Elisa Usai

Can you introduce yourself?

Yes, with pleasure. So, Elisa Usai, I'm 42 years old, I live in Switzerland, in the French-speaking part, next to Lausanne. I arrived there in 2010 but originally I'm Italian. Now I have dual nationality, but I was born, I grew up, I did my studies and I even started working in Italy. I have two children, 12 and 14 years old, and I live half the time with them. Roughly, that's a very short summary. And I work in databases, but that, I don't even need to say, since you already know it. Currently I manage two teams: an Oracle DB team, and an Open Infrastructure team, with databases that are open source, such as MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres, and even operating systems, such as Linux.

Did you study in Italy?

Yes, exactly. Like a lot of things in my life that you'll see, my path is quite varied. In terms of studies, at the beginning I think I was more inclined toward literary things. I did a scientific high school, but with languages in addition. I love foreign languages. It was a scientific track, but with French, English and German, so we had a bit fewer hours of math and science compared to a standard scientific high school, but on the other hand we had these three languages. It was quite varied. I found that nice.

And after high school?

After finishing high school, I switched to computer engineering. My philosophy and languages teachers at the time, when I told them my choice, looked at me like "are you sure? Why??" But that's it, I switched to something else entirely. And honestly, I don't know why, or maybe there are reasons, but a bit unconscious ones too.

There's also the fact that I grew up in a city called Ivrea, which, if you pass by on the highway, you still see the sign "city of computing," because it was the headquarters of Olivetti. It was typewriters, and then the first PCs, a company recognized at a global level. Even now you sometimes find Olivetti machines in small company museums or things like that. So I was born in this city. Maybe that's part of why, at some point, my path shifted. I also had, in my family, an uncle and an aunt, who were married, and who still work today in computing, both of them. So maybe I had a few examples like that in my family too.

I did the first part, the three years to get a first-level diploma. I finished that, and I had started the specialization.

And that's when Atos came in?

When I started the specialization, I had a great opportunity from a company known at an international level, that you probably know, based mainly in France. It was Atos Origin. I started working for them, and that's really where I started working in databases. What's crazy is that the internship I did right after finishing the first three years of engineering was an internship in development. In the small company where I did it, they would have wanted to keep me on, but I understood that development and programming were not really my thing. So I thought, "I got it wrong in my studies, what do I do now?" And then afterwards I discovered there was a whole other world. There's the whole infrastructure side. You don't have to do programming, you can work on a lot of other aspects at the computing level such as databases, and I saw that this was what interested me. So this job opportunity was something really interesting, and that's why I decided to stop my studies: I didn't continue the two additional years to reach the end of the university degree, and I started working directly in that field.

Did you learn on the job, or was it also a lot of what you learned at university?

No, I learned a lot on the job. At university, in the first three years, there were a lot of courses such as maths, physics, chemistry, all sorts of things, but there weren't yet that many computing ones, except programming and maybe two courses about databases. I did have some data courses, a bit basic, to understand a little the architecture and the modeling, etc. But afterwards, I really learned on the job. I was trained, for example, on Oracle directly at work, with colleagues, on real client systems, etc.

What are a bit the key moments of your career?

I think the key moments are really, when I had challenges and new opportunities, and the moments of trusting yourself and telling yourself "there's maybe something new coming, and if it feels like it can be something good, I have to let myself go for it." So, the key points: already, apart from my studies, Atos Origin was a huge experience. I think it's the basics for me, because there were so many different customers, so many technologies, you understand a little how companies work, all the processes, etc. It trained me enormously. The on-call rotation devastated me a bit, but it shaped me too, to be prepared for what came next.

Second thing: it's also the fact of having moved to Switzerland, and working again for a big company here, Nespresso, where, by chance, I was able, at the beginning, to switch toward monitoring. That let me discover a whole other set of systems and technologies, and it let me start having a bit more of a global vision of everything that was happening, all the interactions between the different teams and the business processes of a big company. That continued until I arrived at dbi services, where I made another jump, and added management to everything I had already done before.

Why Switzerland?

At the time, it was because of my ex. We worked together at Atos Origin in Italy. He had an opportunity in Switzerland at the Olympic Committee, and we moved here together at the time. I thought I'd spend a quiet summer to discover this new country, but in the end I quickly found this job at Nespresso after a month or two and I started working here quickly too. We're not together anymore, but I stayed because I feel like home here.

You have quite a multicultural path, you're Italian, you speak French, you come to Switzerland. Did that help you? How did that affect your decision making, for example?

Yes, I think it did influence my way of working. When I arrived in Switzerland, I saw this working culture which is, I find, personally, different from Italy, which is a lot more organized from what I see. There's more respect given to a lot of things, already within the company. And also this balance of professional life and personal life, which is really important. That's something I really appreciated.

Was it difficult at the beginning?

At the beginning it was a lot of adaptation. I already spoke French, because as I said before, I already learned it at school, but that's school-level French, even if we did literature and so on. When I arrived here, at the beginning, during lunch and coffee breaks, the colleagues' jokes, I was a bit in "laugh mode" when I saw others laughing, but I felt a bit out of place in all that. It took me some time for the meetings where I heard a lot of people talking, and when it was talking with several people at once, it wasn't easy, because now it comes naturally, but at the time I still had to translate in my head, from Italian to French, from French to Italian, to speak. So it wasn't easy. I think all this also allows me to focus, to put more energy into communication, to understand that communication is also very important in our profession. And also the fact of gaining confidence, understanding a bit the habits, these habits at the work level which are different, all as part of communication: listening, being attentive to people, to context, etc.

What does a typical day as senior delivery manager consist of?

So, we're getting into what I was telling you before. What I like about all that is that there isn't really a typical day. Each day is different, and that's what I love. You'll see later too that it's really a trait I have myself, because on a personal level, I'm like that too. I currently spend part of my time exchanging with clients to understand their technical needs, translating them afterwards into something understandable, and making sure the projects move forward correctly. I also take care of the whole workload side: sizing, knowing how much time projects take. I support the sales team too, for the production of offers. In parallel, and it's a big part of the work too, I support the technical DBA teams to organize their planning, their priorities. I also make the link between our management and the teams, I'm a bit of a filter: I try to make sure management's expectations reach the ground level, but at the same time that the team can work in good conditions, to work efficiently.

So it's a lot of communication?

Yes, it's a lot of communication in all that. What I like about it, in fact, is that I think I couldn't go back to a 100% technical position anymore, like a few years ago. What I like now is this mix of technical and management tasks. It's this diversity that pleases me, that I'm passionate about. I also like to learn a lot of things, in several aspects, because I still have to keep up to date technically, but at the same time I learn a lot every day about management too, and how to manage teams correctly. And again, it's always about adapting, solving problems, supporting people in different contexts. That's where I want to put my energy too, this link between people, the technical side, and moving things forward at the management level, at the company direction level too.

How do you learn to manage a team?

It's something I did gradually, because when I arrived at dbi services, they trusted me and gave me the chance to start directly in this position. And again it was a challenge, so I decided to take this opportunity.

What happened is that at Nespresso I had already had to reorganize things, but it wasn't really formalized. So I arrived at dbi services almost without any management-level skills. I think several things helped: on one hand, the company trusted me. Secondly, the company also offered, and this was for all managers, small workshops with a consultant who's an expert in management, who coached us a little, to give us some pointers to understand certain key aspects of the role. And then the teams too, they trusted me. It was all-male teams, and they welcomed me well, they trusted me. I grew and evolved with them, and I learned this profession, again maybe like at the time in the technical field, in databases, I learned this profession really by working, and by taking an interest on my own side, by trying to make sure I had all the skills needed for this profession.

Do you have systems that you used to save time?

Not necessarily systems, but the fact is, I think you still need to organize yourself. Because it's great to have days like that, varied, with a lot of things to do, different hats, juggling with all that, but at the same time, if you're not organized in an efficient way, you risk getting a bit lost and wasting time. I try to standardize where I can, everything I can: process level, documentation, tools, follow-ups, ….

And at the planning level, to know where we're going, the priorities, etc. Saving time doesn't mean going faster, it means, I'd say, going maybe a bit slower at the beginning, to try to understand well, to avoid misunderstandings, to anticipate needs, problems, and then let the teams focus on what has value for them. On the technical side, I use project management tools, follow-ups, to-do lists, etc. But I think the most important part, generally speaking, is organization. That's how you really save time, because otherwise you have to go back and correct things afterwards, because you went too fast and did it a bit any old way.

You have DBAs under your responsibility. Do you see mistakes that are made again and again in databases?

Tons! How much time do you have?

The mistakes, I think, are more at a global level. They're not necessarily tied to a specific technology. The mistakes are especially, I'd say, around good practices.

What happens often is the lack of documentation. That's always explained by "oh, but we're technicians, we like technique, and documentation, we don't care about it." Well, that's not really it, because it's super important at the knowledge level for the profession: the architecture, the dependencies, the operating procedures, the technical choices, etc. If you don't have that, if you or colleagues have to come back to it, you start again from zero.

What else?

Resilience. We often think of setting up backups for databases, but how many people think of testing not just the backups, but also the restores? You can be able to back up databases, but if you haven't tested a restore, maybe the restore doesn't work, and so you don't really have a guarantee of being able to restore your database.

Another thing is system updates, which are often pushed back out of caution, sometimes out of lack of time, because at the application level, "we don't know if we support such and such version," so people prefer to stay on old versions that work. But there are risks, because you risk losing the vendor's support, you're exposed to vulnerabilities, and that's happening more and more, and it will keep increasing anyway. The bigger the gap gets, the more, afterwards, when you have to migrate or upgrade, it accumulates, and it will take more time to migrate, to upgrade. So I think a strategy of regularly moving up versions is also important, but it's often underestimated, because we often think about emergencies instead.

And on the technology-choice side?

There's also the technology choice, which is sometimes guided, according to me, by the wrong criteria: the fashion effect, commercial pressure, a preference for a supplier, a political decision, or other things like that. But you have to go look at the needs, the constraints, the resources you have available, the skills, the overall costs. That's a whole analysis that takes time.

And rather on the delivery side, stepping outside the case of databases and DBAs, it's what I was telling you before: the fact of going a bit too fast, and not taking the time to have a bit of hindsight, to analyze and anticipate the risks, the impacts, etc. According to me, everything comes down to good practices, whether it's on the DBA side, broadly speaking, or on the delivery side too.

Do you see common points among the top players in your teams?

According to me, yes. Afterwards, it's not just that point. What I see in my teams is that it's also expertise, quite deep, especially in consulting companies like ours, quite fine, it goes very, very into detail, and that's what's also cool about it: at the technical level, you can manage to become a real expert in your domain, in your technology, and there's a lot to do. It's great. You have to think not only about administration, but there are a lot of things that revolve around it: security, capacity planning, modeling too, performance, backup, restoration, etc. It's fascinating. They're passionate people.

Are you mainly in consulting?

Yes, for the moment. So, small parenthesis, since it's official already. I'm still working for dbi services until the end of August. In September, I decided to accept a new challenge for myself. I'm going to a final client, I'm going to the hospital of Lausanne, the CHUV, as head of the database team.

Why leave consulting, then?

Consulting was great from the beginning of my career till now, and I learned a lot of things thanks to it! At the same time, I maybe don't see as much value in it anymore, because you're on one-off projects, you don't follow a project really from A to Z, you don't see the follow-up, and you don't see all the impact you have.

Now, at this point in my life, I needed maybe, a bit more, to feel "useful", in quotes, in what I do. One of the things I will value most about working in IT for a hospital is the sense of purpose it brings. Even though I'm not directly involved in patient care, I know that the systems I will support help healthcare professionals do their jobs more effectively. That will make my work feel both meaningful and rewarding.

Apart from consulting, I also spent quite a few years being a speaker and giving technical talks at conferences abroad and in Switzerland and I was also involved in the community a little bit around databases. I'm still part of a user group in Italy for organizing events around Oracle in Italy. Again, it was really amazing, but now I maybe needed to settle down a bit and see more value in my job.

Do you think consulting is a good entry point for juniors, for example?

Yes! I think it precisely lets you understand how different companies are organized, the processes, not just the processes of your own company, but the processes at the company level across different, varied companies. That comes from Atos Origin and dbi services too: working for banks, insurance companies, private and public sector, small companies, bigger companies. And you see a lot of technologies, very different ones, database technologies, but also based on different operating systems. The on-call rotation, you don't sleep at night anymore, you cry, but you also learn to manage stress. So it's very, very formative in a lot of ways.

How do you get into a database company?

I think it's important to first build a broad understanding of databases rather than focusing too early on a single technology. You may already know a specific database platform, but it's just as important to understand the bigger picture—things like migrations, best practices, performance optimization, and what it takes to keep databases running reliably for the applications that depend on them.

Later on, you can absolutely become a specialist in a particular technology. But having that broader perspective first helps you understand the needs of the applications, the expectations of users, and the operational constraints you'll face.

In my view, it's difficult to fully understand the role or solve problems effectively without that foundation, regardless of whether you're an expert in PostgreSQL or any other database technology.

How have you used AI?

To be transparent, I don't yet use AI enormously in my work. I'm still a little bit in a phase of exploration. Now I'm starting a little bit to use it if I need to summarize faster, to synthesize information. But not much more than that. Afterwards, if I think about our role, whether it's DBA or delivery manager, I can see a potential in relation to certain things: log analysis, the automation of certain tasks, etc. I've already had the occasion to have confirmation that it doesn't replace the human, it doesn't replace expertise. Especially in domains like that, databases, depending on certain clients and certain professions, it can be very critical, hospitals precisely: a bad recommendation can still have important impacts on availability, security, or the integrity of data. According to me, it's really about seeing that as a tool to accelerate certain things, but behind it, there always has to be expertise and validation, real people.

And the juniors, so, does that come back to the same thing?

No, I don't think it replaces them. If junior professionals stop learning and rely entirely on AI, then in a few years we'll have a real problem. Experienced people won't be around forever. Personally, I'd like to retire in a few years—I have plenty of interests outside of work. So we need the next generation to develop the knowledge and experience to take over.

AI is a great tool, and it can make us much more productive, but it shouldn't replace learning or critical thinking. If we become too dependent on it, we risk losing the skills we need to understand problems and solve them ourselves. Trying to rebuild those skills later would be much harder than developing them in the first place.

I have the impression you're a bit against AI and everything I think.

Well, there you go. I know I probably shouldn't say this because AI is evolving so quickly, and I don't want to be left behind. That's why I'm making an effort to explore it and understand how to use it. But I still don't trust it completely.

A good example is something I do regularly: estimating the effort required for customer projects. A few months ago, a customer challenged one of our estimates. They said, "That seems like too many days. I asked ChatGPT, and it said it should only take about X days." A colleague and I decided to test it ourselves. We gave ChatGPT the same prompt: upgrading an Oracle appliance from one version to another. At first, it gave exactly the same estimate the customer had quoted.

The problem was that, as Oracle specialists, we knew something important was missing. You can't upgrade directly between those two versions because Oracle doesn't support that path. You first have to upgrade to an intermediate version. That's clearly documented in the official Oracle documentation.

When we pointed that out and explicitly asked ChatGPT to take the Oracle documentation into account, it corrected itself and produced a new estimate—which matched the one we had originally made.

For me, that's a good illustration of both the strengths and the limitations of AI. It's a very useful tool, but it doesn't replace expertise. If you don't already understand the technology, you may not realize that a critical piece of information is missing, and you won't know when the answer is incorrect. AI can help experts work more efficiently, but it can't replace the judgment that comes from experience.

So no, it won't replace the juniors.

Do you have a piece of advice that struck you since the beginning?

Trust yourself.

Not because we necessarily always have all the answers, but because we have the capacity to learn, to progress, to adapt. And a lot of great opportunities, sometimes, as my own path maybe proves a little, arrive when you step out of your comfort zone. So you have to believe a little in your path, in your skills, and sometimes in your capacity to take on new challenges.

You evolved in an environment that's very male-dominated, and you still work in one today. How did you experience that?

That's the question I'd been looking forward to. It's a subject that really matters to me. I don't know if you've already seen a bit of this on LinkedIn or elsewhere. I was in this environment even before working, because already at university, the polytechnic school, out of 100 students at the start, we were three girls. That's a reality we still find, unfortunately, in IT, in technical fields generally. I experienced it as an environment that was sometimes a bit challenging, but also, I don't stop there, I don't stop just at saying, "I'm just diving into the situation," I'd like to see that as an opportunity to help mentalities evolve.

How did you deal with it in practice?

So over the years I learned, a little, to find my place, to have my expertise recognized, and not let myself get dragged into stereotypes, the idea that we can't do this or that because we're a woman. We shouldn't deny that these stereotypes still exist, and that they're tied to these technical professions. There's a lack of visible female role models. Certain company cultures can still sometimes discourage women from starting or advancing in these fields.

Can you tell us about Swiss Tech Ladies?

It's for this reason that I'm very involved, and that this subject matters to me. I'm part of a program in Switzerland called Swiss TecLadies, as a mentor. I also developed, a few years ago, a talk that I present at technical conferences around women in IT, to raise a bit of awareness about all that. To understand, or try to understand, the origin of this imbalance, identify the stereotypes and the bad habits, and think about what everyone can do to improve the situation, because we can all bring something to improve it. At a company level, I've also tried to contribute a little, by raising awareness on the importance of pay equality, encouraging participation in equal-pay programs too. That was important too.

I think that at the global level, there are things we can do, but we really have to act as a society. It's not just women, it's not just people in companies, it's really about education. I think that's the basics. Schools, education, families, etc. By showing young girls that technological professions are accessible, that they have the skills, and that they can trust themselves. And afterwards, within companies, with mentoring, these somewhat female roles, and all the communities that provide support and favor equity. The fact of saying "there are fewer women in IT," I think, like in a lot of other fields, when a representative part of society is missing, we reduce the possibilities we have. We end up with perspectives that aren't so different, whereas we could have more variety, we could improve collaboration, and have teams that are richer and more effective because we bring in another way of working too. So I think it's a change and a responsibility that's really at the collective level. Otherwise it can't evolve.

What could encourage more women to get into IT?

I'd really say basic education, whether in schools or in families. Avoid stereotypes. Work in a mode that's more about collaboration and not competition. Having programs and support like mentoring and communities, to help young women, or women, to trust themselves and feel like they have the capabilities to do it. We don't have brains that are coded pink or blue. We can code, or we can't code, that has nothing to do with it, that's nonsense.

Are there concrete initiatives already in place?

For mentoring and communities, there are several initiatives such as "Swiss TecLadies" that I already mentioned, "Women in Digital Switzerland" and others (I can share some other names with you if you want).

In Switzerland, we also have a nice day, called "Dare All Trades Day", where schools encourage boys and girls to go see, through a parent or someone in their family or their circle, professions that are a bit stereotypically the opposite. I brought, for example, my daughter to my job. My son went to see something more stereotypically in the other direction.

We need more programs like that, more awareness starting really young, very young. Afterwards, you can keep building on it later, but that's more of a follow-up thing, because if it already gets coded into the heads of girls and boys, in either direction, that such a profession is stereotyped, "it's for women" or "it's for men," afterwards, it's fixed, and they start orienting their studies toward something else entirely.

How do you spend your free time?

My free time is just as varied as my professional time. There's no ambiguity there, at least. I need diversity there too, to discover new things and keep learning, a little bit like in my job. I've practiced a lot of dance since I was very little, that's probably the central foundation. I do yoga, singing, volleyball, indoor climbing. I also really like being outdoors, so I have a van, I travel around with the van in nature, and hiking. Nature is very important. I need, since I'm quite hyper-connected for my job, to disconnect afterwards, to take a step back, and reconnect instead with nature and other kinds of places, people, sharing.

I also devote a lot of time to my family, my friends, my children, who also let me see life from different perspectives. And like in my job, I also love new challenges, stepping outside my comfort zone. I tried to learn the accordion as an adult, even though I'd never done music before. I'm currently trying to learn Spanish, and I recently discovered, just a few weeks ago, diving and rope caving, so I'd also like to get more into that now. Ultimately, what ties all that together is this curiosity, and wanting to experiment, to learn new skills, and meeting people and sharing it with them. It needs to stay dynamic, a bit like my job.

Is there a book or resource that particularly shaped you?

Not really. I think, in our profession, sure, there's always the certification "Bible", and it's cool, it's interesting, and it teaches you technically. But again, coming back to everything I said before, I think our profession is learned especially through experience. When there are difficult projects, tricky migrations, production incidents, being on call, waking up in the middle of the night, having to think fast, architecture choices, trade-offs between performance, security, cost, deadline, whatever, I think that's what really makes a good professional. There's no recipe like that, in any case, if there is one, I'd love someone to share it with us too, but I'd say it's really about experience.

Is there something you'd like to share? A project, a reflection, a message?

Yes, I will try to summarize everything that matters to me.

To young women and women who are considering a career in technology, or in fields that are still very male-dominated, I'd say: dare. Don't impose limits on yourselves because of stereotypes, because of what people think is "meant for you." You can do everything you want, on the condition of believing in yourself, working with passion, and surrounding yourself with people who support you.

And more broadly, for everyone: stay curious, step outside your comfort zone, dare, try new things, accept not knowing everything, and keep learning. And the best opportunities often come from a challenge you wouldn't necessarily have dared to take on at the start. My path has shown me that it's possible to evolve, to change roles, to learn new skills, to build your own path. There isn't a single way to succeed.

Finally, I believe a lot in the importance of sharing, sharing your knowledge, supporting others, creating connections, collaborating, being part of a community, rather than seeking only competition. That's what makes us grow.

Life is really made of experiences, encounters, discoveries, dare to live your projects with passion, keep that curiosity, and enjoy the journey.