Human's of Engineering - Elena's story

This article was originally published as part of an internal series called Humans of?Engineering,?a collection of stories shared by?our employees?to encourage, inspire, and connect with each other as around the world, companies transitioned to work from home.?The series was created by our WIT team based on?the popular Humans of New York blog.

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Currently I work as a Senior Software Engineer, Data Science in the GTM Sales AI team, but my path to my current role was anything but linear.

My original background was actually in economics and statistics. After I graduated from Bocconi University in Italy I moved to Dublin, Ireland where I started working in finance. I worked as an Investment Analyst for Johnson and Johnson and I started studying for the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Program, completing levels I and II, because at the time I thought that was going to be my career.

But I had a change of heart. While working as a quantitative analyst for the asset management company FAM, I realized I was enjoying the coding part of my day-to-day job a lot. I realized I really enjoyed building data, modeling and analytics pipelines and thinking about aspects of system design. That prompted me to consider a career change - I applied for a Data Scientist role at LinkedIn and I got hired in 2020. At that time I didn't know if I was going to fit in as a data scientist coming from finance because I thought that most of my colleagues would have a different background than mine, with more academic engineering skills and training. It was hard in the beginning to find my strength and my voice and be confident in my abilities.

But the more time I spent here, the more I realized there are a lot of people around me who also did not have a linear career path. One of the highlights of my career journey here at LinkedIn has been finding some amazing mentors such as my first manager and skip level manager who also didn’t have a linear career path and emphasized the importance of personal growth, motivation and perseverance. They encouraged and supported my growth and seeing them be successful changed my views entirely on what a career path should look like and how powerful lifelong learning is. In fact, a few months after starting my career at LinkedIn, I started a four year bachelor’s degree in computer science. Thanks to the invaluable support of my managers, I am only two exams away from completing this degree. Throughout my career with LinkedIn and my transition to a software engineer role, my managers and colleagues have consistently shown me that it’s the quality of the output of our work that matters, a passion for learning and our determination to get our best work done. Another very important aspect of my journey here at LinkedIn has been being part of the Women In Tech community. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences receiving guidance from accomplished women in engineering and contributing to our community at LinkedIn and beyond. Sharing my engineering journey with others and inspiring them to pursue their own paths has truly been a standout moment. Ultimately, thanks to LinkedIn’s diverse and inclusive culture, I discovered that there are so many “where”s, “when”s and “how”s to becoming a software engineer.

--Elena Vergou, Senior Software Engineer, Data Science [as told to Chinmayee Vaidya]