Q & A with Autodesk Software Engineer, Megan Arnez

Meet Megan Arnez, a 24-year-old software engineer at Autodesk, who snagged her dream job after an internship during the summer of 2014. Check out her story below to find out how she’s achieving her goals, what challenges she faces as a woman engineer and how she keeps her passion going. Join Megan and other Autodesk developers at the inaugural Autodesk Forge DevCon in San Francisco on June 15-16. Apply for a free ticket now.

Q. What do you do at Autodesk?

Megan: I’m a software engineer at the AutoCAD Fabric team. I’ve been on that project since last September. I work on the visualization and query team. It’s basically taking a part of the AutoCAD core that’s non-input related, so we’re working on things like graphics generation, selection, highlighting, working on transients…those kind of features, and making them back code compatible for all platforms: desktop, mobile, universal Windows platform and the Web.

Q. What is the most challenging part of your technical work?

Megan: Because AutoCAD has been around for 30 years, this code base is huge, and it’s hard to go in there and refactor something and make sure that you’re not going in and breaking something. Because now everything is portable, I’ll do my work, but won’t change the product functionality itself. Sometimes, your best case scenario is to do some work and if nothing breaks and nothing changes (for the customer), then you’ve succeeded.

Q. What got you interested in software development?

Megan: When I was in high school, I was really big into animation. My sophomore year, we got a grant and a bunch of licenses for Autodesk products including 3Ds Max. I instantly fell in love with it. I’d been hand-drawing my animated films, so it was great to be able to use a software product where something that would take me normally two-weeks to animate, took me 10 minutes. And I could add nice lightning and have great texture for everything in my film, it was amazing! So I thought, man, it would be really cool to make a tool to help others and make them have less headaches and be more productive. So that kinda gave me the idea to check out software engineering.

Q. Where did you go to school?

Megan: I went to school at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. I graduated with a degree in software engineering. It’s a newer degree there, but very similar to computer science.
I had no previous experience in programming before college. I just knew that it seemed interesting and I wanted to try it out. I loved the idea of being able to solve problems all of the time.

Q. What did you think about their software engineering program?

Megan: Oh, I loved it! Cal Poly’s main motto is “learn by doing.” My first quarter when I came in, I knew nothing about programming. I didn’t know how to program, didn’t even know how to do a “Hello World” — I came in and [was told], “By the end of this quarter, you are going to make a mobile app!” So those of us who have never programmed before thought, “I don’t know how to code. I don’t know anything. All I see is pretty highlighted text on the screen. That makes no sense to me.” Being thrown into the deep end really helped me get used to whatever situation I get thrown into. Whatever project I get thrown into, I know I’ll be able to figure it out. Cal Poly gave me those problem solving skills to stick with it until you figure it out.

Q. During college what kind of programming language did you learn?

*Megan: *I learned, C, Java, C++, some of the web-based languages like HTML5, a little bit of Javascript and CSS, Python.

Q. Now what do you use predominantly?

Megan: Mainly, C++.

Q. How did you start at Autodesk?

Megan: I started off as an intern the summer of 2014. I interned with the AutoCAD 360 Web Team. I went in as a QA Automation intern, and worked with them on some of their testing frameworks using Jasmine and Cucumber, and helping to grow their test suite.

Q. When you’re not at work, what do you like to do?

Megan: One of the things I’ve started this year is practicing Tae Kwon Doe. I always wanted to try it out as a kid. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s a lot of fun to be able to workout with a great group of people, get stronger and get more coordinated. It’s a good de-stresser after work. This helps me stay balanced. I also love to run, even half-marathons. I love to draw. Mostly, I’ll use Photoshop with a stylus, or on my phone, I’ll use Sketchbook. Or sometimes I just hand draw with a normal sketchbook.

Q. Have you found any challenges being a woman in this field?

Megan: I’d say, in school, like in high school and in college, I was always one of the few girls in the classroom for engineering classes. I felt like, whenever I introduced myself and would answer the question, “What are you studying?” and I said, “Software engineering,” they’d give me this inquisitive look…Not that it was bad. It’s just not what they were expecting me to say. That was a little bit hard.

I think the hardest part at Autodesk is just my lack of raw experience. I am also the only female developer in the US for the project that I’m on. It’s hard not to get intimidated since I’m programming with people who have 10+ years of experience on me. Sometimes it’s hard to ask questions in a big group because I feel like I’m the only one out of the loop. But I’m very lucky that my team is very welcoming. They are always willing to explain things as often as necessary so that I can succeed and make timely progress on the tasks I am working on.

Q. Do you think having a woman executive leading AutoCAD helps?

Megan: I think so. A lot of our meetings, even if there aren’t a lot of female developers, on the upper management there’s several women on our teams. So it’s pretty much 50/50 by the time you get the whole team in the room— from developers, UX, and all of the PM’s and product teams.

Q. What’s a problem that’s close to your heart that you feel someone in your field can help with? Or build a solution to?

Megan: My two youngest siblings really struggle academically. I know over the years strides have been made to get kids excited about learning through the use of educational software programs. I haven’t seen anything that has stuck at least where my siblings go to school in Folsom, CA. It would be nice to have software for math and science that gets the students engaged. Another thing that I think would be really cool is to get kids starting to program earlier. I didn’t start programming until I entered college because my high school didn’t offer any programming classes. I know that there are great programs out there for this but I know more volunteers are needed because the teachers sometimes struggle with getting everything set up. I know school became a lot more fun and interesting for me when I could see how I was going to use what I learned in school to build and create amazing things.

Q. What would you say to young women who are already software engineers, what advice would you give them?

Megan: Don’t worry about knowing everything. A big topic coming up lately is the “Imposter Syndrome.” I definitely don’t know everything. I’m the newbie on my team, while others on my team have been programming for 15 or 20 years. I definitely feel that I don’t know much. But don’t let that stop you from continuing to learn, continuing to move forward and growing your skills. Keep finding that passion of why you love software engineering. Don’t let any of the struggles take that away from you.