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EverLearn in ActionMay I Speak Your Language?

Pythons in the office

Eyad Hailat is a senior software engineer who was hired last December to work at the Molex design center in Arkansas. “As part of my onboarding, I was asked to fill out an EverLearn profile. My new supervisor, Jacob Bock, said this would make it easier for me to be found and for me to find others.” At the top of Hailat’s listings was a mention of his work with Apache Kafka, an open-source tool for storing and retrieving data in the form of events.
 
“Kafka is like the ultimate high-speed bus,” explained Hailat, who has used it for more than nine years to build systems and what he calls “data pipelines” for various projects.

“You load your data at one end and it moves everything quickly and safely to your preferred destination at the other end. It’s super fast and scalable. The data can be from the shop floor or a welding machine or sensors. It doesn’t matter. It will absorb the data even if the amount is huge. And whether you're consuming from one station or several stations, it will all be delivered very reliably and very fast.” 

Hailat’s brother, Zeyad, happens to work at Guardian Industries, another Koch company, where developers and software engineers had already installed Kafka but had some important questions about the best way to integrate it into one of their applications. Zeyad advised them to use EverLearn to reach out to Eyad.

“Guardian was a little bit ahead of Molex as far as user integration but they needed to know more from someone who had used it extensively — someone who could help them elevate their use of it,” Hailat said. “You see, installing it is one thing, but using it is another. Since Kafka is my favorite ‘toy’ for managing data, I agreed to share my expertise to effectively manage Kafka clusters in production as best as I could.” 

When the session began (Hailat said they scheduled an hour), he was surprised to discover how many people from Guardian were participating. “It had gone much higher up the ladder than I expected. There was a director, a data scientist and a few managers and engineers. I’m almost embarrassed to think about it now because I hadn’t developed any slides or visuals or anything like that.” The Guardian team didn’t mind. They wanted a conversation, not a presentation. They peppered him with questions about security, customization and how to operate the program better. Hailat was able to anticipate almost every question. “I had been in their shoes and knew exactly what they were trying to do.” 

It wasn’t long after their connection when Hailat began to receive a stream of thank-you notes. “Using me as a resource became a huge benefit for Guardian,” he said. “I not only understood their operational challenges, I understood their corporate culture, their Guiding Principles. We also avoided waste because they didn’t have to spend money on consultants or sign contracts or hassle with nondisclosure agreements and all that. We could get right to it. 

“That,” Hailat said with a smile, “was one of my best collaboration meetings ever.”

Plus one

Eyad Hailat’s supervisor, Jacob Bock, has been with Molex for 10 years. He leads a software team that includes dozens of developers in the United States and India. Bock explains their role this way: “Our group is all about helping the company improve its processes. For example, we build a lot of manufacturing testing equipment. Our role is a little weird because we don’t sell software. That’s not our focus. Instead, our goal is to leverage software in ways that help other areas of the company.”

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When updating his EverLearn profile last year, Bock mentioned his experience with Python packaging. (Despite its name, it has nothing to do with snakes or containers. It’s a programming language that helps coders write clear and logical programs for projects of any size.) He estimates there are hundreds of developers working for Koch companies around the globe who use Python for applications, such as creating signal integrity. 

Thanks to EverLearn, Bock was able to share his knowledge about Python with a programmer from Koch Global Services, who in turn shared “super helpful” knowledge about AWS (Amazon Web Services) with Bock, helping him solve a problem for Molex he had been trying to figure out. “So that,” Bock said, “was a double win for Koch.”

Bock often emphasizes how EverLearn is a powerful two-way street: “It not only helps you find the subject matter experts with answers to questions you may have, it helps others become aware of you and your capabilities. That kind of visibility is essential for creating opportunities and furthering self-actualization.”

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Another knowledge network — Jacob Bock presented his team’s work with Python at the recent Modern Application Architecture Development conference led by John Prytulka and Jason Drumright of Koch Global Services. Check out this and other presentations at koch.link/MAADCon.