Intern Series: Mentorship Opportunities Galore - Meet Elena Chen

Alex Wilson
August 25, 2021 | Updated: August 31, 2022
#MongoDB Interns

Elena Chen is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley who is working as a Software Engineering Intern in our New York City office. After learning about MongoDB from her friends, she decided to spend her summer here so she could complete socially impactful work while benefiting from a renowned professional development program. Through the summer, she’s found incredible support from her mentor, enjoyed community in Underrepresented Genders in Tech (UGT), and unwound with an awesome group of peers. Keep reading to hear about what’s made Elena’s time at MongoDB so special.

Alex Wilson: Hey Elena! Thanks for taking the time to tell us about your time here at MongoDB. First, can you tell me a little bit about how you got here?

Elena Chen: Well, some of my friends interned at MongoDB before and they all told me that they had such a great time here! But one of the biggest reasons I decided to intern at MongoDB was that I had the best recruiting experience here. I felt supported, respected, and valued by the Campus team and the interviewers throughout the entire process. I thought that must be what it is like to work at MongoDB and I wasn't wrong! Moreover, I always wanted to work for a company that is contributing positively to society. Knowing that I will be making software that helps developers around the world build valuable applications and services, I decided to intern at MongoDB. Lastly, I chose MongoDB because it has one of the most well-organized internship programs in the industry. Besides providing mentorships and the resources for interns to succeed on their technical projects, the program also consists of intern social events, speaker series, and engineering roundtables. I wanted to immerse myself in all of these events so that I could make the most out of my internship and have a fun and memorable summer!

AW: Amazing! Has your work ended up being this positive? And what’s the best project you’ve worked on?

EC: My favorite project would be my main project for this summer! I am building Evergreen's new Waterfall page, also known as the Project Health page. It is the page where MongoDB engineers can view status summaries on the tasks run for their projects. The new design of the page is going to enhance MongoDB engineers' user experience on Evergreen.

I love my project because it will be used by MongoDB engineers and have a meaningful impact even after my internship ends. Additionally, working on this project has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Every day I look forward to building the next part of the page, and seeing everything coming together has been one of the greatest feelings and senses of accomplishment I have ever experienced. I feel competent in tackling the next major component and yet challenged to think hard and learn new things. While polishing my React and Redux skills and writing industry-standard code, I have learned to write GraphQL queries, schemas, and resolver functions. I have also learned to create front-end testing using Cypress and Storybook, two technologies I would have never used in a classroom setting.

AW: Of course, the 1:1 mentorship is such a huge part of MongoDB’s internship experience. How’s that been for you?

EC: Besides answering my questions and helping me resolve technical issues, my mentor has been my biggest support and cheerleader since the beginning. Every day he blocks out an hour on his calendar as "office hour" to answer my questions and code along my side. Every week, he asks me how he can better support me and make my internship a great experience. He celebrates my accomplishment every time I complete a task, and he guides me through the challenge every time I am blocked.

One thing my mentor has helped me with is boosting my confidence. Having never worked at a big company before, I was afraid at the beginning that I did not have the experience or skill to do well at my job. Nevertheless, my mentor reassured me and gave me a positive outlook on the project. He always tells me that he believes I will be able to finish my project by the end of my internship, and his faith in me has been one of the biggest drivers that motivates me to work hard every day.

AW: I heard you’re also part of MongoDB’s affinity group Underrepresented Genders in Tech (UGT)—have you also found support there?

EC: When I joined UGT I was paired with a UGT mentor. To me, my mentor has been a great source of support, help, and fun this summer. We met every two weeks where she checked in on me to make sure my internship was going great and I could ask her any questions. Sometimes we ate together over Zoom, others we talked passionately about Euro 2020 soccer games. From my mentor, I was able to learn a lot more about MongoDB and things outside my own team, and I received a lot of help with my final intern presentation. Just knowing that I have my UGT mentor to go to if I ever get stuck has been a great comfort to me.

UGT has also allowed me to learn about career development through its career panels. I really valued these opportunities because it was about something I could not have learned in school. One thing I loved about the event was that I was able to hear from mentors not just from my own field, software engineering, but also from product design and managerial roles. Because everyone came from different backgrounds and had different experiences, I was able to relate to each mentor on different points and apply their advice to my own life and career. Some of the mentors were once interns, and some were in positions where the mentees would want to be in three years, so it was amazing to talk to them and learn about how we could get to our next goal. What I have learned from the two panels has been eye-opening to me and will set me up for a successful career.

I am so happy that I joined UGT this summer because it has provided me with a community of mentors whom I could reach out to for help and advice. I actually just coffee-chatted a UGT mentor this morning. I was amazed by her experience and wisdom at the UGT career panel, so I reached out to her, and she was glad to set up a short talk with me. In my opinion, what I learned in my thirty minutes with Samy would have taken me at least a year to figure out on my own. She gave me a fresh perspective on going to graduate school and working in the industry, and I left the meeting with all my questions answered and a sense of clarity.

AW: Before we go, can you tell some of our prospective interns about what you’ve learned about the company this summer?

EC: One thing I have learned through my interviews and the internship is that everyone at MongoDB genuinely wants me to succeed! During the recruiting process, my recruiter sent me a lot of resources to help me prepare for the interviews and learn more about the company. I still remember I thought I did so poorly on my first interview that I emailed the recruiter afterward to apologize for my performance. But she quickly reassured me, and it turned out that I was just the worst critic of myself. During the interviews, I felt as if I was coding alongside the interviewers like coworkers. They pushed me to find the best solution to the problem and guided me when I was having trouble finding the bug. I really enjoyed meeting the recruiter and the interviewers during the process, and I could not wait to work with these people one day. After starting my internship at MongoDB this summer, I realized I made the right decision. My project mentor, my teammates, my campus program manager, and everyone else I have met here have been nothing but supportive and helpful.

Since day one I feel I have been provided the resources and support to succeed in my role. My project mentor and campus program manager also meet with me often to make sure that I am on the right track with the project and discuss how they can better support me. My teammates also help answer my questions daily and make me feel welcome in all of the team events so that I could have a successful and fun internship.

Whether you are just starting the recruiting process or about to embark on your journey at MongoDB, know that you will be supported by a group of people who want to see and help you succeed in your role and in life!

Interested in interning at MongoDB? Our 2021/2022 Software Engineering Summer Internship for the US is now live and accepting applications for students

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From Solutions Architect to Enterprise Account Executive: How Julian Storz is Growing His Career at MongoDB

MongoDB empowers employees to transform their careers by growing in the direction they want. One of the ways we do this is through our many internal transfer opportunities. Hear from Julian Storz about his transfer from Solutions Architect to Enterprise Account Executive and how he became the inspiration behind the MongoDB Lego person along the way. Jackie Denner: Thanks for sharing your story with me, Julian. To start, how did you come to join MongoDB? Julian Storz: I worked at a management consulting firm in the financial services industry before joining MongoDB. By chance, I was invited to a wine tasting in 2018 where I got to know Anton Rau, Regional Director at MongoDB, who was an Enterprise Account Executive at the time. We had an interesting conversation about current trends in the market, technologies that he saw emergings, and MongoDB not only as a technology but also as a company. I was familiar with MongoDB from my studies, loved the technology for its simplicity, and knew that they had IPOed recently, but I wasn’t thinking about a role in tech back then. Consulting and banking was what I learned and knew; thus I did not fully comprehend the potential of a career in the tech sector. Anton and I met again a month later, and by then I had done further research on the business model and took some time to ramp up my knowledge on the current state of MongoDB’s technology. During our second meeting, I agreed to kick off conversations and later accepted a Solutions Architect role within the Presales organization at MongoDB. This marked the starting point for an incredible journey at the company. JD: Tell me about your journey from presales to sales. JS: The main driver for me joining MongoDB was the technology. I always enjoyed programming and entrepreneurship. As part of the Presales team, a Solutions Architect is responsible for guiding our customers and users to design and build reliable, scalable systems using MongoDB. In this role I worked closely with one of our Enterprise Account Executives, Oliver Wedell. We paired up as a team for the Accounts in southwest Germany along with Austria and Switzerland, working on big deals with clients. This teamwork provided me with a profound insight into the sales role. After one and a half years as a Solutions Architect, I decided to make the move into Sales. JD: Why did you decide to make this move from presales into sales? JS: My role as a Solutions Architect also provided me the opportunity to work with many additional sales representatives from different regions, learning about their styles and approaches. I fell in love with the idea of building a business from the ground up and learning how to develop customer relationships by solving their problems systematically. In essence, the role of an Account Executive at MongoDB is one of a real businessperson. You are in charge of your franchise. You have a vast number of topics you can address with the technology, and it comes down to understanding the customer’s business, the current situation they are facing, and how MongoDB can add value for them. I’ve realized that it’s similar to working in consulting. The difference is that it’s not about services, but a product solution. After one and a half years as a Solutions Architect, I decided that I wanted to take the opportunity to learn the sales craft and gain the knowledge of all the inspiring people who are part of the Sales organization at MongoDB. My motivation behind this is to take the knowledge I’ve gathered and help smaller companies grow their businesses in the future. The complexity of growing an organization effectively requires a mindset that I feel can be improved upon in Germany. I am very thankful for this opportunity and the ability to tackle a new challenge. JD: What training was provided to you to help you transfer from a presales to a sales role? JS: During my transition period I received very close coaching from our Regional Directors. They supported me in analyzing my accounts, defining sales campaigns, identifying the right targets, training my pitches, and organization. At the same time, Oliver was promoted into a Regional Director role and became my manager, so I was thrilled that we would continue to work together. On top of that, the Central Europe team has weekly sessions organized by our Regional Vice President and the Leadership team to address specific areas of development for the whole Central Europe organization to allow for continuous development. JD: I hear that you’ve recently played a role in one of our field marketing campaigns. What's the story behind the MongoDB Lego set? JS: The MongoDB Lego set was part of a regional field marketing campaign for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH). The purpose was to promote MongoDB Atlas and its multi-cloud clusters, which enables a single application to use multiple clouds. The campaign was a raffle in which you could enter to win one of the 33 Lego sets MongoDB designed. I have always collaborated closely with our Marketing team, speaking at global and local events such as MongoDB World, webinars, and meetups. When the Marketing team decided to create this Lego set, they wanted a figure that people could relate to. It seems like this was my reward for almost two years of great collaboration because they decided to model the Lego person after me! JD: Tell me a bit about your team and culture. JS: One of the reasons I joined MongoDB initially was that it is all about personal growth and performance. The company culture is very open-minded and goal-oriented, which comes with a strong focus on development. As a team, we understand nobody is perfect and that we can all learn from each other, so this is what we do! We have weekly calls sharing our experiences, reflecting on how we can become better and deepening our knowledge on our sales processes and approaches to ensure that we can serve our customers effectively. During COVID-19 things have been different. We used to do a lot as a team and met at least once a week in-person. This obviously was not possible anymore. We adapted to remote work by having digital team events and working together via Zoom. As of July 2021, things are gladly easing up in Germany which means we can begin meeting face to face again! JD: Why should someone want to join your team? What would you like a candidate to know about life at MongoDB? JS: If you are interested in technology, like working with people, enjoy problem solving, and want to grow, MongoDB is a remarkable place to be. It may not always be easy, but it is more than worth it! The best part is that we have an outstanding leadership team, strong growth and market opportunity, and an open-minded culture - the perfect soil to plant the seed to a stellar 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 transform your career with us!

August 25, 2021
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MongoDB Database Observability: Integrating with Monitoring Tools

This post is the final in a three-part series on leveraging database observability. Welcome back to our series on Leveraging Database Observability! Our previous post showcased a real-world use case highlighting how MongoDB Atlas’s observability tools effectively tackle database performance challenges. Whether you’re a developer, DBA, or DevOps engineer, our mission is to empower you to harness the full potential of your data through our observability suite . Integrating Atlas metrics with your central enterprise observability tools can simplify your operations. By seamlessly working with popular observability tools, our approach helps teams streamline workflows and enhance visibility across systems. Integrating MongoDB Atlas with third-party monitoring tools MongoDB’s developer data platform combines all essential data services for building modern applications within a unified experience. Our purpose-built observability tools for Atlas environments offer automatic monitoring and optimization, guiding diagnostics tailored specifically for MongoDB. Additionally, we extend Atlas metrics into your existing enterprise observability stack, enabling seamless integration without replacing your current tools. This creates a consolidated, single-pane view that unifies Atlas telemetry with other tech and application metrics, ensuring comprehensive visibility into both database and full-stack performance. This integration empowers you to monitor, receive alerts, and make data-driven decisions within your existing workflows, driving greater efficiency. Below is a quick guide to modifying integration settings through the Atlas UI and the popular integrations we support: Navigate to the Project Integrations page in Atlas. Choose the organization and project you want to configure from the navigation bar. On the Project Integrations page, select the third-party services you’d like to integrate. Configure the chosen services with the required API keys and regions. Critical integrations for your observability platform With Atlas’s Datadog and Prometheus integrations, you can send critical MongoDB metrics to these platforms, empowering detailed, real-time monitoring. Through Datadog , you can track database operation counts, query efficiency, and resource usage, ideal for pinpointing bottlenecks and managing resources. Similarly, Prometheus enables you to monitor essential metrics like query times, connection rates, and memory usage, supporting flexible tracking of database health and performance. Both integrations facilitate proactive detection of issues, alert configuration for resource thresholds, and a cohesive view of Atlas data when visualized in Grafana. Atlas’s integration with PagerDuty streamlines incident management by sending metrics like performance alerts, billing anomalies, and security events directly to PagerDuty. This integration records incidents automatically, notifies teams upon alerts, and supports two-way syncing, ensuring resolved alerts in Atlas are reflected in PagerDuty. It enables efficient incident response and resource allocation to maintain system stability. With Atlas integrations for Microsoft Teams and Slack, you can route key metrics—such as query latency, disk usage, and throughput—to these channels for timely updates. Teams can use these insights for real-time performance monitoring, incident response, and collaboration. Notifications through these platforms ensure your team stays informed on database performance, storage health, and user activity changes as they occur. Use case: Centralized observability with MongoDB Atlas, Datadog, and Slack Let’s walk through a hypothetical scenario for ShopSmart, an e-commerce company that leverages MongoDB Atlas to manage its product catalog and customer data. As traffic surges, the DevOps team faces challenges in monitoring application performance and database health effectively. To tackle these challenges, the team leverages MongoDB Atlas’ integration with Datadog and Slack, creating a powerful observability ecosystem. Integrating MongoDB Atlas with Datadog: The team pushes key MongoDB Atlas metrics into Datadog, such as query performance, connection counts, and Atlas Vector Search metrics. With Datadog, they can visualize these metrics and correlate overall MongoDB performance with their other applications. Out-of-the-box monitors and dedicated dashboards allow the team to track metrics like throughput, average read/write latency, and current connections. This visibility helps pinpoint bottlenecks in real time, ensuring optimal database performance and improving overall application responsiveness. Setting up alerts in Datadog: The team configures alerts for critical metrics like high query latency and increased error rates. When thresholds are breached, Datadog instantly notifies the team. This proactive approach allows the team to address potential performance issues before they impact customers. Integrating Datadog with Slack: To ensure fast communication, alerts are sent directly to the dedicated Slack channel, “ShopSmart-Alerts.” This integration fosters seamless collaboration, enabling the team to discuss and resolve issues in real-time. With these integrations, ShopSmart’s engineering team can monitor performance quickly and address issues efficiently. The unified observability approach enhances operational efficiency, improves the customer experience, and supports ShopSmart’s competitive edge in the e-commerce industry. By leveraging MongoDB Atlas, Datadog, and Slack, the team ensures scalable performance and drives continuous innovation. Conclusion MongoDB Atlas empowers developers and organizations to achieve unparalleled observability and control over their database environments. By seamlessly integrating with central enterprise observability tools, Atlas enhances your ability to monitor performance metrics and ensures you can do so within your existing workflows. This means you can focus on building modern applications confidently, knowing you have the insights and alerts necessary to maintain optimal performance. Embrace the power of MongoDB Atlas and transform your approach to database management—because your applications can thrive when your data is observable. And that wraps up our Leveraging Database Observability series! We hope you learned something new and found value in these discussions. Sign up for MongoDB Atlas , our cloud database service, to see database observability in action. To dive deeper and expand your knowledge, check out this learning byte for more insights on the MongoDB observability suite and how it can enhance your database performance.

November 14, 2024