40: Ep. 40 | From Librarian to Software Engineer: Tammy Metz on Career Pivots and Mentorship

Erika (00:01) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast, your weekly dose of real engineering conversations. I’m your host today, Erica, and I’m joined today by…

Brittany Ellich (00:11) I’m Brittany Ellich

Erika (00:13) we met on a team working at GitHub and quickly realized that we were both obsessed with getting better at what we do. So we decided to start this podcast and share what we’ve learned. We’ll be talking about everything from leveling up your technical skills to navigating your professional development, all with the goal of creating a community where engineers can learn and connect.

Today on Overcommitted, we are joined by Tammy Metz, another software engineer at GitHub. Welcome, Tammy.

Tammy (00:42) Thank you. Great to be here.

Erika (00:44) No, we have so much talk about today because like us, Tammy is a successful career changer who made the shift into software engineering after working in teaching and library science. We’re all excited to swap stories, talk about the non-traditional path to software engineering, and discuss how those varied experiences actually make us stronger engineers.

We are also excited to find out more about her incredible dedication to giving back to the community. We know that you do mentoring with the Women to Women Mentoring Program and that you are a big advocate for encouraging other engineers at GitHub to get involved in volunteering. But we’ll start with the career change.

discussion first. So to kick us off, what’s one thing you are currently building or obsessed with learning about right now at GitHub?

Tammy (01:43) yeah, so I’m on the platform health team, which makes internal tooling for analysts to combat abuse at scale. And we’ve always worked closely with the trust and safety team, which also combats abuse, but in a little bit of a different way. And recently I’ve been, starting to work on a tool that the trust and safety analysts use and getting to know.

how they work and what they are up against and dealing with, and also getting to work more closely with people in the Trust and Safety Engineering team. So that’s been exciting and I’m enjoying it.

Erika (02:19) That’s very cool. Well, let’s talk about your non-traditional path to get to where we are today. So we know that a lot of people feel held back if they aren’t straight out of a computer science program, but your trajectory is one that proves them wrong. So walk us through teaching math and working at a school.

as a librarian to becoming a software engineer at GitHub. What was the moment when you decided that you wanted to pursue this?

Tammy (02:48) Yep. So my, my last job before my career change was a middle school librarian and I had summers off and one. So I was, I had gone through a process called national board certification, which is basically like an extra certification that teachers can do. And it is very time consuming and it takes a lot of energy. And I completed the process and suddenly have all this.

free time that I didn’t know how I was going to fill up. that summer, because teachers need summer jobs, it’s just how it is. I found a summer job working with an organization that many people have probably heard of, Girls Who Code. And at that time, they had a long summer program. was like seven weeks. there were like tech companies would host

classrooms. So I was the lead teacher in a classroom of Girls Who Code hosted by a local tech company. And so not only was I teaching them basic coding and helping them to work on things, but we were also going on field trips and talking to all sorts of people at this tech company about their jobs and their career paths. it was just such a great program. And I am

not sure how many of the girls got convinced to go into software engineering, but I got convinced to go into software engineering. So that was kind of like the final point. I had previously left teaching a couple of times and ended up in tech jobs by accident and really liked them each time. But this time I was like, I’m going to do it for real and intentionally. So after that summer, I’ve just started taking classes in computer science.

And that was how I started filling up my extra free time. And then a couple of years later, I just took the leap and left my job and tried to find a software engineering job, which I was not able to do. I actually found a support engineering job instead. That’s how I came to GitHub. And at that point, I had kind of given up looking for a software engineering job. And I really enjoyed doing support engineering.

Doing that really got me really familiar with all sorts of different areas of GitHub and just really helped me ramp up in a lot of ways. And it was my first exposure to a real production code base because I would go in and try to see if I could figure out what changes might have happened that caused this and that. And then there came an opportunity to transfer to the Platform Health team as a software engineer.

That is how I became a software engineer.

Brittany Ellich (05:36) That’s super cool. It sounds like you have a really unique combo of lot of different skills from before your engineering career that might be useful now. Do you find that any of the things that you did while you were teaching or in your library systems work are transferable or anything that you can leverage right now in your career as an engineer?

Tammy (05:54) Very much so. And I think a lot of the soft skills that I brought with me were integral in kind of keeping me above water while I tried to ramp up my software engineering skills. So, you know, I was able to immediately like be able to write a good pull request and explain things and writing and in an organized fashion. I was able to like run meetings.

collaborate cross team with different people. And all of that was just stuff I had been doing forever as a librarian. So it wasn’t anything special to me, but I think maybe those types of skills aren’t emphasized so much in like your standard computer science undergrad program. And then I’ve always liked troubleshooting. just, I can’t stand not knowing why something is.

the way that it is or why something is broken. So I really enjoy like figuring it out. And I really enjoy doing that as a tech support. And that’s really also helped me as a software engineer because even though I may not be the most like, you know, knowledgeable experience, like coder, I fill in a lot of gaps with being able to figure out why something broken or.

It’s just very helpful to have other skills that I’ve been able to just slide into.

Brittany Ellich (07:18) That’s awesome. find a lot of the folks that I work with that have a non-traditional background tend to have a lot of skills that they’re able to use and leverage in their career, even if they aren’t directly technical skills. ⁓ So you said that when you first came to GitHub that you were, you’d sort of given up on a software engineering career switch. What were the challenges that you were experiencing while trying to make that switch? Was it like a technical problem or non-technical problems or, you know, what?

Tammy (07:25) Yeah.

Absolutely.

Brittany Ellich (07:47) Why did you almost give up?

Tammy (07:49) Yeah, I had a lot of trouble getting a foot in the door or finding that very first position. were, I mean, so now it’s like not a good time to be job searching, but back then there were jobs to be had and there were entry level jobs to be had, but they were very geared toward like new grads. Like there was a pipeline, you got your computer science degree, you got recruited. Those were the positions for those people.

There were just starting to be some like apprenticeship programs. so I was applying to those, but I didn’t get any of them. And it was just very difficult to convince anybody to the, like somebody with no experience could do a job. yeah. And that, that was my, my hindrance. so I’m really lucky that I was able to take the path that I took and at the time that I took it,

because I started at GitHub the week that COVID basically shut everything down. So it was a huge relief to know that I had a job, it was already remote, everything was going to be fine. And it would have been very different if it had not happened at that time, I think.

Brittany Ellich (09:02) Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. got into the industry in 2018 and I feel like I had a very similar start where it was really hard to get started. I know, and I know it’s even more difficult now for a lot of folks.

⁓ I’ll go ahead.

Tammy (09:13) Yeah.

I think, I mean, this is not really like good news, but I think that new grads or like, you know, college students are facing exactly the same problems that somebody career switching is right now. Like there’s not open jobs for anybody at that level, no matter what kind of education or background they have. So that’s not like super helpful. But on the other hand, I don’t think there’s like a huge differentiator right now between.

you know, having an official degree and not.

Erika (09:47) Yeah, it’s weird to me looking at the like current job market because I feel like there’s a mismatch between what companies are looking for and what they are saying they’re looking for because there’s so much work to be done. Like there’s no lack of development work, but it seems like companies are saying, well, we want senior plus engineers and no one at the junior level, but

What I’m interpreting that to mean is like, we want people who can run projects, who can run meetings, who can sort of do that, like orchestration, higher level thinking layer. And it’s not necessarily something that junior entry level engineers can’t do to this same point. But like, nobody’s trained them to do it. Like, they’re going into these interviews saying like, I know how to code and companies are saying, well, we don’t really need that.

Tammy (10:36) Right?

Erika (10:44) but yeah, I mean, it’s still very much needed.

Tammy (10:45) Yeah.

I think there’s just so many candidates now that like, even if it’s just not worth it to recruiters to take the time to think about, know, could this person have that potential or what? Cause they’ll just move on to the next candidate. but I agree. Those are like really valuable skills that I think people from a lot of different careers come in with. yeah, it is.

Erika (11:10) Yeah. then, like you do need both. Like you do need the technical side and the non-technical side. But yeah, like sort of chucking everybody out the window because, you know, you’re only focused on some set of skills that you’re not really even looking for is so backwards.

Tammy (11:10) It is not a good time to be looking.

Erika (11:32) feels like a really missed opportunity from a hiring perspective to reshape the narrative.

Tammy (11:38) Sure.

Brittany Ellich (11:40) I agree. That does kind of transition us a little bit though. I’d love to hear more about this woman to woman mentoring program that you’re in. I’m not sure if that’s specifically tech specific or if it’s just a more generic mentoring program, but I imagine that you probably come across a lot of folks that are earlier in career through that. You said originally when we were reading through your Hubbard Champion overview,

that the best part of giving back is helping people by just being yourself. Can you talk about that a little bit and what it looks like with the Women to Women Mentoring Group?

Tammy (12:12) Yeah. So it’s because all I have to do is open my mouth and chit chat. it’s like, at some point I look back on my, you know, path and realize like, I’ve had a couple of careers and I’ve like had some successes and I’ve developed this wisdom that even though I still feel like I’m a 20 year old to the outside world, I am not. I have something valuable that

could help other people. it’s really this program is I get paired up with it could be any STEM students. So a lot of the students in this area are actually in like the biological sciences. But since I am in software engineering, I’ve gotten paired up with a computer science major this year. And last year, I was a cybersecurity major. So that was good because I don’t know what I would tell the biology majors. But you know,

A lot of it has just been just general advice for life. And yeah, it’s just, you know, I’ve been where they are. I can see kind of how some things will end. Like I can kind of sift through like what’s, you know, not that big of a deal, even if it might seem like a really big problem at the moment and like, you know, help them walk through.

just how to get stuff done. you know, well, you want to look into transferring colleges? Well, let’s take a look and like see what office you have to go talk to and like, what’s the name of the person or can you send them in? It’s just like really basic things that, you know, are just really easy for me or anybody probably my age that, you know, are really helpful to somebody who hasn’t developed those skills yet.

Brittany Ellich (14:02) I love that so much. And that sounds like something that I would have very much valued when I was in college, for sure. Is there anything that you see really commonly with the students that you work with? Is there like any advice that you find yourself giving over and over?

Tammy (14:17) Yes. And I started to realize this when I had a previous volunteer thing that I did when I was interviewing prospective students for my college that I went to and also talking to current students about like, you know, their career path and stuff, that it’s a complete shock to students when they first realize that the thing that they’re working towards right now and majoring in

and think they’re going to be doing when they get out of college is probably not going to be the thing that they’re going to be doing in 20 years and that they can have twists and turns in the road. And especially in the case of people in technology, they’re probably going to be in a job that doesn’t even exist now because there are a lot of jobs that didn’t exist when I was in college now that

for like machine learning engineer, you know, so it’s okay. Like they’re not gonna, no choice they make is wrong. They’re not gonna end up stuck somewhere that they can always pivot. And that kind of like mind shift, I think is helpful for them. And it’s something I see with a lot of students that I talk to. So yeah, that’s a big one. And then the other one is that

Like you don’t have to be a 4.0 student. It’s okay if something goes wrong, if you fail class. those are things that seem big at the time, but really in the long grand scheme of things aren’t going to be a problem. you know, they’re just learning experiences.

Brittany Ellich (15:53) That makes sense. And I feel like your background having sort of navigated around a few different career paths now is probably really helpful for them to see too, to be like, look, you totally different things. And you can pivot even if you’re not in college anymore. I like that.

Tammy (16:07) Yeah.

And I always say, ask me about being a teacher. I love it when people ask me about that, but generally that’s not the career people are interested in talking about. yeah, I have a lot to say about that.

Brittany Ellich (16:19) And then specifically just about volunteering in general, do you feel like you spend a ton of time doing it or is like that type of volunteer activity something that anybody could do even if they have a busy schedule? What are your thoughts there?

Tammy (16:32) Yeah,

I don’t spend a lot of time at all volunteering, especially in this opportunity that I’m in right now. It’s like, I zoom maybe once a week with the student a couple times. We have zooms with all the students. It’s very low key and low commitment and so easy. Like I don’t have to leave my house. It fits very well with my kind of introverted nature. But yeah, I think that’s

That’s been kind of my message to people is that a lot of people are probably doing something that actually is a volunteer situation that they never even think of. Like they would do it no matter what, or they’ve been doing it for 10 years, like they’re, you know, on their HOA board or they are volunteering at their kid’s school and helping them plant a garden and just like things that you just normally do.

without thinking like, this is a volunteer thing. So my message is to just like, you know, when you’re working somewhere like GitHub that you can, that has a benefit where you can, you can get money to donate based on how much you volunteer to like just track the hours that you’re volunteering and be able to do that and just take advantage of that benefit. But I truly believe that like,

a large number of people are already doing something that already fits into their life. that’s kind of what you need to look for, something that fits into your life and that you enjoy. And if you’re not going to enjoy it, don’t do it. Don’t ever do something just because you feel like you’re not contributing enough to the world or whatever. The right fit is there for everybody.

Erika (18:12) Yeah, it sounds like it really comes from this place of you recognizing that you have built up something that’s valuable and like you getting the joy out of giving it to others. And yeah, it’s like speaks to your gratitude and sort of like reflection on yourself of like, yeah, understanding how far you’ve come and the goodness of like giving that to others.

Tammy (18:38) Yeah, for sure. That’s the other part of it is like, I don’t even have to. It’s all stuff I’ve just learned from doing what I was going to do anyway. Like I was going to career switch, you know, things have happened in my life and I can take all of that and help somebody else with it. but the other thing that I actually also tell students who aren’t necessarily like committed to software engineering or whatever is that.

I’ve done it both ways where I’ve had like a helping career, you know, being a teacher and now I’m in more of a corporate career and there are real advantages to both of them. like when you’re in a career like teaching, you know, you know, like you’re making a difference all the time and it might not always feel that way, but like in the long run you are, but you’re always tired and you don’t have extra time because all of your extra time.

is usually spent in school doing other things that are, I guess, volunteer as well, but kind of like mandatory, voluntold kind of things. So you don’t have like extra time to get involved in things, you know, like women to women mentoring. Whereas when you’re in a job like software engineering, you have a lot more free time and a lot more free money. And you, you know, I’m able to like,

donate more and I’m able to just be a lot more flexible with the volunteer opportunities that I get involved in. So one is not better than the other, but you don’t have to be in a helping career to necessarily do good. both are options and both are good options. And I’m glad that I’ve been able to do both ways.

Erika (20:09) It’s funny because it kind of reminds me of this like trope of like software engineers dreaming of working on a farm. Like I’ve heard this like, you know, several people being like, or there’s kind of a trend of like, I want to quit my job and go work on a farm because I’m like done with technology. And yeah, I also was actually a teacher right out of college. And I feel like

I also draw on that to remind myself that you can do good wherever you are, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a slave to technology if you work in software. It’s okay, you can be good to your coworkers, you can teach others. There’s elements of that sort of teaching and helping that can be infused in any job that you do.

Tammy (20:49) don’t know.

Erika (21:01) So it doesn’t have to be like, yeah, totally one or the other. You can kind of like take bits and pieces, even if it’s more on the sort of like intellectual software corporate side.

Tammy (21:15) Absolutely. And then on the flip side of that, for those who are, you know, have spent like a whole career as a software engineer, teaching is a great second career because when you come in from something else and become a teacher, you have so much of a foundation to like draw from this. I never was that I did. also started teaching out of college, but I’ve noticed that like career switchers into teaching.

are very successful and it’s just so it’s really good to have like a big age difference between you and the students if you’re a high school teacher and a big like you know I think a lot of students think that like teachers can’t do anything else or like you know they’re really dumb and they don’t know anything and like you know it helps for them to see that modeled where it’s like no you can

The people who have chosen to come and teach you can have a successful career in anything, but they have chosen to come and do this. So I think that like is very good for kids to see.

Erika (22:22) Well, thinking back on your early days, what advice would you give yourself starting out, either sort of at that transition period or in the beginning? Like, if you were your own mentor, what would you say to yourself?

Tammy (22:40) Yeah, I’ll answer with kind of like a meta answer. I would advise to sift through all the advice from people and take the good and leave the bad. There are just really out of touch people that give advice and it’s just not helpful. And even like advice that I could give now based on my experience from like pre-COVID.

It’s just not relevant anymore. Like I don’t really know, you know, what it’s like to be like trying to find that first software engineering job right now. I I have a pretty good idea, but like it’s, it’s a very different world. and. You know, people are, are trying to help and stuff, but sometimes it people’s advice is just like upsetting and it’s not helpful. So that’s okay. It’s okay to be like, thank you for that.

input and because you as the job seeker and the career switcher or whatever, you can see best what’s going on and you know what you’ve been trying and what’s worked and if there was anything that this is not needed. But if I could go back, I would like track in a spreadsheet like every job I applied to because

Now looking back, it’s really blurry and all I can do is like look through my old emails and stuff. I’m just like, I wonder how many jobs I did apply to. I wonder if I ever applied to that company because I can’t remember. Like it just, it would be helpful to have tracked that, but it’s totally not necessary. Just a kind of a thing that you think of later.

Erika (24:13) Yeah, yeah, it’s almost like demotivating when somebody seems to tell you like there’s one right way to do things and then you try it and it doesn’t work. You’re like, well, what’s wrong with me? They told me that this would work. And yeah, it’s a good reminder to be like, no, there’s probably multiple ways. And even if that person had the best of intentions telling you, like it may have only worked for them.

Tammy (24:19) Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I find myself repeating a lot, like you’re not doing anything wrong. You know, it’s just how the economy is right now. Like you’re just, just keep doing what you’re doing. And, I can’t put a timeline on it. I can’t give you any guarantees, but just keep trying. That’s all you can do. And there’s nothing, you’re not missing something by doing exactly what you’re doing. So I think that’s true for many, many people.

Erika (25:03) Yeah, at many different levels too, like whether you’re looking for a promotion, whether you’re looking for that first job, yeah, at any point in the career there’s those moments of frustration and it’s good advice to remember.

Tammy (25:07) Yeah.

That’s true.

Erika (25:18) Well, Tammy, this has been such an insightful discussion. You have given us so much to think about, about transferable skills and mentoring. And before we wrap up, we have our fun segment inspired by all this talk about teaching and sharing knowledge. We are calling this segment Teaching Moment. And so the question is,

What’s one thing you’re surprisingly good at teaching others? And it could be anything, maybe cooking, a game, or a random skill. And we’ll let you go last if you have time to think about it. And I actually also need a second to think about this question. So I’m hoping that Brittany has an immediate answer.

Brittany Ellich (26:04) I I do. Yeah, I love this one. I was just thinking through this and one of the things that I feel like I’m pretty good at teaching others or like something that people used to come to me a lot for was like proofreading messages that they would be sending or like emails. I feel like I’m not asked to do this as much anymore because I think AI took this job from me, sadly, but I’m glad that that skill, like it’s accessible to everybody now.

But yeah, feel like, you know, reading through something for tone is something that I feel like I’ve done a lot of for people and I really enjoy.

Erika (26:39) for sure. I would still use a human over AI for that. I do not trust high-risk messages. all right. I… yeah. I mean, it’s funny because like I said, I was a teacher and I feel like I’m… I am pretty good at getting people to…

Tammy (26:45) my gosh, yeah.

Brittany Ellich (26:47) Same.

Tammy (26:56) I that.

Erika (27:03) sing songs, like I was a music teacher. And I think I’m pretty good at like encouraging people to like sing and just enjoy the music. Yeah, that’s really the only thing that’s coming to mind. The only other thing is like helping out all of my sort of like post-millennial relatives with their technology.

But I don’t know if I’m actually teaching them or just fixing their issues. I feel like it’s more like, Erica, this is broken. Can you fix it? And then I do it. So I’m teaching them to spend on tech support, I guess.

Tammy (27:33) I I have.

Gosh, I along those

lines, think because, Brittany didn’t really have one that was like teaching either, but more of a skill. have a skill too, that has made itself apparent to me in the last few years. a previous volunteer thing that I did that I no longer do anymore because I think that like real lawyers need to be the only ones doing this now. But Microsoft had, a program where.

mostly lawyers from their CLA department, but also anybody else who wanted to volunteer would help applicants renew their DACA application. And so basically it was filling out like five different pieces of really long paperwork and then like going through it with the applicant and you know saying this is what we’re this is what’s on this and this is on this. I’m very good at filling out paperwork and following instructions and I kind of enjoy it.

That was not something I ever thought about before I just kind of decided to try that opportunity. that was a really cool opportunity. And I got to meet a lot of people at Microsoft as well through that. yeah, so now I look for opportunities that involve paperwork filling out because I think that’s my thing. I think I should have been a tax preparer or something in a previous life because…

Yeah, it’s just fun. So, that’s my weird one.

Erika (29:01) That is such a valuable skill. Yeah, we talk about soft skills, like I wish I was better at filling out paperwork. I’m very jealous.

Tammy (29:10) It’s definitely not something I realized I was great at until quite recently in life. But yeah.

Erika (29:12) Bye!

I don’t

cool. Tammy, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a fun, illuminating conversation. So where can folks find you if they’re looking for you on the internet?

Tammy (29:28) think LinkedIn is the best place. I’m on some other social media platforms, but I’m not. I just lurk. So LinkedIn would be the place to reach out if you wanted to reach out.

Erika (29:39) Thank you listeners for tuning in to Overcommitted. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and share with your friends. Until next time, goodbye.