Emily Lomempow: from Computer Engineering to Software Engineering
Not everyday do I have a chance to cover a story of a female engineer in my life, as it can be pretty rare to find them around. Emily Lomempow is one of the few that I know of and she is now, not only an engineer but through her achievements, remarkably a lead engineer for Payment In team. She leads the Payment In team and together, secures every Traveloka’s transaction. Interestingly, she does not hold a computer science degree, but rather a degree in computer engineering (which focuses more on hardware than software).
Different from Ishal, the thought of becoming a software engineer had never crossed her mind. Emily had a lot of dream jobs when she was a kid (just like everyone else in this world), Her first choice was to be a dentist when she was still in high school to help hundreds of people have a better smile and oral hygiene. Her second choice was computer engineering because of the suggestion from her high school teacher. When she finally graduated from college later, her friend advocated her to apply for Traveloka as a back end engineer. It was more of a nothing-to-lose opportunity, but she ended up working at Traveloka for four years straight (and still counting).
Her self-development
Coding used to be outside of Emily’s interest. She had never written any software before joining Traveloka and she had doubts about whether software engineering is something that she would cherish and fulfill her life. She was so used to learning about networking, embedded systems, and microprocessor but hardly on handling database transaction. When she joined Traveloka in July 2015, the first couple of things that she did for one to two days were integration tests, unit tests, and understanding Traveloka’s payment flow. Gradually over time, as she picked up her knowledge, gained experience, and earned reputation as well as trust from her peers and managers, she was entrusted to handle progressively challenging projects such as Payment Integration and Loyalty Points.
Loyalty Point is her personal favorite project. It was a real deal and the first big feature that she took over inside the Payment team. As the only back end engineer for that project, she collaboratively developed the Loyalty Points system with many other roles, such as front end engineer, designer, and product people. “There are so many touchpoints and logic that had to be configured to ensure the smoothness of the entire payment system. It was definitely not an overnight success. We currently have Flight, Hotel, Flight+Hotel, and Xperience connected to loyalty points, but since Traveloka has more products than just those four, I had to think further if other products need integration. To me, it was memorable because it taught me not just one thing, but numerous things at once. Overwhelming, but I am glad it worked fine up to this point.”
The more I see Emily, the more I realized how gentle and quiet she is. She doesn’t talk that much, maybe it’s because she is more of a doer than a talker. Emily is curious, passionate about problem-solving, and attentive to detail. Her carefulness sticks out as a result of her early days in Traveloka, when she inadvertently caused a pretty traumatic incident to Traveloka system, where customers couldn’t access the payment page at all, halting sales on their knees. It might not be a huge problem back then when Traveloka was still much smaller, but fast forward to today with the current scale of the company, the impact from the same incident will have caused deeper and wider repercussions. Nevertheless, it may have been an acute challenge. But, she is blessed to know that none of her coworkers has ever had to accidentally repeat her mistake by keeping her attentiveness on reducing the risk of making any blunder. That small mistake works as a potent reminder to always be observant at all times.
On Leading and Moving People
Emily’s philosophy on personal goal is to be flexible and disallow personal ambition to overtake one’s life as long as there is the continuity of progress and excellence along the journey. As a woman, she personally never heard the term ‘glass ceiling’ and also don’t think that it exists, at least not in Traveloka. She knows many other female engineers in this company. For her, everyone can be a leader as long as they want to, no matter what background or gender they have. Although, in her domain, she really suggests people to learn computer science as much as possible for a strong base foundation.
“You know, if I have an opportunity to talk with younger generations regarding their future, especially girls, I would definitely advise them to try engineering. Engineering is a lot of fun for them who love to tackle puzzles and solve mysteries. It offers so many potential challenges to address. If curiosity kills a cat, I am sure the cat won’t ever survive in a room full of engineers, since curiosity is an essential fuel to work and improve.”
Emily might not have her primary interest in engineering initially, but over time, she affirmed that she would rather do software engineering for a living than anything else offered to her. Emily’s lifelong experience in engineering has been too enormous and valuable to switch to anything related to her past major in computer engineering. Even when she was not yet a software engineer lead, her ideas, feedback, and worries were well understood and valued by everyone, including her manager and those up the chain of the company’s leadership team. She sensed the importance of having her voice being heard and she wants to ensure her coworkers are treated likewise. The “openness” culture cultivates well among her colleagues. She also bonds well with her team members, as she has always been there with them since day one. In the past, there were only five engineers (including her) working on new code and code refactoring on one elongated table. Now, there are 20 people. The challenge that she faces is no longer about “how to code in Java”, but more like “how to grow and influence people”. Her responsibility has shifted to high-level system design and the well-being of her coworkers; their life and work balance as well as their achievements and joy, are four concerns that she intends to never lose sight of. Traveloka is so lucky to have her and she is likewise lucky to be in Traveloka being continually afforded the opportunities and challenges to challenge herself and her team while changing Indonesia for a better future.
When asked for advice for aspiring software engineers, Emily said, “take the risk in learning new things. Software engineering isn’t something that I thought I’d enjoy, but here I am today, tackling challenges everyday and whole-heartedly loving it. Who knows, you will enjoy software engineering as much as I do?” In other words, if you don’t try to spread your wings, you won’t know that you can actually fly.
If you are interested in tackling challenges like Emily does, visit Traveloka’s career page to discover your next journey.
