At Ness, we have many inspirational female colleagues who have found themselves in IT, and are extremely good at what they do. We are fascinated by their courage and determination to plunge into what is, at first glance, the very masculine environment of the IT world, and to succeed in it.

One third of the Czech Ness organization are women, and this number continues to grow. There is no need to wait long before you come across an experienced female manager, programmer or analyst.

Women in senior positions are full of experience and it is definitely worthwhile sharing their stories. Today however, we have decided to go in a slightly different direction and share with you the equally interesting insights of women who are just at the beginning of their IT career, and still have most of their challenges ahead of them.

We are an IT family. My brother is a programmer and my father works in IT, too, and this is why I naturally started with programming as early as at college. Now I am a student on the knowledge engineering bachelor’s program at the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technological University (CTU), and I work part-time as a Java developer. Before that I worked as a tester and this is actually my first position as a developer.

I am very happy that although I’m the youngest developer working on the project, all my colleagues treat me as a peer and in fact, I have never faced any negative attitudes. It’s nice to work in a mixed team; women make the team more lively. In addition to that, we, women, perceive things a little bit differently, which enriches the discussion.

I longed to get involved in something that would change the world. I wanted to do a job focused on a result I would be able to see. What I preferred was the somewhat more flexible working hours and the possibility of having occasional home office. The IT world seemed to be the answer to all my questions.

Although I do not have specialized IT education and I am not a native Czech, I found a slightly more technical job which made it possible for me to change from the field of economics to IT. I did not hesitate to ask my colleagues, and I had no fear about being able to fulfil the tasks assigned to me on a real project. I knew that everyone had to start somewhere.

Thus, it is not important whether you are a woman or a man; it is rather a question of being willing to learn new things and the ability to use your common sense. IT is a field where you can utilize experience gained elsewhere while still learning new things. I use my previous experience to understand the customer’s business better, and it is actually an advantage that I did not come into IT directly.

I played games on my computer as early as my first year at school, and I have always had a close relation to IT. I graduated from an economics-oriented university and spent the last two years focusing on analysis. Then I realized that analysis is what I enjoy the most, and so I started working in a bank as an IT analyst after graduating.

The beginning was not easy, but I became a member of an excellent team of about ten guys who were willing to help me by giving me advice any time. Here at Ness too, I can see seamless collaboration between the team members working on our projects. We have some very smart female programmers here. I do not have the feeling that they would treat them differently from male programmers. The same applies to other positions.