Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Flora, I'm 38 years old. I'm the mother of a 5-year-old little girl. I got my baccalaureate in 2005. I did a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at Aix-Marseille University. Then a master's degree in computer science, specializing in networks, at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.
After that, I got my first job at Orange, where I worked for six years without ever doing networking: I was an application administrator and system administrator.
Toward the end of my time at Orange, I started getting into databases, because I had DBA colleagues sitting right next to me in the office who were really nice. That's how I got into the world of databases. At one point, they had a lot of work and were looking for help. I was pretty junior, and I offered to help even though I didn't know anything about it.
They gave me small tasks that were easy for them but not for me, and that's how I got my foot in the door with databases.
Then, I wanted to move to Switzerland. I wanted to move to Switzerland following a personal life choice. I told myself I'd look for a position similar to what I was doing, in application and system administration, but I also looked for database positions, thinking that I liked that and wanted to get into it, but without experience. Nobody wanted me.
There was only one organization willing to take me: actually, it wasn't really a company, it was the State. A public institution. Switzerland is divided into cantons, and each canton has its own government.
This government body was looking for a DBA with ten years of experience, which I absolutely didn't have. I wrote to them saying I had no experience but wanted to learn. They were very open, they interviewed me, and it went well. That's how I got my first DBA position, by presenting myself in "teach me" mode. It went very well, I stayed there for four years.
This institution is called the État de Vaud, it's the local government of the canton of Vaud. That's also where I met Franck Pachot, by the way.
After four years, I wanted a change. I was approached by a fairly well-known trading bank in Switzerland called Swissquote. It attracted me right away, because it was a very dynamic environment, and on top of that they were five minutes from my home. It was an interesting company with exciting technical projects, and I clicked well with the recruitment team.
The transition was easier, because I already had four years of database experience thanks to the État de Vaud, to whom I'll always be grateful for giving me my chance to become a DBA.
How did you end up in IT?
I've always liked it since I was a kid. As a teenager, I had a computer in my room, I played the Sims and games like that. I was simply drawn to playing on the computer. Quite young, around 13-14 years old, I said I wanted to do something in programming. As a little girl, I was convinced I wanted to make video games.
My father told me he supported me, that I could do whatever I wanted, but that if I wanted to make video games, I needed to study either the graphics side or, as he called it at the time, programming. I thought programming sounded cool. So it really comes from a kid thing, having a computer available.
Today you're at Oracle. What exactly do you do at Oracle?
My job has a pretty funny title, it's called Black Belt. At Oracle, there are teams of people called Black Belts, who are extremely sharp on one particular technology.
I've always had this side of me where I like to go very deep technically on a subject, I like to specialize, I'm not comfortable when asked to be good at everything, I prefer to be strong in one specific area. The Black Belt role suits me well, even though it's demanding.
I'm a Black Belt on an Oracle service called "Oracle AI Database@AWS." Basically, the Oracle database is available on-premises, customers can install it themselves on their own servers. It can also run in Oracle's cloud through various services.
And now, Oracle has partnered with major cloud providers, Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS, to offer the Oracle database service directly through these other providers. My team is made up of the Black Belts for this service at Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, and we're split by specialty: those specialized in Azure, those specialized in AWS, and those specialized in Google Cloud. I'm on AWS.
My job is to support the Oracle teams and the customers who want to implement these services, it's technical support.
How did the move from Swissquote to Oracle happen?
Things were going very well at Swissquote. Oracle contacted me on LinkedIn saying they were looking for someone with my skills in the Switzerland-France region, because they needed someone who spoke French. That's what made me switch.
I was lucky, as with Swissquote, these companies actually came looking for me, which is quite flattering. I don't know if I'm overselling it, but my LinkedIn profile was very well filled out, with all my experiences detailed. I think that's a piece of advice I'd give to young people: a well-filled-out LinkedIn profile.
Companies come across profiles like that, and even with their AI search tools, they first find the candidates who have provided their information thoroughly. That helped me a lot. That's how the transition from Swissquote to Oracle happened, Oracle came looking for me with a very interesting offer.
What does a typical day at Oracle look like?
That's the interesting part, my job has two sides. There's the client side, where I'm in contact with clients and their projects, I help them set up the service, understand it, solve their technical problems.
And there's a side I love, a bit of evangelism: promoting Oracle services, producing content (YouTube videos, articles to publish online), training myself so I can then train others. It's not a huge part of my time, but I really enjoy it. So there are really these two sides, which makes my days quite varied.
I don't really do development, it's more design, architecture, troubleshooting. I support clients at any stage of their project: some have no idea what this service is and want to understand what it's about, others already have the service up and running, but they have technical issues to solve. So my days are never really the same.
That's a common thread I notice in everyone I've interviewed, giving talks, writing articles, there's a teaching aspect in everyone, especially among seniors. How do you explain that?
It's very interesting that you bring that up, because I got into that too. Why? Because I was told that the best way to learn is to try to understand it yourself, then explain it back. And it's clear that it works.
Have you given talks? Do you still give them?
Yes, I gave quite a few before becoming a mom, it's not the child's fault, it's just that life changed. Those were things I did in my free time, and now my free time is spent differently, temporarily, which is normal. But yes, there was a time when I blogged a lot and gave quite a few talks.
I saw you also started a community or association
Yes, that's part of it too. It wasn't related to databases, it was more general, more around women in tech.
Do you remember a project or an issue, something you solved in your career, a pattern of problem-solving you often come back to?
Yes. I'm someone who's very lazy, and I love automation. That comes from my first internship supervisor at Orange, who told me, jokingly, that the goal of our job was to stop working.
But in these jobs as a database or application administrator, real added value comes from automating processes so you don't have to keep redoing the same manual tasks over and over. That lets you move on to other things, more motivating and interesting things, and you keep building automations like that. I love automation.
In my current job, I don't necessarily always have an automation project, because I've somewhat changed roles. But for example, at Swissquote, I took part in a big automation project: we automated tasks that took up a huge amount of our time in the team, and that nobody wanted to do, when it was our turn we'd grumble.
I think it was one of my most rewarding projects: identifying what's repetitive and tedious but important for the company, and setting up something automated that runs with just monitoring. That frees up a lot of time to do more interesting things. I've had the chance to do that several times in my career, and those are really my favorite projects.
Speaking of automation, that brings us to AI. What do you think about everything that's happening?
I use AI a lot on a daily basis. I don't claim to be an AI expert or to do AI-oriented development. The first thing that comes to mind is the productivity angle, if that's the right term. I'm a fairly organized person, I like having my little notes, my little notebooks, organizing my things.
With AI, for example with Codex, I use it like a personal assistant: I talk to it, tell it what I have to do this week, what's being added, that I'm waiting for a reply from someone who hasn't answered yet, and I let it, with oversight from me, make my to-do lists. It's a bit like Dumbledore's pensieve in Harry Potter, it's my organized pensieve. That's a use of AI I really appreciate.
I'm French by birth, so my English isn't perfect. When I have to write emails, anything related to checking the language, the phrasing, making sure I'm clear, I use AI for that. Those are pretty classic use cases I think: summarizing meetings, projects, or sometimes reporting for executives who need information distilled down as much as possible. It also helps me prepare presentations, internal or external, to get to the point and cut out anything unnecessary.
What are your predictions about AI and databases?
On the automation side, I think there are already great things in place and available. I'll talk about Oracle, because that's what I know: Oracle already provides AI tools to improve the lives of developers, DBAs, and to improve the use and exploitation of data stored in databases by customers, by companies.
We can really modernize, secure, and speed up decision-making, break down certain barriers, for example no longer having tons of heterogeneous systems where you constantly have to re-extract and ingest data in different places. We can really recentralize and reduce complexity.
In terms of predictions, it's more complicated, I'm a bit cautious on that point. But I think AI can make daily life easier for a lot of professions.
Does AI replace juniors?
It's funny you ask it that way. I have a stepson who's your age, I feel old! He's 21, he's a computer science student like you, he's also going into his third year. I'm very interested in what he's learning in class, and I see that AI is taught, guided in the right way at his university.
I find that AI is well integrated into learning, and it's a strength for you, the juniors. I'm convinced that AI won't replace you, but that, on the contrary, you're a generation that knows how to juggle it, that knows how to make the most of it, that knows, I hope, when and how to use it well.
One thing I have reservations about is everything related to technical learning. I hope that when a junior wants to learn something, they can use AI as a tool, but without relying on it exclusively: going to the source, cross-checking information, everything the brain does very well.
I hope juniors are already being trained in a world where AI is present, that they're taught to live with it, to navigate with it, and to get the best out of it. I don't think you'll be replaced. I think you'll skip past certain tasks that I, as a junior fresh out of university, had to do tediously for a year or two, things you'll probably never know, and that will be all the better for you.
It's a bit like when I started working in databases: some things were already automated by technologies like Oracle, and old DBA colleagues, twenty years older than me, told me I hadn't known such-and-such constraint from the past. True, I hadn't known it, that's the normal evolution of our professions.
A few books that helped you?
Yes. For books, I have a few classics I could give you the references for.
- Troubleshooting Oracle Performance — Christian Antognini
- OCA: Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Associate Study Guide — Biju Thomas
But those are starting to get dated :-)
What helped me enormously was mainly content produced by the community. I did almost my entire career on Oracle, so when I talk about community, it's mostly the Oracle community, but a lot of other communities, like the PostgreSQL community for example, are also very well developed.
It was a lot of blogs, for things that were easy to access. Of course, as with AI, you have to keep a critical eye on what's published, but you learn a lot by relying on other people's experience, and by testing things yourself.
I really enjoyed going to local meetups, when I had the time and means, which isn't always practical for everyone, but it's interesting. There's also a huge amount of good community content available on YouTube, for those who prefer video format.
It's really the sharing of concrete experiences that helped me, and it made me want to produce content myself. At first, it was purely selfish, just to learn, then it was to help others.
What are some traits or habits you've noticed in top profiles?
I like this question. It's a somewhat personal answer, but I think they're curious people, curious about technology of course, but also curious about people, in the sense that they're good listeners and empathetic.
I feel like a therapist saying this, but what always bothered me a bit in my career, especially when I was young, was the "prison door" DBA stereotype: you ask him a question, he doesn't put himself in your shoes, doesn't try to understand where you're at, what you're struggling with.
There's often this classic case where someone on the development side needs help with the database, and the DBA gets defensive, saying that's not how it should be done, instead of listening to the other person's problem, trying to put themselves in their shoes and understand how to help them. So the qualities I remember are curiosity, listening, empathy. Those are the things I'd remember more than technical skills, because technical skills can be learned, and nobody can know all the technical details.
And also, one last thing, I think they're people who constantly question themselves, not in a negative way, but who always ask themselves whether what they know today is still valid, whether the answer might have changed since, whether their way of seeing things has evolved.
I always have this mindset: I'm 38 and I still feel like I'm junior. I always ask my colleagues what they think, whether they'd change something, whether they have advice for me. I never see myself as having the definitive answer.
If you went back to being 18-19, would you have done anything differently for your career?
Honestly, no, I'm good. I think I was lucky, I came across kind people. One thing I might not have done differently, but that I would have done more, is ask more questions. When you're young, at least for certain personalities, maybe like mine, you start out at a company, you don't know anyone, you don't have your bearings, your habits, the codes. I was in "I don't want to bother people, I don't dare ask the question" mode.
So I'd search for answers on my own for three days, and I'd ask the question only when I'd exhausted all my resources. People answered me very kindly, there was no problem.
But sometimes, you shouldn't hesitate to ask questions, there's no such thing as a stupid question. We all start somewhere, and we all have a range of knowledge that isn't the same as our neighbor's.
You're in a fairly male-dominated field, IT and databases. How have you experienced that over the course of your career?
At the beginning, it was hard. Now, I don't care, but I've become a pretty blunt person about it, meaning that with age and experience, I put up with a lot less bad behavior. But when you're a 19-year-old girl showing up at a company, it's hard.
What was difficult is when I started being a somewhat established DBA, just because of my appearance, I wasn't taken seriously. It's awful. And it doesn't just happen to women, it happens to a lot of people, in plenty of job categories. That was really the heaviest thing to deal with.
How can a woman experiencing this problem handle it?
First, try not to take it personally: it's the other person's problem, it's not ours. Then, you shouldn't be afraid, it's hard to say, but you shouldn't be afraid to assert yourself, to speak up, and to earn respect.
Possibly, interrupting in meetings, or saying clearly "no, I'm the DBA, I'll help you with this project, you don't need to go see the colleague next door." But it's very difficult. What helped me was gaining experience over time. Now, I couldn't care less about those people, but at the beginning, it wasn't easy.
So I'd say you need to have confidence in your own abilities, because the person in question knows their job and is fully capable of doing it. Don't hesitate to put people in their place.
It's a field I find extremely intellectually motivating, everyone has a place in it. You also have to realize that people in these communities are often open people, very happy to have more women, more diversity.
It's a huge topic for me, I worked on it a lot, especially a few years ago. Women also have their own contribution to make, as in every field. I found that somewhat mixed, somewhat diverse teams were the ones with the most abundance of ideas. That's maybe an important thing to highlight for women: when they're present, the range of possibilities takes on a different shape.
These are jobs where you're recognized, where you earn a good living, where you can have flexibility. I think about that for moms, or people who want to become moms, we know very well what kind of society we live in, the burden is still quite heavy for mothers, and you can't do everything.
When I compare with friends who work in medicine, banking, or sales, in IT we have more flexibility, and that's an asset. That's maybe something for younger girls to consider when they're asking themselves questions about their careers.
How do we join Oracle?
Trick question, because I admit I was lucky that Oracle came looking for me. But I can tell you why that happened: it's because I had made a bit of a name for myself in the community, at the time, by publishing blog articles, taking part in conferences.
At conferences, like you, I like meeting people. You meet people from Oracle as well as people from plenty of other companies, you build a big network, even if it's just a friendly network where you go have a coffee with people with no promise of a job. But I think it's thanks to that networking that I was noticed. I'm not a big star, far from it, but I think that's what helped me, being visible, on LinkedIn, on the internet.
One piece of advice I'd give, and that was given to me, it's not originally mine: every time you find a solution to a technical problem you've run into, don't be selfish, share it.
If you faced this problem, there are probably dozens of people going through the same thing, so you can share your solution. The simplest way, I think, is a blog post for example, and that's what will increase your visibility, almost without meaning to, but really with the goal of sharing your experience and knowledge, and getting these things circulating.
I don't know if that exactly answers your question, but I'd say you don't have to jump into some massive project. Just tell yourself that all the little challenges you run into day to day are maybe also the quiet little challenges of the person next to you.
What's your toolbox?
I've tried tons of things, and I always come back to basics, a file open in Notepad. In the end, I use Codex as a layer on top of my little notes in Notepad++. It's not very elegant, but I'm very much a plain-text-file-and-terminal person. I keep it very simple.
Would you recommend Switzerland to a developer?
Yes. I really like this country, I've been here for eleven years, I live there, not right at the border. Switzerland often looks for IT people, people in databases, networking, cybersecurity, and we often bring in people from abroad because there's a shortage. That can be very interesting for a young person.
Switzerland is a wonderful country that adopted me and that I've adopted, I really like the quality of life here. I've now started a family here, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. I love this country, its nature, its culture.
That said, it's very personal. Switzerland is divided into regions with different languages, it's sometimes like little countries within the country. I live in French-speaking Switzerland, like Franck, we're kind of neighbors. Our geographic region is fairly small, so we run into each other a lot, but there are still opportunities.
How do you spend your free time?
I spend time with my family, I love music and going to concerts, so I travel quite a bit for concerts. A bit of travel, a bit of concerts, a lot of family.
Is there something you'd like to share with the project, a thought, a message?
Yes, some fairly general things, maybe aimed at juniors. It would be to not hesitate to ask questions, there's no such thing as a stupid question. To stay curious and open to other people's points of view.
The other thing, it ties back a bit to what we said about women, is to stay true to yourself. It might sound a bit trite to put it that way, but we all have our own way of being, our own way of thinking, our own kind of personality, and you shouldn't try to change yourself to fit into a corporate mold.
Me, for example, I'm someone very outgoing, I like to joke around, connect with people, I'm not very formal, I'm not a cold person. There were moments in my career when everyone was more formal, and I forced myself to be like that, but honestly it didn't suit me at all.
Staying true to yourself, with your quirks, I think that's really important for navigating your professional life. If you're a joker, keep being like that, if you're reserved, keep being like that, if you're someone who gets straight to the point, keep being like that. Everyone brings their own contribution, and it's a shame to try to fit into a mold when it brings us nothing, and it can constrain us more than anything else.