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Mika Flowers’s essay “The Version of Me Who Looks Better on Paper Doesn’t Exist” is about the distance between a conventional résumé and a real life. She imagines a version of herself with a computer science degree, internships, and a straight route to a junior developer job. That version might be taken seriously sooner, she suggests—but, as she puts it, “But she also doesn’t exist.”
Flowers’s actual route includes retail management, caregiving, an unfinished training program, self-directed study, and software projects she has built. Her essay is a personal account of learning and seeking recognition, not a study of hiring outcomes or a promise that any particular approach will secure a job.
The “better on paper” version is hypothetical
Flowers’s title points to an imagined version of herself whose path follows a familiar sequence: earn a computer science degree, complete internships, and move into a junior developer role. The contrast is not between two real candidates or two measured hiring outcomes. It is between the résumé that might look conventional and the person Flowers actually is.
Her real history includes retail work and management, caregiving, and a training program she did not finish. Those parts of her life sit alongside her effort to learn software and build things. The essay does not treat a tidy chronology as the only credible route into development; it asks readers to see the work and the person behind a less conventional record.
#1 Best Overall
How Flowers learned and demonstrated software skills
Flowers describes learning through a mix of formal training, tutorials, documentation, trial and error, and open-source discussion. She also built projects. Her account is neither a claim that credentials are worthless nor a claim that self-directed learning is easy. It is a description of the ways she pursued the skills she wanted despite an interrupted route.
She writes about having to establish repeatedly that she can do the work. The essay captures that pressure in questions such as “How many times do I have to prove I know how to build something” and “Can she actually code?” These are Flowers’s expressions of the scrutiny she describes, not survey findings or evidence about how often developers are doubted.
Writing about what she learned and making projects gave her tangible evidence to point to when self-doubt surfaced. That evidence matters to her story, but the essay does not say that publishing or building projects guarantees an interview, an offer, or a job.
Rejection and identity: what the essay does—and doesn’t—claim
Flowers identifies as a transgender woman and describes conversations changing, as well as rejections whose reasons she could not always know. She leaves that uncertainty intact. The essay does not establish that a particular rejection was discriminatory, and it should not be read as proving a general hiring pattern for transgender applicants.
That uncertainty is part of the emotional burden she conveys: when the answer is no, she cannot always tell what led to it. Her account also contains grief for time she feels she lost and for the career she might have had in different circumstances. She does not reduce that grief to a neat lesson or suggest that determination erases it.
Belonging without pretending the path was linear
Flowers’s closing stance is both an assertion and a request: she belongs in software development, and she wants a chance to demonstrate what she can do. That is not a demand for lower standards. It is a challenge to treat a non-linear biography as something other than an apology, and to let actual work count as evidence of ability.
Rank #4
For readers with interrupted careers or unconventional training, the essay offers recognition rather than a universal formula. Flowers’s projects and writing helped her point to what she had learned; her experience does not establish that the same steps will produce the same result for anyone else.
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Mika Flowers published “The Version of Me Who Looks Better on Paper Doesn’t Exist” on DEV Community on September 30, 2026. Read the essay on DEV Community.
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