Opportunity Made Podcast Transcript, Episode 2

Pam Abreu, Earl Career Transitions

[00:00:00] Pam: It's so hard to want to invest in yourself because you are just trying to survive. Personally, that's why I think there's so many people in Corona who are poor and they're just making means to survive and you constantly see this pattern in generations, like your parents and the kids is cause the system makes it so hard for us that we'll never find the time to actually learn how to stop thinking about survival, but start thinking about your career, the next five years, like that is never, ever, ever on our minds.  

[00:01:04] Katherine: Hello, everybody and welcome to Opportunity Made, the podcast that is based upon the idea that we can make new opportunities for ourselves and others on a regular basis if we are willing to take chances, be intentional in our actions and invest deeply in our own lives. I am your host, Katherine Lewis, and we are talking about early career transitions with front-end Software Engineer, Pamela Abreu.

[00:01:32] I am going to give an audio description of myself. I am a European American woman with short blonde hair that is tied back. Today, I am wearing a navy blouse and there is a white wall of curtains behind me. Pam, welcome! Would you like to give an audio description of yourself? 

[00:01:47] Pam: Hey Katherine, thanks for bringing me on. I am Pamela Abreu.

[00:01:50] I go by Pam. I'm an Dominican American women with short curly brunette hair and a shaved under cut. Today I'm wearing a beige LinkedIn

[00:02:00] sweater, a Mets baseball cap. Go Mets! And I think behind me, there is a Lego poster that says 'level up'. 

[00:02:09] Katherine: Welcome Pam. It's a pleasure to have you, and you use to be a creative designer, but now you're a Software Engineer at LinkedIn. That is a big change to make early on in your career and I'm so excited to learn how you did it, your advice to others who are looking to do the same and how you balance it all. 

[00:02:27] Plus, we were talking earlier and I heard that you have a wonderful dream that you have yet to fulfill, so I can't wait for you to share more about it and see how we can support you in making it come true.  We're going to do some rapid fire questions, uh, east coast or west coast? 

[00:02:45] Pam: I'm going to say east coast cause I feel like if I said west coast, the east coast people would come for me and I feel if it was vice versa, west coast, people wouldn't come from me. So east coast. 

[00:02:53] Katherine: Purple hair dye or red hair dye? 

[00:02:55] Pam: Purple. That's definitely my go-to.

[00:02:58] Katherine: Favorite food? 

[00:02:59] Pam: I thought so hard and long about this and I have yet to come with a definite answer cause I just, I love food. Um, it used to be pizza, but I think I transitioned into tacos cause it's just very versatile. There's just so many different approaches to it and it just always slaps. It's always good. 

[00:03:18] Katherine: I love tacos. There was something that you made today. Tell me what food were you making today? 

[00:03:23] Pam: I took a, I guess a little training course, or demo, maybe that's a better word. And it was to make raw vegan cheesecake, and it was with raspberry and strawberries. It's a frozen kind of treat.   

[00:03:37] Katherine: That sounds delicious. And I'm sure you could put different fruits on there too, if you wanted.

[00:03:41] Pam: Yeah. Yeah, I was telling you, I want to try it with mango and passion fruit cause those are my two favorite fruits and that would be the go-to combo.

[00:03:51] Katherine: Okay. We got Pam's favorite fruits! I should have asked that as the first question.

[00:03:56] Pam:  That was easy for me actually, like favorite fruits. That's very easy to answer. 

[00:04:02] Katherine: Code or design?

[00:04:03] Pam: This is also a really, really tough one to think about. I don't know if you've ever seen this picture of this little Mexican girl and she's fighting with her family over soft tacos or hard tacos so she like, why not both? And so that is how I feel like, why not both. So can I choose both because, I really do think both are the same at the end of the day, because both of them are problem-solving. This is really hard.  My whole thing right now is trying to figure out how can I be both? 

[00:04:31] Katherine: All right. So we combine the answer into one. I love it. And it's so true. It is all about solving problems, right? Whether we're coding or we're designing.

[00:04:39] Awesome. Okay. So let's start at the very beginning. What did you want to be when you grew up? 

[00:04:44] Pam:  Yeah, so at first it was a princess but then I realized maybe that's not an actual career, so then it changed into astronaut, and then once I got into, I guess, art and design, it definitely became into artist, but, I think that's the hardest thing about being an artist is that you have so many ideas. So I actually want it to be everything. I'm always talking about in another life I would've been a musician. In another life I would have been a chef. I'm going to stick with princess. That's what I originally wanted to be. I remember for a good 10 years, I was like, I'm going to be princess Pam and I'm, I'm royalty!

[00:05:23] Katherine: That's so awesome. Okay, but instead of being a princess, we'll still consider you a princess. You are princess Pam and you also studied industrial and product design. So how did we go from Princess Pam into product design? 

[00:05:37] Pam: Yeah, eighth grade I started drawing, got interested into it and then when I went to high school, it was a vocational school. So they had different tracks, you can learn how to do plumbing, engineer, cosmetology, and they had one track called graphic design, and that's the one I ended up doing and I studied graphic design all throughout high school.

[00:05:57] Then I figured I would go to art school to continue it. I ended up going to Parsons and this is based in New York. Something really interesting about Parsons is the first year they make you do all the majors they provide as a way to just explore what you might want to do.

[00:06:12] One of those classes was something with physical making of things so we would have to go to the wood shop or use the sewing machine to make stuff based on the assignments that they gave us. It was really fun for me because it was just a lot different from constantly being on the computer and being on Illustrator or Photoshop, and making designs that are digital. So this was really fun for me to be able to explore that physical side.

[00:06:37] Entering Sophomore year of college, they forced us to choose a major and I was really in between graphic design and product design. It was really hard because one choice was to do something I was already really comfortable with. And another choice was to do something that was completely new and it was going to challenge me in so many different ways.

[00:06:56]  It was really hard to know how to choose one or the other. So I flipped the cool, this is embarrassing. I flipped a coin and I was like, heads is for product design. Tails is for graphic design. I flipped it. It landed on heads so I ended up doing product design and that's how I chose it. My mom was like, that was horrible.  Don't make decisions like this, but you know, once it landed on heads it just gave me that confirmation of you know what, I'm young, let me challenge myself. Let's just see how that feels like to be challenged in these ways. That's how I ended up choosing the major.

[00:07:32] Katherine: Oh, my goodness. That is fantastic. And yeah, probably listened to your mom, but I mean, what a story.

[00:07:41] Pam: It was nice cause I feel like once that choice was laid out, then I can strongly feel like, I don't agree with that choice. I'm going to go with, this cause usually when I talked to my mom, " should I do this or this?" she'll tell me something and I'll be like, yeah, I really want to do this other thing and I'll go for that. It's nice making a choice like that because then it gives me the feeling of well, actually I don't agree with that. I really am feeling this other choice. 

[00:08:05] Katherine: Yeah, that's cool, because when you're positioned where you have to pick between the two, because someone has chosen one, then you have that self-awareness and get to check in. Okay, do I want to go with the same one that they picked or am I actually feeling something else? 

[00:08:19] Pam: Yeah. 

[00:08:20] Katherine: So after picking that, did you have an idea of what your career path would look like? Or did you just sink into that major and focus on studying? 

[00:08:31] Pam: I fully went into it with the studying. I had no idea what my career path was going to be. Honestly going through high school and college, figuring out my career, what it was going to be, was a mess. I actually did not know how to find the support or who to talk to.   

[00:08:48] At first it really was studying, but I think through the classes and meeting my teachers, meeting invited guests to the class, I was able to start  identifying like, okay, these are possible people I can become whether that is somebody in the manufacturing section and figure out what materials to use to build the furniture or I was able to visit some lighting companies and see how they built lamps and I could be in that same role where I was either designing the specifications for how to make a lamp, or I was actually in the shops fabricating something.  It was through that, that I was able to figure out okay, these are all the different opportunities of where I can go.

[00:09:29] The Senior year of college, it was a lot more definitive for me to understand these are what product design roles I can be a part of. 

[00:09:36] Katherine:  It sounds like you needed to have exposure to different types of people and their career paths, and then also experience if you wanted it to be hands-on or more digital and then that gave you some more guidance as to what your field of options was. 

[00:09:55] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. I think especially  meeting these people and understanding the roles was very much a way to understand, if you're this kind of role, these are the skills you'll be needed for this job.

[00:10:06] Katherine:  What was your first job? Do you feel like that whole process of studying prepared you for it? 

[00:10:12] Pam:  Technically my first job was in high school. It was a internship at the Jewish museum and it was working in the children's program. We were facilitators of the children's workshops.

[00:10:27] Parents with their kids came in and we would have activities that they can do. We have so many different arts supplies and ask them simple questions like, what is this product? Why do you think people made this? What was it used for? 

[00:10:38] I would say in college, I actually didn't work as much because my dad really wanted me to just focus on my studies. I didn't really get a job until my senior year. And my first one would have been a coat check girl at a burlesque restaurant so that was really, really, um, interesting, and it was great because there would be a rush hour at the beginning and everybody would be coming in checking their coats and then they would go upstairs and enjoy the show. That was a nice job because during the downtime, I could just focus on my work.  

[00:11:11] Katherine:  Once you graduated from university, what did you do after that? 

[00:11:16] Pam: Yeah, so I got my product design job, um, well, more internship and this was about four months long. That was part-time and I worked under a designer, Nick, and he's a interesting person. He comes up with one-off ideas and he'll just execute it.

[00:11:34]  It's very like limited production kind of things. An example of things we would work on, was coming up with silly ideas.  I don't know if you've ever seen, what is a good example? Like novelty items, products. It's very much for fun. It's not anything serious. We would come up with tiny glasses and then that would be one idea.

[00:11:56] And then we would come up with hardware tools as jewelry. So maybe a lock would be earrings. So things like that. Very novelty. And so, yeah, there was just a lot of room for experimentation and fun and growth. And this was part-time.

[00:12:09] I was also working at a ceramic studio and there I was an accountant. This gave me more the business knowledge of how to run a shop. We would have to account all the products, what was available, update the website with new products that we created and also help with packaging of materials and send it out. Those were the first part-time jobs that I had in parallel. 

[00:12:33] Katherine: Those are two very different experiences, but I feel like they're both super valuable, especially being an artist or wanting to start something new, you need to have the business side as well as exploring all the different aspects of art, what might be traditional and what might also be novel.

[00:12:51] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. It gave me a lot of insight of how small businesses work at least from a creative point, cause my parents actually own a hardware store, so they are a small business. I always understood the inventory part, but just how do you make a business out of conceptual ideas was not an understanding at all for me.

[00:13:06] Katherine:  When you're thinking about a hardware store, someone's already created that product and now you're selling it. You don't have to think about how do you create a product that adds value and how do you sell the product to whoever's going to either purchase it or resell it. You got to see a different aspect of that product creation process from when you first have it as an idea to when it's in someone's hands.

[00:13:26] Pam: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:13:27] Katherine: That's so cool. After that, what did your journey look like and how did you end up pivoting into software engineering? 

[00:13:35] Pam: Yeah, let me see how I can make this long story short. Um, so pretty much I went to Parsons, I did product design as my major and during those years, specifically Sophomore year, I took one web design class and I only did it for the first month of the semester and then I had to drop out because my schedule was way too busy, but I always promised myself I will get back to this.

[00:14:02]  That was my first interaction with understanding tech. I started taking classes of design thinking and one of my professors did a special lesson on technology and the impacts of technology, but thinking about it through a design perspective.

[00:14:17] I think that was my first understanding of this is what technology can do for other people because she, before she was working at the college, she was actually in South Africa, working to bring cell phones and internet to some of the communities down there that didn't have any access to this and so that was her basis for this lesson. From that, I was able to start getting ideas about what tech can do and at the same time, I was starting to meet people in the design and tech major. They were showing me websites and iOS apps that they built and at the time I was like, yo, this is the coolest thing ever!   

[00:14:54] Lastly, during my senior year, this is where you start to work on your thesis. I was really looking into sex education because my sex education in high school was not the greatest. I was learning about how taboo of a topic it is to talk about and also the varying degrees of education throughout the world, let alone America.

[00:15:16] I was doing a lot of research on sex education in general. It was really, really hard for me to figure out how do I build a product that teaches people about sex education? I was more specifically thinking about my community, where I come from, which is Corona Queens and so there is a lot of immigrants, underprivileged, minority people. And we all went to public school. I was just trying to figure out, okay, how could I create a better sex education experience? I want it to be something that was real and impactful and not something that was just like theory. I was starting to get frustrated with how do I actually do this because tech seems like the way to do it, compared to making a physical product. I was thinking about how more accessible the internet is, the amount of resources you can get, and thinking about my family in DR. 

[00:16:08] DR sometimes, people will call it a third world country cause you definitely see houses that are not built well. The electricity will go out. Sometimes they don't have even clean drinking water, and yet these people got access to Facebook on their cell phones, and that always like just blew my mind and I was more and more on the path of like, if I want to do this -being in tech, learning how to do tech stuff - would be the skills to really start thinking about these ideas. But unfortunately I graduated. 

[00:16:35] I really wish I maybe even took a gap year to just reconsider going into another major, like design and tech. But by the time I graduated, I had all these ideas of getting into the tech industry, but I had these design skills. So I'm like, okay, how do I break into the tech industry and learn these skills. And again, I made myself that promise to learn how to do the HTML CSS stuff from that web design class. I figured, okay, I can do an internship. I can do this job, and maybe I can learn on the side. While I was looking for jobs, I noticed a lot of, at least for UX UI design, a lot of them was requiring the HTML CSS because I had more of the problem-solving skills and whatnot, but just not the technical skills.

[00:17:16] It just, honestly, it all happens in one go where, my partner sent me a link to a bootcamp that was based in New York and it was very much targeted for people like me. You didn't need to know any tech skills. You could just go and you would learn. Their price model was also something that was a big seller, because it was like, if you didn't make a certain seller range, you didn't have to pay back the program, you couldn't walk away from it .So I was like, oh, this is perfect. If I ended up hating this, I could walk away. That was how I started transitioning into tech. That was a little long. I'm so sorry about that. 

[00:17:51] Katherine: That was awesome though. Thank you, because sometimes we gloss over our journeys and we just show the mountain tops. We just show the exciting points in time. When we get the job, when we get the promotion and people learn from the valleys, they learn from those details on the ups and downs and the internal conflict and debate.

[00:18:10] Do I do this? Do I do that? I'm missing these skills, right? So that was fantastic. And one thing I heard from you, Pam, is you sound like someone who, if you start something and you really care about it and you don't get to finish, there's this drive to finish it. 

[00:18:27] Pam: Yeah definitely for something I'm extremely passionate, there is always a want to tie up loose ends. I don't know if I can say that for other creative projects. I feel like this is a problem for artists. You never know when something's really done, cause you're always like, it could be done a little bit better this way. You can add a little bit more detail. But definitely at least for technology and sex education, these were giant conversations, giant topics that I knew I could dive into and never get tired of exploring. Definitely was like, I gotta, I gotta ramp up. I gotta finish this. 

[00:19:01] Katherine: And you touched so much on your community and wanting to support them. And I love the story you told because it really highlights the dichotomy of how you could be a person who doesn't have fresh running water or electricity, but you have access to Facebook on your phone.

[00:19:17] Tell me a little bit more about your community and where you come from. Do you still have family in the DR? 

[00:19:23] Pam: Yeah, so my family is pretty much spread all across the east coast and then the rest of them are all in Dominican Republic. If I say DR that's the shortcut. Sometimes I forget that, but yes, the Dominican Republic.

[00:19:36] I grew up in New York. I would say about 30 people in total were based in New York and then everybody else, just my origin, my roots comes from Dominican Republic and this is actually something very interesting for me. Growing up specifically, Corona Queens, because when you meet other Dominican people who grew up together, we'll start to find how all of our families migrated from a specific section in DR to New York.

[00:20:04] And it's always blown my mind because whenever I meet a Dominican person from, let's say Brooklyn or Harlem or the Bronx, they always are saying a whole different place of DR that I've never heard of. But then when I meet people from my neighborhood, it's always from the little community that we come from.

[00:20:20]  It's always been like, how did you all coordinate this movement to come to this one place? To me, it's always been the power of talking to your neighbor because that's really how they all, they all got there. It's literally this one section of DR just up and moved all these people specifically in Corona Queens.

[00:20:37] So that's always been just interesting growing up with all the Dominican people, at least in Corona, because we all have roots in the same neighborhoods, very close proximity. That was always something really cool. I actually met my partner, uh, he only lived five blocks, about five blocks from me and we were born and raised the same area. We lived in the same place forever and then we ended up getting to know each other and everything. And then we find out that his grandma was best friends with my grandma when they were little and they used to have sleepovers. That is what I'm talking about. That is the power of getting to know your neighbors and being close to them. 

[00:21:16] Growing up in Corona, it's very special to me because it definitely feels in a way, like everybody is family. Just on my block alone, I know pretty much everyone. I know all my neighbors and that's such a rare thing I think in New York, to know your neighbors like that. 

[00:21:30]  We all grew up together and so they've seen me grow up from five years old to now. It's been just quite amazing, and sometimes for me, what's hard is growing up on that same block, I've seen it all.

[00:21:42] Like I've seen some crazy violence. I've seen how the police act. I've seen loud parties. I've, I've seen it all and it's always crazy because I think where I grew up, everybody has that mentality of this is all we will ever have, what is rooted here. Like you never need to leave. That is not what you need to do.

[00:22:02] You need to find the opportunities where you live to continue making money and surviving. But, I never, I was always a little bit of a different sheep because you could always live with your parents. I had a lot of cousins growing up who were still living with their parents and they were like 30 years old.

[00:22:17]  And the same with my neighbors, they were living with their parents and they left down south and they just took over the house and it's kind of that same generation of a pattern, it just repeats over and over, and so I was always a little bit the odd one out.  

[00:22:32] I was always different cause I wanted more. I wanted more than what was presented to us because again, this is Queens. I mean, you have Manhattan. Manhattan is amazing. Everyone's so cool and stylish and has personality and has a career and just growing up from seeing movies, like Sex in the City, Manhattan was the place to be. No one talks about Queens, nobody talks about Brooklyn or the Bronx, and so I kind of wanted that for myself.

[00:22:59] I just was very attracted to the shiny things. I felt like that was a challenge that I needed to aspire to, and also with my parents, they actually grew up in New York once they were like teenagers. My dad actually was born in America, but he grew up in DR, when he was younger and my mom, she would travel a lot between New York and DR but she was born in DR. Those two never went to college. They only went up to high school. That was also something that my mom was very hard on me. She, she was like, you need to go to college, like, this is your number one goal in life. You have nothing else, you need to accomplish this.  

[00:23:37] This kind of goes back to that immigrant mentality, especially for first generation college students. That's definitely me. I'm the older sibling. I have a little younger brother, so I had all the duties to perform and not let them down.

[00:23:50]  She was extremely tough on me. My little brother, he got away with so much, um, he really did, but I think that was also something else too we've just heard, putting so much pressure on me to go to college and actually make a career and find a way to move out the house. 

[00:24:07] She even knew it growing up. She's like, I know you, you want to leave me, like, I know you don't want to live with us and what not  and I think all these things just made me want more, but at the same time, because of how close I am to everybody that I grew up knowing, I always felt guilty. I always felt like I don't deserve this because it's not fair that I'm exceeding and yet, I have neighbors down the block selling drugs. They're never going to leave that life. They're never going to have that opportunity that I had. I can say that a lot about the people that I went to high school with. People got pregnant, people got into gangs, people went to jail and again, I feel guilt.

[00:24:45]  I shouldn't be here because it's, it's not fair. I've always kind of been a person where, you know, even though I'm really shy, I just want everyone around me to do really well and just continue passing on the education and be able to see more my people just come up on the rise and take over.

[00:25:03] Being able to see people like NAS, Nicki Minaj, Jay Z, they know it, it's the same, it's the same thing where they grew up around the same thing that I've been through and they made it. It's always that want and need to give it back because you want to see other people around you be able to do the same, you shouldn't be a token person. 

[00:25:23] Katherine: It seems like your experience is the exception, especially in your community and you want it to become the rule. 

[00:25:30] Pam: Yeah. I think that's a really great way of putting it. I don't want to feel like the special one. I want it to be accessible for everyone. Definitely when I did my bootcamp and I was learning the skills, I was telling all my friends, all my families about this is an opportunity.

[00:25:47] This is a way to accelerate and get a little better. I think in the immigrant community, college is your number one goal, and you don't even have to go to college. You can do this 10 month bootcamp and invest in yourself to learn some kind of skill and get hired on that.

[00:26:04] That was also a huge mind shift for me of wow, I wish I wish I knew about these things. And so I, again, I didn't have these career resources. I didn't have role models in my community that I could talk to that were extremely successful and I could talk to them and be like, okay, how do I plan this?

[00:26:21] I had to figure that all out on my own. I definitely have some regrets. I definitely am thinking about, if I could redo everything, these are all the ways I would have done everything, but you know, that is part of life. You make mistakes. I'm starting to realize, okay, all this knowledge, all these mistakes that I went through, the best I can do is just give it back so that way a five-year-old on the come up can be aware of these things and not have to fumble. So I'm very jealous of my little brother because he got the blueprint. He got it, he got everything. Like I pretty much had to like...  I had to make even more mistakes and from those learnings, it's been really nice to just have a chat with him and be like, hey, you want to be mindful of these things. And that to me just makes me feel like, okay, this is why I am in this position of success.

[00:27:10] It's so that I can bring it back and have more people be successful, and hear more people who come from Queens do their thing. It's, it's really, really wonderful.   Whenever I see a role model, who's of a minority or even say they're from Queens, I'm just like, I need to be best friends with you. I , need to know everything about what you've been through so I can just be aware.

[00:27:34] Katherine: You grew up and didn't have that role model, but now you have become that role model for so many other people. And you've punctured the paradigm. You've shown that the options they think they have, aren't the only options that they have. And that is incredible. Have you had any stories, have you seen anything happen differently because of that?

[00:27:54] Pam: So far, I would have to say among my friends and family, just the idea of if you invest in yourself, you can learn anything. You can be anything you want, and so it's still hard. It's actually still very hard for them to fully grasp it or even, you know, take action. Because I think, again, there's that survival mentality of you need to still take care of your bills, and the rent and making sure you're eating and whatnot.

[00:28:21] That is something that is still pretty challenging. I would say the other thing is meeting other people like me, who been through similar experiences. It's really nice. We can be very honest and talk about these experiences. So I think that's something else. So I don't have any stories, but, I will say it's been very consistent with meeting people and opening their minds and me being a person you can always hit up if you really actually want to go through this and be a resource that they can always have, even though things in their life right now aren't the best. 

[00:28:57] Last week at the LinkedIn building in New York, I was meeting a whole bunch of interns and we talked for a very long time, because again, we just, we don't see, like, it was really cool to meet another Dominican person in the office, I was like, oh, this is so cool. And it was just great because it was an instant connection of I know exactly what you're going through and you know exactly what I'm going through. That's something I don't need to explain anymore. And so we can talk about, okay, how do we continue building this? And how do we keep again, creating that influence for our families and allowing them to open up their minds. 

[00:29:31] I would say my mom, my dad, they don't know anything about the tech industry. Like they don't know anything. I had to teach them what LinkedIn was. I think for younger generations like myself, we kind of grew up on LinkedIn. But to them, they're like, I have no idea what you're doing. I would say it's the same for my entire family, just opening up their minds a little bit to the world, to what is possible if you set your mind to it.

[00:29:56] Katherine: Yeah, opening up minds really is the first step because humans who are surviving think very differently than humans who are thriving. 

[00:30:04] Pam: Yeah. That is true. I think that is something I constantly talk about with my friends.  It's so hard to want to invest in yourself because you are just trying to survive. Personally, that's why I think there's so many people in Corona who are poor and they're just making means to survive and you constantly see this pattern in generations, like your parents and the kids is cause the system makes it so hard for us that we'll never find the time to actually learn how to stop thinking about survival, but start thinking about your career, the next five years, like that is never, ever, ever on our minds. 

[00:30:41] It is always about the now. How do I survive to the next day? You're never thinking about your future. Even going through college, this is something I had no idea.

[00:30:50] It's really honestly getting into the tech industry and through my bootcamp that they really started opening my mind to, okay, how do I actually think about what I want to do in my life? These weren't skills and it was always really interesting because in college I always felt left out, like not knowledgeable compared to more of the privileged people. And I do want to say Parsons is the most bougiest school ever. There's people in the woodshop wearing Chanel and Gucci, and I'm just like, you don't care that's getting dirty and so for me, that was also a huge eye opener of how I grew up, how these people grew up and how they had all the resources. They knew what to do. They were never worried about their life, their career. They were never worried about these things compared to me. 

[00:31:33] I always felt really left out. My best friend was very, career-driven like always was networking and so I had to learn how to network. It's still something I'm learning. To me that was very crazy to see that big difference of just knowledge gap of things I didn't know because of how I grew up, where I grew up, I didn't have access to any of these things. 

[00:31:53] Katherine: But then you made it to LinkedIn. So what happened from there and by the way, you just got promoted. 

[00:32:01] Pam:  I started LinkedIn and December, 2019 as an Apprentice Engineer. Honestly my goal has been to get promoted obviously and be at that next level of performing. I learned about the REACH program, through the bootcamp that I went to actually, because they had a couple of people from my previous cohorts in my bootcamp actually were working at LinkedIn so they were already aware of the process and they provided help in thinking how to answer the questions. Like, how did you want to structure your answer? So shout out to Samia. It was amazing because she was able to put a structure for how do you think about answering these questions because again, a lot of the people who did the bootcamp, these were people also who didn't even go to college or they just had that job at a restaurant, so they never really sharpen those career skills you need.

[00:32:54]  I went through the whole interview process and I got here and one of the best interviews actually, because for the technical round in-person interview one of my interviewers, he was already familiar with my bootcamp and he was also from Queens.

[00:33:08]  I think we just hit it off and even after the interview we just kept chatting just about Queens stuff. That was really nice, cause I was like, oh my gosh, another role model from Queens, like it's possible, I can do this. So, yeah, joined in December, 2019. I actually relocated from New York to the Bay, so that was a big transition in my life. 

[00:33:29] I would consider LinkedIn my first real career job as in like, okay, I have a career, like I can, I can actually go up and, you know, become more senior, like, that's a thing now versus my other jobs, it was always a part-time thing.

[00:33:46] You can't really become a bigger role. It was always very small business. My focus was like, okay, the next two years, I'm just going to go in and this is going to be my goal. Get promoted, just to like prove myself, I can, I can do this thing because I am somebody who like, if you give me a goal, I will do everything in my power to try to reach this goal.

[00:34:05]  It was actually really hard because again, I think especially when you're changing careers, there's always that imposter syndrome of I am not actually this.

[00:34:15] So it took me a long time to finally accept that I was an engineer. I was always blown away, people tell me I'm an engineer. I'm like, "what do you say? I'm not an engineer." So it took me a very long time to finally accept it and own it. Like, yes, I'm an engineer. And it's to be honest, even now, it still feels a little weird saying it.

[00:34:35]  It's been just quite an, an up and down kind of journey and I'm just so grateful of all my ups and downs in my life to get to this point. And I do have to say, even though there were some really challenging times working as an engineer, I have more skills than I ever thought I could have and I'm still learning.

[00:34:57]  It's been pretty amazing to have an actual career. I feel more knowledgeable and even if there are times where I don't know something, now I can have the confidence in myself to figure out a path. I can find some way somehow to do X. Now I think my problem is more of putting my mind to do it and actually do it, take action.

[00:35:18]  I think that is the next level for me, but it's, it's been amazing. It just feels really cool that again, I can be a role model for younger people and just be like, yo, you can do this. I am here and I didn't think I could ever be here.  

[00:35:33] Katherine: I'm just kind of speechless. It's amazing. People who pivot and change in their career are often feeling that imposter syndrome. Can I do this? Can I own this? Can I claim this title or position as mine? Am I there yet? But honestly I think people who pivot in that way are some of the most courageous people, because you could just stay doing what you're doing, whether you like it or not. No one's asking you to change, but the fact that you've done a self assessment, you've asked for more, you think you can do more and you're actually going for it is amazing. So kudos to you and definitely embrace it.

[00:36:11] You are an engineer. Fantastic one at that, obviously, because you've been promoted through that next level and not just on paper and through the promotion, but your work ethic and the character that you bring to the job is really what matters Pam, and I think that you do a fabulous job of that. 

[00:36:28] For anyone who's interested in being promoted, could you explain a little bit about that process and anything you learned through that? It sounds like maybe this might've been one of the first times you went through that process. Is that true? 

[00:36:41] Pam: Oh yeah. Promotion was always a very unknown concept to me. So the fact that I got promoted is also a very weird feeling. Um, but in terms of the promotion process, my first manager on my team, I really appreciated that from the start I could tell her my goal is to be at that next level.

[00:37:03]  She was a very open and honest person to have those conversations, and guide me in the mentality that I needed to be at that promotional level and give me all the clues and hints of like, okay, if you want to get promoted, this is what you gotta do. She did a really amazing job of also opening my mind to, okay, how does one get promoted?

[00:37:24] Cause I think, that was also something hard for me. You meet people who are very career driven. I always got the impression of they know exactly what they want and they're going to achieve it. I definitely met multiple people from the cohort that I joined in at the time and previous cohorts, were there were still a couple of apprentices. Their goal was promotion and so that was really interesting for me, cause when I started, I was like, I'm just trying to survive, man, like I'm just do work and make a good impression.

[00:37:55]  I would say it took me about six months to get comfortable enough with the process, the work of an engineer before I could start allowing myself to be like, okay, now I can challenge myself. Now I can think about how do I go to the next level? How do I get promoted and whatnot? 

[00:38:13] Past apprentices who got promoted were very nice, I just vibed with them. So I connected with them and asked them about their experiences of getting promoted or what it was like, just to start understanding what that even meant. Because again, promotion was such a career term for me, something just not at all in my head growing up.

[00:38:33] From them, they were able to just give me a lot of good advice on the whole promotion process. They went into detail, shout out to all of them, cause they helped me so much. But I think the number one advice that stood out to me was having conversations with your manager because they were telling me you will only get promoted if your manager has that confidence in you.

[00:38:51]  This is a very interactive thing that you have to do with your manager, because they are the first person that's convinced to get promoted. I was very nervous, isn't that gonna be so annoying if I'm constantly bringing up the promotion. So that was also very weird thing for me, but they were like, no, you can't feel bad about what you want, cause like a closed mouth don't get fed type of thing. 

[00:39:10]  When I brought it up the first time to my manager in the one-on-one and I was like, so, you know, I've been here for six months... how do I, you know, start thinking about promotion? I just brought it up very awkwardly, but at least, I was very proud of myself cause I'm like, I threw the word out there, we can talk about it now, and it does get easier. That's a hundred percent for sure and so I'm thankful my manager was very open and I think something else that I learned from her was your manager's job is to make you successful.

[00:39:36]  That is literally their job, because again, I've never had a manager, so I was like, what do I do with this person? What is their role, what is their job? Again, so much new things to, to learn. That was also something extremely important to, to recognize that I can have these conversations with my manager and they're there to help me to get to a goal. 

[00:39:55]  Once we were able to get all that awkwardness of promotion, then we were able to consistently in our one-on-ones, if we weren't talking about things related to the work tasks at hand, we could talk about, okay, how do I get on that road of promotion?

[00:40:10]  I think one of the first things that stuck out to me and always stuck with me, is if you want to get promoted, you have to be operating at that level. And so that is the number one thing that has really helped me stay consistent with promotion.

[00:40:27] I was only looking at the things that are expected at this level and if I wanted to get promoted, I had to be performing under the next level. That really helped me stay extremely consistent. I always knew when I was going to work on something new, I would look at those criteria and be able to understand, okay, what from this criteria can be connected to the work that I'm doing right now. Like how can those connections be made? And that helped me, start checking off boxes.

[00:40:54]  It became a matter of a checklist where it was like, okay, I did this, I'm already performing at that, so what are the things that are missing that I can improve on? And then these are the things that I would work with my manager and assign me tasks or projects where I could actually complete this criteria is to say that you are performing at this level because you did this.

[00:41:14] Having a brag sheet helped a lot with my imposter syndrome too. It gives you time to reflect and think of, wow, I did all of this. At least I feel really proud. I'm like, yeah, I'm doing something like I haven't been doing nothing. I'm actually working and doing things. So that was also really instrumental. And I think the last thing would be having a mentor. So again, shout out to LinkedIn. We have so many good programs here. One of them was Black and Latino mentorship pairing program.

[00:41:43] I immediately signed up for that. You would get assigned a mentor and you could find the mentor in whatever you were looking for and I really wanted a mentor who at least was a engineer so that way they could help me on promotion. Shout out to Eric, he's the best. We're able to just have one-on-one to again, think about what do I need to do to be performing at the next level?

[00:42:04] And it was really great because your manager is there for your success, but I feel like sometimes it's too close to home versus working with this outside mentor. With this person, I could just lay everything out in the open and get really honest criteria with no connections to my team, so I really valued that. 

[00:42:22] The great thing was he was also a manager in his past roles, so  he really gave me some good advice on pretty much what cemented everything I needed to do to be promoted. He was just straight up like, Pam, you need to do this and do that. And I was like, I got you. Ima do that and do that. My promotion, it became so easy. It didn't feel like a burden that I had to figure out because now I had the support. I'm just grateful to LinkedIn that, again, they gave me the tools for me to learn how to create a support network cause that was also a concept that I was not at all used to. Really just mentorship, I would say that's the number one thing.

[00:43:01] Just finding your role models, people you look up to, people you want to be and having a chat with them and learning about their experiences and really through that process that's how I've learned so much. 

[00:43:11] Katherine:  That's why it's so important for us to get exposure to people who are like us or who are in the position that we want to reach. So for anyone who's not familiar with the brag sheet, can you explain what that is and how you kept one? 

[00:43:27] Pam:  My brag sheet is a list of accomplishments and it doesn't matter how tiny it is. It can be tiny like I finished my first bug. When I created my first pull request I wrote that on that brag sheet. It was like, created my first pull request, cause I was so proud. That's a huge milestone in the engineer for, for real. I would add accomplishments as tiny as that or big accomplishments like I finally finished the project. That also is really nice when you can look at it and you're able to see like, okay, in the past six months, this is everything that I did. That brag sheet really came through.  

[00:44:05] Katherine: Yeah, I have one as well, and I like to take screenshots of different commentary. If people were appreciative of something or really liked something that I did, then it's easy in this virtual world to take screenshots and just put it in there and remind yourself I'm doing good.

[00:44:22] There are things that people like that I'm doing, I'm adding value, so I love that concept. How did it impact your conversations around wanting to be promoted? How did you use that with your manager? 

[00:44:34] Pam: Once you can start seeing the bigger accomplishments and you can start seeing the impact that it had, I was starting to see major accomplishments, and I'm like wow...I think I'm doing good. Like, okay, I need a, I need somebody, I need somebody to know about this, cause sometimes the brag sheets, it is a personal thing. Only you are aware of this.

[00:44:56] And again, your manager is there for your success and is there to help you get promoted. What helps though is using that criteria of what is expected out of a certain role and then starting to connect that brag sheet with that, and being able to in our one-on-ones be like, "hey, what do you think of this accomplishment? Do you think it meets these requirements?" 

[00:45:17] My manager did a good job of reflection periods. At the end of every quarter, we'll sit down and have a one hour chat on my learnings, my challenges and my accomplishments.

[00:45:27] Katherine:  It sounds like it also created a common language between the two of you.

[00:45:31]  You could come together and really understand I'm looking at these performance metrics, does it mean to you what I think it means to me, and I think it's represented in this accomplishment. Do you see it represented there too, or do we need better alignment? I would imagine the more alignment you have between yourself and your manager, the faster you can get yourself to where you want to go.

[00:45:54] Pam: Yes. A hundred percent. That is so on point. Now you have a thing to both look at and you both can say, well, this is what I think, and this is what you think, and that's the easiest way to create alignment when you have something you both can look at. 

[00:46:06] Katherine:  Thank you so much for going in depth on that. I feel like that's super helpful for a lot of people. One thing I want to circle back to is the mentorship. I've been a mentor sometimes, and will have mentees that really appreciate having a resource, and then some who don't lean into it as much. In your experience, being a mentee, having a mentor, what is that relationship like? Do you have advice on how to get the most out of that relationship? 

[00:46:35] Pam:  That's a great question. I love this question. LinkedIn programs, they're so well put together. Before we actually started our mentorships, we had a training session where they went in detail about this is what a mentorship is. They gave us all the tools for how to build your mentorship and figure out all these awkward details of like, okay, how often do we meet, or what do we talk about, or how do you even give feedback? That's a huge thing, right? Are you a person who needs something that's really direct or do you need it to be a little bit nicer? Things like that. I keep that doc and I share it with like with everybody, because chef's kiss, it was so good.

[00:47:13] That really set us up for success. They really wanted the mentees to drive the mentorship. That was also something really, really helpful because before this program, again, I didn't really know how to work with a mentor and know what to expect of them.

[00:47:27]  You have to drive this relationship because mentors are doing this out of niceness and care, right? This is all really for you. So you really have to make it the most of what you want. It gave me also the responsibility of like, okay, I have to drive this. I have to really figure out what I'm trying to find out.

[00:47:47]  The best advice I could give is when you find a mentor or are you looking for a mentor, really try to understand who this person is, what their expertise is, what their experiences are and then try to talk to them about who they are and what they're known for versus being vague about it. Like, I want a mentor, like that's not really helpful. It's more helpful of like, okay, I want to learn how to develop my front-end skills. Right? That makes it more specific where now you can find mentors who are expertises at front-end, and now you can hit them up and say, I noticed you're a front-end engineer, do you have any advice on how I can up my front-end skills?

[00:48:25] That makes it even more specific and I find that that is way more helpful than being vague because then the mentors don't really know how to help you because you're just floating in the air, trying to get some help.

[00:48:35]  Some advice I've heard was, you want to create a board of directors. Each director is a specific person you can talk to about one thing. So you can have a mentor for talking about front-end stuff. You can have a mentor you can talk to about being a woman in tech. You can have a mentor who can talk to you about how do you become a senior engineer? They have their specific expertises that they can help you with. It makes it a lot easier to talk about those things.  

[00:49:03] Katherine: That's awesome. Pam, we are close to wrapping up here, but I want to hear about what is your dream? You shared a little bit of it with me before, and I just think it's spectacular. Can you share it again? 

[00:49:18] Pam: Yeah. So again, I'm from Queens and the whole reason I'm getting into the tech industry is figuring out how to create resources and give it back to my community so there are other people like me who are up and coming and taking over the industry, um, but in all seriousness, I've always wanted to create a local community center. It would be a mashup of all the things that made my whole entire life path to where I'm at, so that would include things like design, art, and tech programs and it would just be this community space for young students to be able to do fun projects, learn new skills in these areas. It would also maybe be at night like poetry club or a nightclub, partying and everything. So it also would be an event space. 

[00:50:12] This is a very big, big idea of finding a spot in Queens, get this big building, and be able to create levels of all these events and community events for people to come together and grow these skills. And maybe they're interested in it and they can go out in the world and own that and grow their career paths.

[00:50:34] So there's a lot of ideas. It's a mashup of many different things. Like I said, tech, art design, career transformation, everything that has made my life journey, all my interests into a space where people can actually come and do the things. This is the big idea. There are so many things that can be a part of it that would be very exciting, but it would be in Queens. 

[00:50:57] Katherine: So to anyone who is listening, who has a similar passion for giving back and supporting the community and teaching new skills, I hope that they reach out to you. Pam, what's the best way for them to reach out to you if they want to help you get started with this big dream?

[00:51:15] Pam:  Feel free to connect with me on my LinkedIn profile, Pamela Abreu on LinkedIn. You can search that up and you'll find me. You'll see a Dominican person. You'll actually see me with purple hair so it's a little bit different, but you'll see Pamela Abreu, front-end Software Engineer at LinkedIn.

[00:51:32] Katherine: Hopefully people can connect with you, keep this conversation going. As we wrap up, is there a final piece of advice or fun fact that you would like to leave everyone with?  

[00:51:43] Pam: I'm a perfectionist and so I always beat myself up if I don't meet these big grand ideas in my head. That has always made me feel like I am a failure. It took a long time to understand that I'm never really failing. These mistakes are always a learning opportunity.

[00:51:59] So in fact, I'm actually always learning. I hope other people, especially who are perfectionist or feel like they are living their lives for other people, just focus on you. Life is always going to be ups and downs, but it's always a learning growth. It's nice to just reflect and see how far you've come and how much more there is and so be easy on yourself. 

[00:52:23] Katherine: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Pam, for joining me on this episode of Opportunity Made. I loved hearing about your career journey and am just so excited to see what's next. You are just getting started and you have a lot of big ideas, so it's really exciting.

[00:52:38] To everyone listening, thank you for joining us on the Opportunity Made Podcast. It's such a pleasure to meet with good friends and share new ways we can all create more opportunities in the world. I'm excited to meet all the young professionals who now feel more comfortable, hopefully, making an early career transition. To anyone who does make this pivot, please let me know @OpportunityMade on social media. I'd love to know your story and if it's going well. With that, serve widely, give greatly, and take care y'all!