As the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag continues to gain traction, you’ll be hearing more about geeks who break the stereotypes of what programmers should be like. One such example is Michelle Sun, the founder of First Code Academy, a company that teaches schoolchildren as young as 6 years old how to code.
Like Isis Wenger, who reluctantly started the ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign after billboards with her on it attracted sexist responses, Sun is young, female, attractive and a coder. In the minds of many, one of those four things doesn’t fit with the others. Sun is doing her part to destroy that stereotype, and she’s taking it a few steps further.
Sun is a native of Hong Kong, where
children are interviewed before they’re 3 years old for entrance into
the most “prestigious” pre-schools, and students work hard to attain
perfect grades at every level of the education system.
Academics trump all other interests. Rote memorization
reigns supreme. Metro stops in Hong Kong are full of posters advertising
academic tutors as though they were pop stars.
The goal for Hong Kongers? To get a stable job working in finance or banking, and work their way up the corporate ladder. But Sun
doesn’t believe this is the ideal career path of the future. “We don’t
need perfect students anymore,” she says. “We don’t need people who can
regurgitate any bit of information from memory — Google can do that for
us. What we need are people who are creating things to make the world a
better place, and programming puts kids on this path.”
Sun started First Code
Academy after stints with various startups, including Bump, which
allowed users to share information by bumping their phones together (Google acquired Bump in 2013), and Buffer, a social media sharing and scheduling app. After Buffer, instead of working on “the next hot app,” Sun wanted to go in a different direction.
“I was inspired by the impact technology products can make in a wide audience,” Sun says. “I started coding when doing my first
startup. I was working with a team of developers, and became curious
about what goes on behind the scenes. I wanted to communicate better
with engineers, so I started reading a bunch of books on coding.” Sun then attended Hackbright Academy, “the leading software engineering school for women,” to further her coding skills in a full time, intensive environment.
“At Hackbright I took part in hackathons hosted by large tech companies like LinkedIn and Dropbox,” Sun recounts, “and it convinced me of the limitless possibilities knowing how to code can lead to.”
While working in the Bay Area, Sun stumbled onto the opportunity to teach middle school girls how to code,
and the experience led her to reflect on her education in Asia. When
she returned to Hong Kong she decided to bring this type of education to
kids in Asia. First Code
Academy started as a one-day, girls-only coding workshop, but over the
past two years it has grown to offer a range of courses to children
(girls and boys) from 6 to 18.
“Our mission is to empower the next generation to become creators with technology,” Sun
says. “The leaders of this generation will require a solid grasp of
technology regardless of the field they work in, be it tech, medicine,
law, or finance.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by Heather Zynczak, Chief Marketing Officer at Domo, which provides cloud-based business intelligence software. Like Sun,
Zynczak also has a background as a coder, which she counts as being
fundamental to her success in the top marketing role at Domo.
“When I started at Andersen Consulting, which is now
Accenture, I coded,” she says. “I spent 80 hours a week writing computer
programs and that experience has very much helped me, because I can
talk to the CTO, I can choose software systems, and when someone brings
up ‘multi-tenancy systems’ I know what they’re talking about.”
What we need are people who are creating things to make the world a better place, and programming puts kids on this path.
She continues, “My tech background has helped me because
marketing has become such a tech-heavy experience with analytics,
systems, and everything digital.” Sun puts it
this way: ”Coding is the next form of literacy. It’s the next language
everyone needs to learn how to speak. The same way a lot of people are
learning Mandarin to do business in and with China, coding is the new
language not just of business, but for life in our society.”
First Code teaches classes in Hong Kong schools, as well as in their office. The company has a 5-year
curriculum, which can start with students as young as six years old.
Courses range from programming basics to more intensive classes that
teach students how to build a complete app.
Parent-child workshops are also offered by the company in
response to increased interest from parents who want to be directly
involved in helping their children develop technical skills. It’s
working. Three of First Code’s
students traveled to Boston this last summer, at the invitation of MIT,
to show off their apps. The company also has recently expanded its
hands-on services to Singapore.
Programming is also helping participants of First Code’s
programs to develop other important life skills, some of which go
against Asian cultural norms that frown on any sort of failure. Sun
tells a story of a student who showed up barely able to speak in front
of others because he was so nervous about making a mistake or saying the
wrong thing.
“After two courses he’s now so confident he’s shouting out
answers to questions,” she says. “He’s learned that it’s ok to make
mistakes. When your app crashes, you find the problem, fix it, and try
again until it works. Life operates the same way.”