While the need for software engineers is skyrocketing as companies rely more and more on technology to compete in the digital transformation, the number of women software engineers have been in decline for decades, according to Sharon Wienbar, CEO of Hackbright Academy and venture partner at Scale Venture Partners. HackBright Academy is looking to change all of this by equipping women from all career backgrounds to become engineers.

Wienbar spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Oracle OpenWorld 2016 to talk about Hackbright Academy and women in engineering.

The way Hackbright Academy works

Women are coming from all over the country to attend Hackbright Academy — many of them considering engineering after other career paths. The competitive application process includes filling out a form, writing an essay, and being interviewed. There’s also a code challenge.

“In the essay we’re looking for: ‘Can you think like an engineer?'” said Wienbar. The organization is also looking for people who have done some self study for basic coding familiarity.

Hackbright teaches on a calendar system of 12 weeks, and the classes consist of a mixture of lecture and lab work. By the end of the course, women are required to build their own application. “We really want women to own the decision about the architecture of her application and all of the implementation,” said Wienbar.

There are also a lot of career services. “Companies pay to recruit from us,” Wienbar stated.

Advice for women considering engineering

For women who might not have considered engineering as a career, Wienbar gave some fitting advice. “There’s such an important need for diverse engineering teams,” she said. “When you have a monoculture engineering team … you’re often leaving out large parts of the market.”

Engineering skills are also needed to thrive in any workforce. “[Coding is] like baking. It’s a life skill everyone should have,” Wienbar added. “Try it and see if you like it.”

The ability to think like an engineer is useful for whatever someone might do in the future, and women should embrace learning about it to see if they might fit into engineering in ways they never thought they could, Wienbar said.  “Women should think, ‘There is a place for you in software,'” she emphasized.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld.

(* Disclosure: Oracle and other companies sponsor some OpenWorld segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Oracle nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE