11 Codecoolers in 30 Successful Coder Women under 30 in Forbes Hungary

Forbes Hungary collected 30 outstanding programmer women under 30 in their December issue. 11 of the 30 are former Codecool students, confirming that our unique training methodology works, and our inclusive culture is truly empowering young women to find their passion in tech. And making us super proud again about our amazing alumni.

The Forbes article introduces each specialist through a short profile and makes a point: women programmers do exist in Hungary, they are smart and ambitious, and they won’t be discouraged by prevailing gender stereotypes. In fact, most of them don’t even see themselves discriminated against at the workplace. However, many of them are still met with surprised faces when people outside work learn they have such “masculine” professions.

 

Coding “like a girl”

Gender gap in programming is a global concern, but also a complex topic to research. Different statistics show different ratios for women in tech. Numbers obviously differ by country, sector, company and even specialisation. Most generic research puts this ratio somewhere between 10 to 30 percent – that is having 1 to 3 women among 10 programmers. We could do all better.

Especially that there is zero research evidence showing any difference based on gender regarding talent or competence required for programming. The apparent differences are elsewhere: regarding opportunity, (lack of) social support and confidence (not unrelated to the other two key factors.)

Even Codecool statistics show looking at our 1000+ alumni internationally, that we have only 1 woman or girl in every 5 students. This is a number we are continuously trying to improve.

Our strategy is based on clear and active communication of our open approach, zero discrimination in the application process or at school, and a growth mindset as a foundation of our training philosophy. Obviously we are also fighting the consequence of social bias: a low ratio of girls applying in the first place. However, the result of our efforts is an inclusive environment for girls at our school, where they are not only able to build a developer’s mindset, and hard and soft skills, but also their confidence as tech professionals.

 

Wall of pride – meet the 11 Codecoolers listed

„The ideal situation would be not to talk about male and female programmers, just programmers” – says Zsuzsa Gerendai, one of the coders on the list, quoted in the article. We couldn’t agree more.

However, to get there, the best strategy may be to motivate more girls and women to become coders by showing examples. And the programmers in the article do set an amazing example each.

These are the 11 inspiring Codecooler women under 30 listed in Forbes’s list of 30:

 
 

Let’s fight the gender gap in tech together

We are super proud to see our alumni on the list and succeeding in their careers after putting in the hard work to learn tech at Codecool. We have many more amazing success stories in our alumni obviously, not fitting any magazine article or blog post.

But we would love to even have more, and we know our partners would love to have even more talented women and girls working for them in diverse tech teams. We really hope to see many more girls and women join us like these strong and smart women.

We will continue to work on opening the world of tech to everybody, regardless of their gender. Determined to make not only the IT talent gap, but also the IT gender gap a thing of the past.