize with some key takeaways and tips that you can actually walk away from today with. Okay. So, yeah, Ch mentioned we’re done for the day.

Thank you so much for joining. So here are some key takeaways and tips. So in your first few weeks, try to find an ERG or shared interest group you to help you start making connections between beyond your team.

Sorry. Or local community groups or meetups in your city if you’re moving to a new city. That’s usually the new grad experience.

A lot of people are having to deal with the new city and a new job. Join a group as a member or ally if you’re nervous. You can start you can start small and just listen in all first and at first sorry I don’t know what’s going on.

Then slowly start to engage. Maybe even suggest a book club. Then for mentorship stuff, mentorship and peer support are vital for empowering underrepresented engineers and fostering their p professional growth.

As you grow, the key is to build a board of adviserss consisting of skill coach, peer, career guide, and sponsor. As I had mentioned, crafting personalized mentorship plans enhances engagement and effectiveness in career development. Especially as you start having mentors with more seniority or in leadership roles, especially your sponsors, you have to be very strategic and be sure to use your time wisely.

Seek help from experienced colleagues. It’s one of the fastest ways to learn and grow. Peer coding sessions, whether it is like if you feel like you’re working on something new, reach out to the senior in your team and be like, "Hey, mind spending 30 minutes with me pure coding this solution or diving into this bug?" Mistakes will happen.

Accept that. Give yourself grace. Give others grace.

Take the time to understand a reason the mistake happened and apply it moving forward. Similar to how we do with security and bugs and etc. Your goal is to always build tests and systems around to make sure that that mistake doesn’t happen in the near future. Thank you everyone.

I believe Anthony is next. Awesome. Thank you all so much.

We really, really, really appreciate the entire Microsoft team. The students have tons of questions. Presenters, please be prepared because you’re going to get a lot of LinkedIn requests.

But closing out again, we want to we really, really appreciate each and every one of you. If you all can show the Microsoft team a round of applause and our appreciation in the chat, that would be amazing. Also, students, if you can make sure we’re going to drop a survey.

We want to make sure that you give your feedback and your thoughts about this particular survey. And again, thank you each and every one of you all for joining. And that is a wrap on thriving as an underrepresented engineer.

Thank you all. Now, wasn’t that a great session? Oh my gosh, these breakout sessions are fire and I want to encourage you to attend as many as you can.

But let me give you some information before we continue. So, please take a moment to complete a brief survey to share your feedback. Remember, surveys are what’s going to make us get better, but also let us know what we’re doing really well.

To see what’s coming up next, you can head back to the main stage and check out the schedule. See you soon in the next session.