Nicole Gathany (@nicole-gathany)

Life is like a Programming Language: Gratitude, Grief, and JavaScript

I'm honestly going through a hard time right now. Someone I met in a coffee shop heard about what I was going through and told me to try writing in a gratitude journal. I used to hate those. I tried one back in 2016, and it made me feel guilty for fe...

Jul 28, 2025 · 3 min readnicolegathany.hashnode.dev

Empathy and System Design

I am a software engineer with 6 years of experience in tech—really 12 years in a way if you count data science. My previous work was in public health and reproductive justice. Work where the importance of empathy is quite obvious. When I started soft...

May 11, 2025 · 4 min readnicolegathany.hashnode.dev

How Teaching Data Structures Helped Me with System Design. Part I: Indexing and Big O

I know a lot of us learn data structures and algorithms (DSA) because we think it will help us land a software engineering role at FAANG or a FAANG-like company. Some, like me, learn them because it’s fun or because our friends are doing it! But many...

May 11, 2025 · 13 min readnicolegathany.hashnode.dev

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 3: I'm going too slowly!

Welcome to my series on imposter syndrome! So far, I’ve made a laundry list of all the things that make us, particularly software engineers, feel like we’re not good enough but that shouldn’t. I also did a deeper dive into one thing that makes us fee...

May 10, 2025 · 12 min readnicolegathany.hashnode.dev

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 2: I don't know enough

I have friends who are great software engineers. Eager to learn with amazing social skills and business acumen. There are definitely plenty of companies out there who would be LUCKY to have them on one of their tech teams. But they don’t want to appl...

Apr 30, 2025 · 9 min readnicolegathany.hashnode.dev

Nicole Gathany

About

Available for

Nicole Gathany's blogs

Life is like a Programming Language: Gratitude, Grief, and JavaScript

Empathy and System Design

How Teaching Data Structures Helped Me with System Design. Part I: Indexing and Big O

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 3: I'm going too slowly!

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 2: I don't know enough

Nicole Gathany

About

Available for

Nicole Gathany's blogs

Life is like a Programming Language: Gratitude, Grief, and JavaScript

Empathy and System Design

How Teaching Data Structures Helped Me with System Design. Part I: Indexing and Big O

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 3: I'm going too slowly!

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 2: I don't know enough

Nicole Gathany

About

Available for

Nicole Gathany's blogs

Life is like a Programming Language: Gratitude, Grief, and JavaScript

Empathy and System Design

How Teaching Data Structures Helped Me with System Design. Part I: Indexing and Big O

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 3: I'm going too slowly!

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 2: I don't know enough

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Nicole Gathany

About

Available for

Nicole Gathany's blogs

Life is like a Programming Language: Gratitude, Grief, and JavaScript

Empathy and System Design

How Teaching Data Structures Helped Me with System Design. Part I: Indexing and Big O

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 3: I'm going too slowly!

Imposter Syndrome Series Part 2: I don't know enough