AfroTech Virtual Summit Recap: MongoDB Employees Share Advice with Rising Tech Talent

Ashley Perez
December 8, 2020 | Updated: September 9, 2024
#Diversity & Inclusion#Culture

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This past August, MongoDB sponsored the “AfroTech: Tech is Still Hiring Virtual Summit.” During this session, our leaders provided personal stories and insights about what a successful career in technology looks like.

MongoDB panelists included:

The panel was moderated by Danielle James, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at MongoDB. Panelists shared actionable advice you can apply today, including how to build a roadmap for personal success, ways to bounce back from challenges, the importance of communicating your value, where to find support during your leadership journey, and more. Hear their thoughts:

What specific skills are required to become a leader in your field?

 

How do you handle tough feedback constructively?

How do you differentiate yourself from others?

How do you communicate the value of your work?

How do you bounce back from a mistake or conflict?

What should someone do if they believe they're ready for a promotion, but their manager feels otherwise?

How can someone prepare for MongoDB's technical interview?

What rituals have helped you accelerate your career?

What can people do today to help them have a successful career?

Interested in pursuing a career at MongoDB? We have several open roles on our teams across the globe, and would love for you to build your career with us!

Join MongoDB in supporting organizations fighting for racial justice and equal opportunity. Donate to the MongoDB for Justice fund by December 31, 2020 and MongoDB will match the donation up to $250,000. Learn more.

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Employee Spotlight: MongoDB Product Manager Talks About His Role And The Company’s Push For Inclusivity

Editor's note: This was originally published on AfroTech's Website . Having a game plan for your career can help you reach monumental milestones and attain goals that not only benefit yourself, but the greater good of the company that you work for. Just ask product manager (PM) at MongoDB, Garaudy Etienne, who has succeeded at the company by using his expertise of processing data to help fuel product growth. Thanks to his engineering and business background, Etienne helps elevate MongoDB products to a higher level of success in the industry’s competitive landscape. The product manager knows the in-and-outs of tech and advocates for inclusivity in the workplace too. Etienne spoke with AfroTech to share an inside look into his unique experience working at MongoDB as a product manager and how he’s using his impact to dismantle offensive database terminology through the master/slave removal project. AfroTech: Tell us about your background and your role as a PM with MongoDB? Etienne: I’ve been a product manager for three years and was previously an aerospace engineer. I grew up in Haiti, Belgium and New Jersey. I obtained my bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University and my MBA from the University of Chicago. I’m a product manager for the sharding team at MongoDB. Sharding is the process of splitting up a customer’s data over several smaller computers instead of one giant computer. At a certain scale, it is a cost-effective way of storing and processing more data for most companies. Our team is responsible for making sure the data is split in a way that lets websites or apps stay fast as they continue to grow. This means if an app grows to millions of users, they can still read or write information to their database without any issues. AfroTech: What experience(s) prepared you the most for this role? Etienne: My engineering background combined with my MBA have most prepared me for this role. Knowing that I wanted to be a product manager before attending business school helped me focus my learnings and efforts with that singular goal. AfroTech: How were you recruited/promoted/hired into this role? Etienne: Believe it or not, I just went to MongoDB’s website and applied for a “Product Manager, Distributed Systems” posting the company had. I received an email shortly after, asking to set up a phone interview with the recruiter. I’d like to point out that this is not a recommended approach. It’s best to connect with an employee and get some more information about the company and a referral, if possible. AfroTech: What exactly does being a Product Manager mean? Etienne: First, let’s define what a product is: a product is anything you create for other people to use. Being a PM is all about helping the company build a better product. It’s about discovering what to build (and not build) for our customers and when to build it. This means setting a strategy and vision for the product so the engineers see a maximum impact for their efforts. I do this mainly by asking lots of questions, talking to customers, and talking to other teams close to customers, such as customer success managers, technical services engineers, and solutions architects. AfroTech: What inspired you to become a Product Manager? Etienne: I knew that I was interested in business in college. When I finally decided that aerospace was no longer for me, I knew I wanted to still be involved in technology but in a business capacity. I did some research to see what career paths were at the intersection of business and technology. I also spoke to a coworker who was applying to business school at the time to get his thoughts. The more I researched, the more I believed that product management was the right path for me. Photo Credit: Garaudy Etienne, Product Manager, Server at MongoDB kicks off MongoDB's 2019 Black History Month event hosted by TUPOC/Mongodb AfroTech: What’s important to know/do once in the role, and what are the career advancement opportunities for a Product Manager at MongoDB? Etienne: Once in the role, it is important to focus and learn to say no. Requests come from all over the place. It can be customers, sales, marketing, engineers. Not only can you not please everyone, but not every request will lead to a better product. As far as PM career advancement opportunities at MongoDB, there is always plenty when a company is growing, and growing fast. For me, this means soon becoming a Senior PM, then leading a team as a Lead PM. We’ve just hired two Directors of Product on my team, which is the next step after Lead PM. If you don’t want to manage people, there’s always the opportunity to manage much bigger or more important products. AfroTech: How does your role as a Product Manager at MongoDB differ from others? Etienne: One huge difference between being a PM at MongoDB and other places I’ve worked is that I don’t have to spend time managing project timelines. At my previous role, I spent 60 percent of my time managing project timelines. The majority of my time is now focused on discovering/solving customer issues and figuring out how our team’s product fits into the overall company vision and the competitive landscape. In addition, I have been empowered to set the entire strategy for sharding. I recently had a meeting with our Chief Product Officer, where I laid out our plan for the next three to five years. I have never had that kind of autonomy before. It is pretty standard for all other product managers at the company, no matter the level. AfroTech: How do you think your company is making the working environment more inclusive? Etienne: The company has taken several steps to make working there more inclusive. Some of them predate my arrival, such as the parity pledge. The parity pledge promises to interview at least one female candidate for every job opening of director and above. The company is currently undertaking an effort to remove offensive database terminology such as “master/slave” and “whitelist/blacklist” from our code base. Senior leadership has reached out to Black employees to continually get their input and feedback. MongoDB also recently made Juneteenth a company holiday. I personally felt like I mattered a little more when our CEO spoke about the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd before it became just another PR ploy for tech companies. AfroTech: Tell us about your role as an advisor on the master/slave removal project? Etienne: The master/slave removal project started back in January. I have been involved in the discussion from the beginning. I was a staunch advocate for making the changes to older versions of MongoDB when we were debating whether or not to just do it for our latest version onwards. These changes will take close to a year of engineering effort, and it was a good opportunity to challenge the company’s commitment to Black people because this affects our bottom line. I have been in every meeting, from defining the scope of the project, to the design and implementation, and I’ve had to be involved both as a product manager and as a Black employee. AfroTech: Is there anything else you would like to add? Etienne: I wish MongoDB was a more well known company by the layperson. I think a lot of great Black employees in tech are missing out on an awesome company because we’re in the database space and our main users are developers. I’m hoping to do my part to democratize access to information about both MongoDB and product management for Black people in tech. Interested in pursuing a career at MongoDB? We have several open roles on our teams across the globe, and would love for you to build your career with us! Join MongoDB in supporting organizations fighting for racial justice and equal opportunity. Donate to our fund by December 31, 2020 and MongoDB will match the donation up to a maximum aggregate amount of $250,000. Learn more here .

December 7, 2020
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MongoDB Named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems

I’m pleased to announce that MongoDB has been named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (DBMSs) for the third consecutive year. In our view, this recognition cements MongoDB’s status as the only pure-play database provider in the cloud database management system category, underscoring MongoDB’s innovation, execution, and customer-centric approach. According to Gartner, “The cloud DBMS market remains as vibrant as ever and is transforming in important ways, especially in the use of gen AI and how DBMSs interact with other data management components. This Magic Quadrant will help data and analytics leaders make the right cloud DBMS choices in this essential market.” We believe this continued recognition by Gartner is a testament to MongoDB’s commitment to serving developers, as well as the investments we’ve made in our unified platform and integrated services. Driving innovation for enterprises MongoDB's mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. 2024 was a year of innovation and accolades at MongoDB, and I’m proud to share some of its highlights: In October, we released MongoDB 8.0 , the best performing version of MongoDB yet. MongoDB 8.0 is over 30% faster than the previous version of the database, it’s more secure than ever, horizontal scaling is faster and easier (at a lower cost), and MongoDB 8.0 gives teams greater control for optimizing database performance. We also launched—and grew—the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) . With MAAP, MongoDB offers customers a full AI stack and an integrated set of professional services to help them keep pace with innovation, identify the best AI use cases, and to help them future-proof AI investments. MongoDB became a founding member of the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium . Established by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Consortium supports the development and deployment of safe and trustworthy AI. MongoDB released hundreds of features and enhancements to accelerate innovation, manage costs, and simplify building applications at scale. MongoDB was recognized as the most loved vector database in Retool’s State of AI report —for the second consecutive year. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud database management systems “Gartner defines the cloud database management systems (DBMSs) market as solutions designed to store, manipulate, and persist data, primarily delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). These systems must support transactional, analytical, and hybrid workloads while enabling enterprises to innovate across multi-cloud, hybrid, and intercloud ecosystems.” 1 It’s our opinion that this recognition by Gartner is a testament to MongoDB’s strong ability to execute and support customers today, as well as MongoDB’s comprehensive product vision that positions our platform to support tomorrow's operational workloads. What is the Magic Quadrant, and what is a Leader? “A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.  By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Magic Quadrant helps you quickly ascertain how well technology providers are executing their stated visions and how well they are performing against Gartner’s market view.” 2 According to Gartner, “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.” Overall, Magic Quadrants can help you “get quickly educated about a market’s competing technology providers and their ability to deliver on what end-users require now and in the future.” Powering innovation at scale with MongoDB Atlas Enterprises choose MongoDB Atlas because it gives them the freedom and agility they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. MongoDB Atlas’s multi-cloud architecture—including availability across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—ensures customers can design for unmatched scale and resilience. By automating functions like scaling and performance optimization , and giving them the ability to leverage industry-first capabilities like MongoDB Queryable Encryption (which allows customers to encrypt, store, and perform queries directly on data), with MongoDB Atlas customers can spend less time managing infrastructure and more time delivering experiences. MongoDB Atlas’s integrated capabilities to support multi-modal data types and use cases—like full-text and vector search , stream processing , and data federation —accelerate innovation, helping enterprises quickly respond to market changes, power AI-driven insights, and deliver meaningful digital experiences to their end users—all without the burden of operational complexity. Modernizing and building for the future In our opinion, the Gartner Magic Quadrant provides organizations with a clear and accessible evaluation framework to identify solutions that fit their needs, today and tomorrow. The placement of MongoDB in the Leader quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems—for the third year in a row!—validates the efforts MongoDB has made to help developers and organizations take advantage of their most valuable resource, their data. I talk to MongoDB customers frequently, and many say the same thing: in today’s digital-first economy, AI-powered applications and scalable data infrastructure aren’t just advantages, they’re absolute necessities. They say that the time to act is now, and they’re looking for solutions that will help them innovate, streamline, and seize the AI-driven future. And when it comes to modernizing their operations, they consistently point to MongoDB as their go-to partner. Begin your cloud journey with MongoDB Atlas today. Contact our sales team or register for a free account to begin building! And to learn how MongoDB can help accelerate your AI journey, visit the MongoDB AI Applications Program page. Footnotes Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems,  Henry Cook, Ramke Ramakrishnan, et al., 18 December 2024 GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 1 Gartner Peer Insights, Cloud Database Management Systems, December 2024 https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/cloud-database-management-systems 2 Gartner Research Methodologies, Gartner Magic Quadrant, 20 December 2024 https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

December 23, 2024