Last year we tested the unu Scooter Classic. Beginning of this year we went again to unu’s headquarter in Berlin to find out how the second generation differs from the first one. And now we had the opportunity to learn more about the people who work at unu. For our interview series ‘5+1’ we spoke to head of mobile engineering Mihriban Minaz.

Mihriban studied computer engineering in Istanbul and has been working for unu since more than four years now. For two and a half years she was the only woman in the software team. However today it already looks different. In her department they reached a 40 percent women ratio. Well done. Learn more about how Mihriban got into computer engineering, her opinion on how to encourage more women to study and work in the tech sector, her general career and job at unu, her favourite form of transportation, the male-dominated mobility industry and how it looks at unu.

1. You studied computer engineering in Istanbul – a course of studies which is predominantly attended by men. How did you get into that? How can we encourage more women to study and work in the tech sector?

In Turkey, we have a central exam anyone who would like to study at the university has to take (2.433.219 people attended in 2020). This creates a high demand around hard-to-study, job-guaranteed professions such as engineering, medicine, law. When it comes to me, I knew that I was going to study engineering since I was very young. In the home stretch I decided for computer engineering mostly because I was into math and problem solving. There is also the incentive effect of one of my teachers telling me his friend’s daughter studied computer engineering (same university that I studied later) and she was very happy with her profession.

Companies should spend extra effort to create opportunities for underrepresented groups. There are several ways of it: supporting local women in tech communities' events and courses by sponsoring, or like we did at unu, organising free coding courses for complete beginners together with these communities.
To reach younger generations and inspire them on engineering profession, we had three years in a row young visitors coming to unu on Girls’ & Boys’ day, learning about what it means to be an engineer (both software/hardware departments) :) Role models also play a big role on younger generations’ choices: putting a spotlight on women in this male dominated industry – like you do – encourages them to tech. I am also in favour of back to work programmes for mothers to ease the period of getting back on the career track.

2. You are Head of Mobile Engineering at unu. What does your job involve? How does your working day look like?

My main job is to lead the mobile team, together we develop, iterate and maintain the end user app of unu and its backend. It also includes building pipelines for testing, automation of app releases for our beta users and production. Also, there is another hidden work for each of us: the contributions to the culture, expansion and strategy of the company in different levels, either on companywide or team/department level.
My one day is 50 percent meetings/documentation (one on ones with my team members/my manager, product-tech meetings, app planning/refinement meetings, retrospectives), 30 percent support for my team (code reviews, pair programming, solving an issue, removing a blocker), 20 percent process, software team/company related work (interviews, technical challenge preparation and reviewing).

3. Have you always been interested in mobility and knew that you are going to work in this branch? Where did you start your career?

The thing which interests me the most about my profession is solving a problem, bringing a new solution. It can be through different products and for different industries.
My first job was at a health company, implemented an app to fetch the diagnosis from a medical biopsy testing machine directly to our product to prevent the mistakes during the manual entry done by laboratory technicians.
Before unu, I worked on several products for different industries such as banking, e-commerce, health, restaurant, gaming, e-learning and also on mobility focused products such as airlines companies apps.
What excites me most at unu and working on a mobility product is, to know that things are still very immature and require lots of exploration. It not like developing a banking/e-commerce app – most of the things are standardised already and best practices are established a long time ago. The challenges such as Bluetooth/NFC/Cloud communication, maps/telemetry are inspiring.

4. What is your favourite form of transportation and why? How do you get around in Berlin?

I can divide it as before and after corona times.
Before: inside the city, I use unu Scooter a lot in summer, u-bahn in winter and shuttle services or requesting a ride if I am drunk. For travelling within Germany, I love trains – they are very spacious and comfortable.
After: since the weather is also good, I almost only used my scooter to visit friends in their neighbourhood, do the groceries.

5. The mobility industry is still dominated by men. How does it look like in your team and in general at unu? Where do you see the benefits and chances of having more women in this industry?

At unu, we spend extra effort and focus on inclusiveness and diversity not only for gender, but also for race, sexual orientation, age, parental status etc. There is a continuous improvement towards using inclusive language, people’s preferred pronouns. As for the software team we are very happy that we reached to 40 percent women ratio in our department. This didn’t happen magically or over-night. Our team organised two times javascript crash course together with a local women tech community. Through that we got women colleagues. Also we looked for women candidates through women in tech slack groups and job listings.
Diversity is very important since every new person with a different background brings a new perspective to the team. A study from 2019 shows that a woman has a 73 percent higher chance of being seriously injured or killed in a car crash than a man. Because they use an average man for crash-tests. This is a lot related to the male domination in the automotive industry. It is very crucial to have diversity in decision makers, leadership, engineers and scientists. It is a lot like parliamentary democracy, someone representing us should be present in the room (industry) when a crash-test dummy’s dimensions are decided. Quite similar with the height/weight of a scooter. I remember, when the scooter was still on prototyping stage, my colleague Thomas calling me to the room for a trial whether I am comfortable with the height of the new scooter - I am 1.63) We are human and tend to have unconscious biases, they lead to wrong product decisions. Fostering diversity raises awareness around such biases.

And the +1 question from Mihriban to you: “In future, when you have a self-driving car, what would you do in it – since you won't be driving it?”

Let us know what you would then be doing in the car. We are looking forward to your answers.

– Watching outside, enjoying the ride. (via Instagram)
– Sleep in it on the way. (via Instagram)
– Meditate (via Instagram)

We tested unu’s first and second generation. Make sure to check it out.

Pictures: Mihriban Minaz
Interview: Britta Reineke

'5+1‘ with unu's head of mobile engineering Mihriban Minaz