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Noreen Fong Highlight
If you don’t know what you want to do, start with what you know you like and then bridge out and try something else...Just keep following the passion of what makes you feel good.
About Noreen
- I come from an engineering family—my mother, father, and grandfather were all engineers—so I didn’t think I would pursue that.
- I started college as a pre-business major and considered focusing on accounting, but my prerequisite math classes didn’t stimulate me as much as I hoped they would.
- An introductory programming class I took early on in college sparked my interest in computer science because of its problem-solving nature.
- I ended up getting both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science.
- I started my career in aerospace because it merged both of my passions in computer science and space.
- One of my first professional programming positions involved writing software for satellites at Hughes Space and Communications Company.
- Moving through various positions, I found that everyone always competed for the programming role while I gravitated toward the coordination roles, which led to more professional recognition.
- I moved on to work for DIRECTV and worked my way up from staff engineer to vice president of software engineering—I helped build the set-top box engineering team from seven engineers to 650 employees!