Thanks for coming on Sirajology.
That's a great name
Sirajology is a great name? I appreciate it.
Yeah so like. How's life? How's everything going lately?
Life is pretty good actually. Living in SF which is one of my fav cities in the world.
New york is a very close 2nd i think. Actually they might be tied. Love my job, love my apt, love my pet snake
You have a pet snake?
What is the pet snakes name?
His name is Hiss. Which is not a very good name because he doesn't actually hiss.
I like that name
hes like super chill
hes super chill ok. is he a killer snake?
No he eats frozen mice
Do you have mice in the apt?
In the freezer, yeah
What got you to start working at BitTorrent?
A recruiter found me online 2.5 years ago when i first started working there and I didn't realize at the time it
a company. I had used their protocol and the client app, especially in college to DL music and stuff ya know
Poor college student. He reached out to me and said they were looking for a front end engineer on a particular
project and i just got really really excited
i felt like there was definitely something incredibly special about the folks at BitTorrent that's just like
a bunch of quirky nerds who love tech and love what they do. No one is trying to show off or be trendy
They're in it for the right  reasons. I felt really at home there.
its cool that through this period of job hunting which can be really hard, you found a great position
that you seem to love
I personally was looking for a jobs and I got rejected by a lot of places
and it hurts. Do you have any kind of advice for people who are looking for tech jobs -- how to deal with rejection?
what did you do?
oh well definitely crying in the shower
Rejections are definitely gonna happen and it hurts and it sucks and there's nothing  u can do about it but usually
you will find after the initial period of being upset that its kind of a blessing in disguise.  You usually realize that
wasn't the right place to be working. Might not've been the right fit, or if someone doesn't want u working there
u dont want to date someone who doesnt want to date u
i think the key is just to keep powering through and not let it get you down too much
cause eventually you do find the right thing
for sure, and i think thats a great analogy. you dont wanna date someone who doesnt want to date u
whats like your day to day life working at BitTorrent. Its an open source protocol right? but its a company?
We have multiple products. Its not just BT client. I work on the browser team. Im a frontend engineer.
Maelstrom, yeah. Although we're rebranding it to Surf. So super sexy.
Im a frontend engineer but I occasionally work in the backend so its basically BT but in the chromium browser
so we take in the chromium open source code and weve inserted some of our BT stuff and now
you can basically enter a magnet link and get a torrent right in your browser. Thats awesome!
Is it challenging? or do you feel its something very doable?
Um well both. Which is part of my i love my job. Somethings are super easy, doing UI work very straightforward
sometimes not, actually the thing i did today which was trying to get our torrent settings link into the chrome menu
The dropdown menu. you'd think that'd be really straightforward except the chromium code is not
so its basically like a treasure hunt and you're trying to figure out where in the code you have to change things
so its really challenging but also really fun. and doable and feels good when  you actually figure out how to do it
what got you into programming in general?
I moved to CA to SF in 2005 and i was actually an astrophysics major in university.
woah thats different.
but i didnt want to go into research or academia so when i moved out here i was planning on going back
to school for mech engineering or something a little more applied.  While i was doing that, I had a couple
friends who were working on some random project that involved programming, a YT visualization
Oh awesome
I said wth, im going to learn how to program and i'll see if i can help out and i never looked back
ive just been programming every since.
thats awesome and one of the sad things about Silicon Valley is that there aren't enough women in programming
its awesome that you are. Do you have any advice to give to girls who want to learn to code  or get into
the field?
I would definitely say 1st find something you want to build, or make, or just curious about. doesnt have to be
good doesnt have to be useful. It could be something someone did already that u just want to learn about
and rebuild it on your own or something. It has to be something you're interested in and somewhat passionate about
and then you just sort of have to go for it. The other bit of advice is to not let anyone tell you that you can't
do something. Or let anyone put you down. If people do, and u will def encounter people who are rly insecure
themselves and want to put others down and make them feel stupid and bad, find any way to not
let that bother you cause thats huge.
i went to an interview once, i wont say where. you could tell the guy who came into the room didnt know i
was a woman from my resume. And he took one look at me and the look on his face went from friendly to
condescending in under a second. I can't prove it was because i was a woman but
It was definitely because you were a woman.
What would be an ideal 10 years from now?
Hopefully there's a cute guy involved in the picture. In terms of career,  I'd like see myself doing something
a little more science or physics oriented. idk exactly what that would be but i rly miss science
if i could figure out a way to combine the two without necessarily needing a PhD in physics
if i wanted to go work at spaceX or something, i'd pretty much need a PhD. Something along those lines
Thats awesome. Cool, thanks for answering all those questions. Thanks for coming!
