Masheika Allen (she/her)
Masheika Allen began her career as a litigation attorney before deciding to transfer into tech. The transition process was arduous and took several years. During the transition period Masheika worked as an online instructor, middle school teacher, technical writer, personal trainer and e-pub programmer. In 2014, Masheika was laid off from a document review position and faced with a critical choice on how to approach her future. She decided to make a leap, a full commitment to her chosen industry. She moved to the Bay Area sight unseen, relying on an unemployment check and living in hostels while applying for work. The day she received her last unemployment check, she was offered a position at a vendor at Google. Masheika worked as a contractor at several major tech companies over the course of the next 2 years before securing a full-time position at NVIDIA.
1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?
I always loved tech, but tech wasn’t a job in the ‘90’s, it was a hobby. My first program was a space game that I programmed on a Commodore 64 in elementary school. It wasn’t until I was much older, working as an international marketing intern for a startup as the capstone to my Masters in International Business degree, that I actually saw that I could make a career out of tech. I ended up getting a position at an epublishing company, but tech work is hard to come by in Florida (at least it was at the time). I understand there are folks working hard to change that at the moment.
2. Who is a role model that you look up to?
I looked up to my grandfather. I still do. He’s more of my chosen grandfather, as his family isn’t blood related to mine, but he’s the only grandfather that I’ve ever had. I learned how to speak to people from him, how to break complex ideas down to their base level so that everyone can understand without feeling patronized, and most importantly, I learned love from him. Not only did I learn this from how he treated me, but from how he treated people who he knew were trying to use him. I’m not religiously committed so I can’t go all the way down the road that he’s chosen, but I respect it and I’ve learned from it. I understand love from his example and I can never thank him enough for that.
3. Where is your hometown?
305 Baby! The MIA.
4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?
I can tell you one story with a sad ending and another with a happy one. I had been struggling to live in Florida for nearly a decade, 3 degrees — then 4, with little success. When I was laid off from a document review job in 2014, I was living with my ex and her children. My health was failing from the constant pressure of the 10 years prior, exacerbated by trying to keep a family afloat on a limited budget (that black woman pay gap is felt most acutely by black lesbian couples).
My health had deteriorated to the point where I was honestly afraid that I was getting close to the end, but I’d taken on a parental role for the youngest child, and that still means a lot to me. So the decision to leave Florida pitted my desire for self-preservation against my deep-seated desire to stay in my city with my would-be son. I felt pretty sure that I would not be able to hold onto the one, or return to the other, if I left. That was hard. Much harder that I ever expected. It still hurts to this day, leaving him. Not that he doesn’t have his mother, but I chose to be his parent because that’s what I wanted, so to walk away from that to save my own life… it’s justified, but sometimes it’s hard to justify. I still send presents and letters regularly, but the relationship is lost. That hurts. Some days more than others.
Another story of struggle flowed from that decision. I’d left everything and everyone that I knew to move across the country to a city I’d never even visited. I hadn’t even seen a legitimate representation of it on TV. I thought that San Francisco was full of parks and festivals, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up in the megabus to a landscape of skyscrapers! Insanity. No birds, no grass. I was wholly unprepared. When I came to SF, I had a lead on a doc review job, so my first few weeks were pretty hopeful, but that job never materialized. Money got scarce and things started to get a bit desperate. I had to do my first and only couch surf when I left the nice hostel.
I went through a pretty deep depression. No hope on the horizon, but no path to return to where I came from. It was bad. One day I saw an ad for a job meetup at the SF LGBT center and decided to walk there — from North Beach. 2 hours later, I arrived and the group was gracious and kind. I went back again the next day and they helped me update my resume to tailor it for the tech industry. I papered the entire Bay Area with it that night and got an email from the Google vendor’s recruiter the next day. I was literally at the end of my rope, at the edge of my sanity, and I was thrown a lifeline. The path from contractor to FTE was difficult, fraught with huge disappointments and even bigger wins, but I made it. I made it.
5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?
I’m actually immensely proud of my relationship. I learned love from my grandfather but I had only put the external version of love into practice — being kind to people, grounding my behavior in fairness, being trustworthy — things that affect others. What I didn’t really have was a concept of personal love. I hadn’t internalized the positives that others saw in me. I let the negatives that certain people told me supersede the reality of what I was living. I saw myself through someone else’s lens, and that lens was skewed. I saw myself as a failure and unworthy of life. Because there was no way for me to define myself as successful within the structure that I was viewing my life, I began to question the voices in my head, the terms I used for myself and my situation, and I realized that none of them came from me. They were things I’d been told by people I trusted, which I’d allowed to dictate how I valued myself.
I worked very hard to try to change my view of the world; to determine my own criteria for success or failure, determine my own value. I began to put this in practice in my work life before I left Florida, but I never incorporated it into my personal life. Six months after I moved to California, I met a girl. I had so much PTSD from my toxic, abusive former relationships that I ran, but she just jogged behind me, never threateningly close, but never far away. I told her when I met her that she was a high quality woman, which is part of the reason I didn’t think I deserved her or that I could live up to the responsibility of being her woman, but she let me start by being her friend. Over the course of that friendship, I’ve finally been able to complete my transition. I am my own woman. My relationship is proof of that. It’s open, honest, communicative, and unabashedly loving as hell. I am her little cheesy corn. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?
Justice.
7. Favorite food?
Blue Crabs, macaroni & cheese (BAKED! No Kraft. I’m Southern.)
8. Favorite book?
Most influential — Either/Or by Kierkegaard. Favorite read — most things by Steven King or Octavia Butler (except Kindred. That shit hurt.)
9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?
Law professor. It’s the job I’ve always wanted and still intend to have (after tech of course).
10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?