From Law To Web
Romina was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. Web development is something she fell into after she graduated from college- she’s a lawyer by trade but after starting her first job overseeing pensions and retirements, it became apparent that this career wasn’t her calling. After many sleepless nights, she decided to quit her job and find something she felt truly passionate about.
Romina was introduced to web development and freelancing through a close friend. Whenever they spent time together, he would talk about his work, which intrigued her. One morning, after she had resigned from her position, everything clicked and she realized she’d always had an interest in technology.
She started googling online courses for web development and began taking classes. The more she learned, the more she enjoyed it. At first, it was hard to establish herself. She started off working on sites like Fiverr.com and saw that the harder she worked, the better she became.
“I am always studying. You need to stay up to date with the constant changes and upgrades that come out in this field.”
Writing Her Own Code
Romina fell into freelancing. She didn’t study web development in college and needed to get real-world experience, which is why she went straight into freelancing.
The decision to be independent has opened many doors and has been very rewarding. Currently, she works remotely for WePropagate in Orlando, Florida.
It’s All About Perspective
Working in a male-dominated sphere has neither intimidated Romina nor been a problem throughout her web development career.
“I was never intimidated. In fact, it was a man who inspired and pushed me to take this path.”
Her favorite aspect of work is the frontend (i.e. what the client sees) and how they react to what she has created.
“You find some really interesting things when working on these projects. For example, for some people, it’s really obvious that you have to click on a certain button on a webpage, but for others, it isn’t as obvious. It’s all about perspective and different points of view!”
Coding is Like Magic
Romina loves the visual components and aesthetics aspects of projects. Working with the backend (i.e. the part of the site the user doesn’t see) is more complicated but is equally great because she gets to see first hand what writing a code creates in the frontend.
“The user sees that a website does certain things and is very UX / UI friendly, but they don’t necessarily know how it is that the site can do that. It’s like magic.”
Advice for Future Female Developers
1. Don’t hold yourself back because you think that you won’t be treated fairly or simply because it’s “a man’s job”
2. If web development is something you like, study it just like you would any other career.
3. Once you find a development language you like, sharpen that skill.
4. The term “Developer” does NOT equal the word “man”.
5. Learning is key in this field. It never stops.
Romina’s Top 3 Favorite Development Languages
Romina loves the visual components and aesthetics aspects of projects. Working with the backend (i.e. the part of the site the user doesn’t see) is more complicated but is equally great because she gets to see first hand what writing a code creates in the frontend.
React.js – a programming language based in javascript made by the creators of Facebook. Good organization is key in web development, and they do it very well. “It is the future!”
WordPress – it’s open source, extremely reliable and is constantly updating, which allows for a world of opportunities.
CSS – very visual and based on aesthetics. It’s always growing and expanding the possibilities for creating beautiful sites. “Think about it, websites used to be just text and nothing else. Now look how far we’ve come. It’s because of languages like this.”
