Spotlight: Sowmya Gangaiah

Our Spotlight Series aims to highlight women in different Engineering teams across LinkedIn. Featured writers provide insight into their role and what they do at LinkedIn.

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Spotlight: Sowmya Gangaiah Senior Software Engineer, Ads at LinkedIn

I was born and raised in Bangalore, India where I grew up wanting to become a doctor. That was, until I wrote my first computer program in LOGO and have never looked back. I went on to major in Computer Science at PES Institute of Technology(now PES University), interned at Siemens R&D, and started my first job at Accenture. I got married soon after to my now husband and had to decide whether to quit my job after only a few months to move with him to the US, or stay back to learn and invest in my early career. The people and community around us at the time seemed to try and make my decision for me. However, I was able to stay true to what I believed in with the support of my partner who disagreed with the conservative view that placed more importance on the husband’s career over the wife’s. I can look back and say that the projects I worked on, the people I worked with, and the awareness of how important my career was in my life provided a foundation to stay in the workforce even through challenges that life threw at me later on. After a couple of years I moved to the United States, initially working as a consultant, then went on to join Bloomberg LP and in 2021 made my way to LinkedIn.

My journey as a working mom

I am the mother to two adorable kids, 9 and 6 years old. As more and more women in tech discuss the challenges with being a working mother, I have come to reflect on the learnings from my own journey. Looking back, there was a key difference in how I approached the pregnancy and birth of each of my kids. When I found out I was pregnant with my first born daughter, my then work place was heading towards becoming a toxic environment. Although I had originally considered changing jobs, I held myself back assuming that I would need all my energy to focus on becoming a new mother for the next two years. I enjoyed being a first time mother but at the cost of putting everything else, especially my career, on pause. 

I approached my second pregnancy with a drastically different mantra: this time I knew there was no need to hold myself back. I started my new job at Bloomberg when I was well into my third trimester, making the decision to accelerate my career rather than slow it down. I was able to do this with the awareness of knowing what to expect, support of my loving family, amazing friends and a company that actually invests in supporting new parents. I can look back and say this was one of the best decisions of my life that led me to discover the impact of working on engineering at scale. I joined LinkedIn in 2021 to be closer to products that people use on a daily basis and impact important phases of their life. 

If I could, I would go back and tell my younger self to not hold back on investing in my career. My biggest takeaway from being a mom working in tech is that you should surround yourself with positive people and look to nurture a support system that can help you navigate tough times. I believe that all mothers in the workforce should be supported so they can build out a life where their career isn't an afterthought.

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