As part of our Hour of Code Week, we were visited this morning by two dynamic female engineers from Salesforce, Armita Peymandoust (Hamlin parent) and Ayori Selassie. They spoke about the mission of Salesforce, data science, artificial intelligence, developing apps, and what it takes to be a product manager. They also both shared their personal journeys from Iran (Ms. Peymandoust) and West Oakland (Ms. Selassie) to Salesforce, and how math and working with BASIC computer programming language provided them with initial guidance for their career trajectories.

They made the following points (among others):

-Salesforce believes in “doing good as you are doing well,” and demonstrates this by investing in San Francisco public schools and supporting the local community in multiple other ways.

-“Women make the best product managers because of their higher emotional intelligence.”

-“With code you can create anything, you can solve any problem that you think is important.”

-Coding can change the world for women by creating financial independence and allowing them to step out of traditional roles.

-A software engineer’s life is wonderful because you get to: build something and see results immediately, focus on the problem at hand, be a logical thinker, decompose life challenges into blocks, travel and work remotely.