Liquid Net’s WordPress Technician on how the tech discipline marries her love of creativity and connection.
Creativity and introspection have been a part of Rebecca Diamond’s life since she was very younger. Diamond spent her childhood in Louisiana, and moved to Maine simply earlier than changing into an adolescent. “I’ve had a non-traditional life,” she says, “full with being homeschooled earlier than all of the cool children have been doing it.”
In these early years, Diamond developed an intense love of studying—she nonetheless reads between 5 and seven books every week. “On my days off, I like to spend time in my residence workplace, which doubles as my artistic area,” she says. “There I pop on an audiobook at 1.5 velocity and knit, weave, crochet, sew, make jewellery, or work with steel, wooden, beads or, effectively, you get the image. A great day for me entails tons and many creativity.”
After her first job as a potato harvester in Maine, a love of artistic work led Diamond to the tech world. “I first began freelancing utilizing WordPress again in 2005, after constructing a web site for my small pictures enterprise and discovering I cherished to work with web sites,” she says. In 2009, Diamond joined a WordPress startup and labored there till 2017, serving to individuals transition from WordPress as running a blog software program to WordPress as a Content material Administration System. Afterward, she spent a niche 12 months as a contractor for an additional firm after which got here on board iThemes instantly after the acquisition by Liquid Net.
“Having identified the founding father of iThemes since 2008, becoming a member of iThemes and the Liquid Net household was a dream come true,” Diamond says. “I’m neurodivergent and have disabilities, and I’ve been lucky to work in locations the place these wants have been accommodated matter-of-factly. Which means I’ve all the time finished a little bit of all the pieces, typically far exterior my preliminary job scope, at every tech job I’ve had.”
As a WordPress Technician, Diamond helps assist a wide range of WordPress plugins underneath the StellarWP umbrella, particularly iThemes. “I additionally get to assist check new issues (sure, I’m paid to interrupt stuff!), and I assist with documentation, so of us can higher perceive and use our merchandise,” she says.
Diamond sees herself as a part of the infrastructure in tech, reasonably than somebody on the forefront. “What I do,” she says, “and what makes me proud daily, is practising the artwork of translating technical language and software program into one thing accessible and enjoyable for end-users. I do a number of behind-the-scenes work serving to enhance UX for software program I work with—it helps that it begins with nice code from superb builders, for certain!—and I assist interpret that for people who could not stay and breathe code.”
Most influential in her profession journey was the one that instructed her at 14 that ladies have been incapable of studying math or science and that they definitely shouldn’t count on to work in these fields. “I took what might have been an extremely dangerous affect and used it to empower myself and encourage me to create the life and profession I used to be decided to have.”
Having been round tech in a single type or one other since she started learning for her ham radio license at age 11 (“again when an individual needed to study Morse code to get it!”), Diamond is pleasantly shocked by how briskly the sphere has modified to simply accept girls in expertise. “That doesn’t imply the trade is ideal—I’m white, cisgender, and are available from an economically privileged background, and so in some ways, the entry barrier was decrease for me than somebody with out these elements in place,” she says. “Nonetheless, every decade, I see vital progress made towards acknowledging the truth that everybody, of each gender, is able to contributing to and benefiting from expertise.”
Diamond additionally appreciates how Liquid Net has cared for its workers and clients within the face of challenges led to by the pandemic. “I’m grateful for the way rapidly Liquid Net pivoted to all-remote and the assist they’ve supplied every worker and buyer throughout what’s a life-altering occasion for all of us,” she says. “The expansion of the trade throughout this time, and the methods we’ve been in a position to assist of us scale on-line very quickly, is personally significant to me.” Along with working in an organization invested in its workers, she says that her husband, their grownup son, buddies, and religion group have all performed integral elements in her success.
Her motivations in work and life are easy—a need to depart this world in a bit higher form than when she first entered it. “Not everybody will get to be on the world stage selling sweeping adjustments, however I imagine each particular person holds energy to create constructive change in their very own life and the lives of these round them.”
So far as the way forward for girls in tech, Diamond says that, on good days, she will be able to acknowledge the setting changing into extra accepting, extra numerous, and extra welcoming. “Sometime, I hope that the concept girls have been as soon as not accepted in tech appears as a lot historic historical past as a trilobite fossil does to us at present.” However she can be sensible concerning the quantity of progress nonetheless wanted and the hurdles remaining to be cleared. “Don’t imagine anybody who tells you that you need to be a sure sort of particular person, current a sure method, or test the bins on some ‘100% geek’ guidelines. If I can design and knit socks whereas taking (and even instructing!) expertise lessons, you possibly can definitely convey no matter makes you distinctive into the sphere with you.”
Diamond loves working in tech as a result of connecting with individuals is on the coronary heart of her passions. “I genuinely love assembly of us, even nearly—so should you’ve learn this and also you’re an iThemes shopper, be sure you say hello the following time you cease by our helpdesk!”