Career Path Experience Stories

Speaker 1 [00:09]

I'm glad to present our session, Share Your Career Journey, and so thank you so much for being here. We are super exciting to have you. And the idea of this session was quite simple. What if we had heard more honest, real stories when we were students or in the beginning of our career path. And I don't want to hear these great, successful LinkedIn stories. I want to hear the messy, unexpected human journey behind them, with some doubts, probably with some errors and surprises, but also with skills and moments that make them real. We decided to create this space where all professionals can share their different backgrounds and can share how they come where they are. What can you take from this session today? So as a first point, I would like you to understand that a career path doesn't have to be perfect. skills, even ones that you don't matter, you think that they don't matter, my open doors and for you that you haven't even imagined yet. And that there is a power of asking questions, listening and connecting with people who've been where you are now. And I ask you to be curious, take notes if you want, and mostly important ask questions you can ask it directly from the audience or using slido and let's make fun honest and real thank you so i would like to ask the first speaker alexander to share his career path thank you so much for organizing i think this is a great initiative how much time do I have? Like two minutes? Five minutes. Okay, I'll try really short at the same time. Okay, this is probably to me, you know, like, yeah, successful, all this on stage, blah, blah, blah, community, AI, data, AI. Okay, then now let's share my, how I'm not able, like this. Okay, I just said, okay, this is basically my life. Yeah, this is my life, and it's a mess, and I had really, like, a lot of feelings and all stuff I also made like wrong assumptions so I really start as a five-year I was born in Heidelberg my father was working at a building company so I was actually my first three years in school in Iran which in the German school it was before the revolution and actually I was taught in a class with parallel teaching which basically oh my god we cannot do it did it affect me no I don't think so so I came back actually I was always into music I became I was DJing techno house was a new thing at the time so a lot of enthusiasm there I was a party promoter doing school parties also like other techno parties and stuff it was like a really vivid time then I really didn't know about if I should not go to the military or not because I simply had no answer to the question oh if I really need to shoot somebody will I do it I just had no answer and I didn't want to lie about it as well. So I found the easy path. Let's go to NATO, and I was actually in administration, so I'm really probably not the best soldier to defend you, but I know processes and NATO administration. So, yeah, 25 years, I, well, after two years of military, which was still, like, a thing you had to do at that time, and I decided, yeah, I don't really want to go for psychology. Let's rather study the law. I have no answer why I made this call and I think it's totally okay with 21 not to really know where your life will lead there is not this straight path so then while I was studying the law I was DJing doing parties and stuff and working in a record shop while studying the law I worked in a record shop because I had to self my fund my studies so my father my mother was a single mom She left my father when she was 40. With me, as a seven-year-old, she rebuilt her tailor business. We never had a lot of money. So I always had to work for if I wanted to have something fancy or make my living. Of course, it was a struggle, but also, while all the side hustles I had, like serving pizza at Pizza Hut and stuff to make money, I learned a lot. The best thing, if you want to go, if you want to learn about people, serve people because then you will really know who's nice and who's not so nice so yeah it's a life experience actually a lot then of course i was djing stein leute was like this music company they had just like started i joined them i said i also want to do a label sure why not a little bit like the python community i want to do this yeah sure why not um so eventually i had was running a house label, our company grew, I could basically follow many passions like music, working with artists. Fun fact, my most successful artists were actually all from Darmstadt, so I know the region. And actually, yeah, so we're working, business was doing really good, it was really exciting time to do stuff and but since business was doing well, we absolutely ran into an administration problem, because at that time, fax, post, don't sell this, the sales reports were not in the file, they were sent in paper, so we had to fix it, because we didn't have the capacity, so there was no software, because there were no companies building software for that, so I had to type, I taught myself programming, build a whole EPR, this is how I got into programming, which was really good because with like 28 years I was a CEO of a non-listed AG. I was really proud. I never had a suit at that time and yeah but eventually with the music crisis the whole thing totally fell apart and everything I had worked in my life for fell apart because I was fully invested with my life and what I'm doing in this company. And they said, oh, who wants to? I don't have an education. I quit studying, but yeah, good thing was Apple launched the music downloads. I was one of the few people who knew programming, tech, and the industry. And actually, yeah, it was the unicorn in sending these both domains. And then I was a little bit, okay, music industry just sounds fancy. If you do it too long, it's just like, oh no, I really want to leave. And then I got into like weekends at Coursera and nights in Jupyter Notebooks, taught myself data science with everything we have at hand yeah one point is when i started programming there i had two books no youtube videos no online nobody to help me yeah it's like today you just have to pick it up it's awesome times so what i sum it up and now this is like the the career i built then and machine learning and ai and i'm i'm i'm really really happy um i would say i'm a generalist i'm probably not the best programmer i can program solar stuff and build good architectures reliable architectures but there's people that are better than me um so but with broad entre interests and curiosity i was able to find my path and also some people say oh come on alex music data programming oh you really have a really good hand in making your passions into your profession um which is probably good but it's also like enjoyable if you're like a lot of energy if you really like what you do um yeah you know if this one work as well okay great does anyone have some question we have a time for one or two questions great so I guess my question is how did you kind of balance work-life balance with being success what is work-life balance I like what I do I enjoy community I just like what I do I I don't have any other hobbies Please, that's the thing. So, yeah. So, yeah. Thank you. Someone else? Okay. This is voice. Hello. I'm quite impressed by your story, indeed. And then they have so many lessons for me to take I did my PhD in math and I did also postdoc, but I'm so much hesitating to take the next step and always waiting to be perfect and then sort of talk about it. For a person or for people like me, what is your real suggestion to make us to the next step? You are your own worst enemy. That is the suggestion. And that's what I learned myself. So in the past, if you have looked at my LinkedIn or like maybe a year ago, there was zero reference to music industry because I said, oh, the music industry, well, it's like, if you know the music industry, no, it's like not really super professional. It's like shiny, but not professional. So actually everything my CV started with, yeah, here was like Apple, digitalization and stuff. So I really hit it and I can also make like a really other submission because everything is in your head and you basically have a no already just there. You have to really go and dare, and it probably doesn't work every time, so don't go, try to go for the sure shot. Of course, sometimes you have a no, sometimes people you're not interested, but I can make a really big commitment here, like, or like, I was saying, not commitment, yeah. So when I joined the Python community at EuroPython, it was my second year in Python, So I knew programming, but I migrated from something more proprietary to Python. The whole community and everything was pretty new to me. I really enjoyed it. I was session chair for Valerio at PyData Berlin and EuroPython at that time. And I really enjoyed the community. I joined EuroPython society, and there were all these strangers on email I never worked with. And then EuroPython was being rebuilt in Bilbao. So actually I was organizing a Python conference for 1,200 people in Bilbao where I've never been with total strangers. I didn't know anybody. And somehow it worked. I learned a lot from this. I couldn't believe this works, but actually during the process and for rebuilding, I said, yeah, we need program chairs for EuroPython, the big EuroPython, so we need program chairs. So actually Alex Savio and me said, Let's do program chairing. Do you think somebody is like two years into Python should program chair a conference like this? You probably wouldn't say no, but is it necessary to be a good program chair to be the best programmer? You just need to see what's relevant for the community. It's more like a little bit more like knowing, having like an overview and just doing a good job. And actually the next thing I have to admit, I think it was the third year of Python, a very friendly core developer explained to me that Python is actually written in C because I was just a Python user. I don't care what's happening under the hood. So this is stuff where we say, don't think, be annoyed, don't try to shine because we have all these things in our head. Just go ahead and do it. And sometimes you have a no, but I, from my experience, most of the time you get a yes and just do it. Okay, thank you for your presentation. Thank you so much. and I'm really sorry I have to leave early because I have to go to have another session Alex is always busy busy but yeah hello my name is Nico and I structured it a little bit so that I can basically give you three key takeaways And the first, basically up there, you see also my official CV, like stuff like high school, then I studied industrial engineering, worked as a data scientist, now became a team lead, straightforward. But what actually made that possible or what was the most interesting thing for me have been always my side projects. Basically, I mean, yeah, you have to do some study at a university or like some go to high school and stuff. But, I mean, there you learn important basics, but that's what really frames you are the things you do on the site, the things where you have actually a passion to do it on the site because then, I mean, it's totally optional. All those site projects, no one told me I have to do that. I did all of this because, yeah, it motivated me. I had a passion for it. I coded through nights because I wanted to do something. I joined hackathons because it was a great atmosphere. I don't know, if you have an interesting idea, something that triggers you, go for it. That's the thing where you actually make progress and where everything, I think, becomes very interesting and what you can also later talk about. And the great thing about SideProject is you can always start from scratch and fresh and yeah, learn a lot. The second thing I would say is become a contributor. So not just take courses in Coursera or in the university or wherever, but start doing things on your own. Two examples for me that really helped me was I always had been active podcast listener for more than 10 years, like really first Apple iPod I had and then I was listening to podcasts all day. And there are a lot of good tech podcasts where you can learn a lot about tech. But back then, there wasn't so much in German. Most of it was in English, and there was a little bit in German, but not so much. And it took me, like, I had the idea of, yeah, I could start an own podcast, but can I really do this? And I thought about it for almost a year, until I met someone who also had the wish of a good German tech podcast. And then I started with it. And it was a great thing for me because, yeah, I basically just asked people I knew from somewhere or who are good in some field and asked them, can you sit together with me and explain to me what you do? And I recorded and I cut it and stuff. And yeah, that was always a great opportunity for me to learn. And as it goes, you get more confident and things and stuff. And then at some point you might even ask people where you look up to and where you normally wouldn't be brave enough to say, okay, can you explain me things? But with something like a podcast in the background, that really helped me. And it gave me some audience and, yeah. But that's just my personal thing. The second thing, I love to speak at conferences. I think it's a great opportunity because you can meet people, you can exchange. If you give a presentation, people might later at a coffee come by and ask you about your talk. out but people come to you that also a nice thing which helped me but I want to say it doesn't have to be like that you don't have to get on the stage or something if you don't like that but become active build an open source project for example just don't use it on your own but push things out speak about the things you are doing maybe organize if you like to organize things yeah like do it as Alex and organize events like meetups and stuff there's the Python ecosystem and the path community is really open for everyone who wants to engage and do things and yeah that is the point where you actually yeah get your hands dirty learn if you can teach something you really have understood it so get active and jump over your your shadow and the third and last thing is if you are in doubt I would say news always better or mostly better because for a couple of reasons. If you pick a young technology normally it's easier to start because it's not like every nitty-gritty detail is already there but you can basically learn with the project. Often the contributors are really open already still to feedback because they don't have a big audience and it's much easier to become an expert in some technology which is just evolving because it's basically new to everyone you have the benefits as a starter that you don't have any legacy code or things you already have to maintain or stuff you can start from scratch so if you end up I would always pick kind of the younger newer project because yeah you can easier making an influence there and yeah but only do it if it makes sense so don't solve a record with a neural net but yeah that's basically my three takeaways for you thank you a lot for your presentation does someone have a question okay I can repeat it Hi, Nico. Because I know you for years, my question is, how do you find the time and the energy to do all these things? And also, if I look at your slides, you're doing a lot of things. How do you handle all the information you get from these things? Yeah, that's true. I would say, as Alex said, if you really like what you do and the side projects and stuff, you like it, yeah, that gives you energy as well. So if you can work on something that, what you enjoy, it should normally give you energy. And if you realize that working on it takes you all the energy and you really need some things that motivates you to do that, you should rethink whether you're actually doing the thing where you're best at. Because I would argue, at least for me it was always, if I can work on things I want to work on, that rather gives me energy than taking it. Great, another question from the audience? Before you told that your podcast as well, you talk about whatever you were doing, and how did you decide that really, okay, now I'm okay in this topic and I can talk in it? The point was I always was kind of the moderator and I could just ask the question. I had an expert to talk about. I was never the expert in my own podcast. And the nice thing is I could even ask questions where I felt like really stupid to not know with like saying like for the audience or for people. I mean, it was totally crazy because it was for me, but I felt so unsure in the beginning that I wasn't brave enough to say, okay, I don't understand that. I should have done that, because it would be better for my listeners in the end, but in the beginning that helped me, and later I also did it on my own and said, okay, even if it's really basic, I don't understand it, so can you please explain it, yeah. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Let's invite a new speaker. Okay, hi everyone, my name is Daria, and here's my story how I went from a city-at-home mom to a senior data scientist. So let me start, my exposure to programming started when I was in the middle school, but to be honest it was pretty boring, because these Pascal tasks, and also I didn't understand the connection to the real world, so we were just solving tasks, so I decided to give up on that and that led me to getting a bachelor's degree in management and economics and at the same time i was trying to learn foreign languages as much as i can as i could and i i couldn't pick up one language to focus to become for example an interpreter or translator because I just loved the rules you know the systems grammar like the logic behind the language and it was like I was ready to jump over next language whether it would be like Chinese or French to compare them so I was pretty nerdy in that stuff and then after graduation I got married and I had my family and my kids are now like nine and six I have two daughters and also I was pretty happy and I'm pretty happy in my married life but I was thinking about is it it so would I be forever staying at home mom just like reading something posting something writing something like blog post and And here's what I, yeah, my maternity leave was quite extended. It was like, I believe, five or six years. So I had some time to think, like with the free part of my brain, because other part of my brain was occupied by family. And I thought about languages and what was very exciting for me in languages. And I understood that under the language, there is data, there is structure, there is logic, and I decided to Google it. Yeah, what can we do with language, but like in a more fashioned way? That's why I came across NLP, natural language processing, and then I found out about data science. And I was pretty lucky because already in that time I had a choice of online courses, tutorials, schools, and I tried to jump over next new thing, study everything. And I even got an internship in EPAM and I was happy to do it remotely. And then I was hired by an outsource company. and during all this all these steps I learned a lot I was like drinking from a fire hose and also there were a lot of struggles because when I tried to to get hired by a company because I just had some studies but I had no credentials no work experience it was it was tough because I got a lot of rejections so but my family supported me and then I just realized that knowledge is a power because it can help you to switch your domain it can help you to to get a new entire new career that's why I like to learn I keep learning and I like to share my knowledge that's why I'm pretty active in AWS community and I hope to be more active in Python community and I like that now we have a lot of opportunities to if you search for opportunities you will get them so my takeaways that that there is no like golden rule or proven path of your career you can follow you can go back and forth you can take your own way and but what will help you is to be curious and try to learn more about something you have no idea about, then that if you're new, if you're a beginner failures are just, you cannot avoid them, but what will help you is if you build a supportive network, your friends, your family, community, they will support you they will like embrace your failures, they will help you to go through it and also one important thing is to know your why. My why was to support my family and to earn a decent amount of money so it will help you to go through your struggles and also try to save your achievement even the like screenshots someone praised you save it because impostor attacks I guess everyone knows about it yeah and also yeah just take care of your mental health take breaks it's it's okay because there is no golden rule thank you thank you very much we have some time for questions yes Just when it comes to like career transitioning and changing, you know, and learning a new programming language from scratch, and I think like maybe just maybe a motivation for people that are actually like starting that, you know, how difficult it is sometimes to go through online courses or to choose between YouTube and what we call like tutorial help being stuck in that loop, going to video and video again. And how can people actually navigate that path and make sure they get the best out of learning programming? Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. So I think my take was to first ask people about what kind of courses they would suggest. Also I was trying to support some popular courses. But the most essential is not just to watch them, like watch video, try to use this knowledge and already tried to build something with this knowledge. That's why this is where your learning curve would be steep, because you will get a lot of errors, you will get a lot of, you know, I don't know how to figure it out, but that will lead you to another videos and to something that you, like, you already did this, you already have a hands-on practice not just you remember something from the video so I think that every video is good so far it's it helps you to build something great thank you one more question without prior work experience how did you find your first big breakthrough in the data science industry yeah this this is a great question because uh because in my situation i was you know i was located in a small town i had no like big offices nearby and i was trying to find an online remote opportunities and it was challenging i got a lot of rejections maybe primarily because i didn't have like relevant experience and the second point was about that I didn't have idea about the profile, exact profile. I was trying to apply to data engineering, like data analysis, data sciences, like every type of roles related to data. And then I realized one thing, that I could get experience at my current place because I was a content creator, you know, like doing some part-time blog posting. And I just ask them, if you are okay, I can do some, you know, numbers, Excel spreadsheets. And I already can put this as a small working experience, but it is still a real-world experience. And during my interviews, I was talking about these experiences. Yeah, it was a relevant experience, and that helped me a lot, because I already had a topic to discuss. Great, I think it's a great tip. Thank you. Thank you. Is it on? I think so. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much also from my side for joining today. I'll walk you quickly through my career path and where I started. I'm currently working as a senior data scientist, but it all started with a PhD, a bachelor's and a master's in political science, so totally not computer science. And currently in my team, I'm the only one with a not computer science C background. I mean, there is diversity, but there's no one coming from social sciences. If you look at my career trajectory, those green parts here, it kind of looks like a straight line. So I was doing my PhD already, doing some kind of freelance data science. I then started as a proper data scientist in a company, moved to IBM, and now I'm with SAP. But there's more behind the story, as so many before already told you. And the more to the story is actually side projects and being involved in the community And realizing that the things that you already know, even if you're not coming from a computer science background, are a perfect fit to the things that you will be doing in your everyday job. For me, it was Correlate, which is a non-profit organization where I was volunteering. I was doing project work there. I was doing mentoring. I was giving presentations. it all kind of counts towards your work experience that you can then sell to your future employee and kind of make them aware that you know what you're doing and that you have these kind of skills. I'm also involved with PyLadies and RLadies. So PyLadies are here, obviously, if you didn't get a chance. There's a booth over there. Pick it up and talk to them. It's a great community to be involved in. And I'm also Google's Women Techmakers Ambassador, another network to be engaged in where you can get training and where you can also speak and talk with people in network. So this is kind of basically my whole career story and what I said before is coming from a social science background it might be hard to sell to someone who is not coming from who has a more technical field to sell those people that you also have these skills that they are looking for and that's one of the kind of major lessons that I learned when I was moving into the field and not going the postdoc route that was kind of predefined for me before. So what I did is I sat down, I looked at the skills that data science requires, I went through job application or job advertisements, I went through and saw okay they're looking for math and statistics. They are looking for programming and database. They are looking for domain knowledge and soft skills. They're also looking for communication and visualization and eventually, depending on where you work, they want to build products and not just prototypes. So I sat down, looked at that and then looked at my experience that I had back then, gained during my PhD, gained during like things I was doing during side projects. I went through that and realized my portfolio looks actually pretty nice. I can relate to that and I can bring these skills because actually I have a background in statistics. I did that during my political science studies because it was a major part of my whole training. I also have some experience in programming. Of course, there are people who are better, but I bring other things to the table that can be beneficial. I have, obviously, I mean, you have domain knowledge, depending on where you end at working, you will pick up different domain knowledge over the long term, but that's okay. You can do that, because those are things that you learned during your studies. And I mean, I also think I do have some soft skills, so I'm also bringing that to the table. I can communicate, I can visualize results, because I've done that during my PhD. I've done so many plots, I can do that. And that actually brought me to data science because during my PhD I was building my first open source package and I shared it with the world and realized it's so cool to build something that people are actually using so I can partially build products, small products, but I can somewhat do that. And that's what I brought to those interviews and where I convinced people. But those things would never, at least not for me, They would never have been possible if there wasn't the community. For me, it was writing blog posts, being engaged with Correlate, as I said before, like this kind of nonprofit organization, but also being part of Our Ladies, PyLadies, and all those other networks. They're a really nice place to be, to learn, and also to give back, which I think is really essential and so beneficial for everyone. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. We have time for two questions. Someone like to ask something? Okay, I will give first one. Thank you, that was lovely. Just a quick one about not taking the academic route that was planned for you after your PhD. Was that a hard decision to make and how did you get there? Yes, it was a hard decision because I had really nice postdoc offer on the table to be honest And I was really considering doing it and I always wanted to I wanted to become a researcher It was like I realized during my during my bachelor's that the work that we're doing is so cool Like really diving into something and figuring things out working independently but in the end academia at least in the European German context is highly unstable it's not secure there are so many kind of downsides and also you're working like for three years on a paper and then there are like five people reading it I mean like it's a bit sarcastically but it's it's it kind of somewhat reflects reality and with the open source software I realize okay there are like 10,000 downloads 12,000 downloads something like that so people at least it feels like they're more using it so making them this kind of I like pro con lists I made that one and I made the decision but it was a tough one but I don't regret it because it's it's an I feel for me it's the right place to work in yeah thank you and we have another question how did you get your first projects as freelance data scientist community so I wrote blog posts actually and um i was like it was during the covid period um i submitted my ph my my my cv at a conference and some companies saw it there it was like some kind of job board or something like that and they reached out and was like hey do you want to support us i was like we've seen other things from you on twitter you were talking about xyz and i mean like it's really easy actually like once you do this step and you start talking about the things that you're doing I know it's intimidating at first but like not being in front of an audience like in reality but posting things online it's so it can be so easy once you did the first step and that's what I did and then I was talking about that the company knew me from beforehand saw my CV and they reached out so that's That's basically it. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Advancing one's career is often visualized in media as climbing a mountain. Depending on one's route, skill set, and even luck, the length and experience of such a climb can vary greatly. Today you have learned and will continue to learn from very inspiring individuals how to scale such mountains. But I'm not here today to advise you on how to climb mountains. I'm here to advise you on how to bridge the valleys that lead to those mountains. Because not everyone is privileged enough to be dropped off at the base of such, at this, or at our metaphorical career mountain upon reaching adulthood. And I'm one such individual. I'm Jonathan, and I'm a 33-year-old school dropout. After dropping out of school for health-related reasons, I worked various minimum-wage, dead-end jobs, barely making ends meet. I was neither respected nor appreciated for my work. Imagine going to work, having a dread being put down every day. That was my lived reality for many years. So, how did I turn my life around? I signed up for a distance learning program to earn my high school diploma. At that time, I didn't know that I was eventually going to begin to climb the data science mountain. But I knew that I liked thinking analytically and working with numbers. And such jobs require the correct papers generally. But as we heard today, that does not necessarily apply. But back then, I didn't know that. So in 2021, I discovered data science was a thing, and it piqued my interest. Soon after that, I used up all my vacation days for the year to teach myself Python through a Coursera course. Shout out to Dr. Chuck from the University of Michigan. Python for everyone. Anyway, at the end of the course, Dr. Chuck recommended students of the course to visit their local PyCon, and that was what led me to volunteer to the PyCon DE in 2022. I want to highlight that due to my financial situation at the time, I wouldn't have been able to afford participating if not for the financial aid program. So I want to offer a big thank you to the community and the sponsors for supporting me and many others. That what I experienced thanks to the act of kindness convinced me that data science was the way to go for me. And I haven't looked back since. End of 2022, I applied to my current company Fresenius as a dual student and I was accepted. In 2023 I earned my final high school diploma, yes in Germany there's three, it's a wonderful thing, while working two jobs on the side and then began studying data science. Today I'm a fourth semester data science and AI student and every day I actively look forward to working instead of dreading it. And while I just began the climb of this mountain two years ago, I'm overjoyed to have reached it in the first place after so many years. I'm truly happy now. So what advice do I present to you today based on my rather unique experiences? Number one, hard work invested in yourself always pays off. Number two, for the most part, anyone can learn anything. Number three, don't compare yourself to others. I used to struggle with imposter syndrome when I first, at my first PyCon, I felt like I didn't belong at all. And in general, in the years before I was, I managed to be in university, I felt really bad and struggled. But in the end, no other person has shared your struggles, so your individual journey can simply not be compared with others. Number four, often failure is a prerequisite of success. We've all walked into the Goomba before. So yeah, it's just part of the journey and yeah, don't shy away from it. And lastly, don't be ashamed of being different. Because when I think about how much younger the other students in my course are, I feel bad and I'm like, I have thoughts like, oh, my God, I'm like 10 years behind all these other young people. And but in the end, my journey was different. And when I think about how what kind of a walking statistical anomaly I am, that despite all the hurdles I had to go through, but I managed to make it there in the end. I begin to take pride being a walking statistical unicorn. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. We have time for one question, if someone wants to ask something, great. Thank you for sharing. How do you deal with your impostor syndrome? What has helped me is having people that support me. For me, my girlfriend is a really great support. And also, like I just mentioned, I show myself how I just look back and I realize how amazing it is that the long way I've come since 10 years ago or so. And when you look back on all your small little successes and how they've added up to that very moment, that's what lets me push on and, yeah, keep going. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, hi, everyone. pleasure to be here and hear so many inspiring stories it's it's a really big honor to be also be invited to this round here my name is anastasia kravdina and i'm here today to share my story with you here are two pictures of me um so it's me in my hometown and it's me not so while ago actually not so far away from here so enjoying the bicycle trip along the rhine river i can highly recommend And this, if you're into the bicycle, it's a fantastic road with a lot of many charming cities. As you can imagine, yeah, the reason why I put this picture, I was inspired by all these influencers and the social network where you need to stay next to your most expensive vehicle. And I hope this picture screams to you how successful I am in my life. As you can imagine, a few things happened in between of this, too. Let's get started. So I have a couple of minutes to tell you about this. Originally, I am from Siberia, Russia, as you can judge by my nice outfit. I was born there and lived there and also did my bachelor and master in physics. The reason why I decided to choose physics, I know it sounds strange, but it just was the most easiest thing for me to do. I was good in physics and then it was like, yeah, I will just go and study physics. Why not? The motto of my university was, we will teach you how to learn, which sounds a bit weird, but now I really embrace this because I think it was the main skill I got out of university. In addition to the great basic in physics, I actually learned how to learn, which is the skill I use till now. Back when I realized that, yeah, it would be nice to have some abroad experience, so So to speak, you know, when you live in Siberia, I can tell you I was like 23 when I met the first person who did not speak Russian, you know? So like the English was not my priority and any other foreign languages never. But for some reason I decided that my English is good enough just to go and live abroad, which was, well, very enthusiastic, I can tell you. So I landed in Germany, know nothing about Germany, not speaking the local language, and had very, very bad English back then. Anyway, it was sufficient to do a PhD in particle physics, and of course I had to pick up both languages, so English and German as well. And I was working in various so-called large-scale experiments, right? So the most known one among them is Large Hadron Collider, so you most probably have heard about this, this gigantic thing on the border between Switzerland and France, where people look at the tiny particles and try to understand how our universe works based on this. So essentially, in a nutshell, it's a lot of data you need to analyze, very unique data. And there are many people working on this experiment, so it's several thousand of people. So in addition to physics and programming skills, I also learned a lot about working in the large group of people, right? So it's similar to the enterprise we are working in right now. Yeah, it was a lot of fun and a lot of interesting things where you can apply, you know, a very wide variety of skills. And I noticed that I really enjoy working with data, but I don't really like unsafety in academia. A few people at Kazima formulated this very nicely, that you don't feel very safe and stable there. So for me, it was a point when I started to look at what else are there and where I can apply my skills and it was quite clear that I would like to go to the industry and become a data scientist. It was quite a difficult thing to do, to be honest. I was, you know, back when I was this proud postdoc, I was working at LHC, everyone will want me. It turned out not to be this way, right? So I still had to prove myself and show why I believe I will be highly useful in your company and when in the natural in my life I had like three major transition right so moving to another country moving from academia to industry and recently I did my maybe not the last but last till now transition from individual contributor to become an kind of manager right so now I'm living in in Hamburg in Germany I'm a tech lead in a big enterprise company, leading the team, building ML-based solutions, and in my free time I also mentor people and help them to find the best investment of their time to have a more fulfilling career, and also people who would like to break into the data. Right, that's it about me. thank you for your story i also studied in russia and we have the same motto the university probably the same university yeah great uh we have several minutes for the questions Hi. Thank you for sharing your experience, and also hi from Siberia. Great. And also hi from astronomy, from physics in general. And the question is actually, how did you sell yourself to an industry and program and data science stuff? Because, like, as I understand right now, people really think that physics, astronomy and all this stuff is something ephemeral, right? something is not connected completely to the stuff that basically we're all doing. Did you spend a lot of time and effort to try to explain that it's basically the same thing, or maybe you did some special tricks in order to convince people that actually I am doing the same thing that you are doing? Yeah, right, this is a fantastic question, thank you for asking this. I think the main trick, so to speak, is to understand where you're heading into, right? Because many people have this misperception that if you are working in science, that means you are wearing a white coat, you are sitting in the lab and doing something with glasses, which is far from the truth, especially for people who are coming from physics, right? And if you're also in astronomy, you might be part of a larger collaboration or smaller collaboration, But most probably what you do is not so far away as it might seem for people who never worked in the research. And unfortunately, they are not going to think about this themselves, right? So it's kind of your job to understand first what they are doing, what are the things which are valuable for them, and translate what you did, right? So I literally had to translate what I did and reflect on what I call achievements, so to speak, right? because what was valuable in the research that they had that many papers, right? No one cares about papers in industry. What they care about that you build some product which was used by some people and you know robust software development practices, right? And things like this. So it really requires kind of research, if you want, from your side on where you're heading into. And what I can only recommend is talk with other people. Talk with people who made it, who are coming from science and now work in an industry because we can help you to find this language, understand their language faster. Thank you. Another question? Okay, great. As a mentor, what is the most common advice you give to inspiring data enthusiasts? and or what would you say is the most crucial or the most crucial one piece of advice that you can offer okay I think the most crucial piece of advice if you lived on this planet for some time you must probably collected a lot of experience which might be quite valuable for what you are going to do next right and I guess like it's hardly to find anyone who in kindergarten and wanted to become AI engineer, because AI engineer exists only two years, right? But there are people who were doing the right steps, so to speak, or who collected relevant experience. And the main advice I usually give, think how you can apply this experience, right? After all, I did this many transitions, and it felt like I started from scratch, right? It was never like starting completely from zero, right? I had already some things which helped me to do the next steps. Thank you. Thank you very much for your story. And we have a next speaker. Thank you all. Hello. My name is Sohan. I think most experiences you heard so far are folks who came from a different background and moved into data science and computers. I'm going to go the other way. So I actually did my computer science engineering back in India many, many years ago. And currently, I do developer relations at a startup called OddsEd. I've worked in a bunch of different companies, including Amazon and InMobi. So I've been in parts of startups with like 20 people, but also in companies like Amazon with more than 1 million people. So I think I've had the breadth of experience there. A bit about my story. I did computer science engineering, and I started my career writing mobile apps on iOS. Any app developers here? People who build apps? Not too many. Okay, a couple of you all at the back. This was in 2010, and Apple actually used this very obscure programming language called Objective-C. Not too many people have heard of it, but the ones that have, I think, have some shared trauma of writing code in Objective-C, I definitely do. But there wasn't too much documentation or videos on YouTube back then. So I actually spent time blogging on behalf of the company, and I really started enjoying the process of sharing what I was learning. And I also got very active on Stack Overflow. And let me tell you, there's no greater motivation than fake internet points on Stack Overflow, right? When you see that number increase, you're like, yeah, I got to get those points. And I started enjoying that process. So while the coding was fun and I liked tech, I started enjoying the process of sharing what I was learning. And I came across this very, very new field called developer relations or developer advocacy, where technical companies basically needed folks who understood tech to share their knowledge with other programmers. And this company called InMobi was looking for someone like that, and that's where I joined. And that was 11 years ago, and I've been in developer relations ever since. So, you know, that's my story right there. But I think a lot of people are curious about what developer relations is, and there's no formal definition, really, right? I think in part of my job, I do a bunch of different things. I think the most important is, of course, I code. I have to learn to code, and I have to be able to teach code. But I also do spicy takes on YouTube sometimes, which gets you the views, remember? So the more controversial the view is, the more views you'll get on YouTube. But I also speak at conferences such as this, and also do community stuff, both online and offline sorry yeah online and offline there's a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes in developer relations as well where you know you are taking feedback from what you hear on ground to your product and to your engineering teams so that is in a very short in a nutshell what developer relations really does and it is a field that I see growing a lot because there are more companies that have technical products now and the end customers are technical people such as you and me so this field is is getting quite popular nowadays I think post 2020 we have really seen like a large number of people getting into this field I think my advice for you is right now tech is really at the heart of everything we do and the most important skill across all industries right even if you're, like, say, an artist or, I don't know, someone in sports or, you know, in technology, is knowing this ability to understand computers, right? And I'm not necessarily talking about writing code, but being able to create a website, for instance, for your art, or being able to navigate this technological world. And because of that, I think there are so many side things that have opened up in terms of ecosystems. So, really, it is about you figuring out what you really like in the tech world. There are viable careers as content creators across different mediums, right? There's YouTube and podcast and honestly, even TikTok. I'm not even making this up. But there's also things like documentation and, you know, technical writing that you can get into. There are also very viable careers as meetup organizers and conference organizers that people do very successfully, right? So I think it's looking at the tech world and looking at the niche that really interests you and sort of going all in and exploring that niche is the sort of advice I'd like to give. And I think as a student, I think right now is the easiest time to be a student. All the information you need is there online for you to grasp. It's also the hardest time to be a student because that playing field is completely level. anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection has the exact same information that you do right so it is really up to you about how you think about what you really like and want to do and then consume information and take actions to do that so that's it from me I'm around in the conference if you want to chat and have any questions thank you Thank you for sharing your interesting path. We have one question. Yeah, thank you. You used the word student. I'm a student and finishing my master in mathematics. now I'm applying to internship programs and have been so hard and it's really really hard the competition because what I'm seeing is like because I mean I talk with the people in some meetings the companies I'm also in the internship in the internships are taking person that already have experience in those internships. So what advice can you give us for those students that we are also changing the career? I'm not feeling that I'm changing the career. I feel that I'm getting better in my career because I'm becoming a better mathematician. I'm pure mathematician but I'm becoming better mathematician because right now I decide to learn Python. For pure mathematicians, the If people for computer science are like, oh, no, and the people for computer science, the mathematicians are, oh, no, and I want to be a bridge, and I'm getting better because of that, yeah? And actually, I'm organizing my thesis in the bridge of both, okay, in the research math of deep learning. So, what can you advise us? Because it's like a lot of interviews, but a lot of relations. And right now with the EI, they also have a lot of good programs that someone that is no senior, the programs can do everything. It's like how the companies expect that we can have a new career or a new path if already the same AI make everything. That's a very valid question, and I think that's something many students go through. One thing you have to understand about the process of applying to an internship, especially at a big company, there are thousands of people applying from all over the world. And again, the internet and work from home has flattened that. I think when I used to hire for interns and stuff like that, the thing that stood out to me was people who had built something, right? Like they had like a portfolio on GitHub or they had like a personal portfolio with projects that they had built. And that immediately got someone to stand out from the hundreds of other people who just had a resume with, you know, like I'm doing my master's. So I think just having that where you have hands-on experience on a public space so that then you know Hey, this person really understands what they're building. I don't care that they don't have prior experience They know how to code or they know this that really matters, right? So having that some something hands-on I think makes the biggest difference Thank you, and I think that we don't have more time so I will invite the next speaker I don't have much, actually. I just have one slide. Because I haven't planned a lot about what I'm going to say, and I also think that like oh, it's good to see all these beautiful faces here, but I also notice a lot of you here sitting you know just by the look you look like look like me women you know in tech and so some of these like points I'm going to say now it may apply to you you know but it may not but anyway it doesn't matter so so hello I'm check I so I know a lot of speaker talk about what they do like you know school and stuff I don't know how deep I have to go yeah I study physics and then I also like want to be an actor I was working in the theme park and I did some actor training and did a lot of like part-time work giving out flyers surfing tables I've done all like anything you imagine maybe even you don't imagine I've done it but now I'm here how I get here so I would say that I started as a data scientists almost 10 years now ago when I first moved to the UK and you know I was doing part-time I don't know what I'm going to do I have a I won't say life crisis because I was only like 30 years old at that time but I have a crisis I don't know what I'm gonna do in life so I yeah so my friends that like oh how about you do data science because you have you know mathematic like you know strong science background I would say that that's not necessary actually to start a tech career. So, okay, I did a course online. I was lucky enough to land a job that is not data science yet, but data analysis job. And then I got promoted to be a data scientist. I started learning Python when I started that job because when I was doing the course, I was learning R. And then when I started the job, everybody used Python in the team. So I, you know, okay, learn Python. I realized that Python's actually, I fell in love with it. I love it so much. And then I go to a lot of conferences and lots of meetups. And because I talk too much, I go to too much conference. Yes. I remember one time, so I was working at a bank at the time as a data scientist. And my boss come to talk to me, say, like, you can't go to that conference. Even you take holiday to do it because you go to too much conferences. Okay. I took the holiday. I went there and then basically he's about to fire me and I just tell him no I choose the community and I just you know, leave the job, you know, I Initiate to leave the job. So I left Then at that time I was like, oh my god, that's a horrible experience. How can I integrate the community in my work? so that's how I started my career as a developer advocate and so Basically, I'm still doing what I do the most, you know, talking to a lot of people, going to a lot of conferences. But this time, I also have a burden of representing my company and also, like, you know, how I can give value back to my employer. So, it's a bit tough at the beginning because, you know, nobody teach me how to do it. I started working for a startup as the only developer advocate at that time. You know, it's my first developer advocate job, so, like, I don't know how that works out. So, in the end, I think, right now, you have seen me at the JetBrains booth. I'm now working for JetBrains. I think, so far, I have a very good experience working with them, the team, because I'm not the only person anymore. I have support from my colleague, which is, like, make a great difference when you are, you know, a lots of experience developer advocate. Even at this time of my career, I'm not a new developer advocate. I've done it for years, but still, it's very good to have someone to support you. So for any one of you who are interested to become a developer advocate, I'm really happy to help you. I understand how much, you know, how difficult it is. You know, it's kind of like a mystery job, right? Nobody knows what you actually do. So please come and talk to me. I can be reached by check.dev. You can see also I have my own branding. I'm like, you know, wearing kimono all the time now, but you know, I can talk a little bit more about how you can build your own branding, especially for women, like you don't have to dress like a tech bro to attend a tech conference. So come to the open space, I'll be at the Feminist AI open space at 3pm today, if you want to talk more about that, or even just anything about, you know, how I can help you, just come and talk to me, or at a time you can find me at the JetBrains booth, probably, than Paddy's lunch, maybe. But anyway, just grab me at the conference, I'll be here, love you all, thank you. Okay, I think that we can ask all necessary questions in the open space and the free, it's okay. And I will ask the next speaker to come. Hi, everyone. My name is Azamant, and in the next few minutes I'll tell a bit about the story of my journey as a data scientist. First of all, I want to just see, like, with a show of hands, maybe, how many of you here are from outside of the EU as a student or as a worker? Okay, quite a bit. So that was me as well. Ten years ago, I decided to do my studies somewhere abroad, and I picked the Netherlands. It was very random. I just had this, like, Excel sheet with, like, a bunch of columns where it was, like, tuition fee, rankings in the, like, you know, universities and the rankings, this, that, whatever. and I was like, okay, Amsterdam seems to be like, it ticks all the boxes, and actually when I moved there, I thought that they speak Danish, not Dutch, because in Russian it like made sense, but anyway, like I ended up in the Netherlands, I knew almost nothing about the country, and I did my bachelor in math and computer science, because again, I was just trying to like diversify, and I wasn't sure what exactly I want to do, and then I I took a course in econometrics, and that was the first time I was exposed to Python and data analysis. I found it really exciting, and I was like, OK, I really like this thing, I want to know more about it, and then kind of started learning about ML, AI, and all the other things. So quite quickly, I realized I want to be a data scientist. I did my master in AI and then started a job at ING, which is a Dutch multinational bank but has a pretty big presence here in Germany as well as a retail bank. So I worked there for a few years. I started as a data scientist, but then kind of moved into a product manager position. And it was fun. I was working on different projects, but ChatGPT came out. And I think for a lot of people, it was like this revelation moment because, you know, we've been all doing AI, but it was kind of like logistic regressions. You'd be lucky if you use like a recurrent neural net sometimes. And then this thing comes out and it's like the stuff from the, you know, movies and both for me and for a lot of people. I know it's kind of this nudge to explore a bit more what's happening out there. And then I joined an early stage AI startup called Typetown, where we were automating end-to-end content marketing with LLMs. And it was a lot of very interesting projects that I was doing, but there I kind of was not just a data scientist, but an engineer, right? Because at an early stage startup, you're with five other guys, and you kind of have to pick up everything. So I learned how to do back-ends, learned how to do front-ends, had to set up stuff in Google Cloud, all these other things. But the startup journey is a bit bumpy, so that wasn't all rosy all the time. And we've been having some problems So I started looking for another job And now I'll be joining Databricks as of next month But again, in a new kind of role As a solutions architect Which is a position Maybe you don't hear about it as much And there's not as many vacancies about it Especially for a junior or someone starting their career Because this is something that you have to do Actually already had like some years of experience in the field but essentially it's about helping companies mostly like medium to big enterprises to like transition to some kind of technology data bricks is this layer on top of gcp or azure or aws that kind of makes data analysis and data processing more efficient and less costly and as a solution to architect you kind of design the solution for the company you understand what's their cost. current landscape, kind of draw the target, and move the steps in that direction. It's a bit of a sales kind of position, but with quite a few technical quirks to it as well. But as you see here, I've went through a bunch of transitions, and this is not even that many years of experience. So these four moves happened in the last five years. So maybe it says something about me, and I'm not very good at committing to just one single title, but I think it also says something about the industry because AI is moving so rapidly that you kind of have to constantly adapt and you have to kind of constantly reassess is the thing that I'm doing right now kind of like still fitting the most my ambitions or my interests and I think if you ask yourself that question often enough you'll maybe have not as many transitions as here but you can definitely won't be like staying in the same place so kind of like a few tips of what I would like to share with you I think they resonate with a lot of the things that were said before one thing for sure that's so hard nothing mentioned is that if you're just starting out your career really build stuff in public others mentioned as well kind of try to write blog posts try to like give back to the community, put your name a bit out there. But beyond that, I think these three tips would be more for, like, if you found that first job, found that first position, focus on what creates impact and not what fits your role description. And I think this has to do also with the fact that, right, AI is changing a lot. But B, companies are messy. So if you join a big company that does a lot of data stuff, you won't necessarily find, like, the perfect landscape. In some companies, there'll be stuff like the data isn't clean and all that stuff. But even if the tech at the company is solid, you might encounter something like, you know, maybe their product or business sense is not as optimized towards, like, the stuff that products and features and AI require. So you have to constantly just be, like, questioning yourself. Is the thing that I've been asked to do or want to do really the thing that will drive the most impact? and if the answer is no then try to challenge back kind of whoever asked you to do this thing maybe they have a very good reason why you have to do it and you're actually wrong and that'll just be like a healthy discussion that you had but maybe you'll be right and in that case it's also a win because most of the time managers like they will be happy if you help them discover the best path to move forward so that would be one piece of advice another and it has to do i guess with a bit of this first thing is you have to seek the best environment. So if you have a boss to whom you come and you challenge them on the idea and they don't listen to you, they're probably not a very good boss. So you kind of have to like also assess that. Look for good bosses, look for good colleagues, look for a company with a good culture. It can be stuff like, right, do they just give you a task and blindly expect you to do it or do they have this culture of kind of open feedback, of also giving back to the community, kind of encouraging work beyond of what's just necessary. And also, you can find this environment outside of work, like in your community, in your local city, if you have any meetups and stuff like that. This is really like a force multiplier, because if you have the right environment, those people will really help you grow in your career. So watch out for this one. This is probably the most important thing out of these three. And the last is you have to have fun, because if it gets boring, then you're not going to be as motivated to do stuff. And if it gets boring, try to do something about it, right? So try to inspire change, either in your team, you know, bring it up, say, yo, guys, the stuff that we're doing isn't as exciting anymore. Maybe we can, like, think of how to do something more interesting, or kind of be also open, So again, just like re-evaluating, is the position or the title that I have right now still fitting my interests? If not, don't be afraid to change. I guess I don't have that much more time. So tomorrow I have a talk. So meet me there. If you're interested, I'll be talking about LLMs and benchmarking them on writing. And otherwise, yeah, feel free to approach me. Thank you. Thank you very much. do we have some question hi hi so you mentioned seek the best environment I was just curious to have any tips for you you specifically look for in colleagues bosses in culture when you are seeking your job environment I think first thing is I want to be surrounded by people I can learn from right and And that's something that's generally easy to assess. They have to be open and collaborative for this to really work. But I think beyond that, the other thing is that you want to be surrounded by people that are also constantly trying to improve. Because let's say you join a team, you have a lot of stuff to learn from everyone. Within a year or two, you maybe will soak up most of this. So unless also the people around you improve and change, that won't really long-term play out. So I would say these three qualities, people that know stuff, they're open, and are constantly kind of trying to improve themselves and the environment they're in. Thank you. Yeah. So one more question. Okay. So, yeah, you said something about like the most important part was seeking the environment. And I just have to question if, like, what do you do when you can't do anything about the environment because you're stuck with something? I don't know. Maybe you can't find the next job or maybe, like, there are other reasons for staying at the position you're in. So what do you do to make the best out of your situation if you can't just seek the next thing? So I think oftentimes, I mean, of course, there's different, like, life circumstances. But I think especially in the, like, seen as expanding as rapidly as AI, there's always going to be, like, maybe a new team or something else to, like, join. Because I do have to say, like, I'm speaking not just from my experience, but experience of, like, friends and stuff like that. Quite often if you join a team that really doesn't fit, you know, you're going to waste much more time and energy trying to improve that rather than just, like, trying to seek something that fits you. And I think there the tip of advice would be try to learn about the different companies or stuff like that, not just through job applications or company websites, but talk to the people. So you can always reach out to someone on LinkedIn and stuff like that. Or again, just go to meetups and stuff like that. And then what people tell you about different companies, you hear it when it's a nice environment. And, yeah, I think that would be the advice. So we actually don't have time, and I suggest we can talk with our speakers during the lunch pause or next day. And, okay, I will ask to join the next speaker. Hello, it's really great to be sharing this. It looks such a simple idea, but it's very heartwarming to know that all the pressure that we have on ourselves for defining what success means, and I really love the Jonathan example of the mountain, because it's like the movies, and it's always like, yes, I will find the man of my dreams, or the woman of my dreams, and then, no one tells you, right, how it is, those things, and I reach the top, and then, well, for me the funniest part is jumping out of the mountains anyway, so I have a very messy story, and fun fact, I thought I thought I would be talking with kids, so I prepare all my slides for kids. And I actually start backwards. My background, I'm Brazilian, I was born in Brazil, and I was very happy to, oh perfect, this is my time, checking my time, and I think I was very lucky to get into a sort of a young adult age in a very flourishing, blooming, economic, social time of Brazil and that shaped a lot of my experience and every, I love humans and for me every single one of you is this beautiful universe when you stop to talk to a human there's this beautiful universe that unveils because there's this whole history full of a plot twist that helps to each one of us and everyone has this really beautiful rich story when we see that granularly and for me was I've been raised in Brazil in the time where there was a lot being talked about digital culture and open source and open source shaped me I really haven't I really advocate for a free software because of that experience and that taught me about opening up boxes and being curious about and this is how my career has been shaped a lot of ups and downs, feeling that I reached something and then being in the bottom, and that started with a choice of being an artist, and going full in, university, master degree, working to pay for the university, very common in Brazil, you usually work when you study. But something made me fall in love for the weird art, because I learned that in Hacker spaces and I was a very mediocre artist and I had always been very conflicted about that but I kept on creating like and I was very sure that for me art was about sharing and that should be open and I used to make tutorials about how could you replicate my art piece for example and for some reason I was an artist assistant that took me to Mexico and I wanted to extend the most my time in mexico and i stayed there for three months with the salary of a half month and but that made my best friends and my partners in crime one of them is the artist of the first exhibition called jaime lobato which is a freaking genius and i did the creatorship of his first big exhibition and then i found a really love for creating i found that it could be very mediocre artists but it could take the best out of the artists and make a very beautiful exhibition and i really love start thinking about creating and creating if you don't know what a creator does it's kind of someone who puts an idea in the space and it's kind of a lot of thinking a lot of organization and you need like all of those skills that a bit of organization a bit bureaucratic a lot of thinking and a lot of aesthetics and shaping. And I thought I had reached the top in Mexico. At some point, live plot twists, I got an offer job in Mexico when one of my very poor friends become the vice director of the Museum of My Dreams. And I was invited to be the head of production and creator and like the museum of my dreams. And I was like, oh yeah, damn, I reached the top. And then plot twist again, my partner got a job in Germany. when i moved to germany i had nothing i had not my name i didn't know how to speak my own name or to where i come from and i was really down in the bottle for like what am i gonna do and the first thing i thought was like well i would search for a place that i knew before because i took some classes because when you do this kind of weird art in hackerspaces you usually go copy and paste code. It was like, yeah, maybe that could be an alternative. So I searched for PyLadies and I agree with Cosima, like community for me is everything. Not only because I love humans, but because community for me is everything. It was because of this community, they were like, why don't you change careers? And I was like, me? Like I come from the place where I was an artist assistant and he hired technical, technical people who used to be way better paid than me. And I was like, why don't you pay me to learn code? And I do it, and I heard a lot. But you're so poetic, how can you do such a technical thing? And that's a big lesson, how the world sees you doesn't need to define what you need, or want, or wish to do. And that is a big, big lesson, because that pushed me back for wanting to, not even trying to learn code for a long time for people telling me, but I wanted to be a pilot. And my daddy was like, but you're so good with humans. Why would you not be a flight attendant? It was not bad, but they saw me as someone who likes humans. And therefore, I didn't match colors. But I had this big wish to do so. Big lesson to learn. Don't let the others define you. Although they may have right. They may be right. And my work did that too. I finally got a scholarship. Shout out to financial assistance. That changed life. And I got a scholarship to do a full-stack engineer course in Berlin with Coyote, a school that I love. And that changed my life. I got an internship, finally got into an open-source program office, and I was like, yeah, reached the top again. But, well, Germany, starting a life from scratch again, after being head of the department. Life is like this, right? And that's the beauty of it, is there's ups and downs. And then there were, like, my boss decided that I was too good with humans. And he was like, well, why don't you go to the community team? I was like, fucker, I just got to the fucking software engineer. But you know what? I love it. I love it. Because I'm also a developer advocate now. And I can match both things. I can love the humans. And I can still do the code. And I can get tired of the humans because humans can make you very tired. And I just got to the code. And I'm happy with that. And then I got so frustrated with the code, and I'm happy again, being energized with the humans. I love the job. And that's what I have been doing now. And I thought it was for kids. I'm sorry again. So this was the whole change from Brazil to Mexico to Germany. It is this beautiful trajectory that it's my personal story. And it's a bunch of things put together. So now I can get creativity, technical, do a product, being super full on and open source. and knowing that all my life trajectory has an importance wherever I go. I just make that fit in in the roles that I am. That's my trajectory. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. For me, it was perfect. Really comprehensive. I think we have time for one question. if someone wants to ask something tomorrow I will be at the feminist party talking about pleasure activism, that's a thing so if you want to talk about finding your own voice through your own, what gives you pleasure in life, you can hop in there okay, thank you thank you We have last two speakers before the lunch. Hi, I'm Rafael Wieding, I'm an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. Yeah, so I'll kind of start by talking about hitting a point that a lot of people have made, that there's not really one path to get to things. So I started studying math and physics in my bachelor's, didn't really have much coding experience or that wasn't really a part of my degree was actually using computers, which I think they've probably changed by now, but back when I was, even then they probably should have been teaching some of that stuff. But yeah, I mean, so, I mean, raise your hands, who went to the keynote this morning? And only one went to the keynote this morning? No, come on, let's see how many people went to the keynote, raise your hands. Only a couple, okay. So astronomy, I mean, fair enough. I mean, astronomy is a really fun place to be. Yes? Okay, great. Who thought it was cool? Yeah, okay, cool. So that one got a lot more hands. There we go. Who thought it was cool? Yeah, okay. I mean, astronomy is a really interesting place, and I think highlights this kind of nature of you can kind of come from a lot of backgrounds, and you can kind of end up sort of somewhere else. So I know people who've come from all sorts of, I mean, I'm really, I interact a lot more with the STEM people. But, I mean, no matter what kind of background you come through, you can find a place in astronomy either designing databases for the amounts of volumes we're going to be hosting, which some of you heard about this morning, building things. If you're someone who likes to tinker and use your hands, I like it, but I'm not good at it, then you can build instruments. So you should never let me do this. Or if you like building software or doing research or staying in academia, you know, astronomy kind of, you know, is a pathway for that. So I think astronomy is really cool in that sense. But I'll talk a little bit more about what I've found particularly helpful in my own career. And I think a lot of people have said this, is that if something motivates you, that's a good sign. If something gives you energy, that's a good sign. Now, I'm not saying that it will always be positive. I mean, for example, I think a lot of people could probably resonate with the idea that we do a lot more emailing and spending time replying and answering and writing emails than we want to. But that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy what I do, right? It's important that I take care of all of the administrative tasks so I can spend time on the actual things that I enjoy. Sometimes they're really rewarding, and sometimes they can be a little frustrating, but it's important to kind of keep in mind what works, right? So, I mean, and I make this point that it might surprise you what you kind of end up on, right? A lot of people, you know, I really like math and physics, so a lot of people when I was younger thought, you know, I might go into engineering. So I tried engineering, and I hated it. And I'm not saying that means you should hate it. You just find the thing that you like. Then, I kind of make these two completely opposite points, which is I've been really rewarded by going down rabbit holes. That's kind of what a PhD is, is you choose one rabbit hole. You go down it for five years, or in the U.S. it's five years, in Europe, three years, kind of depends on the system. You go down a rabbit hole for five years, and that can be really rewarding and really fun. But then I also now, you know, I've been really rewarded for doing that in certain projects, but then it's really important now, I'm really trying to focus on learning the skill of, We'll also keep in mind what is the big picture of how your work and what you do fits into the greater ecosystem and the greater sphere. So I always kind of try and balance these two things. And then last is I don't think anyone can do anything alone. I really believe that. If you do not accept ideas from the outside, your ideas will become very stale. So you really need community both in your field and also outside your field. You need people that don't do what you do to talk to. You'll be surprised how many ideas come from seeing things in a light that comes from someone who doesn't understand what you do or doesn't have experience with what you do, and not just for your career. It's good to have support systems for not your work. And yeah, I think that I especially want to make the point, being in academia, this is maybe a little easier, but the fact that I've been able to really, that I haven't had any restriction for what code I'm allowed to publish or not publish has really helped me sort of or build those collaborations within my career. And also, if you want people to use your code, really try and build them thinking about the end user. I think that was a point that was made at this morning's keynote, which is they made this amazing code, and then they realized they were the only ones that could use it. And that means that you don't get to benefit from the ideas coming in from outside. So in general, my path has been relatively linear within astronomy, more or less. Even though I didn't really come in an astronomy background i did my phd or master's phd and then now i'm a postdoc in astronomy as well but i i you know i i do get the chance to interact with people from all sectors because it really is an intersection of basically every stem field and also outside stem as well think about all the people who make the pretty pictures for astronomy they're the most fun because they they get to do lots of things with public so anyways yeah that's kind of me i'm around find me you can chat with me um yeah that's about it okay do we have some question okay i i have one question how did you choose astronomy uh yeah i mean i say that every kid has two interests it's dinosaurs and space like i kind of think that's pretty universal and then we kind of we lose space but i think we keep dinosaurs for a long time uh but no no i sort of fell into it right so i i was in university i tried studying chemistry for a bit and i got i i did not like it uh i started studying math and physics and i liked those more and then i found an astronomer in the physics department we didn't have an astronomy department I found an astronomer in the physics department, and I started chatting with him, and I was like, hey, do you need someone to help you do research? And he was like, yeah, sure, why not? And that's sort of what was my first foray into programming. He taught me iRef, which is an astronomical coding software from the 80s. It's really bad, and a lot of people still use it. Talk to me more about that. No, we're replacing it slowly but surely. I also learned a bit of IDL. Who's used IDL here before? Good. Okay. Yeah. It's another image-based processing software that they use a lot in geoengineering and astronomy. That's not a good sign. So now we've really transitioned to Python. So I just started doing research in it. I just started getting involved. And then I started, once I knew a little bit more about what stars were, I started leading public astronomy nights at my university and just, it's been a lot of fun. I liked it. I thought, you know, who doesn't like stars? Who doesn't think they're cool? Maybe you don't. Then don't do astronomy. That's fine. Hopefully everyone can get something, hopefully you enjoy what you do and the nitty-gritty of what you do. It's cool. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay, I invite the last speakers. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, is everyone feeling a little bit like we've been sitting for a while? Do you guys want to just get up and move? Seriously, I just stood up and I was like, oh, my God, my butt is sore. So if you're feeling the same, feel free to have a little stretch. Hey, I'm Laura. I will go fast because I'm sure these have been amazing stories, but I know we all want to go eat lunch. So I will try not to take too much time. Oh, no, what was that? Can I refresh? My slides don't seem to be here, but that's okay. Can I sorry, I put them in this morning, so I was the late bird. Anyway, I'll keep going while she sees it. It doesn't even matter if you can see the slides or not. I had a very weird entry into tech. Oh, look, yes, okay, this is my journey. I actually wanted, because everyone has been so great about sharing sort of the technical details of what they learned and how they got into tech. And I wanted to share a couple of more emotional stories, because I think it's very easy to think that, you know, it's just a straight path to progress and you're just going to get there, or even not that straight, but, you know, you sort of put one foot in the other and everything goes well. But I did not know what I wanted to do when I went to uni. So the first story I want to share is I was sort of tech curious, but I didn't get a computer until I was 18 or 19. In my first computer, I was relatively old, as these things go. And I was kind of curious about computer science, but also I don't know what's going on there. And in my bachelor's, I was in the US at the time, and in my bachelor's at Cornell, the only girl I knew who was studying computer science was in a class of 2,000 people. It was the most flunked course at Cornell, where I was at Cornell. And she came home every day for a week crying. And it was like, fuck that, I'm not going there. That seems terrifying. Sorry, I swear, sorry, apologies, recorders. So I was basically turned off it very early because I thought, oh, god, that sounds intimidating, and it's such a male-dominated field, and that can't possibly be for me. But I ended up getting really interested in design. My first job, actually, I worked in a software company just kind of doing a bit of everything. I was doing some support, I was helping customers write SQL queries, so I learned SQL without really understanding programming, which is a weird thing to do, but oh well. I was interested in how the algorithmic sort of things that were interesting under the hood weren't easily or visually represented to the users, so I was interested in this disconnect between the face of the machine and the guts of the machine, and that's kind of what got me into interaction design, so I ended up going and doing a master's called multimedia, which was back in the days before UX really was a thing, so I was literally learning how to author DVD ROMs and CD ROMs, I don't know if anyone remembers like physical digital media, but I learned some completely useless skills, like my first programming language was adobe flash anyone remember flash yes amazing um but at the same time i learned some very like pragmatic things about um design on digital screens and like the difference between rgb and cmyk and that's that's all quite helpful um and i ended up breaking into design um but after i finished my the second story i wanted to tell was after i finished my masters and i was I was like, yes, I'm going to go be a digital designer, and everything's going to be amazing. I had my course advisor sit me down and was like, Laura, you're not very good. Maybe you should try project management instead. And I say this, like, I think in retrospect, I think he really genuinely wanted to save me grief. But it sucked in the moment. It was just, like, the worst thing. I just felt like I'd been punched in the gut. And, like, I will say that I also discovered something about myself that day. Which is that I am a rage revenge driven developer. If you tell me I'm not allowed to do something, I'm going to go and do it. So I decided I was going to prove him wrong. And I actually did break into design. And then secondarily, I ended up becoming also a front-end programmer. And I became a front-end programmer because I had had this experience over many years of putting together a beautiful mock and a design tool, first Photoshop and then others. giving it to the developer and being like, this is what it should look like. And then something comes back. And it's like, in your mind, you've given them the Michelangelo, and then they've given you back the crayon version. And you're like, oh, this is not really what I imagined. So I actually learned to program because I was frustrated with losing control over my designs. And I wanted to just make it fit the vision in my head. And I think that's a really pragmatic way to learn programming. I just wanted to do something. I wanted to make it real. So I wanted to take the idea I had in my brain and put it in the world. And the third story I wanted to share is ten years into my career, after I had been programming and shipping code, and I will say, like, you know, people may think frontend is not really that exciting a discipline, but you ship a lot of code and it's very real and it's part of production, right? So if anyone wants to come at me for not being a developer, I'm pretty sure we can compare lines of code shipped to prod and I'm going to win. I've just tripped so much code over my career. And some of it's going to be awful and never go back and read code you wrote 10 years ago. That's awful. But at the same time, it's a really pragmatic and tangible way of writing code because you're doing something that people are going to see. But yeah, the third example I wanted to offer is I was in a startup. I spent the last 10ish years in smaller startups mostly. And I had a colleague and he was an ex-stockbroker. And he had done a six-month boot camp. And this is not about boot camps being good or bad. This is about this guy and his particular attitude. But he had sort of brought what I think of as the proprietary, like, cards close to your chest, I'm going to win attitude into tech. And he didn't know where he was, and he didn't know, like, the culture that he had come into. So one day I sit down with him, and I'm like, hey, man, you're using Bootstrap wrong, because Oh, sorry. Everyone remember Bootstrap? Like, this is pre-tailwind, you know, one of these horrible frontend frameworks. You're using Bootstrap wrong. You're not, like, you're not enclosing your containers correctly. Like, you're not, you got the semantics wrong. And he was like, maybe you should go back to Photoshop. And again, like, this was one of these, like, punched in the gut moments where I was like, oh, he still thinks he's better than me even though I've been programming for ten more years than him. And I'm telling you this story not because, like, everything is terrible. In fact, I have mostly met wonderful, supportive non-women in tech. Like, I've mostly met dudes who have just supported me and helped me learn Git and just been amazing. But sexism is real. Racism is real. Sometimes you will come across it. There isn't a perfect way to react in the moment. But let it fuel your fire. If nothing else, let it help you become a rage-driven developer like me. Oh, and, yeah, you can see some stuff I've done, but I'm going to stop. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story. Does someone have some question? Ask me about sexism and racism. how to make you know to feel this rage to do something good how can you balance it in a way that is not become yeah toxic I think I'm going in that direction now it's a wonderful question I try to feed my soul with art and poetry so that I have ways of interpreting hard moments that are not just me stewing in my own frustrations, not just me feeling angry. I also look, I mean, we look to community. We try and reach out to people who have similar experiences. We try and, you know, ask for support when we need it. It's very easy when you've had a really hard experience like that to go inwards and to feel like I need to be quiet. I'm the problem. It's, you know, the fault is me. But really, that's the moment that you need to reach out and be like, hey, someone needs to tell me that I'm good and I should keep going. And, like, I guarantee you have people in your life who will do that for you, but you just have to remember sometimes you have to ask. Thank you. Okay. Does anyone want to ask another question? I'll be around, so feel free to come and chat to me. Great. Okay. Thank you. so this actually was the last speaker and i would like to say thank you for all the speakers which take part in these initiatives and of course i would like to thank the audience and students or just people who come and enjoy these almost two hours of session thank you