In this podcast episode, we talked with Agita Jaunzeme about Career choices, transitions and promotions in and out of tech.
About the Speaker:
Agita has designed a career spanning DevOps/DataOps engineering, management, community building, education, and facilitation. She has worked on projects across corporate, startup, open source, and non-governmental sectors. Following her passion, she founded an NGO focusing on the inclusion of expats and locals in Porto. Embodying the values of innovation, automation, and continuous learning, Agita provides practical insights on promotions, career pivots, and aligning work with passion and purpose.
During this event, discussed their career journey, starting with their transition from art school to programming and later into DevOps, eventually taking on leadership roles. They explored the challenges of burnout and the importance of volunteering, founding an NGO to support inclusion, gender equality, and sustainability. The conversation also covered key topics like mentorship, the differences between data engineering and data science, and the dynamics of managing volunteers versus employees. Additionally, the guest shared insights on community management, developer relations, and the importance of product vision and team collaboration.
0:00 Introduction and Welcome
1:28 Guest Introduction: Agita’s Background and Career Highlights
3:05 Transition to Tech: From Art School to Programming
5:40 Exploring DevOps and Growing into Leadership Roles
7:24 Burnout, Volunteering, and Founding an NGO
11:00 Volunteering and Mentorship Initiatives
14:00 Discovering Programming Skills and Early Career Challenges
15:50 Automating Work Processes and Earning a Promotion
19:00 Transitioning from DevOps to Volunteering and Project Management
24:00 Managing Volunteers vs. Employees and Building Organizational Skills
31:07 Personality traits in engineering vs. data roles
33:14 Differences in focus between data engineers and data scientists
36:24 Transitioning from volunteering to corporate work
37:38 The role and responsibilities of a community manager
39:06 Community management vs. developer relations activities
41:01 Product vision and team collaboration
43:35 Starting an NGO and legal processes
46:13 NGO goals: inclusion, gender equality, and sustainability
49:02 Community meetups and activities
51:57 Living off-grid in a forest and sustainability
55:02 Unemployment party and brainstorming session
59:03 Unemployment party: the process and structure
🔗 CONNECT WITH AGITA JAUNZEME
Linkedin - /agita
🔗 CONNECT WITH DataTalksClub
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html
Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html
Datalike Substack - https://datalike.substack.com/
LinkedIn: / datatalks-club
