Nahid Akhtar, Data Engineer at McMakler — a Frog portfolio company and Germany’s fastest-growing online real estate agent — was recently featured as one of the inspirational women in online tech magazine JAXenter’s diversity series called ‘Women in Tech.’
In the interview, she talked about her daily role as Data Engineer at McMakler and why she thinks there aren’t more opportunities for women in the tech scene.
Akhtar shared how she first became interested in technology: “When I was young, my father bought me a computer because I was top of the class in fifth grade. While I was looking at the gift-wrapped box, I asked my father what was in the box. His startling answer: ‘It’s something you can use to change the world.’ From that moment on, I knew what my passion, what my dream would be.”
A day in her life includes developing and testing APIs using Flask, coding in Python, scheduling tasks in Airflow and building and maintaining data streams. Besides those, she added that she works with many cloud services and is also responsible for extracting, transforming and loading data from a wide range of data sources.
Asked why there aren’t more women in the tech industry, she commented: “Unlike men, women face many social and emotional challenges due to their technical jobs. They are constantly questioned and compared to the skills of their male colleagues rather than being appreciated for the unique skills they bring to the job. (As a generalisation, scientific studies have shown that women are usually better at multitasking and improvising, while men are better at analysis – all equally valuable skills in the industry).”
Read the full interview here.
