Who Is “In Tech”?

Sheridan Kates, says that it’s easier to learn to code if you have a specific project in mind. Sheridan used to work as a Product Manager at Google and one of the ways she started to become more interested in engineering was because she had a problem she was trying to solve.

“One of the things that got me back into this world was I really wanted a way to see bands on a map,” Sheridan explained. “If I had nothing to do that evening, I wanted to be able to say, ‘Okay, who’s playing around me?’ and there was nothing, I still don’t think there’s anything that great, that lets you see for a given date, what’s [going] on around you, on a map.”

As a result, Sheridan created her app “Gigscape” which still works, although as she notes, “it’s not very useful right now because everyone’s socially distancing.”

Glitch’s VP of Engineering, James Turnbull, agrees that it’s a lot easier to learn technology if you don’t focus purely on skills. “I think it’s very hard to pick up a book that says Programming 101, or learn a programming language. But [it’s easier] if you have a specific problem or thing that annoys you about the world.”

Sometimes you might stumble upon job listings looking for 10 years experience with React even though it’s been around for about half that.

“How Old Is It” is a project made by a Glitch user named James, (a different one) as an informative resource.It’s also a cheeky jab at job postings that require years of experience that are longer than the existence of certain languages.

Glitch Director of Community Engineering and resident internet menace, Jenn Schiffer, thinks the debate about who is “in tech” is tedious and pointless.

“The reality of who uses tech and creates it will hopefully continue to evolve,” Jenn said. “I think that despite our industry’s typical gatekeeping, I envision code being seen as a normal everyday tool, like a pen and paper, hammer and nail, or whatever. And I think that because of that, folks who find the apps that they use are maybe not serving their needs or harming them or others, I think that they’ll use code to make their own tech in response.”

*Check out the full collection of apps and make sure to listen to the new episode of Shift Shift Forward.