Your Django Story: Meet Szilvia Kádár

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Szilvi studied economics at university and worked in this field for 8 years but last year something changed in her life. After she participated in the first Django Girls Budapest workshop, she decided to become a programmer. Now she works as a software developer at Vertis and she is one of the Django Girls Budapest organizers. When she doesn’t learn or code, she helps running various events for the Python community in Budapest. You can follow her on Twitter at @kadarszilvi.

 

How did your story with code start?

Hm, it’s hard to tell, I think the entire story goes back to my family. I grew up in a kind of an IT fan environment, as my father, his sister and my grandfather were programmers. Basically I’ve had a chance to get to know this field at a very young age - e.g. when I was twelve I learnt some basic programming in DOS :)

But after that I learnt economics in high school and university. So although I was always interested in IT, my real coding story started only last year, when after suffering a lot from my early career burnout, I finally realized that the thing I always missed was IT. After this recognition I started looking for different courses and asked some of my programmer friends about what I should learn, and how to become an expert. I didn’t find the best solution for a while… But I believe if you really want something you’ll get it somehow. And in this case I was right. In November my friend mentioned this great opportunity (I mean Django Girls) and I knew that this was what I always wanted. I think most of you had the same feeling :)

After an awesome day I was pretty sure that something huge happened to me. I loved the entire programming stuff and wanted to learn more and more. So after working 8-10 hours at the office, I went home and I studied from online courses. Then one of my friends asked me: “Why do you do this? Why don’t you just quit your job and let your career change happen?” This thought was a bit scary for me, but I knew he was right. So I made my decision and quit. I had some money-savings so I could afford to be at home for 3 months and study programming.

The funny thing is while I didn’t want to get a job yet, a position was offered to me at the end of July. So since the beginning of August I’ve been working as a software developer in a small developer team, where my boss and colleague give me the chance to learn a lot. I can’t believe how lucky I am! :)

 

What did you do before becoming a programmer?

I had worked as an economist for 8 years and I had never been in a position which is strictly connected to IT before. But I did learn a lot about business: I learnt economics, marketing, organizational development, I worked in finance, logistics, HR and sales controlling. I think it’s a nice background and I got useful experience from these years. I’m pretty sure that I’ll use this knowledge later in my life.

 

What do you love the most about coding?

In three words: problem-solving, creativity and openness.

I used to say that if you become a programmer, you’ll have to learn to learn. I love that you have to think about the thing you have to solve. There are no standard or final solutions, you always have to be able to learn about new things, technologies, and have to be open to the out-of-the-box thinking.

 

How did attending a Django Girls workshop influence your life/career? What did you get out of attending a Django Girls workshop?

My entire career change wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t attended the Django Girls workshop, so it was a huge influence, I guess :) But the most important thing I would like to highlight is it turned out for me that nothing is impossible. If you want something, and do your best, you are able to do anything. It’s never too late or the wrong time. Every human being is really powerful if they believe in themselves. Since Django Girls I’ve not only become a programmer, but I’ve become strong and brave.

 

Why Django?

It wasn’t a conscious decision. I had no idea about the programming languages and frameworks before Django Girls. But I’m very happy that I met Python and Django first, because Python is a very nice language and it is easy to learn the programming logic. And about the Django framework, I really like its powerfulness.

 

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

Since I work as a software developer I’ve met a dozen of technologies we use, and I have to learn a lot about them. So my idea is to make an own webpage with these technologies and in this way my professional development will be as effective as possible. I’ll create a responsive web page, using the REST framework of Django & Bootstrap, meanwhile I’ll learn a lot about HTML, CSS and jQuery. When I’m done, I want to show these technologies to the other beginners, because this project shows pretty well how a developer job works.

 

What are you the most proud of?

To be honest I’m really proud of my persistence. It wasn’t easy to make the decision to step out of my comfort zone. But I keep being enthusiastic - that’s my secret. I’m still at the beginning: I have to prove to my employer that I was a good choice, so I do my best and I believe in myself.

 

What are you curious about?

With an economics background, I’m interested in the connection between business and IT; how can we turn this relationship to be more effective, what is the best way of working together. I’m a strategic thinker and love to see the big picture. And in my previous jobs I’ve never felt that the current company’s IT technology really supports the business goals and the work processes. It was so confusing! That’s why I wanted to work in a tech field… And a few years later I would like to try myself in a role which mediates between business and IT.

 

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

My hobby? Now my hobby is my job :) But of course I have a lot of things to do in my spare time. I’m a Django Girls Budapest organizer, and I help with organizing the next DjangoCon Europe (which will be held in Budapest in 2016), the monthly Python meetups, and a programming course called as Pylvax. So I should say that organizing is my favourite hobby, right? :) (And of course, I love biking, being outside, hanging out with my friends, travelling, living in the moment, etc. ;) )

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

You can learn a lot from different online courses, like Udacity, Coursera, Codecademy. And you can make new friendships, just be a networker, find your Python community in your city! You will find awesome people. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, they will help you! I only have positive experiences.

And at last, but not least: Don’t give up, it’s totally worth it :)

Thanks a lot Szilvi! :)

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