Kathyleen Beveridge

Overview

  • Born in Vietnam
  • immigrated in 1980s

  • Studied abroad in Spain

  • Bachelors from Santa Clara University
  • Didn’t have traditional education
  • Waited for MBA

Career

  • Banker at Wells Fargo
  • Stock broker from ‘95 to ‘96

  • Worked at Qualcomm, HP, Thermo Fisher Scientific

  • Thermo Fisher:
    • 125k employees at Thermo Fisher
    • 7k R&D scientists/engineers
    • Over 40 billion dollars in revenue
    • Process:
      • Voice of sales : “does this product make sense for the market?”
        • If yes, commercialize the product

Mission Statements

  • HP Inc. : “Create technology that makes life better for everyone, every where.”
  • Qualcomm : “Inventing the tech the world loves.”

  • Thermo Fisher Scientific : “Enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.”

  • All three cater to the people or the world using technology

Kris Porter

Overview

Career

  • Software Engineer
  • SRE
  • DevOps
  • infrastructure

Education

  • Livermore High School alum
  • Enrolled in UCLA for electrical engineering
  • First Computer Science class was Quarter 2 at UCLA
    • Failed the first time, then retook it

Research

  • Center for Embedded Networked Sensors
  • Networked Info mechanical System (NIMS)

Timeline

  • Graduated in 2008 stock market crash
  • 2010: job at startup (email marketing automation)
  • 2012: NBC Universal - Streaming media infrastructure
  • 2014: Intro to DevOps, transition to Qualcomm (Thanks to Mr. Mortensen)
  • 2021: Working at Twitter

Continuous learning

  • CCNA training
  • Machine Learning and Deep Learning (Qualcomm)
  • Python (Udemy)
  • Data Structures, Algorithms and System Design

Projects

  • Streaming media Infrastructure for 2012 Olympics
  • Analytics Infrastructure Projects (LocationSmart, Qualcomm)
  • New data center development at Twitter
  • Migrating home timeline of Twitter to GraphQL from RestAPI

More Notes from the Q&A

  • Agile methodology differs between companies depending on scrum size

  • Always start looking for a new job before you lose your current one (or see signs of loosing your current one)

  • Be ADAPTIVE

  • Keep LEARNING

  • Know how to listen to requirements and translate in terms of how the technology can meet them

  • Ridiculous interviews nowadays (compile code that solves a problem in 30-45 min)

  • Twitter University / Meta University teaches how the systems work because they are built there. Cannot be found anywhere else. (Different from Flask or Nginx)

  • Knowing how to code effectively is not just a skill, it’s a way of thinking (problem solving, growth mindset, etc…)