Breaking the Glass Ceiling In The Tech World: Snehlata Mishra Gets Recognised As TechGig Geek Goddess

Hailing from a small town from Jharkhand, Snehlata Mishra, 28 graduated from National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. With an aspiration to be amongst the most competent Tech-Professional, Snehlata has been practising coding in the software industry, only for the last six years.

With meagre resources to meet with the family’s needs, Snehlata’s childhood was filled with hard work and dedication. Challenging times at childhood, often hone the skills sharper.

Snehlata dreamt of having a career that shall give her good returns and bring in prosperity for her family.
While preparing heavily for mathematics and science subjects, in the Class 12th, Snehlata secured a seat in the stream of her choice. She completed her Bachelor of Engineering majoring in Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Snhelata grew with her coding skills by practising her hands on many different languages. Being a proficient coder, Snehlata delivered many successful projects within her organization. After having worked at different firms for about five years, Snehlata got married about a year ago. Being a workaholic, Snehlata also loves to spend time at home, she aspires to create a perfect work-life balance.

We can proudly state, that Technology used to be the man’s domain in the past…. not anymore. Numerous hackathons and coding challenges being organized for women in the country, the sector seems to be open now for exponential growth in the women workforce. Technology is fast becoming a choice of career for women across the country. Each day, we hear numerous accolades being won by young engineering girl students being from Tier I or Tier II cities, on their contributions in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Internet of Things etc.

Technology today offers numerous more options for jobs, careers and increases the earning potential for women in a big way…. moreover, a large percentage of the techie jobs offers flexible working, heavy incentives on performance, work-from-home options etc. which makes it extremely viable for women professionals.

TechGig Geek Goddess is one of the world’s largest coding competition for women in India. In the latest 3rd edition of TechGig Geek Goddess, over 68,000 women professionals had participated from all over the country. The event format remains the same, the latest edition saw newer technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) & Machine Learning also incorporated. While the complexities of the questions given to participants increases, the number of participants is also rising year-on-year. TechGig Geek Goddess aims to bring more numbers and highly competent women engineers and professionals to the forum.

Having known about TechGig Geek Goddess, through her friends and colleagues, Snehlata felt interested and aimed to set for herself a vision to achieve the coveted title of TechGig Geek Goddess in India. She started her preparations over 6 months in advance. She referred to the content and practised regularly on the TechGig website. Her primary aim was to participate in the contest and meet with the women techies across industries.

It was once in a lifetime experience for me. I came to know a lot about myself – for example, that I have a lot of calibres. Participating in a national level contest calls for a lot of hard work, planning, focus and dedication. Through the levels of challenges successful completion, Snehlata gathered steam and started leapfrogging within the community with more recognition and achievements. 150 shortlisted Semi-Finalists had crossed multiple levels of problem-solving. The finale held in Bengaluru was a unique experience, as the women coders flocked together in a large conference room, aiming to excel and win the trophy.

When a lot of your hard work crystallizes into a moment of pride for yourself and your family, the heart sinks with happiness and humility. The quick moment of being the winner called for a lot of attention amongst the industry leaders, audience and my fellow participants. Bagging the TechGig Geek Goddess 2018 title and being the overall coding champion is a dream come true for me. I had to quickly learn to communicate and engage with the external world, engage with the audience and influencers at the same time. The title got for me a distinctive lead in my profile and a feather in my cap, that shall always fly high for me and my family. It has strengthened my belief in myself and has enabled me to push harder to achieve even bigger goals in life ahead.

My mother never gives up attitude has been a great inspiration. Even though she belonged to a small village, but she never gave up on anything. She kept motivating me whenever I felt low in my life. She keeps telling me that there are a lot of opportunities for you to achieve and it’s OK to fail sometimes.

Women may face a glass ceiling either everywhere or nowhere, I believe it’s all about a false perception created, which is not true at all. We have some of the most successful women leaders in our country, who have made it big in their lives, all by their hard work and commitment. It holds good for every sector, including the technology field. I have never faced any such feeling in my professional journey.

Staying updated with the current technology trends and consistently improve skills is the key to a rewarding career in the technology space. Being an active participant at events such as TechGig Geek Goddess and other relevant events are also a good way of testing and improving your skills. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are the hottest technology in the market right now and most of the software being built is driven on that.

I am planning to invest some time on garnering technical certifications and looking forward to joining big giant industries. Also, as one of our industry leaders had mentioned during the finale ceremony, I would also like to be a role model of at least one girl around me.