Yello's Deepika Duggirala Opens Up About Being an Engineer in Chicago
One of our goals at Holistic is to highlight the incredible people that make up our clients’ teams. We have found that elevating and celebrating voices is an incredibly engaging way to show everyone the POVs and people that drive success.
We are excited to have had the opportunity to sit down to listen to Deepika Duggirala explain the way she has created a path in software engineering. Deepika is the VP of Engineering at Yello, a talent acquisition platform that enables the world’s leading brands to deliver personalized candidate experiences to every job seeker, resulting in quality hires and faster fills.
THE INTERVIEW
What inspired you to become an engineer?
I was always curious about how things were made. It was a family joke that I was meant to be an engineer. It turned out that I was good at physics and math. In some ways I think that natural curiosity led me down that path. I can't really think of a moment where that happened but in a lot of ways, I think that what I do today also found me. I tend to follow what inspires me or motivates me.
What are your thoughts on technology today?
When I first got into data, it was all about analytics, but today we use those same data analytics skills and number-crunching skills to make decisions on everything from social problems to geopolitical issues. When we say technology is ubiquitous, everybody thinks about the fact that we're all walking around with Bluetooth headsets and mobile devices. But we're using it in everything. That evolution of technology has been really cool.
What challenges have you faced in your career?
I felt like I needed to know it all before I walked in, to prove myself to everybody. But I think that was better for me in the end, because I kind of focused on my competencies along the way.
There were definitely points in my time where I questioned whether I got a certain opportunity because I was a woman in tech or because I was a technologist that happened to be a woman. Along the way, I had to train myself to not let that overtake what I do.
What do you love about Yello?
We are able to look at ourselves as a data company with this big asset of expertise around the types of candidates, the types of jobs and the types of companies out there that are active in the talent acquisition space and ideally to be able to make the connections and take a lot of the noise out of the recruiting process.