New member of the team: Laura Bschor, Senior Software Engineer

1. How did you end up at DieProduktMacher?

When I was 11 years old, I built my first website. This masterpiece of plain HTML / CSS was with a lot of spelling mistakes and it had information on my favourite pizza. This is still stored on a CD until today. I got better, and the following projects included fancy curses, moving text elements, and a lot of GIFs, but with becoming a teenager, I felt that being good in computer science stuff was not cool, and I started to focus on other things.

15 years, a lot of career aspirations, and two bachelor’s degrees after my first website, I became a frontend engineer at my former company. Here, I met Marina Adam as well as Thomas. Thomas was the one who brought me into the front-end team, and Marina later introduced us to DPM. Thereupon, Thomas and I decided to start together at DPM.

2. What was your career plan after school and have you stayed true to it?

At school, I spent a lot of time on the stage. Not only playing the piano but also being an actress, and this was also my plan after I finished school: To study acting. I introduced myself to acting schools, but I fast realized that this was not what I wanted to do for a living, so I studied Management of Social Innovations. The topics were interesting, but again I was not convinced to do that for my living. The technical parts of the projects were more fascinating to me, and I built a website as part of my thesis. I was back in the developer game!

Finally, in parallel to finishing my first bachelor’s, I started studying Media Computer Science and was in the position as a Working Student in Frontend Engineering.

3. Can you tell us a little bit about your first days working at DPM?

We were a group of four people that started together, and this was great: We exchanged typical questions newbies would have and met up in the beer garden, and planned a small event (with some more folks who joined two weeks after us) to get to know everyone in a relaxed atmosphere.

As it was summer and the corona situation was okay, I could come to the office often and meet my team members and colleagues in person. This was very important to me. During the first week, I jumped directly into the project I am still working on.

4. How do you balance work with your personal life?

For me, it is important to combine my personal life with work. I am spending 40 hours a week with my colleagues, so I want to get to know them personally and have a good time, not only during coding. After-work activities and team events help a lot to work well together.

Besides that, I relax my body and my mind with movement and a lot of sporty activities: Running, hiking, climbing, cycling, equitation, or lunch breaks with going for a walk clears my overloaded cache.

5. What makes DPM different from other companies?

My former company has been bought by a big agency network. After that, I wanted to change to a smaller Munich-based firm that treats employees as humans (and not only as numbers) and cares about their belongings. DPM offers dedicated time for education, the atmosphere is very personal, and the company is managed by its founders. So, everyone cares about the business and not only about themselves. And of course, I hope to join the surf office sometime!

6. What advice would you give to women entering the tech field?

Just do it! I never experienced making differences between women and men in the tech world (tech community). Everyone starts at a point, everyone experiences something new every day, and you will always get help if you need it. And earlier than you think, you will also end up helping someone else. In my eyes, the real developer community is unbelievably cooperative, communicative, and meets each other at eye level. Looking back and thinking of a young Laura who felt intimidated in situations, I feel like there was no reason for it. Differences between men and women are formed at school and in society. They are outdated and do not have a place in the tech world. Let’s take this spirit and bring it even more to our society that there is no need for questions like this anymore.