So, Welcome Ingy. Have I said that right?
Ingy: In "G". Yeah, it's Turkish but in Arabic we don't have a G. I mean Egyptians have, but there's not actual "guh" sound, right? There's only a "juh", Okay? And then in Turkish is like "chuh".
So can you introduce yourself? Say a little bit about who you are form.
Ingy: So my name is Ingy. Technically I'm no longer a third year computer science student because I did my last exam. I'm originally from Egypt, but I've lived all over the place. So I've lived in Egypt for a bit and then Sweden and then the UAE and then Manchester.
So where did the interest in computing come from?
Ingy: Both my parents are engineers so are most of my (family) like my aunt is also an engineer and so is my uncle. So it's not that far off
Different kinds of engineering?
Ingy: Yeah, so chemical engineering both, my parents are electrical electronical. And they both work in tech companies, right? So I grew up around tech but the thing that made me want to go into computer science specifically compared to circuit boards, was that you can build stuff.
Yes,
Ingy: But it's more, you're not limited by the hardware that you have, your more like, you can build whatever you want, right?
Okay, so I guess, No software engineers in your family?
Ingy: No, that's new. Okay, good. Yeah. So that's interesting. And so was it something that Was it something that you kind of the interest came from your family or did it come from school as well?
Was there something in your education that made you think, actually this is a subject I'd like to spend three years doing it university?
Ingy: It was more my parents. So my mum had programmed before, her university project was a programming project so she always tried to push me into programming, right? But the school, well the schools that I were in, they didn't really push you towards programming. So, people knew to avoid IB International Baccalaureate, computer science because everyone who took it, did not go into computer science
So you did?
Ingy: I didn't do it. I did International Baccalaureate. I didn't do computer science. I did HL (higher level) Math and HL Physics instead and then I took chemistry as I wanted to go into one of the other engineerings. But every single person I knew who took computer science IB did not go into computer science at uni just because it was the teachers who taught it or just the course itself nade it hard for you to like it in the end
Right
Ingy: It had this project that you had to find that client to do a project for and it didn't make you like the subject afterwards.
Okay? Right. So you would, I guess you might have done it but decided against it.
Ingy: Yeah, I decided to look some maths. So I did, you do six subjects. So I did HL physics, HL maths, HL Arabic, SL (Standard Level) Chemistry and SL Business, SL English language / literature. And then extend the essay to TOK (Theory of Knowledge) and CAS (Creativity, activity, service).
So more of a mixture than some of your peers here in Manchester in that having that baccalaureate education, you probably got a broader spread of subjects than most English students.
Ingy: For example I got to do more things for longer so I know some of my friends want on to do A-levels instead of IB and they got three or four subjects max. And I think that getting to do business and chemistry and even continuing English it let me develop different skills that I wouldn't have done if I'd just done A levels. Because if I'd done A levels, I would have just done Maths, Physics and Chemistry probably but I think what's even better was that for the extended essay? It's a 4000 word essay, so you learn how to cite, you learn how to do research. So it prepared me for essay writing that I didn't get to do in uni until later on. Also, because of other subjects, I learnt how to do stuff last minute!
You mean prioritise demanding workload?
Yeah, that. We had exams every week and coursework every week. So you learn how to prioritise stuff and you learn what was worth spending weeks over and what was worth spending a day over and I think for me, I stressed more in high school than I did over uni because I went in knowing it's not worth taking everything with equal importance. Some stuff is more important than others and you need to learn what's more important to not die from stress
And not waste time on stuff thats not going to get the results that you want, I guess
Ingy: Exactly, there's always a choice, work that's hard and you know you're not going to get insanely high marks on it. So it's not worth spending weeks trying to do it when you know, you're not going to get it. I mean, I can remember one specifically that I was like, everyone was trying to do this Haskell coursework and I just, I looked at it and I was like, I know I can't get higher than a five. But getting the five marks out of 10 was relatively easy compared to getting the other five marks.
This was Haskell here or in high school?
Ingy: Here. So it was like it was PLP I think and it was a 10 mark coursework, and there's five extension marks and then five that you could get by doing fancy programming or just brute force
Right. Yeah.
Ingy: A lot of people spent weeks on it only to get five marks and I just did the five marks and I was I'm okay with this. It's only 5% of my grade, I have other stuff to do.
Yeah, Okay good. So you arrived here in 2020, would that be right?
Ingy: Yeah
Because it was in 2020. So we've just come out lockdown. I think you said, I'm remember you saying your high school was ...
Ingy: I didn't have graduation a high school because it wasn't, you know, yeah, I got my degree and they're like, congrats and was like thanks but...
So the graduation you have next month will be the first graduation that you have.
Ingy: I'm very excited to finally graduate.
And so you're right here in 2020 we're just coming out. Well, we just started starting lockdown 2020 so that must have been tough. So, Um, What how, what happened in your first year? How did your first year ago?
Ingy: The uni kept saying, we're gonna do hybrid, or we're gonna do stuff in person. And then, I think I came technically two weeks before uni is supposed to start or something like that. And I came to pick up my BRP id.
BRP is Biometric Residents Permit? www.gov.uk/biometric-residence-permits
Ingy: Yeah, it's your visa but on a card for some reason because they want you to lose it. But the problem is, if you don't pick it up within a month of it being issued, you have to re=apply for the whole visa
Right
Ingy: So a lot of people in COVID would come pick it up and leave and that's what I ended up doing because the day I was in the airport, as my flight was taking off to go back home. You came out of lockdown, right? And it stays on lockdown, for like three months
Oh golly
Ingy: Was like that Tuesday or something afternoon when they were like we're going until lockdown and There was no like it's not like what we're going to lock down like in the week. It was like tomorrow. You can't leave. Yeah. Um, and I'm so glad that we got onto that flight because my sister wanted to stay. Right. Um, But, Yeah. And then I didn't come back until second year And then it was really weird because I'd only seen Manchester empty and then you come in second year and it's still kind of, it's not what it is now
We're coming out a lockdown. Yeah, sort of
Ingy: yeah.
I guess getting to know your fellow students was a new thing.
Ingy: I mean, the nice thing was I feel like COVID brought our year group closer. I don't know about other year groups, but our your group tried to like know people in first year. So there's a lot of people that I knew online but I'd never met in person. Like, I either, we literally never even like, zoom called so, I don't know what they look like.
But you would have been, tried to interact on ... But I guess this school Like discord.
Ingy: Yeah. Like they had the years, just one. Yeah.
So you would have known people's names.
Ingy: Exactly.
And maybe seen their avatar or whatever, but not really met them in person.
Ingy: Yeah.
That's always a nice thing, when you kind of, when you've been interacting with people online and then you finally get to meet them in person
Ingy: Its kind of weird too especially if you've never seen them fully, then it's a new perspective. But then sometimes, even when you see people through zoom like, The video versus in person like one time, I just, I kept looking at this person. Sounds like, I, I know I've seen you before, but like this feels different.
Well, you can't remember what you saw, recognise their face. Yeah, I'm sure I've met you somewhere before, but I can always was online was yeah, that's why it doesn't really add it up
Ingy: but it was, it was pretty, honestly, I think it wasn't too bad a year considering the global pandemic.
Yeah. I'm mean not ideal by any means.
Ingy: I feel like I've only done two years of uni. Yeah, but Oh, it's better than a lot of other cases, You know, like I feel bad for the people who are in the second year during COVID because that's the people who graduated during COVID, like that was harder in my opinion.
Yeah, definitely. So, we go back to first year. I think you appled for internships during your first year, is that, right?
Ingy: Yeah.
Which was. Where was where was that?
Ingy: So I technically did two
Right in this in where they online they were.
Ingy: Yeah, they were both remote. So I worked part-time with imago imago.cs.manchester.ac.uk
The student software company.
Ingy: Yeah, that's run like through the University of Manchester, and I worked part-time during first year. Throughout I think second semester and then over the summer, I did a summer internship. Yeah, and then during the summer, first year, I worked in this company called IN3. It's Egyptian, based, I was based in Egypt, and it's a machine learning company. So I worked on NLP (Natural Language Processing) tasks and basically, creating a system that finds the sentiment that people have towards companies through twitter. Then I was also doing an
This is pre-twitter meltdown? When will the APIs were still open and you get the day to you? Ingy: Before we were actually face-to-face in person or this was online again?
Ingy: So even though Egypt was a bit more open than the UK, this was fully remote which was it wasn't too bad considering some people's internship got cancelled. But it was it was a really good learning experience. It was a lot to juggle both because I was working in technically two different time zones and sometimes I wasn't even in both. So I would be in Dubai or something and Egypt is a few hours ahead and then the UK is a few hours behind. So working weird hours but doing both, I learnt a lot. So for the IN3 one it's the reason why I picked my third year project. And it's the reason I got NLP experience, so early on and then for the imago one I learnt how to deal with tough people and also a lot of web development
So as well as the barriers you faced in the job of working, I supposed it was your first serious job, I guess ?
Ingy: I generally had volunteering roles
but nothing that paid?
Ingy: but I got really lucky that there is this volunteer Coding thing, that one of like, the graduates from the University did.
Is that code first girls? codefirstgirls.com?
Ingy: So, I did cause code first girls, I took the course right in first year and then I did this thing called tech together techtogether.io. It basically, we provided software solutions for charities? So it wasn't paid or anything. I'm just volunteering and it was technically with the uni. So that is what got me the imago role which got me the imago summer and the IN3.
I think one of the biggest barriers that most students face in getting that first internship. is having something even, voluntary work.
Ingy: Yeah, or especially voluntary work. Good valuable, but it's getting that in the first place, right? I think that's why like volunteering is the easiest route to getting experience because a no one's gonna say NO to an extra volunteer but also, the diversity. You get from volunteering is like you work with completely different people and on completely different projects like one of the projects we worked on was for this organisation based in Rwanda and another one was based in the UK. So it's you work with a bunch of different people on different projects and the experience you get is pretty good comparatively
right? Okay, good. So then that your summer spent juggling two jobs
Ingy: that no one knew about until today,
coming out of pandemic, Well, beginning to come out of pandemic. And your second year. So then what happened in the second year you were then also as well as doing a degree you were applying for stuff. Yeah. Following summer. Yeah. So um, so can you talk a little people told you earlier is you apply September October time, right?
Because I applied in year one, right. But a lot of my friends who hadn't tried to apply your own, They were like, oh I'm gonna take this year off, didn't realise until end of October that a lot of the more competitive roles were starting applications September October. And even I think like AWS, (Amazon Web Services), fill all their spaces by September, end of September
there's a little bit of, some even talk about August. Yeah, trying to get in there before. Yeah, exactly. Like
Ingy: The August ones are insane to me because, yeah, you haven't even started second year you're applying as a second year student, But I was applying for roles in this time. I was trying to do something more structured. So like some internship scheme or like some big company
and I guess, looking for stuff face to face? Yeah. Because you're experiences have been limited to online only. Yeah, which is an important skill. Now
Ingy: yeah
To be able to work online and that people are still kind of learning how to do that, But that's becoming an increase. I mean we've always had that in computing. I think. Yeah. But It's, it's an important skill to be able to master even when you're working face to face. You're gonna be able to navigate all this stuff.
Ingy: I was used to my parents being in meetings and they've always done Skype meetings before, when Skype was a thing, and I interrupted those meetings before so moving to remote was I know what not to do now, you know, like I know to turn off my camera and turn off my mic but it was it was different doing it for work than like when I'm on a call with my friends but definitely I wanted something in person because I wanted to talk to people because I think everyone I'd worked with at imgao, I'd only met two people as a whole and I'd worked on technically three projects over the span of two years.
So that was fellow students you were working with?
Ingy: No, I never met tese too because it was all online,
But you saw your meeting clients?
Ingy: No. So I met like I either the lectures who are in charge or like, Suzanne Embury and Gareth Hendhall. I mean Gareth I had to do it first year so but I met Jan who used to work at Disney and he came into like advise okay, yeah just me and him worked on the project together so then afterwards when lockdown ended we agreed to like go grab coffee or something and it was nice to see people that I worked with. But I never, I think I only met one person that I'd worked with. I know other people have met more, but everyone I worked with either graduated or... actually no, I met TWO people but they were a year older so they went on placement. And then this year, I finally met them face to face because they came back.
I was it Amish? But Zane last year was my co-pass leader, and Gabby, right? She was on my first ever project so we tried to like stay in touch because her placement was based in Manchester and then we ended up meetingike I think end of the second year. Um, and that was really surreal because I see her through Zoom,
Cause I think the thing is like when you're somebody who is established like like your parents, say those established, their already built relationships with their colleagues face to face in real time. That transition to online is easier because they know all those people. When you're starting out fresh, you don't know anyone.
Ingy: like, oh, "HI BYE" through Zoom and you never talk again. Yeah. So it was like you're trying to like see who who's just being friendly and like, who can you actually talk to after? And I like, honestly, I'm very grateful for having Gabby on my first project because I ended up talking to her and asking it for advice about second year and stuff.
So then what sort of places were you applying to in your second year and what sort of barriers did you face? How did you overcome? You talked about some of those things already, but there are any other things.
Ingy: second year, I think, was the hardest and like my mental health for a lot of reasons. But also like internship applications. I like I decided to boycott LinkedIn.com because I do not recommend anyone searching for jobs to be on LinkedIn at that time!
Because of the social media toxic
Ingy: Just oh my god I'm so grateful to have these three offers, but I decided to take this, dude, you don't need to do that. Yeah.
Like Kind of just turn Google and Microsoft down. I'm going to take this job with Amazon,
Ingy: Exactly. I've literally seen someone, who's like, oh, I decided to go with Apple and I said, bye to like Google and Microsoft and I'm like, you don't, you don't need to do that.
I know that's pretty interesting point because I think actually that's a problem social media isn't it? People only talk about good stuff. Yeah so you never hear about the bad stuff or you rarely hear about exactly. So you can kind of get this impression and everything was going well everything's going well for everyone else but for me, it's my 30 job rejections. So You know, applying for summer internships which where did you end up working?
Ingy: In the end of your second, No end of second year and ended up working at McKinsey specifically like McKinsey digital And that was, Partly thanks to my PASS leader https://www.cdyf.me/carmen who also worked in McKinsey.
She's been a guest on the show
Ingy: Yeah, exactly. I was talking to her about wanting to do something that isn't pure software engineering, because after all the interviews that I'd done, I realised that I don't want to be working on the tiny search button on the Google Homepage. You know, I want to have more variety and more control over what I do. She recommended, because McKinsey is project based, and that it would be a good fit. So I ended up applying for that solely talking to her.
I guess that's the case with consultancy generally, not just McKinsey is that you're getting where you're what doing stuff with clients rather than just one company, you're more likely to get exposed to different kinds of practices, different people
Ingy: :you get different industries too, sectors. Yeah and different technology
And that was based in London.
Ingy: I was actually in London finding a place to stay was very hard.
Expensive.
Ingy: Yeah it's not like Manchester
No!
Ingy: But I think because I applied to very different things in the beginning, versus the end of my application period. Like first as applying to like the Googles, the Metas, the whatever and then after doing a bunch of interviews and realising, I'm not the kind of person who memorizes coding questions and I wouldn't want my interview to be solely based on how well I can pretend to not know a question that I've seen before.
Oooh let me think about yeah,
Ingy: I only got it. Like I think one time I sat down I was okay, let me Oh coming out right let me try and memorise. Like let me try and do some leetcode questions and I got one interview. That was a question. I'd done something similar to and it just felt wrong pretending that I didn't know how to do it and I didn't like that.
Did they say or is it implied that if you know this then don't let on that you know it? Because you're trying to look really smart and you're working this out on the fly actually you've prepared this one.
Ingy: The advice that I saw online was that if you get one that you've seen before, it's best to give a bad answer first and pretend you're thinking
... and then optimise?
and then get a very good optimal solution and it looks like you can think in seconds and having interviews that were solely based on that isn't, that's not where I want to work. I don't want to work in a place where all they care about is how well I can turn out algorithm.
I think actually the employers probably don't care about that as much that Anyway, it's just because that the hiring is so competitive.
Ingy: Exactly.
They'll have these coding interviews and actually, that doesn't necessarily select the best engineers because you're just selecting on technical skill. not any of the other stuff?
Ingy: So I started applying for jobs that were like, soft skill more. And that this was like, before the McKinsey one, which is half the interviews were literally just soft skills. Um, I even want all the way to, like, product management.
Did you find those interviews okay? Or
Ingy: I prefer it. I personally, I prefer being myself and talking with someone over answering a coding question.
They can be tough but in a different way, right? So if somebody asks you a question like Give me an example of way you've resolved a conflict in your team. It's quite difficult to come up with a good answer to that question on the fly unless you've thought about it just a ltitle bit beforehand.
Ingy: I think with doing UNICS in second year, I got very good experience for the kind of questions. It's harder. If you don't have experience with, like, roles that would let you do those things. But like, would you see us definitely like, have you dealt with a challenging person? Absolutely. Have you, That was someone who didn't want to do their work, like, 100%? But I think that, like, for people who haven't had the opportunity to lead teams or work with the big variety of people, it those questions become harder but there's I think it's. There's a structure like STAR or something that tells you how you should answer it
Situation, Task, Action, Result. Or CAR: Context, Action, Result. I put an E on the end for Evidence. C.A.R.E. see section @ref(mycvsk). That's part of the results in a way but if you can provide some sort of evidence, yeah, which is probably your results actually.
Ingy: So doing that, before I prepared for interviews, I had an Excel sheet and I got the most generic possible ranges of questions like "challenging person", "different environment", whatever and I just sat down and I thought of two scenarios for each question
Trying to pick examples from different places.
Ingy: Yeah. So they're not all. Are you this? So yeah, this you kind of want because you can't be like they ask you two questions. You're like, let me tell you about UNICS. Yes again, But that like doing that, just once I didn't have to read it. I just it made me think of the scenarios and then when I was asked it in the behavioural interviews, it became really easy to think about versus I don't know, it made it easier to also apply to different situations because you've thought about it previously. Whereas, if you hadn't you're like, okay, wait, what? Challenging person have I worked with recently and that's kind of harder
Definitely. So you've got the job at McKinsey in the second semester. I mean, can you say a little bit about what you're were doing at McKinsey? Talk about the clients and the kind of whworkere you were doing?
Ingy: Technically I was a digital analyst. I think that's my actual title but I was a technical consultant. So either I consult on the technical tools that they use or I program. So for my projects, I was programming on them
Any partiular languages and technologies?
Ingy: Yeah, so I did two. And for one of them, I was the only software engineer on that one and that posed its own challenges and that was web development based. So it was like TypeScript, JavaScript, a bit of API stuff. Um and I can't really remember the rest and then for the other one it was more like Slackbot and Flutter, it was app development with some web development and that one, I had a team with me and that that was so much easier, I worked way less hours on that team than I did from my first project
You can just go off the person next to, how do I exactly this, or what's this thing?
Ingy: Yeah, I mean the nice thing is there's other software engineers. So one time I got really really stuck and I just went someone who wasn't even in the entire project. And I was I'm having this bug. Do you have any idea how to solve this? Because I've tried everything and he knew the answer straight away and I was like I should just ask you earlier. But I like people were friendly enough to be able to ask, but I think that like, learning when to ask is an important part because if you go for every little thing then,
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Good. So we've wizzed through this in in your second year come into final year now. So, You mentioned your project at the beginning. Could you tell me a little bit about what? You're final year project was on?
Ingy: so my project is kind of inspired by my first year summer internship where it focused on Arabic text.But I wanted to focus on Sarcasm detection and dialect detection in Arabic text. And I used tweets which, you know, currently not the best thing.
So at the beginning of the year, the API was open, and its all closed down since February something like that.
Ingy: It was like beginning of this year, 2023
So you've got all your data?
Ingy: I was good. I before I even proposed my thing, I made sure to get my data. Yeah. And I downloaded everything I needed just in case someone was like this GitHub needs to go down. Um, but I used pre annotated data. Anyway, that was open source and used in other publications that I set called ar_sarcasm. [@arsarcasm] It's a mix of technically, I think two data sets and newly labelled data and it's annotated on sarcasm dialect and sentiment. So, I wanted to explore those three areas so that for me was great. And then I think over the summer they came out with ar_sarcasm version 2.
Is sarcasm another kind of sentiment or is it different, like happy sentiment.
Ingy: Positive negative natural and then for sarcasm it's like currently they're all labelled sarcastic or not sarcastic but Working on during the summer of second year, I worked on a shared task with the person who became my supervisor in third year, Riza
She's a godsend. Oh, so she had a PhD student, who's doing a shared task on dialect detection and sarcasm detection, right? Um, and she asked me, she was like I know you proposed this project to me. Would you want to do the shared task as well? So I did that over the summer while I was also working at McKinsey and we end up getting our paper published [@ingy1] for that one and that basically led me to fine tuning my project idea. Because I realised, when I was doing the model for the shared task that there's different variations of sarcasm and different dialects.
All right,
So Egyptians are very sarcastic, whereas the gulf has a different approach to sarcasm. In Egypt. We're more ironic and if you say something is extremely good, you mean, it's terrible.
Which is hard to detect when someone's reading it
Yeah,especially in text. So in speech, you can tell based on tone and the scenario you're in and the context but for speech, looking at the tweets, sometimes I was like okay wait, and then you could tell based on the emojis but basically for my project I created a new labelling system for sarcasm detection so I made it as a spectrum from 0 to 100 so 0, 25, 75 and 100 and it would be how sarcastic is the text and then I had like guidelines for each criteria. And then for that model, I put it into a sentiment detection model to see how well that performed and it ended up performing better because the model was better at picking up Sarcasm. Because Sarcastic or not. Sarcastic is kind of a harsh line to draw because someone could be funny. Someone could be ironic and some people would see it is not sarcastic. There's others would see it as being sarcastic. So having the zero in the 25 or the 75 and the hundred made it better a detecting different levels, right?
Okay. So that sounds like quite an interesting project, very open-ended.
Yeah.
Using skills you already had in, obviously Arabic. Yeah. Quality of machine learning and NLP type stuff. Yeah. And you got paper, which was nice, which is pretty going for a third year project. That's unusual.
Yeah, I mean the paper was before, right? I'm trying to get a paper.
Oh, you said there's another paper that might come out?
Yeah, I've done that. Actually, the next iteration, fingers crossed I was kind of unlucky technically because in the beginning of 2023 a paper came out doing what I wanted to do and that created a new baseline to compare my work too and I was already like doing my system. So I had to switch directions, halfway through my project but switching directions is actually better for me in the end. So the flexibility is definitely better at providing space for growth in different ideas.
Right?
Like my initial idea was basically using dialect to inform sentiment, instead of using sarcasm to inform sentiment.
Okay? So you need to have that flexibility and you set up if you're doing something that's kind of research you like this you kind of you don't really know how yeah do it and then you discover actually this approach is no good.
Exactly like I think before I finally got a model that works. I had 10 models that didn't work. I had a whole labelled data set that I can't even use because it was doing something I didn't need anymore, but I think the flexibility of a self-proposed third year project is that you can you have all the room to explore it. And I think that's what ended ended up making me like my project even more. Because any time I was like, oh, this is interesting.
You are more invested in as well. Yeah, because it's your baby.
Exactly like He's your kind of you must have been interested in it to propose it in the first place.
So I was like, even though I'm not sleeping I was literally like refreshing my model and I was training it and it was 4 a.m. and Riza was like go to sleep and I was like, no but it's still running. But I don't regret any of the time that I've spent on it because without all the models that failed and without all the setbacks, I wouldn't have the final thing that did work, and I wouldn't have learnt so much
Right. Good. Okay. Asking here. So, we've whizzed through three years of your degree, you've done your last exam last week, come out of that and you'll be graduating next week. So it's the end of end of an era in some ways. So reflecting on a few sort of broader things here, so one thing I ask or guess is about, if you a member of minority group, what has your experience been as and what could the university or your employer, even do better to make... Let's start with women in computing. So that's that's a obvious place to start. What's been your experience of being a woman in computing? And how could that have been better? How could the university and employers line McKinsey make these environments better for women.
I think that I've had different experiences throughout high school versus uni versus work. So in high school it was even like simple things, like HL (Higher Level) Maths. We were comparing schedules and I was asking one of my guy friends? I asked what course are you in? Which class are you in? He was like, oh no, I'm taking HL Maths and I was like I am too. Like, who's your teacher? Um, and it was like those like small comments, but in the end, our class had more girls in it than guys
Right
Just because the guys ended up dropping out. So, it was like, Kind of karmic job. It felt good, you know, right. Um, and that guy who told me he was taking HL Maths ended up dropping it. But ironically, yeah, ironically. And then in uni, I think Manchester has a very good. Comparatively percentage of like, I think it's 24% (female students)
Something like that know. A lot less than half. It's a lot less than half. Hopefully, you know better than it has been, much lower in the past. Yeah, I think not even double figures
Sometimes, I think I know someone, one of my friends just computer science somewhere else and their percentage just like 8%, which like I can't imagine just going into somewhere and not seeing someone like you, you know? But I think that with Yni, because there's so many female lecturers, too, who are like top of their fields. And there's people in years before me, who've done, things like people students come and get like Carmen, she used to lead hackathons and UNICS and she was the chair I think before or like Alice or those kinds of people. It wasn't that hard to see other women doing things that I wanted to do so, I never felt that was an obstacle. There's obviously always the obstacle when you're applying for internships or when you're getting interviews and stuff. There's a lot of guys who are like, oh you only got this interview because you're a girl and they wanted to fulfil their diversity quota. But well you have you couldn't get the job.
What about all male interview panels?
It's not the best but it's not the worst because you can't go in with the mentality that they're against you. Until something happens. So I usually go in assuming that I'm not the minority, You know, even if I am, it doesn't bode you well, to think you're going into someplace that doesn't want you and it doesn't bode you well, for your self confidence to be, oh, they just wanted me because they need more women. So, I never went into interviews like that and I never made it that my identifying trait is that I'm a woman. Because then it undermines everything you've accomplished.
Yeah yeah. So like for interviews I I don't think I think the only Interviews that I've done were like big tech whereas majority male, interviewers Everything else was like, like I think my IBM one was three out of five or woman. Um my Expedia, one was two and two.
So, that's a healthy about, It's a healthier balance and sometimes even you find, like, The woman aren't the nicest. It's not even like It doesn't really matter who's interviewing you it's like the person not what they identify as. But yeah, I think Then it work. It was like a mix of my age and my gender.
But McKenzie has more female software engineers than male software engineers at least in the London office, Right? Especially with like Carmen going back, where like, I think, Either evenly split or were split more females. And the only other software engineer who joined the firm with me was a woman.
So for that case, I like I did not feel at all like the minority even though. I think consultancy firms tend to have a higher ratio of woman. Comparatively Compared to Tech companies that have more male. Um, but i never felt like a minority in my department but then in projects, like The first team I work then was I was the only softer engineer and this one person could not respect my opinion.
At like, I don't know if it was because of my age or because of my gender but it was like after proving him wrong like three times, he finally accepted my opinion but it's something I'm used to like even with uni group projects, I've had people doubt me and I'm just like, okay, you do it your way, I'll do it my way and we'll see, who's is better, And we'll go with that.
Yeah. And after you do that, they start respecting you more than if you just Go into the endless arguement of I can do this. It doesn't matter what like if I'm a woman or not. Oh yeah, yeah, good. Okay. So It was good to hear. So you've had some, I guess some negative experiences, but some positive ones as well.
Yeah. So that's that's good to hear. Um, So, next thing here is, we've got, I want you to imagine you're the next five chance for the University of Manchester. So, Nancy Rothwell is stepping down next year. And I put you in charge the And, Airport, governors. Have appointed you their next question.
Just. So what would you what would you change about how the university is run? I mean, I guess you see it from obviously from a student. Yeah, it's kind of perspective. I think maybe like, for me, it was the little things that kind of affected us more. So, for dissertation, or for any of the research work that I've done.
You can't get any funding approved for like collab pro or overleaf pro or even grammarly, like, for writing your dissertation. And I think Co-op pro, I had to buy it. And what's kind of pro have? No. It's like collab, but with you buy computing power. So you buy either monthly subscription or like a yearly thing and you can't clouds service cloud service.
So it's like AWS but in collab is Google's. Like sell executable, Okay, Programming things. So it's better for training models because you can run it and you can run it in front of you and you don't have to look send off your code to the cloud or whatever. But, You buy like 500 compute powers and It's like that and it's pretty expensive, CPA, CPUs, GPU, GPU.
So, you buy GPU and you buy brown. And it's way more powerful than even like if you have a hardware, like desktop Yeah. But you have to pay for that out of pocket so it definitely like without it. I couldn't have done my third year project I couldn't even have done like Two of my courseworks in my final so you took the hit yourself.
Yeah, I really need this to do this project so I'm just, you know, it's going to take too long to try and goatee time and like Like there's one course work where I was working with. A lot of data. And if I run it without collab pro, it would have taken three weeks for one execution to like, finish.
But with collab pro, it takes a day. So, It's also like how much the value your time is if also like the amount of times I run it and my code broke. And if I just run it once over like that, three week period, It would have broken after like three weeks.
And I wouldn't have known that. It didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry it is is important to Have access to that because you kind of saving your time in that time is a limited and finite resource. Exactly. And it lets you test out different things whereas like If if I didn't have it, I would just before I had it, I just did the safe bets.
So I did the stuff that I knew worked, because I didn't want to risk spending time on something that didn't work and it would take a lot of time. And like for your third year project, you don't even have that much time because you need to write your report.
Yeah, but after I got up pro, I was like, oh, I can run multiple things and like run a bunch of different sizes of epoxy and whatever, So it's like the resources that are available. We know there are available to post grads And with all, we're paying for undergrad.
I feel like just simple things should be made available. Yeah, okay, that's good. Anything else? Um, I mean, they it's not that bad for society funding. So like when I run UNICS, the uni did help us with a little bit of money, So I think I give it. If you a society gets, Kind of situation Grant.
So and it's based on the number of members you have in your society, right? So it's like You apply, they ask you for the number but it's also based on like what you're doing with it, okay, right. So I think it's technically under the school of science and engineering and not like The university, but they helped us fund Mayball.
They helped us fund one of our hackathons. But you have to win the grant, So we didn't win it once when we needed it and then we managed to find a sponsor who could fund it, but maybe just more funding for university-based societies because with it, I think you need to see us like Really impacts people.
When it's done, right? You can I met a lot of people through your new CS and I learnt so many things and I just learning how to run events. Exactly And perfectly pleased to learning how to manage like people too and working with different people, but learning events was I think very important because you never get to run and you're not like, oh, hi.
I'm around the person on the street. I want to run a hackathon. Um, and i think that like unisias is something that should continue, but if they don't get funding, It's very hard to continue. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, so Just to wrap up then. So we've got one item here then.
So one tune one podcast, one book, one film. Can you recommend a tune to add to our coda's playlist? A piece of music, that's important to? Can you say a little bit what it is and why it's important to you So it's this song called Entertato, which is like technically from an ad for a bank in Egypt.
But Egypt, does this thing where they write really good songs for ads because it gets people to watch the ads. But enter the translates to you can or you can do it. And, My dad sent it to me when I was, like, going through something like very difficult. And it basically, just talks about how, like, even if you're down and like, You're struggling.
You can get through it. I'm like bad at translating the lyrics, so I won't, But it's worth. It's worth a listen to especially like if you can read the translations, if you don't understand Arabic. But yeah, i i really every time I feel sad, I think I the first time was in high school when my teacher was like, oh, you won't accomplish anything.
And my dad sent to me because I was like, crying in the bathroom. I was like, I don't know what to do anymore, and he sent it to me and like, ever since then, anytime I'm going through something. I just listen to that one. I'm like, I got through that I can get through this.
Yeah, yeah, definitely Okay. And podcast. You listen to podcasts at all the recommend. Yeah. I I haven't listened to them on a while, but there's this one called, How i built it or how I built this. Let me let me check. Um, what's about, what's about? It's about, because I commanderling, I'll put the links in the show notes, but yeah, it's how I built this and it's about they get a bunch of different CEOs who Built companies from it's not just tech.
It's like everything. And like this, they got the spanks woman on like it's not, you know. Um, but they talk about like their journey and all the failures they've had before and what random coincidence is that led them into doing what they're doing now. Um, and that one I think was really nice, especially to see people from different backgrounds and different industries.
Um, talk about how they got to where they are. Um, and you they always have like a life lesson in it somewhere. And then the other podcast was like, I think it's called the happiness lab. All right. Yeah. Um yeah, the yell one name now. It's because so I read the happiness of.
Yeah, the happiness advantage, the science of happiness, I read That book. I think Lori sent us. I think I think so too. It's he wrote a paper about it and she wrote a paper about it, Sorry. Oh, because the podcast is too hosts. Okay, right. Yeah. So That the podcast, they get guests in.
Um, and they talk about like different things. But the book I read it. First year or second years and I think I read it second year when I was like not in a good place and it puts stuff into perspective and instead of reading the book I just listened to a podcast every time I needed like a reminder.
Yeah. But You yes. So that one kind of it's not just like chapters from the book but they do other stuff. So they're I think they have an episode out like four days ago or something. So they're still continuing. But yeah. And of course that goes with, it was called the science of happiness.
Yeah. Which is very good. I think it's on course, here or something. Um, I actually highly recommend it, even if it's just Like they have even if you're not even if you're happy yeah it's still quite a good thing to do to remind yourself exactly. Like what keeps you in a good mental state.
Yeah. Quite easy to. For whatever reason. Yeah, to fall into a state of definitely depression or anxiety, or yeah, any other number of mental ailments. So with them, we got one book and one film. So any books that the book was the happiness. Okay? I really like that one.
I don't usually read nonfiction. So for me for a nonfiction book, I read it really quickly and it was easy digest and they had Like studies in it too. So it was backed up by science kind of yeah. Like they did psychological studies, and they would mention them in the book.
But it was like a quick read and It made me think of things in a different perspective. And then for the film is probably hidden figures. Room. So anytime i saw one the national. Yeah. So I'd never knew these women existed. Um, which is sad like, It makes you think of how many other people you don't know, existed.
Um, but it just shows you that like even When everyone's against you, you can like, do the things they thought you can do. Um, and they're honestly like incredible people. Um, regardless of gender arrays, they're just You know, so I listen I mean, I watched that movie anytime I need like a cheer me up, boost myself confidence.
So yeah, okay. So and then the last thing here is time traveller. So I want to imagine that you're going back in time to first year three years ago, What advice would you offer your former self and fellow students about, you know, making the most of your time that the short time at University because it just goes by so quickly.
And what would you advise students to do to make the most their time? I think definitely getting involved in societies or like volunteering or like anything like that. So as much as unisias stress me out in second year and increase my workload by a lot, I don't regret the time I spent on it because Hey, I learnt a lot of skills but also it made me who I am.
And in my opinion, is the reason I got so many of the interviews that I got and buy. I found the behavioural interview so easy. Um, and then the second thing would be I don't know if this is like good advice, but don't take people's opinion of you to heart that much because different people have different opinions and you're not there to like, please one person.
You know, you're there to be yourself. And even if this is just like, I'm going to say coursework feedback, but like, Just feedback on something you find significant to you. So like whether you're if you're trying to publish a paper you have three annotators or three reviewers and you're probably going to get one person who hates it, you know.
But if two people say yes you're published. Yeah. So you can't take one person's opinion as being who you are because That math teacher in high school, who told me I never amount to anything. Well, like, did you have a message here? So yeah, she did. It was, it was an IB in.
She just took I was in front of the class, like presenting something and she was like, shut up. You just confuse everyone. You do like you won't ever do anything. And she was like, oh, you're never gonna pass this course and you're never gonna be an engineer. And I really wanted to go to her after I graduated with a seven in months and be like, well, I did it.
Even if you told me I couldn't do it. But for me, like, When I was there, I actually thought her opinion was valid. I was like, oh, if this person has seen so many people go through it and they think that figure with authority as well. Yes, so you look at, you know, the age you would tend to look up to somebody's teaching you.
Is how as you say, had that experience? Yeah, and it's difficult to solve. Exactly. Sometimes You trust their judgement because well they've seen so many people who could do it And so many people who couldn't do it. Why is it like that? Their opinion of me isn't, right? But I think that you're not there to prove.
You're worth to anyone. Yeah, okay good. That's a good place to start. That's a good place to finish on. So Thank you. Any. I think that. Yeah, imagine it's a jay. Okay, thank you in G for joining us in GE for joining us today. We look well. So we actually we haven't said, so, where you going next?
I think you said you're going back. Yeah, and back to McKenzie, Go back to McKenzie in September or October. So you've got a bit of time to yeah, enjoy life for a bit, I hope. Yeah, my last summer, so I tried to extend it as much as possible, Good idea.
Yeah. So, Thanks for coming on the show and we look forward to seeing a graduation next month me too. Yeah, thank you.