SINGAPORE, July 28 — When she was 17 and a junior college student, Ms Ainul Razib was fascinated by the world of manhwa (Korean comics) and would frantically write fanfiction about the characters in the comics and post it on her Tumblr account. Then, an accidental click on the HTML button on Tumblr’s interface opened up a whole new world for her.

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking platform for posting and interacting with multimedia content and blogs. The HTML button allows users to view and edit the underlying code for advanced customization.

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This fascinated Ms. Ainul, now 26, who told TODAY how she learned to code and how to personalize her Tumblr page.

Sitting across from Ms. Ainul in a cafe on a recent Tuesday morning, I was struck by her infectious enthusiasm and passion, which shines through in person as much as it does on her TikTok account, where she posts videos designed to demystify the tech sector for Malay Muslim women like herself and everyone else.

“Two things I noticed about coding are that there are specific steps and a process,” Ms. Ainul said as the coffee machines churned and the baristas firmly packed the counter.

“Another thing about programming or coding is that if something goes wrong, it usually goes wrong right away, so you have to fix it,” she said, her voice full of excitement.

Over a matcha latte, she added that the directness and problem-solving nature of coding suited her well.

Dressed in soft shades of pink, Ms Ainul said many people associate programming with heavy and often arcane subjects such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, Web3 and crypto.

While that’s true, coding “can be as simple as designing a nice website, like formatting your text,” she added.

After mastering the basics of JavaScript code (a programming language), Ms. Ainul added a Google Translate plugin to her Tumblr page, which allowed her to translate her texts into any language.

“It was a lot of work for barely any followers (on Tumblr), but at that point it was all about the publicity, right?”

Nearly 10 years later, Ms. Ainul is a software developer at a global company and has a TikTok account with over 75,000 followers.

One of her videos about breaking into the tech world received more than 1.7 million views and nearly 250,000 likes.

Ms Ainul also regularly goes ‘live’ on TikTok to answer burning questions that people in her community and beyond have about breaking into the tech industry in Asia.

Although she told TODAY that her time in college wasn’t easy, her parents’ support and early exposure to technology gave her the confidence to pursue a career in tech. She learned about information systems, essentially a bachelor’s degree in engineering.

“My parents did not prescribe gender-specific careers for me,” Ms. Ainul said.

Still, they weren’t averse to expecting their daughter to pursue the usual array of “Asian parent dream jobs,” such as becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer, she joked, while we sympathized with equal parts annoyance and affection.

Even then, Ms. Ainul found it difficult to imagine herself as an engineer, as there were few women who looked like her and pursued a similar career.

“Statistically, I am Malay, Muslim and a woman, so there are not many of us working in the tech sector,” she said, calling herself a “triple minority.”

“At some point I realized that I could be part of that change. That sounds very inspiring, but in fact I’m just impatient.”

‘Outclassed’ and late with coding

When Ms Ainul took her first coding class at the Singapore University of Technology and Design in 2017, she felt immense pressure to perform as well as other students.

“There was definitely pressure to code late.

“Some of the people in my class were already legends. They knew how to code when they were in the service.”

While it was a dream come true for Ms. Ainul, who studied information systems, to be immersed in the world of coding, her other “big goal” was to graduate with a job.

But it seemed like the odds were constantly against her.

“I already felt so behind, while there were classmates in my class who immediately understood.

“I realized that not only was I learning slowly, but I was also way behind in terms of networking and my knowledge.”

It was a bitter pill to swallow for the aspiring software engineer, but she decided she wouldn’t aim for the “best grades”; instead, she would aim for the job.

I found it refreshing that Ms Ainul was so candid about her challenges. Social media often requires you to maintain a glossy façade, but she didn’t shy away from the bumps along the way.

Ms Ainul took every opportunity to connect with her career advisors and regularly attended career fairs and networking events.

Whether she was working closely with tech professionals or showcasing her skills to recruiters, she was always in the thick of the action and focused on her goals.

She estimates she has attended at least seven networking events and still attends at least two or three events per year.

As for that period in her life, she described it as one where she was in “survival mode,” struggling with her peers getting full-time jobs and feeling like she had imposter syndrome, thinking she wasn’t good enough.

There were many times when Ms. Ainul was on the verge of giving up and “seriously considered” changing careers if all her efforts failed.

In December 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, she was offered a job as a full-stack developer, even before she graduated.

A full-stack developer is someone who handles both the front-end (user interface) and back-end (server, database) aspects of web development.

Breaking through in the world of technology

Like most people who used TikTok during the pandemic, Ms Ainul turned to the video platform to combat boredom.

It started with dance videos, but she noticed that people were becoming more interested in technology. She decided to tell how she got started.

She was right: I had to admit to her that I didn’t know the difference between a product manager and a backend engineer, let alone how to get such jobs.

Despite its gleaming, pristine appearance, the inner workings of the tech world remain a mystery to many outsiders.

Ms. Ainul’s content was also unique in that it focused on breaking into the tech industry in Asia, unlike most online content, which focuses on the US tech scene.

The video that caught on was one of her resume tips that got her interviews at big tech companies, and it has been viewed more than 300,000 times.

She then began to talk more about salary transparency, what it’s like to work at a tech company, and what it’s like to navigate the workplace as a person from a minority community.

Ms. Ainul’s social media presence was how her current manager, Mr. Asmi Razali, found and hired her. He followed her coding lessons on TikTok and when he heard she was looking for a job, he asked his talent team to reach out to her through the networking site LinkedIn.

Mr. Asmi, who spoke highly of Ms. Ainul’s capabilities and her willingness to learn and grow professionally, said, “It is one of the best hiring decisions I have made.”

Mr. Asmi is a big proponent of her side hustle as a TikTok content advocate and creator.

He told TODAY: “I love that she’s using TikTok as a platform to connect with ambitious people who want to pursue a career in technology.”

He added that using TikTok for advocacy work “can be a powerful tool to raise awareness and create meaningful connections with those interested in technology.”

Ms Ainul said there is a perception of coding or programming that “all you have to do is sit behind a computer, write code and go home”.

She said that couldn’t be further from the truth. Working in tech means you need to hone your communication skills more than ever.

She explained: “It’s not just one person building a whole system. It’s multiple people building small parts of a larger system.

“You come into contact with many different people, you’re not just staring at the computer.”

An advocate for the Malay-Muslim community

Her work is not only about unravelling the workings of the tech world, but also paving the way for other Malaysian Muslim women interested in technology.

Ms Ainul said it is not that minority groups in the broader community are not interested in technology; it is that “the technology community is not as open to minorities”.

She spoke candidly about her role as a minority in the tech world, saying she never received any nasty comments at work, but she did online.

“People call me a diversity asset because I earned my dad’s money. That’s strange because I’m not rich.”

Still, it seems worth it when young people approach her during networking events and tell her how much they recognize themselves in her.

Mr Asmi said: “For those preparing for a career in tech, seeing people like her in successful tech jobs can inspire them. This can help close the diversity gap by encouraging more diverse talent to enter the field.”

Ms Ainul, who also volunteers as a mentor at Malay-Muslim organisations such as Mendaki, said: “We are changing the idea that if young people come from a certain demographic, they can only choose certain careers.”

She knows the work is far from done.

“I think the question is how do we really attract and retain (minorities) in the industry so that we can change this on a societal level, but that’s the challenging part.” — TODAY