Maths and Management. A lot of people don't know these two areas can be combined, and think Maths is only limited to a straight Maths degree or one that is related to Computer Science. This week, Liv Rennie tells us how her Maths and Management degree led to a career in tech!
It's definitely taught me that not knowing how to code initially in a tech career is ok - as long as you persevere and try every opportunity. Read more about Liv's inspiring journey and the benefits of a joint honours degree below!
"I got great marks in maths throughout the whole of school, so why would I not be able to study it at university? Maths is so often spoken about as being difficult, and that only really smart people study it"
I’m Liv, I just graduated from Leeds University where I studied maths and management, and now I work for a technical consultancy called Dae.mn, mostly doing performance engineering. I’ve loved maths for as long as I can remember, for me it not only feels great when I solve a problem, I also really enjoy the process of working out ways to tackle it, which I think is one of the reasons I gravitated towards working in tech.
When I first spoke to Joely, she asked me about why I chose to study maths and management, and I get asked this pretty often when I mention my degree and I usually just say something along the lines of “I wanted to study maths, but not spend all of my time doing maths”, but I’ve never really thought about why I didn’t want to study maths full time. I think that a huge part of the reason was purely a lack of confidence in my abilities, which looking back is ridiculous: I got great marks in maths throughout the whole of school, so why would I not be able to study it at university? Maths is so often spoken about as being difficult, and that only really smart people study it, which really put me off studying it at university, in fact I almost didn’t study maths at all. Luckily my mum could see how good I was at maths, and helped to push me to continue studying it, with the compromise of studying management alongside it. Having said all of that, I’m really happy with the decision I made, studying two completely different subjects at university really allowed me to expand my skill set.
"when I started to struggle with maths, I could switchgear and write some of a management essay, and when that got boring I could simply swap back"
So what’s studying joint honours at university like? I personally loved it, maths and management are taught in very different ways. Maths, at Leeds at least, consists of lectures which explain the background information, mostly proofs of mathematical concepts, and is supported by tutorials and worksheets where you apply that knowledge to questions, and then exams at the end of the semester. Management was lectures supported by your own reading, with a mix of coursework and exams. I really enjoyed switching between studying the two subjects: when I started to struggle with maths, I could switchgear and write some of a management essay, and when that got boring I could simply swap back and look at the problem again.
As I alluded to above, maths at university is very different from maths in school: the goal isn’t simply to solve a problem, it’s all about proving fundamental concepts, learning how to begin tackling problems when you don’t necessarily understand what the outcome is supposed to be and then maybe applying that knowledge to solve a problem. For example, rather than being taught how to differentiate, you learn about what differentiation is from fundamentals, then you prove and begin to understand why it works, and only then do you actually do differentiation. Sure it’s challenging, but degrees are supposed to be challenging! If you’re good at maths in school, and you enjoy it, you will be more than capable of studying it at university, and you’ll understand it so much more.
Whilst at uni I decided to do a year in industry, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to work in tech, even though the idea kind of scared me: I didn’t really know how to code, and I didn’t know what sort of jobs were out there. I applied for all sorts of jobs at all sorts of companies, and I ended up working in data at Sainsbury’s. I learnt so much in that year: yes I learnt a little bit about how to code, but I also learnt how to turn numbers into visual dashboards which tell stories, how data and tech in large, old companies aren’t going to be perfect, and how to deal with that, but most importantly I started to see how many different tech roles there were out there. After my year at Sainsbury’s I did a summer internship with Dae.mn, the company that I work for now, where I helped to build a web app, and learnt about how a much, much smaller company works.
I preferred working in the small company, I liked being able to get involved with whatever I wanted, Dae.mn is also very friendly and personal, so I decided to return after graduating. Since returning to Dae.mn I’ve been working on a couple of projects, mainly with the performance engineering team. So what is performance engineering? As its name suggests it is all about improving the performance of systems, software etc. It’s about taking something that already works, and making it better (a common example is making something perform faster). I’ve been working mostly on pagespeed optimisation; helping to collect and analyse data on how well, and quickly, eCommerce websites (everything from ASDA to Burberry) perform, and publishing this data to a leaderboard. Whilst working on this I also got the opportunity to make some improvements on our own website homepage, a great way to learn about how to fix problems, rather than just identifying them. If you’re interested, you can see the leaderboard here, and read about how I improved our homepage here.
I love working in tech, I still get to spend my time finding and solving problems, and the team I work with is great, but it is very much a male dominated field. Both in Sainsbury’s and at Dae.mn I have worked in teams where I am the only woman, and I am often the only woman on a call. This isn’t surprising considering that only 16% of tech roles in the UK are filled by women (and this hasn’t changed in 10 years), but it is something that needs to change. Women are more than capable of working in tech, and I hope that by encouraging girls to study maths and other STEM subjects, we will also see more women choosing to work in tech.