Ayushi Samaddar is living the dream that is being denied to other women who never get the chance to see what a career in computing is all about.
After studying computer science at UC Berkeley, Samaddar, 22, started her first job after graduation this summer at Workday, the Pleasanton enterprise software company cofounded in 2005 by tech icon David Duffield.
“I’m so glad to be here,” Samaddar told me on her first “real day” of work after an extensive training program. “It’s just such a fun place.”
Samaddar, who is an associate software engineer, has landed work in computing, a field where fewer than one-quarter of the jobs are held by women. That there are few women in the field is not news to Samaddar, who took her first computer science class at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino. Just like women before her, she attended male-dominated computing classes all through college, though she says it was never a huge deal.
“I wouldn’t say it was isolating, per se,” Samaddar says. “Everybody was really friendly. There is a sense of camaraderie, laughing and joking. Every once in a while, you notice that you might not be the majority in the class.”
In fact, last year Berkeley awarded 16.2 percent of its computer science degrees to women, not far off the national percentage of 17.6 percent.
Samaddar would find other women in computer science to commiserate with through campus clubs, like the Association of Women in EECS (electrical engineering and computer science). In fact, she served as co-president of the organization.
She says the club and others like it and the CS KickStart program, which brings together women interested in computer science to bolster their skills and broaden their networks, is helping to attract women to the major.
“I think it goes back to that issue of exposing people to the subject,” Samaddar says. “Getting people involved and showing them what this is, is the first step.”
For her part, Samaddar was exhilarated the day I talked to her. She was working a job, doing what she loved to do. She was preparing to move from her parent’s South Bay home to her own place closer to her job in the East Bay. Life was good.
And she would love to see more women share in that life.
“You could, as a programmer, be the good guy trying to save the world from evil hackers, or be creating the next latest robot or the next latest app that listens to your every voice command,” Samaddar says. “I think computer science is sort of the key to the world. It’s just kind of marvelous to be a part of that.”
Contact Mike Cassidy at womenincs@mercurynews.com or 408-859-5325. Follow him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.
