Choosing a career in Tech - perspective after Internship at Ushahidi

Choosing a career in this continuosly changing world  is not an easy especially in the tech field. Just a year a ago i made my first steps into tech when i attended a Git/Github event Organised by the Google Women Tech makers. The event was hosted and Organised by young girls like me who were already into tech; some were into open source and had already done paid internship like Outreachy,GSOC and e.t.c others already mobile and web developers and even Entrepreneurs. I had never seen such greatness in young black girls infact i had never even heard of a girl developing a software or coding. Seeing all these motivated me a lot and i gained moral and inspiration to get into technology.

After that i made research on what programming language i should learn for a start. I decided to learn C programming, then after a short while i moved on to a High level Language which was PHP. Learning PHP was really amazing. And from there i developed a strong interest in Web development. I decided to learn PHP till I am a master in it;but in web development one does'nt learn one programming language  and calls himself a web developer so then i also had to  the web development stack. I then have been spending time learning HTML,CSS, & JS. Learning these technologies have increased my knowledge of the web and given me the opportunity to work with teams that are building software to solve problems and also build some of them personally.

So then i would love to have a career in web development. learning HTML,CSS have given me a lot of insight on the physical appearance on the web, and Front end web development is a career job I am aiming at and already preparing for.

Back end development is also i huge part of the web. learning PHP and JS have given me much insight on how the web should function for maximum user satisfaction.

Having a career in web development is going to take a lot of skill and time but i dont mind sacrificing to achieve it because, It is a skill in high demand and one that will be worth my time and sacrifice. Also, It is a great way to build software that can help people and build tools and solutions for them that are needed in many aspects of life like Business,Academics and Health care for example  open source organisations that i have contributed to like Mifos, Wikimedia, and USHAHIDI that are using the web to access the World and solve problems like Poverty,Lack of knowledge and human crisis.

That is the same vision I have. I would love to work with companies that  are using the web just like them that is to bring solutions to humanity. After the Outreachy internship I would like to complete by degree in computer Engineering and by that time i would be a Software Engineer and a skilled full stack developer.

So far i have not tried applying for jobs yet because i am still in the learning process that is why i am searching for experience and knowledge by not just contributing to open source but by also engaging in internships like Outreachy and hopefully Gsoc too so as to be well exposed to the tech industry.

Another career i will like to pursue is in being a Cloud Engineer. Cloud computing is really a huge deal. It let's us build software and deploy them in the cloud which is safe and very reliable. Right now in developer community cloud computing is not yet what many developers are into but in a few years to come it is going to be an essential skill for every developer to have.

Recently I have been spending time on Qwikilabs and played some cloud computing games on Qwikilabs by Palo Alto networks.

For choosing a career path i am not very sensitized and exposed so my few words are just a result of my little knowledge.Nevertheless that is why i am engaging a lot of activities especially free ones so as to make maximum use of opportunities and become a better developer.