WWCode Podcast #34 — Jessica Joly, Senior Software Developer at Shopify
Written by Jane Willborn
Women Who Code Podcast — Episode 34 | Spotify — iTunes — Google — YouTube — Podcast Page
Jane Willborn, Developer Advocate at UI Flow, sits down with Jessica Joly, Senior Software Developer at Shopify. Jessica shares her path from law to a career in tech, her favorite project at Shopify, and how she maintains balance by pursuing her interests outside of work.
What got you into tech and how did you find this career?
It’s been a path with a lot of different bumps, twists, and turns. I went to school for communications and cultural studies. I thought I would work in advertising or in a museum. I ended up preparing myself to go to law school. The idea was to become a lawyer specializing in tech. I think the new technologies and media were always at the center of my interests. A little before I was due to head off to law school, some of my friends and I were talking about trying other things first. I have some friends who were developers that did coding bootcamps. It took just a few months. I had done some light coding in the past. I just sort of took a leap of faith. I ended up really liking it. Straight out of my coding bootcamp, I got hired by Shopify.
How do you feel that bootcamp has influenced the trajectory of your career?
I really had no background or much background in coding itself. We paired every single day, that’s how we learned and did projects. For me, the collaborative aspect was really important in my learning curve. That’s important to me to this day. I’m a big advocate of pairing and working collaboratively.
Tell me a little bit about what you think the difference is between juniors, who are fresh out of bootcamp, and somebody who’s at your level, a full senior at Shopify?
I used to think that a senior was someone who had all the answers, who had dealt with any and all types of problems out there. I thought they could pick up a new technology really quickly. I realize that the biggest difference is that a senior can leverage previous experience, different problems they’ve encountered before, different technologies, and different challenges when dealing with your next project. A junior or someone who is just coming out of a bootcamp or university, may not have that wealth of experience.
Expand on the mentorship program at Shopify and tell me a little bit about how that got started.
Within engineering at Shopify, we have a formal mentorship program. It was first started by our Particular team. It was so successful that they started it across engineering. Before, it was always more of word of mouth, more of a networking sort of situation. That can be quite intimidating, especially for someone who’s fresh out of school or new to a company. With this program, I think it’s run in six-week increments. It’s short enough that it’s not too big of a time investment for any one party. It’s long enough that you can actually get through some of your goals.
I participated in their first cohort, both as a mentor and as a mentee. It was so beneficial. Before, I didn’t think that I had anything to contribute. I felt very insecure before I took part in the program. It validated that I can impact someone’s growth and that I have a lot to bring to the table.
With my mentor, our conversations were more about the next steps in my career and career growth. He gave me such a refreshing perspective. It helped solidify what I wanted to do next. I had questioned whether I wanted to continue being a developer, whether at Shopify or not. I had an interest in doing product stuff and maybe going down that path. There was openness there to maybe shadow someone for a little while or work on this project that sort of needs another person. Whatever it is that you’re interested in, there are not only opportunities for that, but that is part of the culture. There is support. I’ve continued down the path of engineering, but in lots of different parts of the organization and different types of projects.
What does an inclusive culture mean to you?
It’s embracing differences. We have such a diversity of people, not just ethnicity, but also experience. There are people who are self-taught in engineering or even in design, or people who had next to no experience, who did something completely different. We’re embracing that fully. That’s the special magic that makes us different.
Can you tell me a little bit about a project that you’re really proud of, that you’ve worked on with Shopify?
I’ve worked on a lot of projects and I’m probably proud of all of them. I would say the one that I’m the proudest of is one that I did a couple of years ago, in the products area of Shopify. Products are the heart and soul of our platform. If merchants don’t have products to sell, they don’t have a store. Since the beginning of the platform, the only media that helped merchants tell the story behind their products were images. We added video and 3D models. We had to make sure that our product images were still working while we were adding to the code.
There was also learning about how storing videos and how video compression works. We built this service around that, and then the same thing for the 3D side of things. It was a collaboration between my team, the AR, VR team, and other teams as well. It wasn’t always easy having this many people involved, but it was also a really interesting project.
Outside of work, is there anything else that you are really passionate about or that you really enjoy doing?
I really like spending time outside with my dogs. Before the pandemic, I went to the movies a lot. I’m really into cinema, museums, and trying restaurants and food from all over the world. For me, it’s what allows me to feel excited to come back to work. Being inspired in all these different ways and feeding these different parts of myself allows me to feel balanced.
Do you have any pro tips for either people who are starting out their journey or maybe mid-level, women who are in tech?
Be gentle with yourself. You can’t know the things that you don’t know. It comes with time. The tip I would give to other seniors is to exemplify that behavior to create a culture in which juniors can feel comfortable saying, “yeah, can you explain that again? I don’t know.”
