Women in IT stories with Matilde Pereira
I joined Cisco in March of 2021 as a part of the 1st group of interns in Portugal working completely remote.
The internship was supposed to last 6 months, but things were going so well that it was extended for another 6 months. During that year I helped solve customer challenges in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center, I met people from all over the world, I finished my master’s degree, and I got the CCNA certification.
After the internship I was able to join the graduate program where in 4 months I received the necessary trainings to finally join my current team. I’m Customer Success Specialist in the Data Center team where I support and help our customers fully understand the value of the product and how to use it efficiently.
-
Can you describe what is like being a woman in the tech industry?
To be honest I didn’t quite understand what was the big deal in being a woman in a tech industry until a few months ago. My degree, Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering, is known to be male-dominated, but this was not the case during my studies. We were 50/50.
When I started working at Cisco, the meetings were also pretty balanced. For example, we were four interns, two women and two men. I also had a few meetings with females in management positions. And once I got the chance to start working in the office, I did not feel like I was working in a male-dominated field.
When did I become more aware of our under-representation in IT industry? A few months ago, I was invited to go to a few partners to deliver a presentation of our Data Center solutions. Two colleagues (both males) and I prepared the presentation and then it was time to deliver it. First thing I noticed, I was the only woman with a technical background at both meetings. Second thing, I could not find a woman working in IT at those companies. It was at one of the companies that hit me, I was looking at an operations center with about 30 people and none of them were women.
At that moment, a series of questions crossed my mind. For example, why are there no women working there? Are we not competent? Was I only invited for these sessions because I’m a woman?
Since then, I’ve been paying more attention to the lack of women in the tech industry and trying to draw attention to the existing gap.
-
What advice would you give to other women who are starting their careers in the tech industry?
Just go for it. It’s a pretty good feeling when you see all your hard work paid off and that along the way you may have helped to change some mentalities. We are competent and we are able to succeed in the tech industry.
So, my advice is: stay curious, be ok with change, ask for help when need it, believe in yourself, don’t let the imposter syndrome win and think that you are making a difference in the generations of women to come.
We still have a long way to go to avoid certain questions crossing our minds but on the bright side we don’t need to open the office doors, our male colleagues take care of that for us…
