S23:E8 - Empowering the Next Generation of Black Tech Talent (Pariss Chandler)

For our Season 23 Finale, Saron talks to Pariss Chandler, Software Engineer turned Founder & CEO of Black Tech Pipeline. You may have heard of her before, as she was the mobilizer behind the hashtag, movement, and community #BlackTechTwitter. Pariss talks about getting into tech, being in tech at ad agencies and a beauty company, and how life changed after just one tweet. Pariss also talks about Black Tech Pipeline, the company Pariss started after seeing a lack of Black programmers in tech and wanting to change that. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Black Tech Pipeline #BlackTechTwitter React CSS Vanilla JS HTML JavaScript Resilient Coders Frontend development

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[00:00:05] SY: Welcome to the CodeNewbie Podcast where we talk to people on their coding journey in hopes of helping you on yours. I’m your host, Saron, and today we’re talking to Pariss Chandler, Creator of Black Tech Twitter, and Founder and CEO of Black Tech Pipeline.

[00:00:19] PC: My career pretty much took off, so my professional network just grew. I gained clients that way. I was able to build a Black Tech Pipeline. I then had these community members. I had different organizations wanting to speak to me or have me speak at their events. It was just like a strange dream-come-true type of thing, but in a way of like this is not where I expected my life to be, but I’m just going to go with it.

[00:00:42] SY: Pariss talks about getting into tech and being a software engineer at an ad agency and a beauty company after this.

[MUSIC BREAK]

[00:00:56] SY: Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:57] PC: Thank you for having me.

[00:00:59] SY: So let’s start from the beginning. Tell us about your very first job. Was it in tech?

[00:01:04] PC: No. I guess my first real job that I would consider was when I was a wax specialist at European Wax Center.

[00:01:12] SY: Is that like eyebrow?

[00:01:13] PC: It’s full body, so head to toe.

[00:01:14] SY: Oh, wow!

[00:01:16] PC: Yeah.

[00:01:16] SY: Hardcore. Nice. So what inspired you to go from that to tech? It feels very disconnected. Very different.

[00:01:24] PC: I mean, it was. So really, it was the whole “you’re going to be replaced by machines” thing that got me.

[00:01:30] SY: Really?

[00:01:32] PC: Yeah.

[00:01:33] SY: Because I feel like we say that about every career, but you really felt it in yours.

[00:01:36] PC: Yeah. First of all, let me say I was not familiar with like the tech industry at all when I was a wax specialist. I didn’t really know what coding was or anything like that, but I was losing clientele to laser hair removal, which is a permanent form of getting rid of body hair. And so as I continued losing clients, I was like, “You know, it’d be interesting if literally all of my clients got laser hair removal because then they wouldn’t need to ever come back to me and then I would be out of a job and I don’t even know where the wax industry would be after that.” And although I think that’s pretty dramatic and it’s not going to go anywhere for a while, it really is a possibility. It’s something that’s on the table. And so that’s when I realized like, “Oh! So I’m one of those people in those groups that is being impacted by technology and getting replaced by machines.” And so it was sort of like, “If you can’t beat them, then join them.” [00:02:31] SY: What’s so interesting about that is when I think about being replaced by a machine I imagined a robo waxer, like I was imagining like a robot that wax for you.

[00:02:42] PC: Like Terminator.

[00:02:43] SY: Yeah, basically, which I mean, I don’t know if I really want that. But what you’re talking about is technology creating an entirely new way to solve the problem of unwanted hair and replacing not just the person but the process too.

[00:02:58] PC: Exactly. Yeah. And it’s permanent. In the long run, it’s cheaper.

[00:03:03] SY: Very interesting. So how did you learn about code specifically and the code industry from a career perspective?

[00:03:10] PC: So I had a client come in. I guess she was a software engineer. And when she would come get waxed by me, she would tell me like, “Hey, you should really get into coding. It’s just so easy and you’ll make such good money.” And for me, in my head, I’m like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll check it out.” I knew I never was going to because I wasn’t actually interested in it and I didn’t feel like I’m one of those people who does good with sitting at a desk from nine to five behind a computer. I’m very much one of those people who wants to move around and do what I was doing at that point in time. But then what really pushed me into coding specifically was I learned that my little brother was learning to code in school. It was part of his curriculum, and he was really young. And so I asked his principal about it. I was like, “Why are kids learning to code? I feel like this is something like, I don’t know, maybe college students would be doing.” And he was like, “Well, no, things are changing. We live in this technological era. And if you don’t have a technological skillset, you’re going to be left behind.” And that made me think about the whole waxing thing, like I’m being replaced by a machine literally with laser hair removal. And I was like, “Okay, maybe I should learn to code.” And the reason why I chose coding specifically was because that was all I knew. That was all I kept hearing about. Had I known that there were so many other fields that I could have entered, I probably would’ve chose something different.

[00:04:33] SY: Yeah. Very interesting. So when you first exposed yourself to it, what was your initial reaction coming from the world of wax? What was the world of code like for you?

[00:04:42] PC: I actually really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I specifically was learning front-end web development, so HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and I really enjoyed it because I felt like this is another form of being creative and I didn’t think that that was possible in this field. And it was visual, right? I can see what I’m building, I can make it look like whatever I want it to look like. I can make it do whatever I want it to do visually. So for me, that was really exciting.

[00:05:12] SY: So you went out, did your own research on code and tech, and how did you know where to start? I feel like there’s just so much information out there today than there ever was about learning how to code. How did you know where to begin?

[00:05:24] PC: So I actually asked someone. I asked my previous college counselor. I have my associate’s degree in communications. And so I asked. I was like, “Hey, do we have like some sort of coding program?” And she said, “No, but I do know of a coding bootcamp called Resilient Coders.” And I didn’t know what a bootcamp was. I just knew she said that there’s a program that offers coding and I went and looked it up myself just to see what it was about. And I learned that Resilient Coders was having a hackathon like that upcoming weekend. The timing was just perfect, honestly. And I didn’t know what a hackathon was, but I was like, “Oh!” Like I knew that was the chance to like learn about the program. So I went. And that’s where I learned like exactly what front-end web development is, why coding is so important, the sort of problems that you can solve with coding. So yeah.

[00:06:15] SY: Very, very nice. Okay. So how did you ultimately decide what path you wanted to take? How did you decide front-end web development, this is the path for me?

[00:06:25] PC: So I didn’t really. That’s all I knew that existed. I kind of didn’t bother looking more into the industry. I was like coding, like that’s all I keep hearing is coding. So I’m just going to do that, I guess. And when I went to that hackathon for Resilient Coders, that’s what they talked about too. It was like talking about being a software engineer and learning web development and getting your certificate and learning about the problems you can solve with this skillset. And that’s why I got into it. But later on, that’s when I learned about all these other careers that I could have gotten into within tech.

[00:07:02] SY: What was the coding bootcamp like for you? What was Resilient Coders like?

[...]

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