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

Ashley Perez
December 8, 2020 | Updated: January 6, 2021
#Diversity & Inclusion#Culture

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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Exploring New Security, Billing, and Customization Features in Atlas Charts

MongoDB is excited to announce a few new updates to Atlas Charts that enable you to securely share insights, gain deeper visibility into expenses, and customize your most frequently used data visualizations. Based on specific feedback received from users of our native visualization tool, these significant improvements will make data analysis even more productive. We: Improved security in Atlas Charts for passcode-protected public dashboards Increased visibility into Atlas spending through an updated billing dashboard Introduced new customization for table charts through hyperlinks and hidden columns Secure insights with passcode-protected public dashboards First, there’s the new passcode-protected public dashboards feature that brings an extra layer of security to publicly shared dashboards—we understand that not everyone who benefits from Atlas Charts operates within MongoDB Atlas. Alongside the ability to schedule email reports and support for publicly-shared dashboards , we’re offering a new and secure way to spread insights with the launch of our latest feature. Add an extra layer of security to previously publicly shared dashboards, ensuring that only authorized users with the passcode can access your data. Enabling passcode protection on a dashboard is simple. As a dashboard owner, a new option is available to protect dashboard links with a passcode when sharing it publicly. Check the box to protect your public link with a passcode Once enabled, a passcode is automatically generated and can be copied to the clipboard (and regenerated on demand as needed). Viewers navigating to dashboards via the public link will see a new screen prompting them to enter a passcode. Once authenticated successfully, they can view the dashboard just as before. Easily access your dashboards by inputting your password when prompted Whether you're sharing insights with clients, stakeholders, or team members, rest assured that your data remains easily accessible yet secure. To learn more about the different ways we support dashboard sharing, check out our documentation . What’s new in the Atlas Charts billing dashboard Next, we continue to make enhancements to the MongoDB Atlas Charts billing dashboard , all of which provide insights into Atlas expenses. We are delighted to share that it’s now possible to see resource tags data, as well as billing data from all linked organizations inside the Atlas Charts billing dashboard. Additionally, users can now ingest billing data from another organization, provided they possess the organization’s API keys. These newly introduced features rely on the availability of billing data within the organization. And for those leveraging resource tags, the billing data will seamlessly integrate, empowering users to generate personalized charts or to incorporate tailored dashboard filters within the Atlas Charts billing dashboard. If cross-organization billing is enabled, editing the configuration will ingest the linked organization’s billing data for the last three months, with the option to extend this period to up to a year by creating a new ingestion. Project tags data in the Atlas Charts billing dashboard Resource tags are now seamlessly integrated into billing data and can be included in any of the charts or the dashboard filters inside the Atlas billing dashboard. For example, our MongoDB organization uses the Atlas auto-suggested tags “application” and “environment,” alongside a custom resource tag labeled "team." The following chart uses the tags data and shows the billing cost per team and per environment. A chart which depicts cost per team and environment using tags The subsequent chart presents the billing cost allocated per project and team, providing valuable insights into the primary cost drivers for each team's projects. A chart depicting cost allocated per project and team Users can also add a dashboard filter to the “tags” field, which will allow them to see the whole dashboard based on the selected tag values. In the next example, we have selected a specific “team” : “Charts” from the tags dashboard filter, so we can see all of the billing insights per team thanks to our custom tag. Billing insights filtered by specific "charts" team in an intuitive dashboard Linked organization’s data in the Atlas Charts billing dashboard For complex Atlas projects spanning multiple organizations, the Atlas Charts billing dashboard now seamlessly integrates billing data from all linked organizations. The most productive use case is to add a dashboard filter based on the "organizationId" to enable filtering data according to specific organizations for a more granular analysis of the spending. Dashboard filtered by the organizationID field to show insights for one organization Billing data from another organization Users can now ingest billing data from other organizations that are not directly linked, provided they possess authorization API keys, bringing the data you need to where you are. Provide the API key to ingest billing data from other organizations These new features in the Atlas Charts billing dashboard are designed to provide richer, more detailed insights into organization spend. Check out our documentation and our previous blog post to learn more about it. Hyperlinks and hidden columns for tables in Atlas Charts Of all the data visualization methods available in Atlas Charts, table charts rank as one of the most popular among our users. So it should come as no surprise that one of the most highly requested features from our customers is the ability to format columnar data as hyperlinks. We're excited to announce that this is now possible in Atlas Charts through the new hyperlink customization options available for table charts . With hyperlink customization, you can format columnar data as hyperlinks using any of the following URI protocols: http, https, mailto, or tel, and can be constructed statically or dynamically using encoded fields. Let’s assume we’ve created a table using the sample movies dataset in Atlas, with encodings like title, imdb.id, runtime, genre, poster_display—which is a calculated field —and more. Customization panel in Atlas Charts To turn movie titles into clickable links that direct users to their respective IMDB pages, navigate to the customization panel and click into the hyperlinking feature in the fields tab . We will format the title field as a hyperlink which links to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for that movie. IMDB URLs are formatted as follows, where id needs to be substituted with the value of the imdb.id field for each document. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt<id>/ Customize the “title” field in the table chart to link to IMDB using the “imdb.id” field in the URI input. Below, a preview displays the fully formatted URI with fields substituted for their values, helping to ensure it’s correct before we save it to be applied to the chart. Preview of URI in the hyperlinking panel Since we only need the imdb.id field to be encoded for the purpose of constructing the URI applied to the title field, we can hide the column from rendering using another new customization option. Select the imdb.id field in the customization panel, and toggle on the “Hide Column” option. Toggle "Hide Column" We also support using URI values directly from fields (provided they use one of the supported protocols). Let’s see this in action by creating a hyperlink to the movie poster. In the URI input, trigger the encoded field menu using the @ keyboard shortcut, and select the poster field. Similar to the previous example, a preview will be displayed. After saving and applying the hyperlink formatting, we can hide the rendering of the poster field as needed to keep the chart clean. Use the @ keyboard shortcut to trigger the encoded field menu All these options are accessible in the customization panel, making it straightforward to enhance table charts with interactive hyperlinks. For more detailed instructions, visit our documentation . As we conclude this roundup, we hope you’re as excited about these updates as we are. The Atlas Charts team is dedicated to continuously improving Atlas Charts to meet your needs and enhance your data visualization experience. Stay tuned for more updates, and happy charting! New to Atlas Charts? Get started today by logging into or signing up for MongoDB Atlas , deploying or selecting a cluster, and activating Charts for free.

September 5, 2024