25 years later, Donna Lambert returned to the tech role she never imagined

Donna Lambert, software engineer I at Elastic®, spent the majority of her career as a manufacturer’s representative. It was a combination of sales and logistics, she says. 

When the owners of the small company she worked at decided to retire, she made the choice to return to school — and the tech industry. 

Donna started her career in an IT role at a real estate firm, but 25 years later, she needed to refresh her knowledge if she was going to land a tech role. 

“I didn’t see an easy way to get back into it [tech] and fulfill the knowledge gaps,” she says.

While her past roles helped her with transferable skills, like communicating with stakeholders and learning how to ask questions to get a project done, she needed to re-skill in today’s tech. 

Donna enrolled in an immersive, full-time, six-month boot camp to level up her skills. For those in a similar position, she recommends starting to build small projects as soon as possible.

“Doing something in practice and giving context to what you’re reading is a good way to cement what you’re learning,” she says. 

While there, she was surprised to discover she liked backend, more abstract work. She likens backend engineering to the engineer of the car, with frontend engineering as the steering wheel. 

“The backend interacts with the components that we see,” she says. 

But she didn’t take backend engineering roles right away. Instead she joined an ed tech company in data engineering and then a cloud manufacturing company as a frontend developer. 

At Elastic, Donna works on the backend. She is on the billing team, where she works on the technology that bills Elastic’s customers.“I write APIs on the backend to facilitate billing functions,” she says. 

Switching from frontend to backend was a challenge — but one Donna was ready for. 

“I had to shift my mental model from frontend to backend,” Donna says. “I challenged myself to grow. I almost didn’t apply [to Elastic] because the job was backend but now I love that that’s what I’m doing.”

Donna is used to facing challenges head on and using them as growth opportunities. She said it was intimidating going into the boot camp as someone who was older than most of the other students. “I thought it might be a hindrance,” she says. “I thought: Is it too late for me to switch? Would I be able to keep up with them?”

Donna’s age didn’t end up being an issue, she says, and instead the boot camp was exactly what she wanted — a chance to grow.

“Growth is more about expanding my knowledge and never becoming stagnant in my day-to-day work.”

At Elastic, Donna’s learned to ask questions because there is always someone to talk to if you show interest, she says. 

Her advice for those looking to continually grow? 

“Don’t limit yourself — just go for it. Usually the thing you’re worried about is not as looming as it might appear.” 

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