Welcome to the Codenovie podcast. We talk to people on their coding journey in hopes of helping you on yours.

I'm your host, Ron, and today we're talking about psychological safety in tech with Taylor Point Dexter.

It's a very human thing to make mistakes. It's a very human thing to have questions.

And so being in an atmosphere where you feel safe to ask those questions and make mistakes the way we all do can really help you grow a lot.

And so just having that almost just allowed me to spread my wings.

Taylor talks about her coding experience, focusing on self-care and mental

breaks, and growing within your career after this. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so

much for having me. So let's start from the beginning. What drew you to tech?

Honestly, it was a family friend. I consider them family now, but just was encouraging me to take a CS class when I was in college.

And I originally was like, absolutely not. No, sir. Why? Why absolutely not?

I just didn't think it was for me. Like, I always thought that I was going to be like a business woman or like a doctor or something like that. And so because I had never seen an engineer that looked like me, I was like, oh, no. But then, you know, he was like, just take one class and see what you feel about it. If you hate it, you never have to do it again. But if you like it,

now you know that a new avenue is for you. I love that. I took the one class. Honestly, I was

terrible at it, even though I was like pretty good at school. But I appreciated the hard work that

you had to put into coding and how you felt once you conquered the problem. And so that's how I started. So people get tech

jobs in a number of different ways. Some people go to boot camps. Some people teach themselves online.

Others have a degree like you. How has your degree affected your job search? I honestly think it made

it really, I don't want to say easy to get my first job, but it made it a lot easier for me to get my first job. But since that first job, I guess people see it on my resume sometimes and they want to talk about it, but I don't think it's really, you know, swayed people one way or another. It's more so my career experience once I got my foot through the door. So you feel like it was really that first

opportunity that wasn't as hard as it could have been, but after that it didn't really matter too

much? That's the way I feel like my journey is gone. So considering that you've been in tech

for a little while, and I'm assuming you've done some, you know, hiring some resume reviews of your

own, how do you feel about a CS degree and how necessary it is when it

comes to getting a job? I definitely have done hiring. I wouldn't say that a CS degree is necessary,

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