Lovisa Berggren Is Much More Than "Just an Intern"

Sammy Attia
August 30, 2022 | Updated: August 31, 2022
#MongoDB Interns

Lovisa Berggren is a student at Umea University in Sweden and a software engineering intern based in MongoDB’s Dublin office who is thoroughly enjoying the hands-on experience her internship on the Cloud API Experience Team has to offer. Read on for more about the projects Lovisa is working on, the culture at MongoDB, and why she’s truly happy about her decision to intern at MongoDB.

Sammy Attia: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today! I know you’re a software engineering intern on the Cloud API Experience team. Could you tell me more about the team?

Lovisa Berggren: My team is responsible for the MongoDB Atlas Administration API with projects like API Authentication, API rate limiting, and API versioning. We are involved in the release and platform support for Ops Manager, which is specifically the focus of my work this summer.

What projects have you been working on?

This summer I am working on a release tool. Currently this tool has its own repository and uses a Makefile for building, testing, and execution. My task is to move the code to a monorepo, restructure it, and change the build tool from Make to Bazel, which is used in the monorepo.

That sounds awesome! Which part are you finding the most interesting?

The most interesting part has been all the things you don't necessarily learn at university. Usually when you do assignments for a course, you create your program, see that it runs as expected, and then you forget about it. Here at MongoDB, I have learned about working with legacy code, maintaining code, releasing, and testing. Seeing how these things work in a big company is really interesting and new to me, and so important.

I’m glad to hear you are gaining real world experience. I would love to hear why you decided to join MongoDB in the first place. Can you share more about your decision-making process?

I had heard about MongoDB and I had also used it myself in coding projects, so I thought it would be really cool to work here. Also, after applying I had a great interview process. I was able to meet with many different people at the company, and all of them were really kind. During the interview process, I also learned more about the culture at MongoDB, which made it clear that I wanted to intern here.

And has the culture lived up to your expectations?

The culture is amazing. Everybody here is very kind, welcoming, and helpful. I don't feel as though I'm “just an intern.” I am truly a part of the team and the company. I have had the chance to get to know a lot of people, both in my team but also from other teams, which is great.

Hear from two-time intern Erin McNulty about how MongoDB’s engineering culture has enabled her to grow.

It’s probably hard to narrow it down, but what would you say has been your favorite part of the internship experience?

The best part is the people and the culture, and how they make me feel on a day-to-day basis. I am always excited to go to work, and I feel appreciated here, which is something I think is very important. Having a great intern experience is not only about having a fun and interesting project to work on, but also working in a great environment with people who support you and share your values.

I love that! Thank you for being here this summer, and for your contributions to MongoDB.

It's been amazing to be able to participate in a great intern program. As a Swede from a relatively small town, it's also cool to get the opportunity to experience Dublin during the summer.

Interested in opportunities for college students at MongoDB? Find out more.

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Growth and Opportunity: Why Now Is a Great Time to Join Our Sales Ecosystem in Korea

Read in Korean As MongoDB continues to scale, we are expanding our presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The South Korea market, in particular, is an important and strategic focus because we anticipate high growth in the region. Below, hear from members of our sales team in South Korea to learn how they work cross-functionally to make an impact — and how the opportunity to help build MongoDB Korea translates to extraordinary career growth. Joe Shin , Regional Director Over the past few years, MongoDB has grown rapidly because it addresses the emerging requirements of new applications and can modernize existing workloads which are struggling with traditional relational databases (RDBMSes). I've always thought that open source would become the next market trend, especially when new technologies such as NoSQL replace the limitations of RDBMSes and dominate the database market. We knew the market opportunity would be enormous for the MongoDB Korea branch because we know that our Korean customers would love to receive more active support locally. MongoDB’s organizational culture is horizontal. People of various positions in various jobs freely communicate and share opinions. In this horizontal organizational culture, each team has a clear role and works efficiently through organic relationships. As a regional director, my role is to drive local sales strategy, guide and develop our sales team on how to solve complex issues, and communicate effectively with partners — especially by escalating things when necessary to help solve problems. As a local leader, I hold myself accountable for embracing a collaborative environment where everyone cares about each other, one that encourages effective teamwork and empowers all team members to follow MongoDB’s corporate values of Build Together, Embrace the Power of Differences, Make It Matter, Be Intellectually Honest, Own What You Do, and Think Big, Go Far. MongoDB is at a great spot within the market. We already have hundreds of customers in the country, including many familiar brands such as KBS , Kakao Pay , Woowa Brothers , and many others across both traditional organizations and digital natives. In fact, Woowa Brothers have been users of MongoDB in Korea for some time and have now gone all in on our developer data platform for their international expansion into Southeast Asia. Our customer Nod Games is using MongoDB to transform the gaming industry by leading the move to pay-to-earn games using blockchain technology. Even with this success, we're still at the very early stages of a massive shift in technology, and we need to keep finding and researching our customers’ pain points to deliver them value. The Korean database market is getting bigger and bigger, and it shows enormous possibilities. MongoDB Korea is growing so fast that sales reps will have the opportunity to learn quickly and see the direct impact of their work. Hae Sung Kim , Strategic Account Director I joined MongoDB as an enterprise account executive and have been promoted to strategic account director. As an EAE, I benefited from the detailed and clear MongoDB sales methodology and enablement. MongoDB has a very passionate and strategic sales culture. There is a focus on finding the right person who can effectively deliver MongoDB’s value for the customer’s business. In addition, there is a culture of knowledge sharing across the entire sales ecosystem, so that you can take best practices from teammates and apply it within your own accounts. This culture helps strengthen sales capabilities by making it possible to establish strategies from a customer's business perspective. I also gathered enormously helpful tips from team sharing, delivered MongoDB’s value to numerous accounts, successfully completed various cases (including on premises, cloud, and ISV/OEM). I gained valuable experiences and recognition. At MongoDB, sales is not only about revenue. You work with various customer contacts within your accounts, such as developers, operations, and C-level stakeholders, with dedicated support from all internal functional departments. At MongoDB, you will have the opportunity to strengthen your sales capabilities and help a wide range of customers and industries. But more important and exciting is the communication and collaboration you will have with passionate global team members. White Moon , Field Marketing Manager I was first introduced to MongoDB about four years ago. At the time, it was still relatively new in Korea, but developers were very interested, and it was a promising and proven solution in the marketplace. When I joined, I was impressed by the diverse and inclusive organizational culture and how all employees supported one another. I joined as the first and only female employee, but I always felt that I was able to speak freely with other members of the team and that I would receive support whenever it was needed. As a company, MongoDB actively supports women through initiatives such as the MDBWomen affinity group, coaching and development for professional and career development, and holding celebrations for events like International Women’s Day. The global marketing team has also supported me by helping to ensure my region has everything it needs to strengthen MongoDB brand awareness and generate strong demand. I often connect with marketers in other regions to share best practices and learn from their experiences. Not only has this made me much more strategic, but it also gives me the opportunity to meet and become friends with people outside of my direct team. When working with the sales team, I want to be a representative partner of the Korean region and be a leader who oversees marketing in Korea. I'm not just an event planner; I'm trying to be the CMO of my region and a business partner to my regional sales team. Through local programs and account-based marketing activities, I can support driving new leads and accelerating deals. I’ve always seen myself as responsible for understanding when and why to do these programs, and how to ensure the leads make it through the sales funnel and become new customers. The MongoDB office space in Seoul. Jun Kim , Manager, Solutions Architecture I joined MongoDB when the Korea branch had just been started. To me, MongoDB’s document model and sharding capability were really attractive compared to other databases, and I was impressed by all of the technical features. I had worked for Oracle as a master sales consultant, and coming to MongoDB allowed me to gain exciting experiences in many different capacities, from meeting with developers and DBAs to C-levels. I started as a senior solutions architect and have since been promoted to a people management role. MongoDB is a very fast growing company, and I’ve seen my direct impact on the organization. It is exciting to be a part of scaling our team and MongoDB’s presence in Korea. I also feel that I’ve been developed and continue to develop through the support I receive from my peers and leadership. Our team in Korea is growing quickly, and we have a strong culture of collaborating with one another and benefiting from each other’s experiences. I am proud of what we have accomplished so far and look forward to our next phase of growth. Read about local customers BAEMIN and Nod Games, and find out what the media is saying about MongoDB in Digital Daily and TechM DataNet . Interested in making an impact and helping us scale MongoDB Korea? We have several open roles and would love for you to transform your career with us!

August 29, 2022

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MongoDB and Partners: Building the AI Future, Together

If you’re like me, over the past year you’ve closely watched AI’s developments—and the world’s reactions to them. From infectious excitement about AI’s capabilities, to impatience with its cost and return on investment, every day has been filled with AI twists and turns. It’s been quite the roller coaster. During the ride, from time to time I’ve wondered where AI falls on the Gartner hype cycle, which gives "a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time." Have we hit the "peak of inflated expectations" only to fall into the "trough of disillusionment?" Or is the hype cycle an imperfect guide, as The Economist argues? The reality is that it takes time for any new technology—even transformative ones like AI—to take hold. And every advance, no matter how big, has had its detractors. A famous example is that of Picasso (!), who in 1968 said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” (!!) For our part, MongoDB is convinced that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology that will enhance every future application—a belief that has been reinforced by the incredible work our partners have shared at MongoDB’s 2024 events. Speeding AI development MongoDB is committed to helping organizations of all sizes succeed with AI, and one way we’re doing that is by collaborating with the MongoDB partner ecosystem to create powerful, user-friendly AI development tools and solutions. For example, Fireworks.ai —which is a member of the MongoDB AI Applications Program ecosystem —created an inference solution that hosts gen AI models and supports containerized deployments. This tool makes it easier for developers to build and deploy powerful applications with a range of easy-to-use tools and customization options. They can choose to use state-of-the-art, open-source language, image, and multimodal foundation models off the shelf, or they can customize and fine-tune models to their needs. Jointly, Fireworks.ai and MongoDB provide a solution for developers who want to leverage highly curated and optimized open-source models and combine these with their organization’s own proprietary data—and to do so with unparalleled speed and security. “MongoDB is one of the most sophisticated database providers, and it’s very easy to use,” said Benny Chen , cofounder of Fireworks.ai. "We want developers to be able to use these tools, and we want to work with providers who enable and empower developers." Nomic , another MAAP ecosystem member, also enables developers with best-in-class solutions across the entire unstructured data workflow. Their Embed offering, available through the Nomic API , allows users to vectorize large-scale datasets for use in text, image, and multimodal retrieval applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), using only their web browser. The Nomic-MongoDB solution is a highly efficient, open-weight model that developers can use to visualize the unstructured datasets they store in MongoDB Atlas . These insights help users quickly discover trends and articulate data-driven value propositions. Nomic also supported the recently announced vector quantization in MongoDB Atlas Vector Search , which reduces vector sizes while preserving performance. Last—but hardly least!—there’s our new reference architecture with MAAP partners AWS and Anthropic. Announced at MongoDB.local London , the reference architecture supports building memory-enhanced AI agents, and is designed to streamline complex processes and develop smarter, more responsive applications. For more—including a link to the code on Github— check out the MongoDB Developer Center . Making AI work for anyone and everyone The companies MongoDB partners with aren’t just making gen AI easier for developers—they’re building tools for everyone. For example, Capgemini has invested $2 billion in gen AI and is training 100,000 of its employees in the technology. GenYoda, a solution that helps insurance professionals with their daily work, is a product of this investment. GenYoda leverages MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to analyze large amounts of customer data, like policy statements, premiums, claims history, and health information. Using GenYoda, insurance professionals can quickly analyze underwriters’ reports to make informed decisions, create longitudinal health summaries, and streamline customer interactions to improve contact center efficiency. GenYoda can ingest 100,000 documents in just a few hours and respond to users’ queries in two to three seconds—a metric on par with the most widely used gen AI models. And it produces results: in one example, by using Capgemini’s solution an insurer was able to increase productivity by 15%, add new reports 25% faster (thus speeding decision-making), and reduce the manual effort of searching PDFs, increasing efficiency by 10%. Building the future of AI together So, what’s next? Honestly, I’m as curious as you are. But I’m also incredibly excited. At MongoDB, we’re active participants in the AI revolution, working to embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. The future of gen AI is bright, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together. To learn more about how MongoDB can accelerate your AI journey, explore the MongoDB AI Applications Program .

November 4, 2024