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“You’re about to learn what it means to be a software engineer. You’re about to learn a lot about this company, and how technology is used to make the magic. But I think the biggest part is, you’re going to learn a lot about yourself.”
Nikki Katz is giving a stirring speech in a room with walls plastered with characters such as the Incredible Hulk, Frozen’s antic snowman Olaf, and the brain-inhabiting cast of Pixar’s Inside Out. The decor—and Katz’s allusion to magic—aren’t surprising, given that we’re in a Walt Disney Company building in Glendale, California.
A Disney VP of technology, Katz has the sort of background you’d expect of someone in her position, including a degree from Stanford and a résumé with experience at companies such as Yahoo. The women she’s addressing, however, are joining Disney’s software-engineering workforce in a most unconventional way. They’re participants in CODE: Rosie, a program that gives women already at the company in non-technical roles an opportunity to switch careers.
