In our Alumni Spotlight series, we ask alumni to tell us about their careers and how their UVA experiences prepared them for life after the Lawn.
Meet Hanbin Cho, a December 2016 Computer Engineering graduate who enjoyed studying abroad three times. Hanbin immigrated to the US from South Korea in 8th grade and enjoys traveling, yoga, meditation, and cooking.Tell us about your career and your current job.
I currently work as a software engineer at CloudHealth by VMware in Boston. CloudHealth was founded in 2012 and acquired by VMware in 2018. It is a software platform that accelerates business transformation in the cloud. Thousands of businesses rely on it to manage cost, ensure security compliance, improve governance, and automate actions across multi-cloud environments. To put it another way, CloudHealth develops a suite of online reports, that show our clients many useful metrics on their cloud usage. As an example, imagine that you have subscribed to three video streaming channels, but ended up watching shows from only one. Every month, you are paying for three-channels' worth, but you have been realizing value on only one's worth. This pattern can happen to cloud users too. They may have unknowingly subscribed to cloud services much beyond their needs. If not attended carefully, expenses on cloud could quickly grow out of control. CloudHealth offers reports that help our clients access a clearer view of their cloud usage pattern, as well as receive recommendations to get the most bang for their buck. I work in a team of that supports CloudHealth's integration with Microsoft Azure cloud.
In addition to CloudHealth, I've had the chance to work at other smaller, earlier stage companies, as well as some larger, high-profile organizations. There may be many exciting projects that attract public attention in the well-known companies, but it was not guaranteed that I would get to work on those cool projects, as an entry-level engineer in a company full of seasoned engineers. In the smaller companies, my teams gave me the training and the responsibility to work on the core products of the company sooner because they really needed everybody's hands to handle the workload. I will not claim that the size of the company alone predicts if an entry-level hire will get to work on an interesting project. However, I would like to invite our soon-to-be-graduate readers to consider setting aside how cool a company's name would sound to an outsider and instead evaluating which option might help you grow your skills the most in the next couple of years.
What does a "day in the life of you" look like?
In any given day, a software engineer in our company might be: 1) Creating a technical design for a new feature set, 2) Writing code and unit tests for new features, 3) Assisting our support team troubleshoot issues, or 4) Sharing knowledge with colleagues on how things work. This last part sharing knowledge is so important (and one of my favorite activities). There might've been a time when our company was small enough that the few people knew ins-and-outs of the system. Those days are long gone.
As our system is becoming ever more feature-rich, and its infrastructure is constantly being updated to a better standard, no one person has the entire context necessary to solve new problems. Each person usually starts out working on a new task by gathering puzzle pieces from those who might have more context. They might discuss with others on pros and cons of different solutions. Their final solution must be reviewed by the team to be accepted. Now that they have grown expertise in this domain, in the future, they will help others leverage on what they have learned. Learning how to effectively leverage others' knowledge and share knowledge with others is so important to help everyone save time and effort.
How have your experiences and education at UVA shaped your life after college and your career path thus far?
“UVa is a multidisciplinary learning environment” probably sounds cliché, yet it is why I am so glad to have attended UVa, rather than a strictly technical school. As a UVa student, I had access to excellent learning resources beyond the Engineering School like the Theory & Practice of Yoga course through the Religious Studies department (with Prof Campbell and John Bultman), Mindfulness & Compassion course through the Nursing school (with Prof. Bach), Micro & Macroeconomics courses (with Prof. Elzinga and Prof. Coppock), and Computer Animation course through the Architecture School (with Prof. Mark).
Not only were these courses deeply fulfilling to take, but I continue to engage with the world with skills and perspectives developed in these courses. Yoga and meditation practices have been vital for my physical and mental health. Economics has been such a useful framework to make sense of events in my personal and professional life. Using computer to empower artistic expression is still the area I hope to contribute more in the future (Shameless plug for the animations I made in Computer Animation course!). I am deeply grateful that I had access to this kind of multi-disciplinary learning resources as a UVa student. There were many more courses that I wished I had taken!
On-Grounds life aside, studying abroad was by far one of the greatest perks that UVa offered. I had gone on three study abroad programs:
1) The summer after my first year, 1 month in Stuttgart, Germany with Professor Elzey, visiting research labs, factories (including Mercedes Benz & Porsche!), and various cultural landmarks of that region. After my 1 month there, I backpacked in Europe for 7 weeks (Shameless plug for my video journal from this time!).
2) 1 semester in National University of Singapore as an exchange student, getting to befriend exchange students from many other countries and visiting places throughout Southeast Asia.
3) January-term program through in India with Professor Cheema, visiting a variety of businesses and landmarks in Delhi and Mumbai.
The benefits were countless. Being immersed into entire worlds out there that operate in slightly different way from the world I'm used to, taught me a lot about both worlds simultaneously. I became a lot more curious about other worlds, more sociable to strangers, and a lot more confident in myself to adapt to new environments. Having experiences from many parts of the world helped me establish rapport with new friends/colleagues from those regions quickly too.
How has UVA Engineering helped you innovate and lead in your career thus far?
Appreciating the value of thinking out loud with others
I think having done many group projects in small teams in UVa made me appreciate the value of this. Talking aloud together on a problem often encouraged new ideas to come and got us unstuck. Bringing questions to professors' office hours, and experiencing many “Aha!” moments also conditioned me to appreciate this. New ideas can come from within, but there's something about a conversation, a discussion, that generates new ideas that I wouldn't have alone.
Appreciating the value of modularization
Once we define rules that describe how a set of input should be transformed into a set of output, we can give it a name, and refer to it everywhere else we need to borrow the logic, instead of re-writing the rules every time it's needed. This is how I understand modularization, and modularizing well simplifies evolving a system. It saves engineers a lot of work that feels unnecessary. It's easier to grow complex structure out of parts with simple interface (modularized well) than to grow complex structure out of parts with complex interface (not modularized well). Many classes in UVa helped me appreciate this (in particular, Professor Williams's Computer Architecture & Design class), and it continues to guide me in my current role.
Tell us about an event, class, advisor, professor, or mentor that really impacted your career path/choices.
There were many events, classes, and professors at UVa that really impacted me, that I cannot mention all within a paragraph. Of those, I'd like to highlight Professor Norton's Engineering Professionalism and Ethics classes (STS 4500 & STS 4600). He introduced us to many snippets of history that boldly illustrated the kinds of social and ethical dilemmas with high stakes that we might likely face too. There's a saying, “Work is easy, people are hard.” I interpret this as, “Solving technical challenges is often more straight-forward than navigating through interpersonal challenges.” I think this class endowed me with many useful anecdotes and conceptual tools, that helped me perceive the interpersonal challenges with greater nuance and find my balance amidst it. It helped me gather courage to persuade a senior engineer away from an approach that I thought was not in the best interest of the end-users or the company. It helped me appreciate that it matters that I make choices well not only for me personally, but also for the society I'm part of.
How did engaging with the Center for Engineering Career Development support your goals and vision for the future?
Looking for a career opportunity can feel daunting. The end goal seems simple: Landing an opportunity that will get your foot in the door. Yet I had many questions that made me feel overwhelmed: How can I know what concrete opportunities are available out there? How can I get the attention of those organizations? What important signs should I gather about the workplace, to compare my options? How do I best handle letters that rejected/accepted my applications, or write letters that reject/accept offers?
These questions could be searched online, but the answers were limited to being general advice or anecdotes specific to someone else's situation, not my situation. This is where talking 1:1 with a career counselor had been immensely helpful. My counselor (thank you Heather!) listened to my concerns, asked me questions that invited a new perspective, shared anecdotes relevant to my case, bounced new ideas with me, and encouraged me on my search. In that space of our conversation, magic happened. I always walked in with a heavy sense of feeling stuck but walked out feeling cheerful and clearer in my direction. I cannot emphasize enough how helpful and fulfilling it is to consult great counselors like those in the Center for Engineering Career Development.
With your professional perspective, what skills do you think are vital for current UVA Engineering students to learn?
The ability to narrow down the scope of the problem
Almost every day, my teammates and I encounter problems we don't know how to solve, yet. It's quite natural. The industry is changing, the customer needs are changing, and our system is changing. Many facts we rely on today will soon become outdated. So as engineers, rather than trying to know it all already, I think we should become skilled at figuring out the cause-and-effect relationship that isn't known already. When we encounter a problem we don't know how to solve yet, we can 1) Define exactly what outcome we want, 2) Hypothesize the causes for the problem, 3) Find ways to test out the hypotheses (in cheap and quick ways if possible), 4) Eliminate irrelevant causes, and 5) Solve for the relevant cause, to get the outcome we want. This skill seems to remain relevant through the changing landscape.
Asking for help from others, and helping others
For the reason already explained in “What does a ‘day in the life of you' look like?”
For current students hoping to go into your field, what are some of the most effective things they can do right now to prepare themselves for future success?
1) At a career fair, before you approach the recruiter of a company that you have never heard of, look up the company on your phone briefly. What product/service are they offering? Do you have any specific questions about working there? It will help you stand out in the recruiter's memory rather than just asking, “So what do you guys do?”
2) The book Cracking the Coding Interview has a great roadmap on how to prepare for software engineering interviews. I believe the Center for Engineering Career Development has a few copies to loan!
3) Though it's the age of the internet, discovering and applying for a job opportunity through a personal referral still goes a long way. Check out the “How Not To Get A Job” chapter from the book “Designing Your Life” for more tips on this.
4) Try a timed mock interview with a friend at least once as an interviewee and at least once as an interviewer. You can learn good interview tips from books, but doing a mock interview (especially as an interviewer) will help you realize the tips that really matter.
5) Last but not least, if you don't already know a career counselor personally, book an appointment and say hello! Seriously, it's such a privilege to have great allies like them to start your career.