Sara Inés Calderón is the Director of Women Who Code Austin. She was originally a communications major incollege, but after joining Sabio.la, a collaborative coding boot camp geared towards women and minorities, she was prepared for her first job in tech. Sara currently works as a freelance web/software developer and pursues projects that promote personal growth. She adamantly believes that a career in technology is valuable for women and girls because “it grants you the opportunity to work for yourself and to start your own company.”

Here are Sara’s 5 tips to crack the code:

1) Find an online community: Find people you can ask questions to, who will pat you on the back, and tell you to not give up.

2) Find useful ways to learn about new things: Get on Twitter and make use of open source technology, such as GitHub. Meetup.com is another great resource for technology groups to share their insights with the community. Everything you need to start learning code is at your disposal with free lessons available on Codeacademy, blog tutorials, and Youtube.

3) Repetition is key: Find tutorials and always be practicing. While learning the React JavaScript framework, I made five of them and learned a lot from the process.

4) Ask questions: There is often pressure in technology to act like you know everything. Often times people are thinking about the same questions as you are, so don’t be afraid to ask!

5) Go to Conferences and Hackathons: Only attending 2-3 events can have transformative results. Hackathons and conferences allow participants to hone their skills, meet potential employers, and test new products.

Sara believes that coding can be one of the most rewarding careers. It provides you with the ability to work from home, grow within organizations, and develop your leadership skills.

Contributor: Rebecca Zuo