The most common misconceptions about working in tech debunked

By September 20, 2017For Companies, For Talent

Curious about a career in tech but not sure if it’s for you?

Ahead of Jobbio HIGHER, we spoke to some of our community to find out what it’s really like to work in the industry. We asked them ‘what’s the biggest misconception people have about working in tech?’

Clement Haider, Product Manager at Shazam

“Some people think that working in tech means you have to have good programming skills but that’s not true. You can be an excellent Product Manager without having that knowledge. You need to be able to handle a discussion with devs that’s for sure to know what their main challenges are when they’re writing code and when they’re discussing the complexity of a feature.

You need to be able to conceptualise how different components work together but you are not actually coding, you’re not programming and you’re not going to be in your day-to-day.” 

Jacky Fox, Cyber and IT Forensic Lead at Deloitte

“I think the biggest misconception is that it’s an industry for men and that it’s a bit nerdy. I think while it is true that it can be male dominated, we’re making strides to make it more balanced.

In cyber security internationally about 10% of the workforce are female, in the team at Deloitte we have here we have 30% and I intend to keep pushing that number up.”

Shilpa Apte, Engineering Manager at SurveyMonkey

“That it’s somehow unsocial. That’s actually one of the reasons why I thought I didn’t want to be an engineer because I thought I don’t like doing solitary work! But that’s not at all the case. 

You get time to do your coding work but I think that’s pretty similar to any other job in that you have to work with the team, you have to work with all the people that are helping move the product forward. At the end of the day you still have your set number of tasks to complete that you’re accountable for whether you’re in product, marketing or engineering, we all have our tasks to get done that we’re individually responsible for.”

Samantha Hepburn, Co-founder at Circle.

”The biggest misconception people have about working in tech is that you have to be technical. When I say that I mean people think that you have to be a developer. They think that you need to have knowledge of coding and things like that.

I organise tech events for a living. I rub shoulders with developers every day but I don’t know how to code because that’s not what I’m hired to do. I’m hired to give the information that they don’t have in their brains. You don’t need to be technical but knowing how to communicate is the main thing you need.”


Looking for an exciting opportunity in tech? Find it at Jobbio HIGHER on September 28th. 


Author Aoife Geary

Aoife Geary is the Content Editor at Jobbio specialising in the areas of Workplace Culture, Diversity, Startups and Digital Trends. She's partial to a burrito, a bad pun and living way beyond her means.

More posts by Aoife Geary

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