Anna Matela: From humanities to an engineer in a technical field

As a visual person, I like web design and I’ve been doing it in various hobby projects and at work too ever since my family got their first PC in the late 1990s. However, I didn’t specialise in IT at school and my degree was in history and museum studies. In the summers I earned extra cash as a museum guide.

Once I’d completed my master’s in the early 2010s, I had small children and instead of moving into a career in the museums sector, I decided to go into hospitality. What was supposed to be a temporary solution absorbed me for years – mainly because there was a lot of work available and the flexible working hours suited our family situation. At some point, however, I came to the conclusion that I wanted more out of my career and I started seriously thinking about changing sector.

Fascinating problem solving and detective work

I started studying information and communication technology on a hybrid programme at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in autumn 2019 at the age of 35. The sector I was aiming to enter was software design, i.e. coding. It was a bit challenging at the beginning as when the course started I didn’t know how to produce a single line of code and we plunged straight into C# (which isn’t exactly the most beginner-friendly computer language out there).

With peer support, working closely with my fellow students, I got to grips with my studies and soon found I really enjoyed coding. It’s fascinating problem solving and detective work in a class of its own, where challenges and opportunities just keep on coming. I also got interested in UI/UX design, although there were very few courses in it available in the sector I was looking to move into.

In the very first year of my course I managed to get a summer job and work experience in technical customer support for Tietoevry. It was wonderful to quickly get a “proper job” where I learned huge amounts over a short period of time. I gained experience, my professional self-confidence grew, and I got lots of additional motivation for my studies. With a few more holiday jobs under my belt, a couple of years later as I came to the end of my ICT studies, I applied for and got my current role as a DevOps Engineer with Tietoevry.

In my final year of study I was working full time in the industry, which perhaps slightly slowed down the completion of my degree. However, now I’m at the happy point where I’ve finished my degree project and that’s been assessed and my degree certificate has just turned up by email. Job done, career sorted – and right on time! I’m quite proud of myself. It turns out you can do lots of things with a humanities degree, including becoming an engineer in the technology sector.

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