Well, it finally happened. The spam bots found my little piece of the internet and flooded my poor Mailchimp newsletter with hundreds of thousands of sign-ups, all from a &quot;Hot Alisa&quot; apparently. 
I discovered the spam while on vacation in Atlanta with my sister. I usually check my newsletter every once in a while to see if someone new signed up and if I can recognize the name. The newsletter is mostly family, friends, and work colleagues but I'll also have an interested stranger sign up every once in a while. That always gives me the warm fuzzies. 
So, while on my laptop and checking out Mailchimp, I noticed the thousands of sign-ups and saw that sign-ups had been paused since I'm on the free plan for Mailchimp that only allows 500 contacts and 2,500 emails per month. I was definitely well over that. The worst part was that I had to manually archive all of those spam sign-ups. It wasn't hard but rather tedious. I told my sister that as soon as I got home, I would have to add a CAPTCHA of some kind to prevent this from happening again.
<img src="https://brittanisavery.com/images/posts/google-recaptcha-example.gif" alt="An animated gif showing the checkbox for Google reCAPTCHA" />
According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, a CAPTCHA (which stands for &quot;Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart&quot;) is a type of challenge–response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. If you've been around the internet for any moment of time, you would have definitely seen one. The most common varieties include picking images that contain a certain object like bicycles, reading moving and/or distorted letters, and even just checking a box that says &quot;I'm not a robot&quot;. There are levels of difficulty, which can unfortunately keep out real humans. The system isn't perfect, but it can prevent most spam attacks at a slight inconvenience to human users.
There are two main options for CAPTCHA: Google reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha. I picked hCaptcha since it's more focused on privacy. The documentation also seemed a bit easier to understand and implement for me. There is a React component for hCaptcha and it was super easy to integrate into the current newsletter form. A fragment of the <code>newsletter.tsx</code> below:
<pre class="language-js"><code class="language-js">import HCaptcha from "@hcaptcha/react-hcaptcha";
.
.
.
export default function Newsletter({ topics }: NewsletterProps): JSX.Element {
 // This keeps track of any errors with the CAPTCHA
 const [captchaError, setCaptchaError] = useState("");

 // This holds the token generated once the user completes the CAPTCHA
 const [captchaToken, setCaptchaToken] = useState&lt;string>(null);
.
.
.
 function joinSubmit() {
 // making sure the CAPTCHA is not empty and successfully completed
 if (isEmpty(formJson["h-captcha-response"])) {
 setCaptchaError("The captcha check is required.");
 } else {
 // verify the captcha token, i.e. make sure this user is a human and not a bot
 const verified = await fetch("/api/captcha", {
 method: "POST",
 body: new URLSearchParams({ token: captchaToken }),
 });

 if (!verified.ok) {
 setCaptchaError(
 "The captcha check was not successful. Please try again."
 );
 }
 }

 // form has some kind of error, so we'll reset the CAPTCHA and let the user fix the form error
 if (nameError || emailError || captchaError) {
 captchaRef.current.resetCaptcha();
 return;
 }
 }

 return (
 &lt;form>
 .
 .
 .
 &lt;div className="field">
 &lt;span className="label has-text-primary">Proof of Humanity&lt;/span>
 &lt;HCaptcha
 sitekey={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_HCAPTCHA_SITEKEY}
 onVerify={(token) => {
 setCaptchaToken(token);
 }}
 ref={captchaRef}
 />
 &lt;p className={clsx("help is-danger")} aria-live="polite">
 {captchaError}
 &lt;/p>
 &lt;/div>
 &lt;/form>
 )
}
</code></pre>
With hCaptcha in place, I have not experienced any spamming. If you want to try out the new and exciting CAPTCHA, sign up for the <a href="https://brittanisavery.com/newsletter">newsletter</a> and you'll get the bonus of updates from me. Do you have any funny stories about your dealings with spam bots or other tech security concerns? Let me know!

The spam bots finally found my little piece of the internet and flooded my newsletter with thousands of sign-ups from a "Hot Alisa". This post describes the steps I took to make sure that the spamming can never happen again.

Mailchimp in "The Attack of the Bots"

I recently started a new job at <a href="https://www.simplehealth.com/" target="_blank">SimpleHealth</a>, a company that strives to simplify reproductive health care. Before interviewing with them, I remembered seeing an online ad on some social media, like Facebook or Instagram. But that was it. I knew very little else about them.
Right from the start, I knew that this company was different. The salary for this senior software engineer position was mentioned during the first phone call with the recruiter, no salary negotiation required. The unlimited vacation wasn't just a fake perk, but one that was actively encouraged with a two-week minimum (average vacation normally taken is around 3-5 weeks). The CEO is a Black and Chinese disabled woman who has grown the company in a manageable fashion. This start-up has even acquired another company that will play off well with their birth-control business. My interest was piqued and I was excited to move forward with the interview process.
During my interviews and my first couple of weeks, the one thing that I really noticed was the ample amount of diversity in backgrounds and cultures. My first interview was with an Indian woman (my manager now) and my technical interview was with a White guy who had majored in music but taught himself to code well enough to be promoted to a senior developer. There's a Black data engineer with long locs (hair goals fa real). The VP of engineering is a Black man living in Atlanta. The new CTO is a woman, a rarity in itself. A developer that came over with the acquired company is from Austria, who moved back home from the states with four dogs. Talk about determination and grit! And for the first time in my 14-year career, I am working with a Black female developer. She just graduated from a boot camp and the company took a chance on her, creating a junior position to have her on the team. It's been great seeing so many different kinds of people working together to spread knowledge and medication of reproductive health for those that need it.
Sometime during my second week at SimpleHealth, I got a LinkedIn message from one of my former coworkers from the job I just left. The reason for his message was to ask of my previous salary since he wanted to make sure that he wasn't asking too much for a raise. I stated that mine was $120,000 and wished him the best in his request, thinking that would be the end of the conversation.
He replied, &quot;Wait seriously? They really lowballed you, I was given $150k =/&quot;.
To say that I was a little upset would probably be an understatement. Certainly not at my former coworker. I honestly appreciate him telling me and sharing my disbelief. At the time when I received his message, I was speaking with the Black junior dev and she also agreed in the difference's ridiculousness. All three of us acknowledged that our places of residence could have affected the difference in salary, but that was never mentioned to me as a reason for the limit of my salary. The recruiter made it seem like this was the highest amount available.
My former coworker and I were hired at most a month apart. We both have specialized knowledge that the company needed, backend development for me and mobile development for him. Yet for the most part, that is where the similarities end. I have a bachelor's degree in computer science. He has an associate's degree. I have 14 years of professional experience. He has 7 years. I am a Black woman. He is a White man.
While this is the first time I have seen a major discrepancy between my salary and the salary of a White male coworker, I have noticed the absences of certain milestones in my career. I have never been promoted. I have never held the title of senior developer/engineer until my position at SimpleHealth. I have never had a raise more than the standard 3%. I have been laid off twice, once from a job where I stayed for four years and was the team-appointed mentor for all new devs.
Coworkers have described me as a hard worker with an easy-going attitude. Managers have told me that they don't worry about my code or my timelines. But none of that praise transformed into tangible benefits. No raises, no promotions, no title changes. In 2020, the pay gap between men and woman was 17% <a href="https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/simple-truth/" target="_blank">(Source)</a>. The pay gap between me and my former coworker is 20%. It doesn't seem like too much has changed. 
In the future, I will be completely fulfilled by work rather than 'toiling for nothing' like I have in most of my jobs. <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/isaiah/65/#v23065021-v23065023" target="_blank">(Isaiah 65:21-23)</a>. Until then, I look forward to seeing what I can help SimpleHealth to accomplish and how I can grow further as a developer. During my first 1-on-1 with my manager, she asked about my career goals and how she can help me achieve them. There are new projects in the pipeline of which I'll be a big part. I'm glad to be at a company that values my experience, my knowledge, my perspective—my worth.

In 2020, a woman working in the US made 17% less than a man. When comparing my former salary to that of my male coworker, it seems like the salary pay gap is still alive and well.

The Many Sides of Brittani S Avery

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Mailchimp in "The Attack of the Bots"

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