Meet The Directors: Claire Tolbert

Claire is a Performance Engineer and .NET Developer at Alkami Technology. She is passionate about giving back and bullet journaling. She is happiest with a cup of coffee in her hand and a client problem in front of her to troubleshoot. When she’s not at work, she enjoys crafting, video games, and roasting her closest friends on social media.

How did you get into the industry?

I was always interested in technology. My father is a computational chemist, and my mother is a web and graphic designer. Code runs through my veins.

I spent the summer between 8th and 9th grade transcribing an enormous document in LaTeX for my dad’s boss at work. I remember remarking to my dad: “I don’t get why people complain about code. It’s so easy. When you don’t know the answer to something, you just look it up.” My dad chuckled: “If only more people understood that!”

During high school, I got really into custom MySpace themes and would sell them to my friends for like $5 each. Again, I thought it was so easy. I’d find an existing custom theme online, and tweak it to my friends’ preferences. At the time, I thought nothing of it. Looking back, I realize that I was full-on coding, without even knowing it.

College took a while. It took me five years and six colleges to realize code was my calling. At one point, I was 21, a college dropout, and working in my hometown. I just wasn’t really happy, so I decided to go back to college. In January 2011, I quit my job on a Friday, packed my apartment that Saturday, moved to Oklahoma on Sunday, and started school again on that Monday. This was the best decision I ever made.

While at Panhandle State, I joined the Association of Information Technology Professionals or AITP. We had lunch together one day, and my Dean had organized the CEO of a local company to come by and talk about programmers in the agriculture industry. The talk was enchanting. When I first thought about jobs “in the industry”, I always thought of working at places like Google or Facebook — places that are inherently technical. I never thought of a cattle company needing programmers!

I followed up with the CEO to thank him for his time, and offer my hands if he ever needed someone to sweep out a barn — I really needed a college internship on my resume. About a week later, I had an interview with him and the IT Manager for a Software Development Intern position. I worked for Hitch Enterprises for a total of a year and a half, where I learned C# and fell in love with Database Design.

What did you struggle with most when getting into the industry?

I made a cardinal mistake when I was first starting out: comparing myself to colleagues and friends. I’d listen to work stories from friends of mine, whose technical skills are far superior to mine, and I would become filled with self-doubt. Wow, I wouldn’t know how to handle that situation. I must be so bad at my job.

Ultimately, I learned I have to stop worrying about others’ performance in comparison to mine. I’m not in their meetings. I’m not working for their clients. As long as my clients are happy, and my work is getting done, I’m good!

How did you get involved in Women Who Code?

My first week on the job at Alkami, my Team Lead, Caree, grabbed a crate of supplies and headed downstairs, saying: “I’m going to set up for our Women Who Code Meetup. You’re welcome to join if you want!” I had no idea what Women Who Code was, but I was intrigued! After just one event, I became addicted to the community. Soon, I was helping set up events, greeting guests, helping answer questions, and even gave my first talk in July 2018.

Why Women Who Code?

Come to an event. If you haven’t already, come to one of our events, and experience the love and support from our community. There is nothing like it. We have new members being helped by experienced members in things like interview tips or where to access free code resources. We have members cheering each other on when someone is promoted or is offered a position at a new company.

That is why.

There is an intoxicating feeling at every Women Who Code event, where I know I am in a safe space, and I can commune with people who have an enormous amount in common with me. Whether I’m complaining about ruining my most recent git branch, or praising getting my new feature working, I am in good company.

Now that I am a part of the leadership team, I am so happy to coordinate with location sponsors and speakers to get events set up. I get so jazzed welcoming new members to our community. It is an enormous honor to serve the community who so effortlessly served me and made me so much more confident in myself.

How has Women Who Code helped you in your career?

I’m much more visible than I ever have been. Since posting things on LinkedIn, Twitter, and even YouTube, I get a lot of people reaching out saying, “I saw your YouTube video” or “I read your post on LinkedIn”. It is really awesome to know that I have an effect beyond my desk at work.

This ultimately makes me a very valuable employee. The fact that I exist outside these four walls at Alkami shows how much I care about what I do and that I want to continue improving.

I’m not looking for a job anytime soon, but it’s kind of cool to know that — if I was — I could just point someone in the direction of my Intro to SQL video on YouTube, and it would perfectly encapsulate who I am: a teacher at heart with a goofy streak to keep people engaged, and a lover of databases.

What is something you wished you would have known when you started your first dev job?

Real world code doesn’t always align with theory.

During my first job after college, I was working on a product that was decades old. There was spaghetti code everywhere, nothing was commented, and there was almost endless repetition. I felt like I had been lied to!

The best thing to do is be the best developer you can be in those situations. Comment your code. Make helper classes to take care of repetitive tasks. If you find some extra time, refactor pieces here and there. Every little bit helps!

What is something that motivates you?

I think we only get out of life what we give. If I want the world to be intrinsically good, then I need to be good. If I want the world to give back, then I need to give back. That keeps me going in ways I can’t explain. I thoroughly enjoy helping others achieve their goals because there have been countless people involved in helping me achieve mine.

Tell me about a time you made a mistake. What did you learn?

Last year, I was working on an implementation for a loyalty rewards program. I was up one night at 2:00am working with my team to deploy some new code to production.

Surprise, I don’t work best at 2:00am.

A week later, someone on my team found a huge error, and I found out after some research that I forgot to update a config file during that 2:00am push.

My pride was hurt, and I wasn’t sure how to approach this. I decided to walk right into our morning stand up and announce: “Well, it was me, everyone. I caused these issues. I forgot a config file during the upgrade.” I braced for impact. My project manager was the first to speak: “Okay, let’s get an action plan together to solve this.”

I learned that day how valuable it is to be completely transparent in times of failure. If I had beaten around the bush, we would have wasted more time. My team knew it was an honest mistake, and was just thankful that we got to the bottom and could start working on a solution.

What’s next for you? What are some long-term goals of yours?

I have no idea. Right now, I’m enjoying my time analyzing the performance of my company’s product and helping triage production fires. I think I’ll always have to be close to chaos to be truly happy at a job. I’m also in the process of studying for some AWS Certifications… so maybe SRE is where I’ll stay? It’s so hard to tell at this point.

What’s something you’re really proud of?

I’m proud of myself for always being someone who recognizes a need for change and acting on it. Each accomplishment in my life happened because I put myself out there, I challenged myself, and I didn’t back down. From going back to school, to moving to DFW, to my most recent career change to SRE… Each of these happened as a result of my hard work. Sometimes I let myself forget that. Today isn’t one of those days.

Stay in touch with Claire by following her on Twitter!

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