Tag Archives: Remote Working

Data Engineers of Netflix — Interview with Dhevi Rajendran

Post Syndicated from Netflix Technology Blog original https://netflixtechblog.com/data-engineers-of-netflix-interview-with-dhevi-rajendran-a9ab7c7b36e5

Data Engineers of Netflix — Interview with Dhevi Rajendran

Dhevi Rajendran

This post is part of our “Data Engineers of Netflix” interview series, where our very own data engineers talk about their journeys to Data Engineering @ Netflix.

Dhevi Rajendran is a Data Engineer on the Growth Data Science and Engineering team. Dhevi joined Netflix in July 2020 and is one of many Data Engineers who have onboarded remotely during the pandemic. In this post, Dhevi talks about her passion for data engineering and taking on a new role during the pandemic.

Before Netflix, Dhevi was a software engineer at Two Sigma, where she was most recently on a data engineering team responsible for bringing in datasets from a variety of different sources for research and trading purposes. In her free time, she enjoys drawing, doing puzzles, reading, writing, traveling, cooking, and learning new things.

Her favorite TV shows: Atlanta, Barry, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Dark, Fargo, Succession, The Killing

Her favorite movies: Das Leben der Anderen, Good Will Hunting, Intouchables, Mother, Spirited Away, The Dark Knight, The Truman Show, Up

Dhevi, so what got you into data engineering?

While my background has mostly been in backend software engineering, I was most recently doing backend work in the data space prior to Netflix. One great thing about working with data is the impact you can create as an engineer.

At Netflix, the work that data engineers do to produce data in a robust, scalable way is incredibly important to provide the best experience to our members as they interact with our service.

Beyond the really interesting technical challenges that come with working with big data, there are lots of opportunities to think about higher-level domain challenges as a data engineer. In college, I had done human-computer interaction research on subtitles for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as computational genomics research on Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve always enjoyed learning about new areas and combining this knowledge with my technical skills to solve real-world problems.

What drew you to Netflix?

Netflix’s mission and its culture primarily drew me to Netflix. I liked the idea of being a part of a company that brings joy to so many members around the world with an incredibly powerful platform for their stories to be heard. The blend of creativity and a strong engineering culture at Netflix really appealed to me.

The culture was also something that piqued my interest. I was pretty skeptical of Netflix’s culture memo at first. Many companies have lofty ideals that don’t necessarily translate into the reality of the company culture, so I was surprised to see how consistently the culture memo aligns with the actual culture at the company. I’ve found the culture of freedom and responsibility empowering.

Rather than the typical top-down approach many companies use, Netflix trusts each person to make the right decisions for the company by using their deep knowledge of the problems they’re solving along with the context they gather from their leaders and stakeholders.

This means a lot less red tape, a lot less friction, and a lot more freedom for everyone at the company to do what’s best for the business. I also really appreciate the amount of visibility and input we get into broader strategic decisions that the company makes.

Finally, I was also really excited about joining the Growth Data Engineering team! My team is responsible for building data products relating to how we connect with our new members around the world, which is high-impact and has far-reaching global significance. I love that I get to help Netflix connect with new members around the world and help shape the first impression we make on them.

What is your favorite project or a project that you’re particularly proud of?

I have been primarily involved in the payments space. Not a project per se, but one of the things I’ve enjoyed being involved in is the cross-functional meetings with peers and stakeholders who are working in the payments space. These meetings include product managers, designers, consumer insights researchers, software engineers, data scientists, and people in a wide variety of other roles.

I love that I get to work cross-functionally with such a diverse group of people looking at the same set of problems from a variety of unique perspectives.

In addition to my day-to-day technical work, these meetings have provided me with the opportunity to be involved in the high-level product, design, and strategic discussions, which I value. Through these cross-functional efforts, I’ve also really gotten to learn and appreciate the nuances of payments. From using credit cards (which are fairly common in the US but not as widely adopted outside the US) to physically paying in person, members in different countries prefer to pay for our subscription in a wide variety of ways. It’s incredible to see the thoughtful and deeply member-driven approach we use to think about something as seemingly routine, straightforward, and often taken for granted as payments.

What was it like taking on a new role during the pandemic?

First off, I feel very lucky to have found a new role in this very difficult period. With the amount of change and uncertainty, the past year brought, it somehow felt both fitting and imprudent to voluntarily add a career change to the mix. The prospect was daunting at first. I knew there would be a bunch for me to learn coming into Netflix, considering that I hadn’t worked with the technologies my team uses (primarily Scala and Spark). Looking back now, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity and glad that I took it. I’ve already learned so much in the past six months and am excited about how much more I can learn and the impact I can make going forward.

Onboarding remotely has been a unique experience as well. Building relationships and gathering broader context are more difficult right now. I’ve found that I’ve learned to be more proactive and actively seek out opportunities to get to know people and the business, whether through setting up coffee chats, reading memos, or attending meetings covering topics I want to learn more about. I still haven’t met anyone I work with in person, but my teammates, my manager, and people across the company have been really helpful throughout the onboarding process.

It’s been incredible to see how gracious people are with their time and knowledge. The amount of empathy and understanding people have shown to each other, including to those who are new to the company, has made taking the leap and joining Netflix a positive experience.

Learning more

Interested in learning more about data roles at Netflix? You’re in the right place! Keep an eye out for our open roles in Data Science and Engineering here. Our culture is key to our impact and growth: read about it here.

Data Engineers of Netflix — Interview with Dhevi Rajendran was originally published in Netflix TechBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Raspberry Pi 400 for working and learning at home

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-400-for-working-and-learning-at-home/

Did you get Raspberry Pi 400 as a home learning or working device? We hope you’ve been getting on well with our affordable all-in-one computing solution.

If you’re a new user, here are some tips for you to get the most out of your brand-new Raspberry Pi 400.

Does *anyone’s* home office desk look this tidy?..

First things first!

Make sure your Raspberry Pi runs the newest version of the Raspberry Pi OS. Here is how (and here is a video preview of what the process looks like):

Screen grab of raspberry pi os being installed inline code

Open a terminal window by clicking on the Terminal icon in the top menu bar. Then type this command in the terminal window:

sudo apt update

Press Enter on the keyboard. Once the update is downloaded, type into the window:

sudo apt full-upgrade

Press Enter again. It is safe to just accept the default answer to any questions you are asked during the procedure by typing y and pressing Enter.

Now reboot your Raspberry Pi.

Videoconferencing, collaboration, files

‘Every Zoom Meeting’ by Second City via YouTube

With the newest version of Raspberry Pi OS installed, you can use the following applications in the Chromium browser:

Just log in with your username and password and start working or learning!

Raspberry Pi OS also has LibreOffice installed for working with text files, spreadsheets, and the like.

Printing on your Raspberry Pi

Go into the Preferences section in the main menu, and open Print Settings. This shows the system-config-printer dialog window, where you can do the usual things you’re familiar with from other operating systems: add new printers, remove old ones, set a printer as the default, and access the print queue for each printer.

Like most things in Linux-based operating systems such as Raspberry Pi OS, whether you can make your printer model work depends on user contributions; not every printer is supported yet. We’ve found that most networked printers work fine, while USB printers are a bit hit-and-miss. The best thing to do is to try it and see, and ask for help on our forums if your particular printer doesn’t seem to work.

More tips for using Raspberry Pi as a home computer

Our very own Alasdair Allen wrote a comprehensive guide that covers more topics of setting up a Raspberry Pi for home working, from getting your audio and video ready to setting up a Citrix workspace. Thanks Alasdair!

Free resources for learning at home

A girl and mother doing a homeschooling lesson at a laptop

We’ve got a host of completely free resources for young people, parents, and teachers to continue computing school lessons at home and learn about digital making. Discover them all here!

What do you need?

Let us know in the comments if there are any niggles you’re experiencing, or if you have a top tip to help others who are just getting to grips with using Raspberry Pi as a home learning or working device.

The post Raspberry Pi 400 for working and learning at home appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

How COVID-19 Reinforced the Need for Mobile Device Management

Post Syndicated from Justin Turcotte original https://blog.rapid7.com/2021/01/07/how-covid-19-reinforced-the-need-for-mobile-device-management/

How COVID-19 Reinforced the Need for Mobile Device Management

How many of you got that call at the beginning of the pandemic to make your company’s workforce 100% capable for remote work? How many of you had no idea how to make that happen, seemingly (and sometimes literally) overnight? How many of you were already prepared for such an event?

Remote workforces and mobile device management (MDM) are more important than ever in 2020’s pandemic reality. Unmanaged remote endpoints are one of the biggest risks to an organization’s cybersecurity posture today.

Don’t think of remote endpoints solely from the isolated ransomware/malware infection standpoint. Instead, think of them from a MITRE ATT&CK matrix perspective. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Can attackers gain access to the endpoint?
  • Can attackers establish persistence?
  • Can attackers perform data collection and exfiltration?
  • What could an attacker achieve by compromising an unmanaged remote endpoint?
  • What can that endpoint bring back to the enterprise network with it when it returns to the office?

While working with Rapid7 customers over the past several months of quarantine and lockdown, it’s evident to me that many companies were caught completely off guard when facing the reality of being unable to work from their corporate offices.

Many customers have no ability to manage their endpoints remotely without them being connected to the company VPN, or in many cases, are unable to manage them at all. Many times, these VPN connections are unreliable, or the company had not planned for the network overhead required for a thousand employees connecting to the company VPN at the same time.

Companies have spent large amounts of money over the past several months rolling out more robust VPN solutions and mobile devices (like laptops and tablets) for users to be able to perform their jobs remotely. And security has seemingly taken a backseat to these larger efforts to keep workforces employed and productive.

Here are a few solutions we’ve seen many of our customers using for remote productivity and connectivity:

  • VPN: Company-controlled VPN service installed and configured on remote endpoints for users to connect as necessary.
  • Always-On VPN: A VPN connection that is “always on,” whenever the endpoint is connected to the internet. This configuration is more secure, as users are forced to connect to the company network in order to perform any work that requires the internet or network resources. This can help ensure users are not surfing dangerous websites or using other unapproved services such as personal email or file-sharing sites to perform official work.
  • Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD): BYOD scenarios include installing a company-controlled VPN client and configuration on an employee-owned device. This configuration is less than desirable due to the inability to control the remote endpoint in any capacity due to the lack of ownership.
  • Loose Controls: Some customers have even relaxed security measures that were in place prior to the pandemic. Due to the speed with which companies were forced to loosen security measures—such as removing multi-factor authentication requirements and disabling password rotation requirements—these actions have left some companies at great risk of being compromised.

Cloud-based remote management and security solutions are the key to beating remote work requirements imposed by federal and local governments.

There are still a large number of companies that seem to be cloud-averse when it comes to anything to do with endpoints or security, but this new reality makes it necessary to start adopting cloud-based solutions to manage your enterprise network.

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Cloud managed services to consider for a completely remote or mostly remote workforce

Antivirus

A cloud-based antivirus solution that does not require connectivity to the enterprise network in order to receive signature or software updates is crucial in this new dynamic. Users are taking their systems to their home wireless networks, which have notoriously weak security.

Anti-malware and endpoint detection and response (EDR)

Having an EDR and anti-malware solution that is able to report to a cloud-based management console is also important to prevent malware infections and alert on suspicious or anomalous activity.

Vulnerability management

Having a cloud-based vulnerabaility management solutionsystem in place that can report back to a centrally managed vulnerability management system is important for assessing the overall level of risk that an organization has in regard to remote endpoints.

Asset management

An effective asset management solution is crucial for an effective vulnerability management program. You cannot patch or secure what you do not know you have on your network. Asset management systems also help with remote support and resource planning.

Patch and software deployment

Are you able to patch or update software on remote endpoints easily and effectively? Is your current patch management solution able to reach remote endpoints reliably? Having a cloud-based patch and software deployment solution is key to ensuring your endpoints are kept up-to-date with the latest patches and version updates.

Data loss prevention

Are you able to see company data flowing across the enterprise network? Can you monitor the types of data flowing through VPN connections, personal emails, or cloud-based file sharing solutions?

These areas are just a few of the most important MDM or RMM solutions needed in today’s pandemic toolbox for the IT security professional.

Future considerations

If you already have some of these areas covered, can your tools integrate with one another to provide a single pane of glass administration console that enables your IT and security teams to perform day-to-day tasks?

Where can you consolidate tools into one platform? Can your patching solution act as your asset management solution as well? Can your endpoint detection and response system be a remote SIEM solution or a User Behavior Analytics system?

COVID-19 has altered the attack landscape forever. Work from home is likely not going anywhere and will only become more necessary as lockdowns continue. Some organizations have even opted to close offices and work remotely on a permanent basis after discovering how well their teams were able to work from the house. The need for mobile device management and the ability to detect and remediate vulnerabilities on remote endpoints is now a necessity rather than a convenience.

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