Meet the jury in Female Developer of the Year 2024
We use the best to choose the best. This years jury includes 3 previous winners of the Female Developer of the Year award!
Current title: Developer/Tech Lead at NRK
What is the best thing about being a developer?
Solving problems. The possibilities are endless! It’s the best feeling when you get to create digital products that people use every day.
What has this award meant to you?
It’s been a very nice recognition. It gave me a boost to continue doing extra work for the community outside my normal work. It’s also been great getting to know and connect with even more female developers from other places.
What advice do you have for future female developers?
Stay curious and keep updating your skills! And when people talk about developers as a male profession or mention “gutterommet,” just ignore them. There have always been female developers, and we are just as good as (and sometimes even better than) our male colleagues.
Merethe Granevang - Winner 2022
Current title: Developer at Aschehoug
What is the best thing about being a developer?
For me, the best thing about being a developer is bringing ideas to life and solving interesting problems. The developer profession offers a wide range of areas, such as creating exciting user experiences, developing computer games, architecting large systems, combating cybercrime, and researching artificial intelligence. Additionally, you have the freedom to dive into many different industries since there is high demand for software solutions.
What has this award meant to you?
I won this prize for creating a game that teaches programming to children. Receiving this award has brought me a lot of recognition for my work, both among my coworkers and others in the developer community. It inspired me and gave me the confidence to continue on my path, and to pursue ideas that ignite my passion. Additionally, it inspired me to help others gain the recognition they deserve. It has also been a valuable addition to my resume when searching for new jobs.
What advice do you have for future female developers?
I encourage you to be proud of your work and be visible to inspire others to pursue a career in development. This way, you may contribute to increasing diversity in tech. Don't be afraid to try out new things to ensure your experience and skillset in programming continue to grow.
Patricia Aas - Winner 2021
Current title: Principal Consultant & CTO at TurtleSec AS
What is the best thing about being a developer?
You can build things that can be useful to others, and you don't need anything other than your brain and a computer. It sometimes feels like a superpower.
What has this award meant to you?
I was very honored to be considered deserving of this award, and more broadly I think such a spotlight is something that we need in our industry to showcase diverse talent and role models.
What advice do you have for future female developers?
Two cheat codes for getting good at this:
1: Focus on your users, get to know them, see how they work, care about them, focus on making something that serves them. That focus will help you not get distracted by technical or political discussions. If you can bring it back to "How will this help our users?" or "What problem that our users are struggling with, will this solve?", that will help you to refocus and prioritize the right things.
2: Find folks that are nice and ask for honest feedback on your code. Going from good to great when it comes to programming requires real humans saying "Hey, maybe this bit would be nicer if you..?" or "Have you tried to write it this way?". Not everyone is capable of giving you this kind of feedback, but if you find someone, appreciate them, it's much harder to give good, actionable feedback than shallow, useless feedback.