Zainab "Zee" Ebrahimi, Software Developer (Part 1)
Zainab “Zee” Ebrahimi, photo courtesy of the subject
In Career Spotlight, the*gameHERs team interviews women who have found or created work within the gaming industry (or adjacent tech industries) in areas outside of playing, streaming, or competing.
This week we interview Zainab “Zee” Ebrahimi, a software developer who has worked for Bitly and Skillshare and on many of her own projects.
In PART ONE of this interview, we discuss Zee’s role as a software developer, and how having representation of women coders in Hollywood was important to the start of her career.
This section is part one of a two-part installment. Read part two here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity from a longer conversation.
THE*GAMEHERS:
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JUMPING ON TO TALK ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE! FROM WHAT I CAN GATHER, IT SEEMS THAT YOU ARE BOTH A GAMER AND DEVELOPER. YOU HAVE THIS WHOLE EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE PROFESSIONAL TECH SPACE, AND ALSO EXPERIENCE FROM A PERSONAL AND FUN STANDPOINT. COULD YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND AND SOME PLACES THAT YOU have WORKED, AND WHAT YOU'RE UP TO NOW?
Zee Ebrahimi:
Well, I think I'd like to start with the fact that I don't identify in a traditional way as a gamer. If someone asked me, I don’t think I I would say “Oh, yeah, I'm a gamer,” but I do love to play video games. It is an interesting kind of clash, right? Because you would say someone who likes to play video games is a gamer, but I think there's so much weight to the word “gamer.” Because I'm not a hardcore gamer — I don't play competitively, or I don't play every single day — I feel like that label doesn't fit with me. That's the cool thing about [the*gameHERs] platform, though. It's kind of re-taking and redefining the word “gamer,” and what that means. [The*gameHERs] is making it much more inclusive in the sense that perhaps you don't have to be an avid gamer in order to be called a gamer, or you don't have to be a male, or you don't have to be competitive, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway, that’s the first thing I noticed as soon as you said that [I was a gamer]. I was like, “I feel a little uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm a gamer.” But I do recognize that I like to play.
G.H.:
IT’S SOMETHING WE'VE DEFINITELY BEEN EXPLORING WITHIN THE WORLD OF THE*GAMEHERS AS WE BUILD THIS COMMUNITY: TO SEE THE DEGREES IN WHICH PEOPLE'S PERSONAL IDENTITIES INTERSECT WITH THEIR LOVE OF GAMING AND HOW THEY COORDINATE THOSE TWO FIELDS. SO, IT'S INTERESTING THAT YOU SPEAK TO THAT.
FROM A PROFESSIONAL POINT OF VIEW COULD YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT YOU DO?
Z.E.:
I'm a software engineer. I’ve spent my entire career working and developing web applications. I previously worked at companies like Bitly and Skillshare, and I specifically do UI: what you see and what you interact with. I'm a front-end engineer.
As to what I’m working on right now: I recently quit my job and decided to take a leap and start my own business. I'm now a co-founder of a two-person company that’s trying to explore the local community industry and how we bring people together and discover their neighborhoods.
G.H.:
THAT'S SUPER EXCITING. SO, AS A SOMEBODY WHO HAS WHO HAS BEEN A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, WHAT DOES THAT JOB ENTAIL? IF THERE WERE YOUNG GAMEHERS OR PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THAT CAREER, WHAT HAS THE DAY-TO-DAY LOOKED LIKE FOR YOU? WHAT ARE SOME OF THE RESPONSIBILITIES AND SOME OF THE SKILL SETS THAT YOU'VE USED?
Z.E.:
I spend most of my time obviously coding: writing code to make sure that what I'm building actually does what it's supposed to. Outside of that I would say there's a couple of other things that are part of the work. First of all, especially as a web developer with a specialty in UI, you want to make sure that what you're building looks good, works as expected, and that the user is able to understand what to do when they are using it-- You need an eye for detail to catch for example, if the color of a button changed when you you clicked on it. Or does it take you to the right page after you clicked on it? What does it look like on a phone? What does it look like on a laptop?
Zee mentoring at a conference
You get to sit in the position of the user a lot as you’re building. That’s like the core of the role: building things that people can see and interact with and having a say in terms of what the design looks like and what the product actually does. You get to do a little bit of design and a little bit of product business thinking at the same time, which is really cool.
I would say that a couple of other parts of the role have to do with collaborating with others. You do a lot of teamwork, you tag team with other people, and you get to help others learn new things.
G.H.:
HOW DID YOU GET INTO WORKING IN TECH AND WORKING AS A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER? IS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU WANTED TO DO, AND YOU MADE A PATH TO GET THERE AND CHASED IT, OR DID YOU FIND YOURSELF THERE BY A SERIES OF OTHER EVENTS?
Z.E.:
When I graduated from high school, I wanted to be a history teacher. I was really into social movements and history, and that's what I wanted to do.
But it’s a really funny story: I watched Transformers (the first movie). I was having kind of a crisis, at the time; I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a history teacher. A character in the movie really had a huge influence. Her name was Maggie Madsen. She was the hacker who intercepted the Decepticon signals and she was able to decode them and save the world against the Decepticons. As I was watching the movie, I realized I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be a hacker. I wanted to be able to understand the technical world and be able to protect us, given that all of society was kind of moving in that direction.
I didn't know how to code. I didn't know what that meant, really. I didn't know what it took, but I wanted to do that!
So I went to school for it -- there's no school for hacking, but I did some research and was like, okay, so what do I need to know? I was scared of coding, so I was trying to avoid it as much as possible, but I went to school for information technology and learned how to code.
The way that I got into web development was that, you know, I was broke, as most college students are. I had taken a web development class, and I really liked it. I built a website for this lady who owned a jewelry store and I got paid for it, so I kept on doing it. One thing led to the other and I started just making a living out of it. I really loved it and got really passionate about it. That's how my career in web development started.
G.H.:
FANTASTIC! HOW EXCITING THAT IT CAME FROM A PLACE OF WANTING TO BE A HACKER, AND THAT YOU MADE THAT INTO A REAL JOB.
Z.E.:
When I reflect on it, it really makes me think about the importance of representation. The fact that I saw a woman doing something really cool with computers really inspired me. You know, I don't know if it would have been the same had that character been a guy.
Interview continued in PART TWO.
Follow Zainab “Zee” Ebrahimi:
Twitter: @zainab3brahimi
Instagram: @zeeberry
LinkedIn: Zainab Ebrahimi
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