With a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in market research and consumer behavior, Masha Zvereva is well-versed in influencer marketing and how people work on a micro and macro scale.
She has also enjoyed coding in one form or another since she was a child, so when she was re-introduced to tech while working for a startup in Madrid, her passion for tech was rekindled. Her dream from there was to work at Google. She spent months applying and asking her network to refer her, all while pursuing tech in other ways too.
Then, only two weeks after starting her blog Coding Blonde, she got an interview that turned into a job. While her role at Google was not directly tech-related, it involved working with YouTubers, which inspired her to keep growing her own social presence.
Coding Blonde evolved from a blog into a blog, YouTube channel, and social presence. Now, Masha does influencer marketing with Coding Blonde full-time—combining her passions for people, technology, and content creation all in one.
In today’s episode, we talk about combining your passions, what’s involved with influencer marketing, why it can be difficult and discouraging work, the importance of defining your mission, and more.
This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos. Laurence Bradford 0:09 Laurence Bradford 0:27 Laurence Bradford 0:49 Laurence Bradford 1:11 Laurence Bradford 1:53 Masha Zvereva 1:56 Laurence Bradford 1:58 Masha Zvereva 2:14 Laurence Bradford 2:22 Masha Zvereva 2:32 Laurence Bradford 3:15 Masha Zvereva 3:26 Laurence Bradford 4:01 Masha Zvereva 4:07 Laurence Bradford 5:25 Masha Zvereva 5:31 Masha Zvereva 6:16 Laurence Bradford 7:21 Masha Zvereva 7:24 Laurence Bradford 7:26 Masha Zvereva 7:28 Laurence Bradford 7:30 Masha Zvereva 7:58 Masha Zvereva 8:52 Laurence Bradford 9:35 Masha Zvereva 9:45 Laurence Bradford 10:01 Masha Zvereva 10:37 Laurence Bradford 11:04 Masha Zvereva 11:13 Laurence Bradford 12:21 Masha Zvereva 12:31 Laurence Bradford 12:33 Masha Zvereva 12:38 Laurence Bradford 12:39 Masha Zvereva 12:43 Masha Zvereva 13:31 Laurence Bradford 14:19 Masha Zvereva 15:08 Masha Zvereva 15:43 Masha Zvereva 16:40 Masha Zvereva 17:34 Laurence Bradford 18:13 Laurence Bradford 18:18 Laurence Bradford 19:29 Laurence Bradford 20:51 Masha Zvereva 21:21 Laurence Bradford 22:19 Masha Zvereva 22:58 Masha Zvereva 23:51 Laurence Bradford 24:28 Masha Zvereva 25:07 Laurence Bradford 26:42 Masha Zvereva 27:36 Masha Zvereva 28:14 Laurence Bradford 28:57 Masha Zvereva 29:09 Laurence Bradford 29:36 Laurence Bradford 30:01 Masha Zvereva 30:28 Laurence Bradford 31:11 Masha Zvereva 32:03 Laurence Bradford 33:01 Masha Zvereva 33:11 Masha Zvereva 34:15 Laurence Bradford 35:16 Masha Zvereva 35:24 Laurence Bradford 35:48 Masha Zvereva 36:22 Laurence Bradford 36:54 Unknown Speaker 37:00 Laurence Bradford 37:12 Laurence Bradford 37:14 Laurence Bradford 37:20
Hi, and welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host, Laurence Bradford. Today we'll be learning about influencer marketing and how to create your own tech career online. That's coming up after this quick word from this episode's sponsors.
Product design is a lucrative and in demand skill with online programs, flexible classes, and one on one mentoring. Thinful, Product Design program can help you land a job as a product designer. To find out more and to get $500 off, go to learntocodewith.me/thinkful.
Do you want to automate your workflow to save hours of manual data entry? Mailparser takes email data and uses parsing filters to help you understand your customers. Get a free trial and 30% off your first year over at mailparser.io/learntocodewithme.
In today's episode, I talk with Masha Zvereva. Masha is an entrepreneur, content creator and educator. She's gone from working at companies of varying sizes from startups to Google. And now she runs coding blonde where her mission is to empower women in the tech industry by making it more fun and accessible. I followed Masha for a while now on Instagram, so I'm super excited to have her on the show. We'll be talking about influencer marketing, how to make a career online and she's going to share some advice on how to combine your passions and create your own tech career. Enjoy.
Hey, Masha, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Hi Laurence, thank you so much for having me.
I'm really excited to talk to you that isn't the first time though we did a live Instagram or Instagram Live, I think a couple weeks ago, which was really fun. And after that we had such a good conversation. I was like, definitely have Masha on the podcast. So good. Thank you for coming on.
Again. Thank you so much for having me. That conversation was awesome. And I had this same exact feeling with my youtube channel regarding you.
Awesome. So like to get things started. Can you just give us a quick overview of your background and you know what you're doing today? What What is the life of Marsha like?
When I get asked that question, I freeze a lot of the times because it's hard to I guess define what I do in standard terms. I have a background in economics and marketing and market research. I have worked at so many different environments. I've worked at startups. I've worked a bit organization like Google, I've worked at a university now I run my own business. I've been over the place, but it's been, I guess, all around marketing, market research, community building, content strategy, entrepreneurship education, basically all this good stuff.
Yeah. And you, of course, you're in tech now, but you didn't do that in college. You mentioned a bit about economics. Was that your only degree or did you study other things too?
So I started off with a degree in Economics and Management, but then I dropped management that was my undergrad, I realized that management was too wishy washy, and I really enjoyed how with economics, you actually had an answer, you know, just like a math problem, you could have the right or wrong answer. So I got a degree in economics and then an undergraduate degree in economics and then upon postgraduate degree, a master's degree in market research and consult behavior.
Wow. So what drew you into studying market research and consumer behavior?
Fun story. I when it comes to my undergrad, I defaulted to what my parents did. Both of them studied economics, and I had no idea what I was going to study at university. I had no I guess creativity, or I didn't feel the freedom to find it myself. But I wanted to have a solid base in a social study in the social science sorry, because I knew I wanted to go into marketing because that field sounded fun to me, but I don't know why I thought that I needed a solid base first and then to kind of add marketing as an add on. And market research was, I guess, an accidental result. I was looking for a course in marketing in Madrid because I That was my first big pivot in my biggest career path I was planning to live in London and go to LSE initially, but I didn't end up getting the grades. And I was looking for a master's degree in Madrid because I really wants to live in Madrid after that. And I found one that had market research attached to it. So yeah, that's how I found it. And that's how it found me. Pretty random.
Yeah. So how did you end up then getting into technology and teaching yourself how to code?
Yes. So once I graduated from my master's degree, I ended up in the startup scene in Madrid. And that was, I guess, my first introduction to working at a tech company, because the first company that I was working for, it was an e commerce platform, ecommerce solution for small businesses. So I was doing marketing and PR for them. And that was my introduction to tech I was working with alongside developers. And that was really fun. And I remember as a child, I really enjoyed coding without really actually knowing that I was coding I it was always at the back of my head.
I really enjoyed Visual Basic when I was 911, before I left Russia to go into boarding school at 14 when I was 14. So and that's when I stopped learning Visual Basic. So, I wanted to kind of revisit it, first of all, and secondly, I was trying to make myself more employable because as a recent grad, who has a basically a degree in marketing who can do marketing for people, I was facing a lot of competition because there are a lot of recent grads who have who can work in marketing and I had the problem of needing visa work visa, wherever I went. I didn't really want to go back to Russia. I wanted to stay in Europe. And in order to be sponsored for a visa, I needed to really stand out as a recent grad. So that's, that was my thinking process, I guess, of how I started learning how to code just to pimp out my pump out. Wait, okay.
I think I'm actually not sure. What?
Pimp out, right? Yeah so..
Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. You can, like pimp out your resume.
Pimp out my resume. Yes.
Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So he and I think I'm probably skipping ahead a lot here. But one of the things I know about you, and I remember when I first started following you on Instagram was like, something that stood out was that you worked at Google. So when did that happen? How did that happen? Like, what was that transition? Like first? So from coding in Madrid working at a tech startup teaching yourself how to code right doing PR marketing, and then you worked at Google? What? Yeah, what led to that?
Um, yes, working Google has always been my dream. So after graduating from my master's, I thought that I would get in straightaway. But it took me quite a few took quite some time. And I worked at three startups in between my masters and getting into Google. And they were all over the place. One of them was in Switzerland, and I was working remotely for them. But yeah, before I go too far away from from the initial thoughts, I was really trying to get into Google throughout that whole time. It probably took me half a year of actually applying and asking using my network to refer me because that's probably one of the best ways to get into one of these big companies is to get referred by someone who works there.
So after half a year of doing that, and literally two weeks into starting coding blonde my blog is I got a my first interview with Google. And the rest was, I guess, history. It wasn't for a tech related position. It was. I was part of the YouTube team. And I was educating creators, YouTube creators on how to run their channels, how to optimize their content and business strategies, all that fun stuff. So it wasn't something related to coding at all. But yeah, it was my introduction to the tech world on a much larger scale.
That's so cool. So you were kind of like a Educator of the YouTube platform for people who used it. I think they may be that what was your job title? I'm just curious.
Um, I had to, I guess, cuz within that one team, we had two roles and I throughout my two years, I did both of them. I was a community manager and a partner manager.
Okay, that's really neat. There was someone we had on the podcast a while ago. And her name is Brianna Swift. And we'll have to link to her episode in the show notes. But she had a job at actually making sure she works there because this was a while ago, but she was working at GitHub, and she would travel all around the country and just like train companies and people at companies on how to use GitHub. I was like, that is such a cool job. It just sounds like it just combines like education and like knowledge and like working with people and like empowering people to use a product. It's really awesome. So how long were you working then at YouTube for?
I was there for two years. And literally what you were just describing was my role just when it comes to the Russian speaking market with YouTube. So I was traveling all over the place. Literally, there were times when I would not spend a single weekend in London. Well, some of it was also personal travel, but I would not spend a single weekend in London for months. It was crazy. It was awesome, though.
Wow. So you were living in London. Okay, so now you live in Colorado. Correct. So when did you end up moving to the US?
I ended up moving here in November 2017. Because it was time for me, you know, every at every role you have a learning curve. And I feel like two years is probably a very good chunk of time when the learning curve hasn't slowed down too much when you're still excited the role. And so I realized that it was probably going to be time to move on. And also I was trying to relocate here for personal reasons, because I was doing a long distance relationship with my boyfriend who is from here from Denver. So yeah, I was planning that move for some time. I told my manager that I was looking he was helping me and I ended up finding I was looking for opportunities within Google and externally as well, because you know, you need to always understand your options. And I found this awesome program called Global entrepreneur in residence at a university here. So, yeah, I ended up applying trying it and got it. So that's how I moved here.
Oh, wow, that's awesome. So you, she ended up leaving Google at that time when you moved here. And then you had that set? Because you repeat the you said global ambassador?
Global Entrepreneur in Residence?
Global Entrepreneur in Residence. Okay, perfect. And that was at a university.
Yes, yes.
Wow. That's really awesome. So what did that look like? I didn't even know that. You You did that.
Yes. So that was a very strange role to go into straight off to Google because Google is so you know, goals oriented and very structured. When even for my team and my team wasn't the most structured way. I came to Colorado. I didn't really know what the role was to be honest because the description wasn't. I don't know it wasn't precise enough. And then when I got here, nobody really knew what I was doing either. So I was kind of figuring it out. As I went, it was a part time roles. I was capped at 20 hours a week. And I was supposed to be involved in all the initiatives around the campus campus.
That in that were related to entrepreneurship or innovation. So that meant I was going and speaking to classes giving workshops, supporting programs and initiatives, whether they were student run or staff or faculty run and I was also mentoring startups on campus. So if anybody from the student body or the staff or the faculty He had an idea or startup, I was there to help them when it comes to that idea and give them advice and you know, some guidance when it comes to the stuff that I was good at. So you know, marketing content, content, strategy, all that good stuff.
Nice. So, as you're speaking, I feel like this constant theme throughout your like career so far has been community building content creation, event planning, and of course, like around innovation and technology and entrepreneurship, which is really awesome. And it makes so much sense why your Instagram account is such a hit. For folks listening, if you're not aware of Masha has it or is coding blonde and it's like a really popular tech Instagram account with like thousands and thousands of followers and you're always doing really awesome stuff. They're like, how did you learn? I know you did study some marketing college you had these other jobs. and whatnot that involved it. But like, how did you start vlogging it and just creating this whole brand on Instagram?
Well, first of all, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. But I was always curious about blogging. And before I started Coding Blonde I was I created so many different domains that I thought I was going to follow through. And I was always planning all this content strategy on a lot of stuff. One of them was literally called Marshall loves chocolate. And it was going to be me cooking things with chocolate, but I realized it's not, I guess, as healthy if I have to cook multiple recipes with chocolate per week or per month, so I stopped that.
And then I started Coding Blonde when I realized that I really wanted to, to show my journey of me learning how to code and since then it has evolved. But then I got into Google, and things have really slowed down for my learning curve when it comes to coding. And also from my blog because I was traveling non stop, just like I said, within those two years, I took 118 flights, I counted. And it was very difficult to keep keep up with. But I was working with YouTube creators, and I had that market research and I guess user research. Gene, I would say, and I wanted to see what people who I work with, experienced on a day to day basis, so I started a YouTube channel that was kind of a spin off of my blog.
And of course, I had an Instagram account. It wasn't really growing, it was just, you know, kind of stagnant at the time. I didn't really do too much until I realized that I wanted to take this much more seriously and nobody teaches you even if you go to Marketing. If you go study marketing or something like that, nobody really teaches you social media strategy. When it comes to you know how often you should post or anything like that you need to figure it out for yourself and for your audience. And I had a moment when I really started getting into this when I applied for this global entrepreneur in residence program. And I was lucky because I was in this creative environment with people who were constantly experimenting and trying new things and creative people.
One of my colleagues, she was actually a very big and a very talented travel blogger on Instagram. So she sat me down and she was like, Okay, so this these are the strategies that you need to follow when it comes to your YouTube. Sorry, I feel like I've diverse a little bit but yes, so that's how I started my YouTube channel by working at YouTube and that's how I started grew my Instagram account by working at YouTube with people who were also in this whole social media game who could help me with the strategies and figure out what works for me what works for my account, and the rest was history.
Sit tight podcast listeners, we're taking a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors.
Thinkful is a coding program that's designed to get you your dream job and tech, with online programs, flexible classes and six months of support from a career coach. It's the perfect place to start your new career. In 2019, LinkedIn named product design one of the most promising jobs in the United States, with a median base salary of just over $121,000. This is a lucrative and in demand career. Thinkful's product design program is built to get you a job as a product designer, or your tuition back. With one on one mentorship and the support team behind you, you'll work on impressive projects to build your business. Fully out and prove your design abilities to future employers. What's more, this course fits around your schedule so you can get ready for your new job without having to quit your current one. 90% of course graduates are hired as full time designers, but thanks to Thinkful's tuition reimbursement guarantee, if you don't get a job within six months of graduating, you'll get your money back. To find out more and get $500 off go to learntocodewith.me/thinkful.
Smart small businesses spent a lot of time managing logistics and trying to understand their customers. Mailparser is a leading email processing tool that makes these things a lot simpler. First, you'll forward emails to Mailparser manually or with custom email filters. Then Mailparser uses custom parsing rules to audit mackley extract the important information you need from the email, body or attachments. You can view the extracted data on your Mailparser dashboard, or use web hooks to automatically send the data to your other business applications. Mailparser offers a suite of parsing filters that are highly flexible, and that can render custom output from almost all structured data. Whether you are capturing leads, analyzing order information, or figuring out what new features your customers want, you can do it efficiently with Mailparser get a free 14 day trial to see if you like it. Then 30% off the first year of service at mailparser.io/learntocodewithme.
So you said I feel like in a lot of ways we have really similar stories like they're very different, but there's certain moments that you mentioned I can relate to like he said a bit ago when you just knew you wanted to take it more seriously. And I had that kind of moment myself when I was working full time. And I had this realization that I want to take learn to code me more seriously and really give it a go at having it be like my full time thing. I'm curious when for you was that though? Like, how long ago was that when you had that realization?
It was when I was applying for jobs externally, outside of Google. And I was thinking what would be the next step after that? So I normally tried to take it a job at a time but that one was part time. And that meant that I had time to work on my own project. So I was I realized that if I want to continue if I want to have something to go to after this program, because the program was supposed to be just a year then it got extended be a bit longer, but I realized that I needed to take this seriously if I want to make this A reality or otherwise, why am I doing this? Right? So it was then when I was applying for that program and after that I started being very consistent and growing my platforms. So it was summer 2017 if you need to, if I would, I was going to pinpoint an actual time.
So almost two years ago, or about two years ago. Wow, that's awesome. And now, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are running coding blonde full time, right? Correct. Wow, that's really awesome. So what is that like? Like what? So so it's funny cuz I don't think I've ever really had I've had people on the show who I would call an influencer, like lots of people. But we never really talked. I've never had a conversation on the podcast after you know, with 110 episodes about influencer marketing. And I know that's what you do today. And I would love if you could just talk about it a bit and like what your day looks like?
A no day is the same. I'm sure you experienced the same thing. Because when you're creating content and when you're working with brands when it comes to you know, all these different campaigns it's it's never no day is the same. You're you end up doing different things all the time and your day will end up derailing every now and again because because you know, because there is a fire or there is a an urgent campaign or something like that. And it's exciting and frustrating sometimes. But yeah, I I don't even know I have. I have a very hard time when people asked me what do I do every day. I have a very hard time pinpointing it because they're just so many different things like this morning I had a call with my accountant.
We're going through my VAT registration stuff and sales tax all over the all over the world. Then I had a meeting with a brand that I was creating content for another brand. It's all over the place to be honest. It really just depends on the season and on the projects that I have going on. It is very, it's keeping me busy, for sure. But it's also very fun. And what I love about it is that you can really experiment and let your creativity go crazy, because there's no limit to what you can do and how you can experiment.
Yeah, that's, that's really awesome. And I totally know what you mean by like, No two days, looking the same. And it's, you know, when you are running your own business, you have a lot of flexibility in how your schedule looks, and I totally understand that. But if that sounds like awesome, like you're doing so much of like the things that you love and creating this content and getting to impact you know, people's lives through that. So what like have like what has your learning experience been like since you started doing this full time, like Was there something like you thought was going to be different? And then turns out it really wasn't? If that makes sense.
Ah, let me think about it. To be honest, when going into it full time, I have already experienced doing this part time. So I had a pretty good idea when it comes to my day. And when it comes to the different tasks, I am trying to add other revenue streams at the moment and other I guess business functions because I'm a huge believer in diversifying revenue streams and all that stuff. And I just know that I have so much more to share with the world. So for example, when it comes to the art of being of running an influencer business, I'm really hoping to help some influencers, help them give them help to help give them structure and Some tools and framework on how they can become more successful, how can they optimize their stuff with simple things like CRM and stuff like that. So I am adding a lot more to my plate. And unfortunately, it's only one of me. I guess that's the biggest realization that I have come to. And my biggest challenge right now is to hire people that can help me take some stuff off of my plate, but it's, I'm sure you have experienced it as well. It's so hard to let go of some of the processes, especially when you're perfectionist. So yes, that's what I'm dealing with right now that it is it's turning out to be harder than I thought.
Oh, yeah, I can totally agree for me it's actually not as much about letting go of things but sometimes I feel like I can be so nitpicky about really small things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of everything, like, you know, like little things on the website or in articles or just like small things I'm like, Yeah, I need to like just chill. Yeah, I can be a bit high strung I think some people may say But yeah, which may be cross me knows like perfectionist. There's other words you can maybe maybe say it but yeah, no totally know what what you're saying. So that's awesome that you're now helping other people do similar and if there's someone listening right now who wants to build a YouTube channel they want to build an Instagram following and all that and start to be able to make money with that what is some like high level advice you can share?
The biggest piece of advice that I would share with someone who's just starting out or someone who is who has already started but doesn't really know where to go from here is always go back to your why and really define your why because that has kept me going throughout my journey with coding blonde and that has allowed me to get where I am Because social media is, is wonderful, but at the same time, it can be very frustrating and disappointing, especially when algorithms change and things like that when things don't go your way.
And it's very diff, it's very easy. It's very easy to actually get discouraged and just give up. But if you have a why, if you have a reason why you're doing this, if you know that you are helping people in some way or another, if you have a mission that will keep you going, that will keep you coming back to this that will keep you experimenting that will keep you growing, essentially. So yeah, that's my biggest piece of advice. always come back to your why even if it's even if it seems like a superficial like it's a superficial thing to do. No, there's always a why that will keep you driving. That will keep driving you that's..
Yeah, I love that and I I feel like I've already asked us like five different times. But I just always need like a timeline in my head when again, did you start Coding Blonde? So the Instagram or the YouTube, whichever.
Okay, so I started Coding Blonde, the blog, and I registered basically the accounts in around August 2015. And then the YouTube channel was, was born at the beginning of 2016, I would say. And then I really started taking them seriously in August 2017. That's it.
Awesome. So the reason why I asked that, once again, was because I feel like and I speak to people all the time as well who write in or, you know, send me an email and they want to start a blog about helping people learn to code or something similar in that way and, you know, want, what advice and all that and I always feel like it's one of those things that just takes so much time whether you're on YouTube, Instagram, building your own blog, or podcast. It's like the day in and day Work that people don't see.
And you've been, I mean, you first registered Coding Blonde in 2015. That's what like four, four years ago. And for myself, I first got my domain, my articles my domain back in 2014. So it's like been a slow, but I mean, for both of us, right? It's been like a really slow build up. And yeah, now you have, I'm just looking at your Instagram right now, at the time of the recording of 56,000 followers there. But it's been, you know, years of day in and day out work that you're doing behind the scenes to get there.
Absolutely. All of the overnight successes. actually take some years of consistent work behind the scenes. Consistent is a key word here because, you know, if you're not producing consistent content, you're not serving an audience and people will not be coming back. And yeah, there's just so much work that goes behind the scenes. And that's probably one of my biggest frustration with what people think about influencers. They think that it's so easy, but they've never actually done it themselves. And they're too quick to judge but yeah, like you said, it takes work and it takes consistency.
Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, like I I'm not gifted at Instagram and visual media or, or videos or any of that. So I have so much like admiration for people who can post all these really awesome looking videos and photos because I know just from my few forays at doing it, how long and how many photos it takes to get one that actually like conveys everything you're trying to do it like take like an hour or two and I'm not even that good at it and it takes me that long so I can only imagine for folks like you you know you're doing this for brands like you're being paid to do this, like the amount of effort and detail and planning that has to go into it. So yeah, like totally get that so I wanted to circle back though because you mentioned earlier about knowing your why and going back to your why when times are tough or they don't go as planned. And and all that. So what is your why then?
Yes. So my Why is I want to help women discover technology and feel much more comfortable and technology the way they are, so that they don't feel like they need to fit a certain standard or anything like that I really believe that this industry could use just like any other industry really could use a lot of diversity of thought and that women are being underrepresented at the moment, which can lead to some technological solutions not serving us not solving our problems. And so I really want to create a space and show women that they belong in this in this world, and therefore helping boost the diversity in the in this industry. At least. You know, To a little extent.
Yeah, that's awesome. And what are some of the things that you're doing, whether in the past or actively that is, like working towards that or yeah, building that?
I've experimented with a bunch of different formats. I remember at the beginning when I first discovered that there are so many women, inventors, and so many women who were the first in software, I was so excited and I was creating blog posts about them. It was very early on in my in my blogging career, so I don't know if many people saw those blog posts. Then I started this format called coding blonde dictionary, where I would explain tech concepts using fun examples. For example, explaining cookie browsers with actual cookies were hand was running around and putting cookies into my friends pockets and then Pretending to be a browser recognizing them and all this stuff. And the most recent, I guess, experiment initiative that I'm doing that I'm hoping to build into something bigger is called women in tech weekly.
And it's a newsletter that I publish every Tuesday that is comprised of news and resources that are shared by women and in the online community, about their wins about what they're celebrating, and also some resources that are that would be useful and relevant to other women. And it has been so rewarding. I, I'm so happy that I started it. It's been incredibly inspiring and just to read what all of these amazing women are up to and what they're achieving, and I have received so much positive feedback. about it that I think that I'm going to really continue with it and solidified, I have no idea what shape or form it's going to take in a few months. But I'm going to continue with this one for now because I can see it. This, this initiative, making an impact.
That's awesome. Where can people that are listening right now, um, like, find out more about it or learn about it or get or get the updates and all that?
Yeah, they can go on codingblonde.com. And there's an actual category on my blog for women in tech weekly issues, and they can also sign up to my newsletter on my blog, and they can follow me on Instagram where I publish the summaries every single Tuesday on my feed. And also my stories.
Amazing. So one last question for you. So what I love about you and everything that you're doing is that you're combining technology and you're combining Korean content, and you're also empowering women. So these are like three things that you love to do. But you're not working right as a full time software engineer. What advice would you give someone who likes tech, but they don't want that full time kind of job? And they want to they have other interests like you and they want them to come together. Is there anything you could any little tidbit of advice you could share for them?
Yes, absolutely. I feel like technology is a tool. It's a vehicle, right? So I would encourage them to think of tech as that and then focus on there again, coming back to their why, what are they trying to achieve? How what impact are they hoping to make? And once they define that, finding the right technology to get them there? treating technology as a vehicle in this case, that's what I would recommend.
Awesome. Thank you so much, again for coming on the show, Marsha, and where can people find you online?
Yes, they can absolutely find me on codingblonde/com or using or, you know searching for Coding Blonde and any social media. That's my name.
Awesome. Thank you again for coming on.
Thank you so much, Laurence.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Masha. If you're interested in finding out more about how you can get into tech, especially if you're a woman, make sure you follow me on Instagram where she shares a lot of great advice and other tidbits to help you get inspired. And if you missed any of this episode, or would like a recap, the show notes for every single episode of the podcast can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. When you're on the website, you can use the Search icon in the upper navigation to type in Masha's name to find her episode. You can do this though for any episode that we published in the past. Besides the show notes, the Learn to Code With Me website is also a wealth of information in other ways. Make sure to get on our email list if you're not on it yet. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next time.
Key Takeaways
- Getting a job takes time, and that’s perfectly fine; it took Masha half a year of applying and asking her network for referrals
- Speaking of referrals, one of the best ways to get a job at big companies (or small ones!) is to get referred by someone who works there
- There’s nothing wrong with jumping around a bit before you settle on the thing you know you want to do
- If you want to grow a presence on social media, use trial and error to decide when and what to post for best results. Also work with the community within your industry so you can help and boost each other
- Don’t expect an overnight success—social media and blogging takes years of hard work, dedication, and consistency. But if you have a mission, that’s what keeps you going
Links and mentions from the episode:
- Coding Blonde
- Coding Blonde on Twitter
- Coding Blonde on Instagram
- Coding Blonde on YouTube
- S2E1: From Teacher to Github Employee with Briana Swift
Where to listen to the podcast
You can listen to the Learn to Code With Me podcast on the following platforms:
If you have a few extra minutes, please rate and review the show in iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show. I would really, really appreciate it!
Special thanks to this episode’s sponsors
Mailparser: Mailparser takes email data and uses parsing filters to help you understand your customers. Get a free 14-day trial and 30% off the first year at mailparser.io/learntocodewithme.
Thinkful: With online programs, flexible classes, and one-on-one mentoring, Thinkful’s Product Design program can help you land a job as a product designer. To get $500 off, go to learntocodewith.me/thinkful.