Carola Nitz: From MD to CS to Find Career Success

When Carola Nitz was growing up she didn’t dream of code and software. Rather, she wanted to be a doctor, and study medicine so that she could help people. However she struggled in the academic setting of high school, and by the time she graduated she didn’t have the grades she needed to achieve a spot at the required Universities. That’s when a friend told her about medical computer science, and provided her with a new avenue to pursue her passion.

Not knowing what else to study, Carola enrolled in the Universität zu Lübec and began taking a number of computer science courses. At first she was really unhappy with the decision. She had never written a line of code in her life so the work was hard, but she also had a misconception about what a software engineer was supposed to be. It wasn't until she started her student job at Nik Software that she learned that it is actually quite cool and fun to be a software engineer. That's when she started to love it!

Upon graduation with a Diplom Informatik in Medical Computer Science, Carola had a rough start entering the professional world. She quickly took a job as a software engineer at windowin GmbH and then Digital Pioneers, but both companies turned out to be insolvent, and she had to leave each position after about three months. At that point she was discouraged and regretful. She missed her work at Nik Software, but they had been acquired by Google, making the hiring process much more complicated.

However she never gave up. Next she took a job as a software engineer at Stuffle, a small startup, where she learned a lot. After that she moved on to working for nxtbgthng a prestigious well known Agency in Berlin where she learned even more. All the while she continued to interview with even bigger and more prestigious companies, a process that was fraught with failure at first, but carried on with a passionate persistence. Finally that perseverance paid off, and in October of 2013 she moved to Silicon Valley after accepting a job as an iOS Developer at one of the leading Tech companies in the valley.

She had found professional success, but Carola still had one issue that held her back from reaching the next level. She wasn’t comfortable with public speaking, which made it difficult to reach for and handle some of the opportunities which would have gained her wider industry prestige. However she didn’t accept defeat, rather she strove to improve, taking on presentations from both work and her local Women Who Code Network until she became so comfortable in front of a crowd that she was able to give a talk in front of 150 people at the London Swift Summit.

Now that she has achieved career success and industry recognition, Carola Nitz feels that it is important to help other women get to where she is. She does this through gentle encouragement and support of the next generation of female coders, sharing her wisdom and experience with them, while guiding them towards important opportunities that they might otherwise have missed. When asked what advice she would like to share with the community she said “Don't let fear of failing get in your way and stop you from giving that talk or applying for that position. Chances are that you’re underestimating yourself and you should try it anyway.”

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