Your Django Story: Meet Margaret Myrick
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Margaret Myrick is a program manager at Indeed, and a musician on the side. She has lived in Texas since she was a child.
How did your story with code start?
As a child I learned logo writer and loved video games, but never thought of working in technology. I love written expression and earned a bachelor’s in English from UT and a master’s in journalism from UNT. I really wanted to work in print news. But after struggling with job options and trying a few different paths, at 27 years old found a training program at the University of Texas that taught me to write code and work in the IT department. I was a software developer for 8 years and started taking computer science classes at night. After I took on more management tasks at work, I realized it was for me. I went back to grad school at 33, received an Engineering Management master’s and went to work for Indeed as a Program Manager.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
Worked as a small town newspaper reporter, in customer service, as a swim coach.
What do you love the most about coding?
I love the immediate feedback you get from running a program and the rewarding feeling that you are making someone’s life easier. Also, thinking about the obscure cases.
Why Django?
Django gave us a way to do rapid development and deliver something to the client that looked good in a reasonable timeframe.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
I no longer code. I am a manager from engineering embedded in a marketing team of over 100 people. My projects with marketing center empower marketers to develop their own web content without having to rely on engineering teams. To do this we are building out a WordPress platform.
What are you most proud of?
Looking back I am most proud of my ability to understand different disciplines so that I can do work between them, and help others who are more specialized.
What are you curious about?
Human behavior, how teams work, and what makes people want to collaborate.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I play bass in a Queen tribute band.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Don’t be afraid to break things. Write in small chunks and get units working. Consider the impact of your changes across a system. Don’t judge the previous developer of a system you maintain too harshly. You don’t know what constraints she was working under.
Thank you so much, Margaret!
If you would like to suggest someone to be featured in the Your Django Story series (or would like to nominate yourself!), please email us at story@djangogirls.org!
