Kerry Dougherty
Product Engineer
Wednesday, 29 October 2025
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Kerry Dougherty. I am originally from the United States. I previously was living in New York for around 14 years, then this past year I moved to Berlin to join an exciting new company, Upvest GmbH.
Whats your background?
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations. I had a few ideas of a dream job, but, like most people do (especially in expensive cities like New York), I applied for any and every job I saw and accepted the first offer I received. That first job was for a sales position at a newspaper. As much as I wanted to do a good job (and needed the money), I was just not meant to be a salesperson. Luckily for me, rather than letting me go, my manager put me in touch with the head of the company's advertising operations department, and I was moved to a position in that department.
While doing that job, I was exposed to a little bit of code, and found that it was by far my favorite part of the job. I started to learn a lot about how websites worked, and got my first taste of debugging, and absolutely loved it. I started looking at engineering jobs to see if I could turn my passion into a career, but all the engineering jobs I saw required a Computer Science degree, which I did not have.
I eventually started another advertising operations job at a small startup that had only about 20 employees. I got to know the engineers there very well, and they were very welcoming and excited to hear about my interest in engineering. They gave me access to the company Github account and walked me through some of how things worked. I started taking some online coding classes in my free time, and eventually was able to make a tiny contribution to the company's code. Around that time, a lot of "bootcamp"-style coding programs had started popping up in New York, and for the first time I was hearing about people who'd gotten engineering jobs after doing a bootcamp program, even though they didn't have a Computer Science degree. I was fortunate enough to get a 1-month scholarship to Flatiron School, so I quit my job and signed up and learned as much as I possibly could in the next few months.
While attending Flatiron School, I ran into an old coworker who had become the CTO of another small startup. He was looking for part-time help, and I was looking for an opportunity to test my new knowledge in the real world. He graciously decided to take a chance on me, and I started part-time at the company soon after. That job absolutely changed the course of my life. I learned so much from him and levelled up my skills in a short amount of time. I ate, drank, and breathed code for the first couple years of my career, and finally felt like I was in the career I was meant to be in. Since then, I've had more amazing managers and coworkers who have mentored me and pushed me to amazing new heights, and now I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to relocate to Berlin, Germany and join the largest engineering team I've ever been a part of, which brings with it a huge diversity of experiences and knowledge that I get to learn from.
Whats your current role?
My current role is a Product Engineer. The role is the same as ones with the title "Software Engineer", but my company, Upvest, chooses to call the role "Product" Engineer to emphasize the importance of being product-minded in our roles as engineers. We're not just being assigned tickets and mindlessly completing them. We're responsible for truly understanding the needs of our clients (both our direct B2B clients and the end-users). We need to have an in-depth understanding of our product and how it works across the whole company, not just in our particular domain. Using this knowledge, we work together with the product team to figure out the best way to build new products and features and provide the best value for our users. Our knowledge and feedback as engineers is essential to the process. It's a lot of responsibility, but it makes the job a lot more enjoyable, and it makes for a great engineering culture to have everyone really invested in the direction of our product, and not just focused on their own siloed work in their domain.
Why have you decided to learn to code?
Growing up in the 90s/00s, I was exposed to code during the excitement of the beginning of the internet. If you knew HTML and CSS, you could be the coolest in your grade and have the nicest looking AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) page, and you'd get bonus points for being able to make a website with obnoxious Javascript effects. I was lucky enough to have an older brother who was also really into computers and coding, so I got to learn a lot from him, and he had a computer I could use when he wasn't home (but if he's reading this, I'm kidding! I definitely never used your computer without permission...).
Despite being interested in computers, coding, math and science from a young age, I never really thought of engineering for a career. People always talked about engineers as the stereotypical male genius, like Bill Gates. I didn't identify with that image, so I just assumed I wasn't cut out to be an engineer, so I never really thought about that as a career when I was younger. Even though I excelled in math and science, the feedback I received was usually, "You'll make a great mom, you'll be able to help with your kids' homework" or "You're so good at this, you should be a math teacher when you grow up". It wasn't until I was older and already in the workforce that I realized what an engineering career really entailed and began to see that it was something I was absolutely capable of.
Do you think its important to learn to code?
It is definitely important to learn to code. It reminds me a lot of when my mom would tell me about how she learned to type. When she was young, that was a "special skill". It seems silly now to ask someone "Do you think it's important to learn how to type?". I think coding is very similar. The way we code right now is a newer concept if you look at all of human history, but even in the short time it's been around, our world has changed dramatically as a result. It feels like an essential skill to learn now, because more and more of the world is being run digitally, so if you know how to code, you'll be able to be a part of this evolution and help shape it.
Do you feel the tech industry is male dominated? How can we encourage more women into the industry?
It's not just a matter of opinion that the industry is male-dominated. Look at any statistic about the number of males and females in tech roles, and it's skewed so heavily male. What is interesting to me is that 10-15 years ago, the discussion was about how there were no women engineers, so we should try to get women interested in engineering. But years later, there are a lot more women interested in engineering, who hold degrees and certificates and are ready and able to work in a tech role, but the inequity still exists. I don't think the most pressing issue is that we need to inspire more women to code, but that we need to make sure they're allowed the same opportunities as males. The girls and women that code are currently in a workforce where they are far less likely to be promoted to a leadership position than their male counterparts. It's not enough to just encourage females to go into a career in tech, we need to make sure it's worth our while to be here. Nobody wants to hit a plateau in their career just because of their gender, so we should help each other push past these arbitrary limits. We can help other women shine, whether it's giving public shoutouts, proofreading someone else's self review and making sure they're not underselling themselves, or doing mock interviews with someone who is looking to break into a new role. There's nothing more encouraging in tech than knowing you've got the support of all the women around you.
Did you struggle being a woman in the tech industry yourself?
The tech industry has a lot of the same issues that women face in any aspect of life, but I've been incredibly lucky to have amazing managers and coworkers in the jobs I've had since I became an engineer. No matter what the circumstances around me, I've had people who could relate and commiserate, which makes any situation easier.
Whats the most rewarding and most challenging parts of your tech career so far?
Mentoring and helping other engineers is 100% the most rewarding and challenging part of the job. As I've mentioned before, I am a product of the amazing support and mentorship that I had, and so I've tried to give that back to others as much as I can. A lot of times, especially earlier in our careers, I think we don't realize that we have a lot of knowledge and experience to share. One of the best parts of the job is helping others gain confidence in their own abilities. It doesn't have to be something formal, and it doesn't even need to be helping someone on their own code. I've had great experiences with asking a more junior dev to help me debug my own code. It takes longer, of course, but in the process, you get to help someone sharpen their own debugging skills, and you get to alleviate some of the job pressure and show that everyone runs into bugs, no matter their level or how long they've been programming.