Sayari Ghosh

When I was around five years old, I mended my mom's broken clothespin and my dad suggested that I would be a good engineer. I think that stuck with me. I also enjoyed playing with mechano (like Lego, but for making mechanical devices like cranes and pulleys) and electric mechano (similar, but we could make electrical circuits with it). My dad used to encourage me a lot to play with these things. Growing up in India, I was a pretty good student, I chose science subjects in high school. After graduation, I had three options - medical school, physics or engineering. As I already had 3 generations of engineers in my family, and my sister being an architect, I very naturally went towards engineering.

I have a Masters in Computer and Information Sciences from The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA and prior to that, a Bachelors in Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology, India.

1. Writing programs - for testing, fixing bugs 2. Configuring jobs to run on servers 3. Monitoring our service, finding issues like response time getting higher, database problems and reporting/fixing them. 4. Attending meetings with my team and manager 5. Attending fun events like Hackathons - where we code something from scratch and make a running software. 6. Just plain having fun, cracking jokes, eating a lot!

That I get to create running software (that works on command) out of nowhere!

Last year, I worked on creating performance tests for my project from scratch. There was not a single line of code written for that before I started and I was initially a little intimidated. But with encouragement from my team, I started to work on it and now it is a reliable service we depend on to verify how our feature is doing.

My engineering background was not very strong as I struggled with programming language courses. In India, we relied more on old school theoretical classes more than practical hands-on coding. So my base was very shaky. However, I worked on programming really hard after coming to US and slowly got better. Now, I have a lot of confidence in programming and when faced with a new challenge at work, I tell myself that there was a time when I didn't know programming, now I know. In the same way I will be able to tackle this new challenge.

I grew up in a very close-knit family back in India. I am the fourth generation engineer in my family. My great-grandfather, grandfather, 3 uncles, 1 aunt and my sister are all engineers of different fields (civil, mechanical, metallurgical and architecture). My dad is a business degree holder and my mom has a PhD in International Relations and has been a University Professor all her life. My husband is also a software engineer. In my family, studies are given the utmost importance and we have always been told to study hard and work hard. Both my sister and I have been encouraged to find stable jobs and stay in those jobs. We are encouraged to be independent women who can stand up for their own.

Short term goals - 1. Learn better coding by working closely with my senior team mates. 2. Focus on learning new technologies, new programming languages. 3. Understand the feature I am working on thoroughly, end to end. 4. Get promoted to the next level at work. Long term goals - 1. Become a technical lead who has in-depth knowledge about software development. 2. Have 2 kids and manage home and work in the best way possible. 3. Become a mentor for younger women.

My dad. From the time I can remember, he has drilled in my mind these few things - 1. I am good at studies and my career should be in something academic or technical. 2. I have a lot of potential and I need to grow to my full potential. 3. Go abroad for higher studies. Higher studies wasn't just an option for either my sister, or me. It was just a natural part of life. 4. Learn to be independent and NEVER EVER think of being financially dependent on a husband.

If you really have a passion for engineering, you'd be successful in your career no matter what. If someone tells you "engineering is not for girls", tell them that the first person to write a program was a woman. (Ada Byron, who was the daughter of the famous English poet Lord Byron.)

If someone tells you "engineering is not for girls", tell them that the first person to write a program was a woman.

I really love reading literature, both in English and in my own language, Bengali. My all time favorite books are The Hound of the Baskervilles (a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and Rebecca (by Daphne du Maurier). Other than that, I love writing in my blog, cooking (recently started cooking French food following Julia Child's recipes), painting, swimming, gardening and hiking. We have 2 fat orange cats and a dog at home as well and I love to play with them.