What They Don't Tell You About Working in Tech.
Pasifika Looking at a Tech Career, Maybe Read This First.
*1
Talofa reader,
I feel like the Wednesday morning newsletter post is becoming more consistent than the scheduled Tuesday one.
I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, and one thing I've observed over the last several years is the rise of organisations, new and old, targeting Māori and Pasifika and getting them into STEM—more specifically, Information Technology or Tech.
There’s a massive push for Māori and Pasifika to get into I.T., which is understandable given the “sunset industries” we’re over represented in.
It makes sense.
Tech is an opportunity where learning the skills is so accessible—courses, YouTube, blogs, online documentation, etc.—and the demand for those skills pays top dollar.
In short: If you've got the goods (skills), you can get the bag (money), basically.
Many institutions have popped up in recent years, targeting Māori and Pasifika with courses, scholarships, and other incentives to sign them up to learn "something" in tech and then secure them a job.
Sorry (not sorry) to be my usual cynical self, but when there's a lot of funding involved, you know the demographic that's usually seen as a "problem" suddenly looks like a great opportunity.
I’m sure they mean well, but what’s the road to hell paved with…?
I remember joining a video conference with a company that presented their course, aiming to train Māori & Pasifika into engineering roles, earn a micro-credential, and receive mentoring from industry professionals. When I asked them how many mentors were Māori & Pasifika, they said they were having trouble finding any.
If you already know how this goes from this point on, you can skip ahead.
I met some graduates from this course, who are Pasifika, and I'm not surprised when they tell me the people running the course lacked any cultural awareness and safety for the Māori & Pasifika students who went through it.
Some of them stayed on as tutors to shield the next cohort from the same experience.
This cliché story of people who don't know what they're doing, getting funded, to "help" people the funding is targeted to, yet don't know anyone from that community, is so boring it’s tiring.
Can we get a better villain please? We’ve already seen this one.
It's like when people know I work in IT and ask me to fix their printers (bad analogy incoming).
Sure, we can watch me fumble around and button-mash the thing, trying to look up the manual online to figure it out.
But is that the kind of printer-fixing service you're looking for?
The person who comes in with some relative knowledge, poking around on your time and patience, and eventually, maybe fixes it?
No?
Then why is the "close enough" service good enough for Māori and Pasifika?
I can’t do much about the opportunists - they’re going to do what they’re going to do.
What I can do instead is focus on things within our “circle of influence”, and that is to understand everything we need to know about the tech industry opportunity.
The good, the bad, the middle management.
I know Pasifika are between a rock and a hard place because we need to move away from these "sunsetting" industries, but how much do we really know about working in tech?
The current generation of Pasifika being sold the "working in Technology" dream aren't being told the whole truth2.
We know about the salaries and bonuses3, the work-from-home setups, and remote work opportunities.
We know we can teach ourselves all the tech we need to know on the internet if we know where to look and how to learn.
But what about what's not great about tech?
Do you know one of the most important questions you can ask any future employer during an interview?
"What's the most challenging part of the role?"
You want to know what things are like on a bad day.
Working in tech isn't for everyone.
I don't mean that in a "gatekeeper-y" way.
It's a fundamental law of the universe— not everyone is going to like everything.
You can choose to work in tech for a number of reasons, just know what the deal is and what it's going to cost.
If you’re a geek and would play with tech even if you never got paid for it this may be easier for you.
The danger for you here is your passion being exploited for free labour because you're so obsessed with figuring something out that you lose your evenings and weekends working on solving the puzzle.
However, if you lack that genuine interest or passion for tech, like with any career, it can lead to dissatisfaction and burnout in the long run.
It's challenging to stay motivated and get ahead in a field that requires continuous learning and adapting.
For all the work-from-home and "flexible work" talk around tech—which may seem like jazzy cafés working on your laptop sipping flat whites—the tech industry is known for long working hours, high stress levels, and demanding work environments.
If your life already has several personal challenges and stressors, entering a potentially high-intensity field is going to add to that stress.
And lastly, if this wasn't already obvious to you, you're going to be one of the only Pasifika people in your team, maybe even the department.
And if you're a Pasifika woman in tech... good luck.
It's getting better (I think?) with more representation, but this is the current reality.
Sure, it's good to mix in with everyone else, but I bet if we made everyone else hang around with zero people who looked like them for most of their working life, they'd feel some type of way about it as well.
It's not fatal.
It's just a factor you need to be aware of when chasing the tech opportunity as a Pasifika person.
Again, this isn't "don't come to tech if you identify with any of these," it's "be aware of these issues as you make a decision that's best for you."
For all my long-winded pontification on the subject, I don't have any perfect solutions for how to fix any of this. I have just two pieces of advice that have helped me and might help you navigate this journey.
Firstly, "shared culture" - try to find a network like the “Pasifika Tech Network” to join and participate in. You'll see there are more of us out here; we just need to find and support each other.
And not to hide ourselves away in a segregated corner of the internet, but to grow and encourage our community in a way that makes it easier for us to participate and contribute to an industry we genuinely want to be a part of.
Secondly, "shared passion" - one thing that a role model of mine, Kelsey Hightower, touched on in a podcast, and that I've experienced myself4, is this phenomenon where when people come together around a shared passion, something they geek out over, they stop seeing the differences for a second and just see the other geek who's into this stuff too.
I think in both cases, it's a space that lets us see each other's humanity instead of our differences.
And it's nice to just feel like part of the group doing things together, and everything's okay.
Thanks for reading - see you in the next one.
If you genuinely found this post interesting, please give it a ❤️ to let me know 🙏🏽
Learning
Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…
Working on a bunch of AWS Workshops…
Building
Things I’m building or working on this week…
A YouTube Channel… watch this space.
Generative AI with Large Language Modelsthis bored me to tears, so I stopped.
Interesting Reads
Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…
N/A … need to reinstate my reading schedule.
Community
Other projects in community I’m working on…
Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community.
Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners.
Midjourney - still sucks at hands.
Don’t get me started on the community getting bamboozled by blockchain and crypto currencies. NFTs anyone!??
come to think of it, some of these things are just standard once you’re up off the factory floor.
Kiwicon/Kawaiicon - love the hax0rz community.