About me

If you want to learn more about me, let’s start at the beginning. I’m Sara, I was born and raised in France, Grenoble, and I come from a French/Algerian family. I grew up in a popular district called Villeneuve, but as a kid and teenager, I never felt it was such a bad place to live. Not only that, but I made amazing friends there, I had great results at school, I definitely spent some of my best years in that place. It’s only in high school when I went out of this area that I saw how people looked at “Arabs” like me coming from a place like that. And still, it never really affected me.

Educational background

I went to a fancy international high school to be able to study Arabic at the same level as French, on top of being specialized in science and math. After graduating from high school, I joined an engineering school. In France, if you want the title of engineer you have to follow a 5 years curriculum, 2 years of preparation, and 3 years in an engineering school. The equivalent of this is a master’s degree, but with the additional title of engineer.

I chose to study math and computer science for the first two years, I liked math and also wanted to learn more about computer science. I was very curious. Then I went full computer science for two years at the engineering school Polytech Grenoble. As I also really wanted to improve my English, I decided to spend my last year abroad in the United States – Montana State University – one of the best experiences in my life.

Work experience condensed version

I got my first job as a web developer back in Grenoble, after my internship in the company Viseo. I worked there for a little less than 2 years. It was a great period during which I learned a lot and made amazing friends.

After that, I wanted to go back to the USA, and so I applied for a job there in a French company in ad tech called Sublime. I was trained in Paris for 3 months and then worked in New York for 8 months. I worked as a front integrator and publisher operations. Unfortunately, I had to come back to France because they decided to shut down the New York office.

Back to square one. It was a hard time for me as I was also 3 months pregnant. Hopefully, It was easy for me to find a job as a Front-end developer in Lyon, where I decided to settle. It has been more than two years now that I work for the company Norsys and 26 months that I raise a beautiful baby girl.

I never doubted the fact that I will succeed in my life, finish my studies and get a good job. People were sometimes impressed, not because I was smart, but because they didn’t think someone like me would make it that easily. Actually, it wasn’t always easy, I got some obstacles around the corner, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

The aim behind creating TheTrendyCoder

However now I want to give back to society. I’m happy with my career path and what I accomplished so far, but I feel it’s not enough. I’m very ambitious, I always want more because I know I have the capacity to do better and to go further. On top of that, I don’t want to forget where I come from, so it’s time for me to give back. I would love to be able to inspire and motivate young girls to pursue a career in tech. I want to transmit the ambition I have to them. Tell them no matter where you come from, you can make it. You can do great and beautiful things. I also want to give women the opportunity to share their experiences on my website to create a community that empowers each other.

I also want to give back to the dev community. Every time I had to google an issue, a bug, or a question, I always found an answer online. I always took that for granted. I felt that Google had to have the answer, that’s what it’s for, right? But actually, behind every answer I found, there was an article, a post, or a comment written by a human being. This person took the time to do research and publish his knowledge online so that it would be profitable for all. Indeed, why should I just consume these pieces of knowledge without participating in creating some myself? Hence, the creation of TheTrendyCoder.