Away From the Keyboard: Anaiya Raisinghani, MongoDB Developer Advocate

Welcome to our new article series focused on developers and what they do when they’re not building incredible things with code and data.

“Away From the Keyboard” features interviews with developers at MongoDB, discussing what they do, how they establish a healthy work-life balance, and their advice for others looking to create a more holistic approach to coding.

In our first article, Anaiya Raisinghani shares her day-to-day responsibilities as a Developer Advocate at MongoDB; how she uses nonrefundable workout classes and dinner reservations to help her step away from work; and her hack for making sure that when she logs off for the day, she stays logged off.

Q: What do you do at MongoDB?

Anaiya: I’m a developer advocate here at MongoDB on the Technical Content team! This means I get to build super fun MongoDB tutorials for the entire developer community.

I’m lucky where each day is different. If I’m researching a platform to build a tutorial, it can mean hours of research and reading up on documentation, whereas if I’m filming a YouTube video it means lots of time recording and editing.

Q: What does work-life balance look like for you?

Anaiya: A bad habit of mine is to get really caught up in a piece of content I’m creating and refuse to leave a certain spot until I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do that day.

Because of this—and because I work mainly from home—if I can anticipate that I’m going to get caught up in a project, I create plans that force me to leave my desk. Some examples of these are non-refundable workout classes, drinks with friends after work (I hate being a flake), or even dinner reservations that charge you if you cancel less than 24 hours in advance. My biggest gripe is paying for something that I didn’t get anything out of. If I’m paying for a single pilates class, I will make sure I’m there trying my best on the reformer. So this has been a fantastic motivator.

Being 25 and living in NYC means that my weekends are always booked, so I’m always out and about, and this allows me to not think about work on my time off. I’m also lucky enough to have a great manager and team that keep very great work-life boundaries, so I never feel guilty practicing those boundaries myself.

Q: Was that balance always a priority for you or did you develop it later in your career?

Anaiya: This balance was definitely something I had to develop and actively work on. I’ve always been an anxious over-achiever, and when coming into my first corporate job I thought staying overtime would be expected. We’ve all heard the phrase: “Be the first one in and the last to leave.”

My manager actually used to actively tell me to log off when I first started because he would notice that my Slack was active past work hours (shoutout to Nic!).

Having him and my team as a great example helped me understand that there will always be more work and to enjoy the time that you spend away from your laptop. It was also the realization that working shouldn’t be your entire life. You need to develop hobbies and build relationships within your community in order to be a happier human being.

Q: What benefits has this balance given you?

Anaiya: The biggest benefit this balance has given me both at work and in my life is that I’m incredibly present when I’m doing one or the other. When I’m working during the day, I’m entirely locked in and take advantage of each hour. And when I’m done with the workday, I’m actually done and can focus on my hobbies or my friends.

It’s also taught me to plan in advance and it gives me a better understanding of how much work on average is expected for each project.

Q: What advice would you give to a developer seeking to find a better balance?

Anaiya: If you’re seeking a better balance, I recommend removing Slack from your personal phone and laptop. This way when you’re disconnected, you’re truly disconnected. Of course, there are some teams and companies that require you to be on call or working around the clock, but even then having a specific laptop or device with everything you need that is separate from your personal devices can help bridge this gap.

Thank you to Anaiya Raisinghani for sharing her insights! And thanks to all of you for reading. Look for more in our new series.

Interested in learning more about or connecting more with MongoDB? Join our MongoDB Community to meet other community members, hear about inspiring topics, and receive the latest MongoDB news and events.

And let us know if you have any questions for our future guests when it comes to building a better work-life balance as developers. Tag us on social media: @mongodb #AwayFromTheKeyboard

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The Learning Experience: Celebrating a Year of MongoDB Developer Days

One year ago today MongoDB held our first regional Developer Day event, a full-day experience designed to teach the fundamentals and advanced capabilities of MongoDB. Developer Day events have been held in person in over 35 cities, across 16 countries, and in seven languages. Initially created by a core team with a passion for enabling developers, a group of talented MongoDB Developer Advocates and Solution Architects have since scaled the program to directly engage and teach thousands of developers worldwide. As developer relations programs go, engaging builders through hands-on workshops is hardly a new approach. But the difference at MongoDB is how closely we collaborate cross-functionally with other teams, and how focused we are on providing authentically hands-on, engaging experiences for developers. From the start, the MongoDB Developer Day program was a collaborative effort to take a platform that is easy to get started with and to introduce more advanced capabilities in a compelling way. Based on the helpful and positive feedback we continue to get from participants, we know Developer Days help developers gain skills and a sense of accomplishment as they alternate between instruction and applying that learning through hands-on exercises. To share more about what has made Developer Days so successful, I asked members of that core team—Lead Developer Advocate Joel Lord , and Sr Developer Advocates Mira Vlaeva and Diego Freniche Brito —to reflect on key areas that went into creating this enduring experience. Our Developer Day class at MongoDB.local NYC in May, 2024 A sense of accomplishment “We all agreed that a Developer Day should focus on hands-on learning, where developers can experiment with MongoDB, potentially make mistakes, and take pride in building something on their own,” Mira said. “The goal was to build a fun learning experience rather than just sitting and listening to lectures all day.” The curriculum was designed to encourage developers to work together at certain points as they advance from data modeling and schema design concepts to implementing powerful Atlas Search and Vector Search capabilities. “One of my favorite moments of the day is when people start working together,” Joel said. “At the beginning of the day, our attendees can be a little hesitant, but they quickly begin to collaborate with each other, and it's wonderful to witness that happen.” Building great Developer Days together While our MongoDB Developer Relations team designed the agenda and course material, it was our partnerships with other teams and stakeholders that helped Developer Days take flight. There were many key stakeholders that shared a vision for enabling developers to realize more value with our platform. As Joel remembers, “We had to work and collaborate with a number of other teams, which was, at the time, new to us.” Among the key teams involved, Diego added, “Working with Field and Strategic Marketing teams has been a great experience. They help us so much with all the really important tasks… there's so much they've done that Developer Days wouldn't be a reality without them.” The program has expanded our collaboration with several other teams, including marketing, product, and sales, to ensure our courses remain up-to-date and we make the most of our time in each city by welcoming developers from key accounts. Continued success and improvements To ensure Developer Days were as impactful as possible, we initially ran the program as a pilot in seven cities. In addition to noting live observations and interactions, we used surveys to collect feedback and report on an NPS (net promoter score) to assess whether the event exceeded participant expectations. These initial events were spaced out enough that the team could implement improvements and try new approaches at subsequent Developer Days. “We had the opportunity to run the same labs multiple times, make small changes each time, and observe how people react to the different configurations,” said Mira, who continues to contribute improvements such as new interactive elements. As we continue to bring the Developer Day experience to new cities, we’re also taking Developer Days online. “There are so many reasons why people may not be able to attend our in-person events,” said Lauren Schaefer , who recently rejoined MongoDB Developer Relations to lead the program forward. “I look forward to working with my team to tackle the challenges of bringing our curriculum successfully online.” So a year later, I want to say thank you to everyone who has made Developer Days a success—from seven staff members who supported our first event in Chicago, to the roughly 100 talented people across MongoDB who are now part of the program. Even more importantly, I’m thankful for all of the participants (across 35 great cities and 16 countries!) that joined us for this full-day experience. As I love to say at the beginning of every Developer Day, we’re here to learn from each other. I hope you’ve learned as much from us as we have from you! To learn more about MongoDB’s global community of millions of developers—and to check out upcoming events like Developer Days—please visit our events page .

August 29, 2024
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Leveraging BigQuery JSON for Optimized MongoDB Dataflow Pipelines

We're delighted to introduce a major enhancement to our Google Cloud Dataflow templates for MongoDB Atlas. By enabling direct support for JSON data types, users can now seamlessly integrate their MongoDB Atlas data into BigQuery, eliminating the need for complex data transformations. This streamlined approach not only saves users time and resources, but it also empowers customers to unlock the full potential of their data through advanced data analytics and machine learning. Figure 1: JSON feature for user options on Dataflow Templates Limitations without JSON support Traditionally, Dataflow pipelines designed to handle MongoDB Atlas data often necessitate the transformation of data into JSON strings or flattening complex structures to a single level of nesting before loading into BigQuery. Although this approach is viable, it can result in several drawbacks: Increased latency: The multiple data conversions required can lead to increased latency and can significantly slow down the overall pipeline execution time. Higher operational costs: The extra data transformations and storage requirements associated with this approach can lead to increased operational costs. Reduced query performance: Flattening complex document structures in JSON String format can impact query performance and make it difficult to analyze nested data. So, what’s new? BigQuery's Native JSON format addresses these challenges by enabling users to directly load nested JSON data from MongoDB Atlas into BigQuery without any intermediate conversions. This approach offers numerous benefits: Reduced operating costs: By eliminating the need for additional data transformations, users can significantly reduce operational expenses, including those associated with infrastructure, storage, and compute resources. Enhanced query performance: BigQuery's optimized storage and query engine is designed to efficiently process data in Native JSON format, resulting in significantly faster query execution times and improved overall query performance. Improved data flexibility: users can easily query and analyze complex data structures, including nested and hierarchical data, without the need for time-consuming and error-prone flattening or normalization processes. A significant advantage of this pipeline lies in its ability to directly leverage BigQuery's powerful JSON functions on the MongoDB data loaded into BigQuery. This eliminates the need for a complex and time-consuming data transformation process. The JSON data within BigQuery can be queried and analyzed using standard BQML queries. Whether you prefer a streamlined cloud-based approach or a hands-on, customizable solution, the Dataflow pipeline can be deployed either through the Google Cloud console or by running the code from the github repository . Enabling data-driven decision-making To summarize, Google’s Dataflow template provides a flexible solution for transferring data from MongoDB to BigQuery. It can process entire collections or capture incremental changes using MongoDB's Change Stream functionality. The pipeline's output format can be customized to suit your specific needs. Whether you prefer a raw JSON representation or a flattened schema with individual fields, you can easily configure it through the userOption parameter. Additionally, data transformation can be performed during template execution using User-Defined Functions (UDFs). By adopting BigQuery Native JSON format in your Dataflow pipelines, you can significantly enhance the efficiency, performance, and cost-effectiveness of your data processing workflows. This powerful combination empowers you to extract valuable insights from your data and make data-driven decisions. Follow the Google Documentation to learn how to set up the Dataflow templates for MongoDB Atlas and BigQuery. Get started with MongoDB Atlas on Google Marketplace . Learn more about MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud on our product page .

December 17, 2024