From UTP to academia and business: stories of professional growth

From the UTP to Academia and Industry: Stories of Professional Growth

On December 12, 2024 we gathered at Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira for From UTP to academia and business: stories of professional growth.

Do not miss our last meetup of the year — there will be natilla, buñuelos, and plenty of surprises.

TALK 1

Speaker: Sebastian Gomez

Role: Software Engineer at Google Zurich

My career path: from the UTP to Machine Learning Engineer at Google

If you feel university did not prepare you well for professional life, you are not alone. In my experience, course quality at our universities depends heavily on who teaches them, and is generally fairly low. The ones who pay for that are the students, not the university.

This talk shares tips from my own experience for building real professional skills. I have had the privilege of working with people from many countries, and I have seen how our education system puts us at a serious disadvantage next to people educated elsewhere. I want to share some of what helped me along the way — programming skills among them — and also what I wish I had done differently, like contributing more to open source.

It is never too late to start doing things differently, but the earlier you take your career into your own hands, the better. Do not assume that what you are taught at university leaves you ready for a successful professional life.

TALK 2

Speaker: Juan David Gil López

Role: Director of Machine Learning at Factored

Ups, downs, and resilience: my career path in tech

Have you ever felt that things are not working out professionally in tech? That you want to apply what you know but the opportunities do not come? That you are stuck, and have been rejected everywhere? Believe me, you are neither the first nor the last — a career in tech can have many ups and downs, but with discipline, resilience, and patience the path gets clearer.

In this talk I want to share some of my career, which started at the UTP almost 11 years ago and has been full of peaks and troughs: a thousand rejections, months of feeling stuck, and then becoming Director of Machine Learning at a startup, leading a team of nearly 80 engineers.

Part of the conversation is the tips that kept me afloat in the hardest moments, and the skills that opened the door to where I am now. The message comes down to this: there is no single recipe for success, we can each grow differently, and what matters most is never stopping.

Original post on Meetup.com

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Sources

• Original event page: Meetup.com
• Content migrated from the production archive (main branch) for date/content parity.