Raina Wang: Targeting Her Dreams To Achieve Her Goals

Raina Wang started out as a business student in China, working towards her Masters Degree. While she did well in her classes, she never really enjoyed them, and only continued to pursue this discipline because it was a popular option for people in her country. However in 2011 she got a chance to attend Ohio State University as an exchange student. There she took a class called Linear Programming which was her first introduction to technical pursuits. This was a revolutionary experience for her, as she found she had a natural aptitude and love of coding, which she was able to pick up quickly and with relatively little effort.

Having found her calling, Raina enrolled in another Masters program in the United States, this time opting for a degree in Information Sciences. She also started researching companies in Silicon Valley, and fell in love with the culture, which was a balance of work and life, with a variety of perks and benefits that she found very exciting. It was at this point that she started targeting these large tech companies, looking into the hiring process and what these organizations were specifically interested in from potential employees.

When she graduated and started her job hunt, the process was somewhat daunting. She didn't have much practical coding experience, and was unsure whether she would be qualified to work at one of the big tech companies that she was so enamored of. However she didn't let that hold her back, and instead forged on, keeping her eyes open, and eventually running across a youtube ad for a website building and hosting service called Weebly. It seemed like an interesting concept so she went online and applied for their open software engineering position.

Weebly uses a trial week technique for recruiting, so they gave her a project which she was able to start at home, and then complete in the office. This was a challenge, the work was more advanced than anything she had ever done before, and she found herself struggling with the complexity of the code. However she persevered, looking up answers on Google and Stackoverflow, until she was finally able to complete the project perfectly. During the process she learned a lot, and also impressed her peers enough to land her dream job in the organization.

While working at Weebly, Raina has had a chance to work on a number of fascinating projects, and increase her experience with industrial applications. Last year her team worked on a Domain Transfer feature that allowed customers to transfer their external domains, while also managing them from an easy to use interface. She was also exposed to Women Who Code through Weebly, which periodically hosts meetups for the organization.

When asked what advice she has for up and coming tech professionals, Raina said, Never stop acquiring new skill sets. It’s a really quickly evolving industry. And never stop thinking about MVC when you code.

Check out Huan (Raina) Wang on LinkedIn