Started in 2014 with a team of former Nokia and Blackberry employees, we count exactly 700 colleagues at Volkwagen Infotainment on the day Swarna was hired in February. But Swarna is not only officially our "700th employee", she is also the hundredth woman at VWIF. This makes our recruiting team particularly happy: although experience shows that mixed teams work more creatively and communicatively, applications from women in the IT and software sector are still a rarity.
According to a representative study by Bitkom, only 17 percent of all IT professionals in Germany are female. A curious development, considering that programming was a typical female profession in the early days of computer development at the beginning of the 20th century. The reason why women are underrepresented in the field of software and IT today is primarily due to outdated role models, writes AP Publisher 2019: "Experience shows that even talented female students lose interest in technical subjects if they are not specifically encouraged in them or are confronted with stereotypes that pigeonhole them as "unfeminine".”
Stereotypes have never interested Swarna. Even as a teenager, she was on fire for computers. "When I got my first internet connection, I was already trying out a lot of things and learning about new gadgets and software," she recalls. A few years later, Swarna went on to study computer engineering.
Today, she works as a software developer in the field of mobile online services and applications. There, she develops a software application that offers innovative services to the end customer, based on data collected with their consent, to optimise the customer's driving experience.
If you love experimenting with software and IT is your passion, then take a chance.
Swarna is proud of her job. She doesn't care that many of her colleagues at Volkswagen Infotainment are men. She also blames social clusters for this: "I think professions with a technical focus, such as those in the IT sector, are often still afflicted with a certain pigeonholing - the idea that software development & co. is a man's job," she says, but emphasises: "I think that this kind of mentality is - fortunately - changing more and more nowadays."
This is also shown by the personnel development at Volkswagen Infotainment. Because even if the results of the Bitkom survey suggest the opposite: Swarna is not the only woman in her team, on the contrary. There are several other women in the field besides her: POs, software developers, development managers - "women who are not impressed by outdated ideas.
For those who are also thinking of becoming software developers, Swarna advises: "Just try it out. Don't dwell on the opinions of others. If you love experimenting with software and IT is your passion, then take a chance. All you need is a can do and will do attitude."