From Turing Tech to University of Manchester

Mehwish, tell us about your educational background.

I mainly got my early education from Rawalpindi. My schooling was from SLS and Dr. AQ Khan. Then for my pre-engineering, I went to APS. Later, I got my bachelor's degree from FAST in Computer Science. 

What about your technical skills? Are you mostly self-taught?

I learned my technical skills and software skills mainly from my curriculum. My semester projects were mostly coded in Python and Javascript. My final year project (FYP) "Visual representation of analyzed privacy policies was implemented in D3.js". I worked mainly on the frontend where I integrated the data visualization for the summarization of privacy policies that could help users understand the crucial policies which they otherwise would have ignored. 

Before joining Turing Tech, where did you work?

After my graduation, I began working with a small startup by building e-commerce websites for their products. I started as a frontend developer, where I mainly worked in Vue.js (which is a JavaScript framework). After a while, I felt a need to learn about backend development as well so I took an initiative to learn how Django works and worked on it to become a Full Stack Developer.

Why did you decide to apply to Turing Technologies?

Since my previous work model was remote, nothing social was involved even when the covid lockdown was taken off. So, I thought of applying to Turing Technologies for a change in my work style and routine and Turing Technologies did not disappoint at all.

What are your current responsibilities here? 

As a frontend developer, I am currently leading a team of developers and collectively we are working on one of it's SaaS products involving multiple 3rd party integrations. Along with implementing features, assigning tasks, and code reviews, I lead team stand-ups on a daily basis.

What milestones about your team that you want to achieve in the coming months?

As a frontend team lead, I and my team have our priorities straight, like:

• Delivery of our features at least 2 days before the deadlines, so that necessary QA could be done in time and if there’s any change required that can be done in due time. 
• Timely identification of bugs in our soon-to-be-launched main features like Design board, Task Management, and Event and Personality Quizzes. 
• Since the QA team recently started the quality testing and design review for our features, I have asked my team to divide our work schedules into phases: One is for fixing QA bugs and the other phase is for our main features and their deliveries. 

What are your future plans?

For now, I am soon going to start my Masters in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Manchester. I have been looking for a master's abroad since 2020 to enhance my skill set and now I have an opportunity to expand my knowledge from website development to data science and artificial intelligence.

How do you feel about going to Europe alone for the first time as a Pakistani woman? 

For me and my family this idea of going away from family, as a girl, that too alone is nothing new. As my elder sister is also in the UK for her studies. I am excited and nervous at the same time as it is going to be quite challenging to come out of my comfort zone but I believe it is going to be worth it. It will take a few weeks for me to first settle down there and get used to the British lifestyle. 

Are you planning to work at Turing Tech while pursuing masters abroad? 

Yes, Turing Technologies has been very supportive of me throughout the process. I will be working with Turing Tech throughout my educational journey abroad. That’s one of the main perks of working at Turing Tech that you can work from anywhere and I am extremely thankful to them for supporting my journey.

Kindly share your future milestones. 

For now, I will be focusing on 

• Delivering my features before leaving for the Europe. 
• Then my main focus will be to figure out a healthy work-academic routine for me. 
• Along with that, Sir Asad has given me a few books about project management. I will be reading them over the weekends. 

What are your favorite reads? 

• Limitless by Jim Kwik, it’s about growing as a person through self-discipline and pushing yourself to get out of your comfort zone. 
• Along with that, I loved Atomic Habits by James Clear, it has helped me to form some healthy habits.
• 5:00 AM club by Robin Sharma. Waking up at 5:00 am has been a personal goal that I am trying to achieve lately.