00:00:14.700
I hope you’re in a wake-up mood now, okay? As you can see, I'm really not ashamed of doing stuff. That’s also why I'm going to talk about productive unemployment. Actually, I'm going to talk about unemployment, but when I say that word to people, they tend to get uncomfortable. I don’t know why.
00:00:22.320
So, I gave the talk that had a productive unemployment theme, so that people feel like, 'Ah, it’s not a bad topic, it’s a yay topic!' The funny thing is that I work for a company called Observeenta, which creates job boards. Hence, people were like, 'Are you giving a talk about unemployment?' I mean, good luck with that. But in the end, they were really supportive and even made me an extra T-shirt with our logo on the front and a quote on the back. They told me that they’re proud of me, so I’m happy.
00:00:53.730
Okay, so I'm Kaja, and I’m on Twitter. Some of you might know me, maybe. I have this weird picture with flowers on my head. I’m from West Berlin and was born two years before the wall came down. I’m also half Croatian, so shout out to the Croatian people! I'm a Ruby back-end developer, and here you can actually see me in my bed in my room. On the sofa next to me is our CTO, and you also see a part of the head of a colleague who’s sitting right there. This is what we actually do. We call it 'kids work', where we all go to someone’s home and work from there, visiting the neighborhood and looking at their routines. It’s actually a nice way to get to know your team better from a different perspective.
00:01:35.430
As we already heard, I studied philosophy and historical linguistics. I don't have a computer science background, but I play football. This is my team; we call it football, so for the Americans, that’s soccer! I'm also part of the organizing team of what was formerly known as Rails Girls Berlin, which is now called Code Curious to be more inclusive.
00:02:04.070
But let’s go to the topic of unemployment. After graduating, I found that there was no well-defined career path for me. Nobody explicitly wanted to employ me as a philosopher, and I felt really lost and disoriented. I began to wonder, 'What should I do now?' So, I went to the job center, which is a thing in Berlin and in Germany — we have job centers where you can go when you’re unemployed or just graduated.
00:02:27.830
I asked for social welfare, which is called 'Hartz IV'. I don't know why it has such a weird name. It’s not only for unemployed people; it’s also for those who are working poor, meaning they don’t earn enough money and need extra support. There are also people who are temporarily unable to work due to issues like mental health. However, one main condition is that you must stay in Germany to receive that welfare, so traveling isn’t allowed.
00:03:09.370
I received Hartz IV after graduating from university, but there’s a huge stigma and shame surrounding it. There are tons of jokes involving the term Hartz IV, and we even have a verb, 'hartzivern', which means to hang out lazily, drink beer, and not do anything productive. If you ask most people in Germany to sketch someone who receives Hartz IV, they'd likely draw a man with a potbelly, in shabby clothes, with a beer bottle next to him, sitting on a sofa. This stigma is the image that people have of those receiving Hartz IV.
00:03:53.170
I'm giving this talk today because I want to take away the stigma and shame associated with being unemployed. In fact, that year I was unemployed was one of the best years of my life, and I was incredibly productive during that time. So here are some facts: You receive about 400 to 800 Euros a month, and they also pay for your health insurance. To be perfectly honest with you, I got 650 Euros a month. I had to manage my rent, food, phone bills, train tickets, and everything with that.
00:04:47.320
You also have to meet certain conditions to receive that money. On your first visit to the job center, you stand in line for a long time, often over an hour – it’s similar to waiting at the airport, weaving through a huge hall. While waiting, you see many different types of people: young mothers with children, people who don’t speak German, and those who seem like they’ve been living on the streets. I found myself at that moment, really aware of my privilege. I was standing there with my university degree, an expensive snowboarding jacket, and an iPhone, while feeling like I need to take care of myself. The staff treated me differently; they saw I graduated, so they thought, 'Ah, she just needs some time.'
00:05:30.060
Let’s talk about the conditions again. You have to apply for jobs while receiving unemployment benefits, like attending monthly appointments and following job center instructions, which can sometimes be quite strange. For example, even before I received any money, I had to attend a support center where we basically sat there for four days, eight hours a day, doing nothing! It was a bit tough, especially because I can’t handle tasks that seem senseless. On the first day, I didn’t even bring food and had to sit there for eight hours feeling hungry, which is a torture in a way.
00:06:18.090
The next day, I decided to show up really late, like two or three hours late, just to sign in and then leave to take phone calls or hang out in a café. Interestingly, they didn’t make me do anything else because I communicated that I didn’t want to participate in those activities. You can apparently say no to these things.
00:06:59.340
This situation also sparked my creativity. I thought to myself, 'I don’t want to do pointless things in my life.' I had attended a Rails Girls Berlin beginners workshop, which ignited my interest in coding. I realized how fascinating it was, and that it brought me joy. This clarity motivated me to dive deeper into coding.
00:07:46.250
So, I went to a 'Code and Cake' event organized by Rails Girls Berlin, which felt like a hackathon. During this event, I developed a pet project called Edible Hood. It was designed as a Rails app to connect individuals interested in growing edible fruits in public spaces. The initiative was hosted by a fundraising company called Better Place. While working on the project, I met two influential people: Linda, another woman who had just started coding, and Johannes, a senior developer at Better Place.
00:08:29.819
We worked on the Edible Hood project together, coding all day. Linda shared information about this amazing boot camp that cost quite a bit, like five or six thousand Euros, but she was enjoying the experience immensely. Since Johannes worked there, I asked them for an internship, hoping to join their team as a developer. I got the internship and began to explore an almost ten-year-old codebase.
00:09:16.250
The team consisted of around five developers using Scrum for project management. I learned how to use GitHub during that period, how to write tests, and how to validate code. It was a foundational experience for me as I could observe and ask questions about code development. I found it fascinating how things worked on the Internet, which was something I never learned about in philosophy.
00:10:02.040
After the internship, I really wanted to attend the boot camp, but the job center said no when I first asked. God, I was so enthusiastic! Once again, I went back and pleaded for the boot camp funding, sharing about my study groups and commitment. Finally, on my third visit, they approved my request, and I went to the three-month boot camp.
00:10:53.990
The boot camp was a wonderful mentoring program conducted online. I could work from my room coding on various Rails apps, learning new skills along the way. The coaches were available on Slack, and we had mentoring calls that were incredibly beneficial. Through this experience, I created my first rails app, which was inspired by my love for surfing and was set up like a surf shop where I also learned to integrate payment systems like Stripe.
00:11:38.280
I also learned about the CRUD architecture and deployment to Heroku, which opened up new doors for me. I started to grasp how the production world worked and explored various add-ons like Redis, SendGrid, or Postgres. This knowledge empowered me to understand more about how the Internet operated.
00:12:24.290
Once I completed the boot camp, I was once again faced with the question of what to do next. During the summer of 2016, the organizing team of Rails Girls was discussing the Rails Girls Summer of Code, a scholarship program for open source coding during the summer. I applied for a project at Discourse, teaming up with Jen, who I had not met before and who turned out to be an inspiring partner.
00:12:56.430
Together, we called ourselves the Timberland Diamonds and developed a plugin that syncs backup files to different providers. Initially, it seemed like a simple plugin to back up to Amazon S3, but we wanted to expand it to other providers like Google Drive.
00:13:19.020
Our team moved quickly, and we received awesome support from many coaches and our project manager. The experience transformed us into confident coders. After the project, I still found myself unemployed, even after the amazing summer of code experience.
00:14:02.200
During the summer, I was actually doing my open-source project at a coaching company, which was Absorbenta. I annoyingly dropped hints every day about potentially working there in the future. After the summer of code, I raised the topic with our CTO, who had been observing my growth over the months. Finally, he agreed to let me work there.
00:14:46.170
It was fantastic to have already established a relationship with the team. I didn’t even have to formally apply. He told me, 'I saw your journey, I was impressed with your progress, and I’d like to offer you a job.' It was my first job, and I felt elated!
00:15:31.170
I loved my new role, the team was fantastic, and I was fortunate to have a mentor who navigated me through the transition smoothly. I felt supported; he was always there to ensure I wasn’t just thrown into a situation with only junior developers. This helped me confidently make my way into the world of coding.
00:16:16.900
As I continued my journey, the job center was now happier because I had shifted from being viewed as a problem to someone contributing and paying more taxes than I ever received in benefits. It proved to be a win-win situation.
00:16:43.380
During my time unemployed, I learned a lot about open-source contributions, which I believe is essential. I wished I had more time for this after getting a full-time job, as I now primarily work on private projects. Many people underestimate the value in contributing to the community.
00:17:31.090
Working in pairs during the summer of code was also beneficial since Jen and I had our misunderstandings that required us to seek mediation from our supervisor. It was a good lesson for both of us to not get too attached to our own code but remember that we were teammates working towards a common goal.
00:18:21.330
Ultimately, I learned that I can achieve anything as long as I'm persistent enough to ask for it. It became a vital lesson that helped me approach opportunities actively instead of passively waiting for them.
00:19:09.190
Being unemployed is nothing to feel ashamed of. So the next time someone shares they are unemployed, or if you find yourself in that situation, don’t let the stigma overwhelm you. Have open conversations and appreciate the time to reflect.
00:20:01.210
I chose not to work in menial jobs during my unemployment but rather utilize that chance to plan something meaningful for my future. I realized that my unemployment was a privilege compared to others who don’t have such support.
00:20:30.770
Furthermore, even if the job center frustrated me, they ended up helping me move forward by giving me the support I needed.
00:21:02.160
You are all invited to ask me questions later, and thank you for your attention.