Students in an apprenticeship program at Bitwise
At fifteen years old, the only thing Irma Olguin Jr knew about the PSAT test was that it was a ticket to get out of class for a half day. Little did she know, that the PSAT was also her ticket to a future she never dreamed of. The daughter of immigrant farm laborers from Mexico, Irma only knew a life of field labor in the central valley of California. There, her family, like so many other migrants, lived out their destiny looking for crops as they ripened so they could work the land, hoping each month to have made enough money to pay their bills.
But Irma’s destiny changed when she scored well on the PSAT. Marketing materials started arriving at her home from colleges, and when one letter arrived offering her a full scholarship, Irma allowed herself to imagine life beyond the fields in California for the first time. Irma’s subsequent career in technology led her to start Bitwise Industries with her co-founder, Jake Soberal. The mission of Bitwise stems from Irma’s unique personal story, experiences, and lessons learned about how to provide opportunities for those individuals in underserved communities who would otherwise not even dream of a career in technology.
Irma Olguin Jr, co-founder of Bitwise Industries
How Irma got involved in technology was an accident. She chose her major based on her desire to work in the beautiful glass building that she later learned housed the school of engineering. It was a dramatic change from the fields of Fresno, California where she had lived her seventeen years and came with the promise of a new life.
Irma shared with me in a recent interview that she struggled initially with computer science. “I was surrounded by folks, mostly male, who knew what they wanted to do, who grew up knowing they wanted to hang out with computers and do that kind of work. I was very much behind in every way, culturally and academically.”
Her first job was working on mapping software as a student. That job, which earned her $17 an hour, radically changed her life. “I remember getting my first paycheck and thinking, I don’t know anything and I still can make this kind of money, more than minimum wage, less than a professional engineering job, but nonetheless, more than everybody I knew was making at home.” She went on to say, “ This was an inspiration, a driver for me to finish school and get some skills because I knew, even as a woman in a male dominated field, I felt as though I was at the starting line of something that could transform the way I understood and experienced life.”
Bonnie Marcus: Similar to your story, there must be a lot of people who don’t see this potential for themselves because of their background and where they live. How do you show them this type of opportunity and expose them to that potential?
Irma Olguin Jr: What we do is not magic, but who we do it for and the places that we do it in, we think is magic. That’s the differentiator between our program and others. There are human beings who have similar stories to mine, who don’t know what is possible for themselves. They look around and they see what their family does or their community does, and they think that’s what they’re going to do.
The truth is that an average person with an average mind, with an average skill, can make an above average contribution in the technology industry because of the state of the world, because technology is the fastest growing industry on the planet. You need talent. You need human capital to power that to continue to grow. And there’s space for all kinds of minds. It doesn’t have to be the kid who got an 800 in math on their SAT’s.
Marcus: Who enrolls in your programs?
Olguin Jr: Most people are between the ages of 17 and 45. They may be veterans re-entering civilian society or folks who were formerly incarcerated and looking for a new career after spending time in the system. We also work with the unhoused. The technology industry is an option for all these groups. These are folks who are not from the technology hubs of the world as you know them. They are from Bakersfield and Merced and El Paso and Greeley, Colorado.
We offer an open enrollment on a rolling basis all year long and we’ve served over 15,000 people in 10 years. They tend to triple their earnings over time, going from about $20,000 a year to $82,000. That’s transformative.
Marcus: How does the program work?
Olguin Jr: Nobody is going to learn to code overnight and we know it’s going to take an effort for them to get themselves into the technology industry. We want them to self-select into our programs and then as quickly as possible, we work to get them into a registered apprenticeship where they can earn a wage. It’s really important that they get paid to learn. That’s how we produce the outcomes we’re able to produce because these groups are from underserved cities. A lot of time, they’re being asked to choose between earning a wage, an hourly rate job typically, or investing in their futures.. The paid apprenticeship is our secret sauce.
students learning technology at Bitwise Industries
Miguel Hernandez, from Fresno California, now an online marketing specialist, credits the program at Bitwise with transforming his life. Previously incarcerated after getting mixed up with the wrong crowd at a young age, he participated in a Bitwise special course for apprentices of a similar background. “At first, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t think I belonged in a technology class or at a place like Bitwise. The first day of class felt like the first day of middle school. I kept telling myself, it’s career time—this is your career, Miguel. Forget emotions; they aren’t necessary right now. It’s game time.” Miguel added, ““I want to keep working on my career skills, I tell myself, how can I improve on what I did last year?”
Marcus: What does success look like for Bitwise?
Olguin Jr: On a macro level, we want to change the faces and places of the technology industry. We want folks from Fresno, California or Las Cruces, New Mexico or Toledo, Ohio to find an opportunity in their hometown where they can contribute to their friends and neighbors and they can do that because the technology industry affords them the opportunity to do so. That’s the macro level.
On a micro level, what really powers the work and keeps things going are the hundreds, now thousands, of individual human beings whose stories have changed; how they now contribute to society and are now able to participate in their communities. It all comes down to whether that person found a way to take advantage of the opportunity to change their own lives.
Bonnie Marcus, M.ED, is the author of Not Done Yet! How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence and Claim Workplace Power and The Politics of Promotion: How High Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead. An executive coach and speaker, Bonnie is also host of the podcast, Badass Women At Any Age.
