Web Desk (LTN NEWS): Shafiqa Iqbal, who grew up in Sadiqabad and worked as a data engineer in Lahore, was hired by Google through LinkedIn when she was 24 years old. She works at the Google office in Warsaw, Poland, right now.
Shafiqa, a graduate of Punjab University, was working as a data engineer and taking part in open-sourced projects like blogging about data engineering. Data engineering is a growing field around the world.
She was a top-rated seller on Upwork and was also the Global Ambassador of Women in Tech for Pakistan. She was good at logical programming, database migrations and development, ETL pipelines, cloud solutions, and backend development. She used to create and sell scalable solutions for businesses all over the world.
Before she got a message from Google on LinkedIn, she had been working for about 2.5 years. After many interviews, she was finally hired by Google and given the chance to work in the Warsaw office of Google Poland.
Talking to Junaid Akram
Shafiqa said that companies like Google and Facebook value open source work in an interview with Pakistani YouTuber Junaid Akram (aka GanjiSwag), who visited Shafiqa’s Google office in Warsaw, Poland. She also said that even though there are a lot of talented young people in Pakistan, no one knows how to join Google because the company doesn’t have a physical presence there, like an office.
Shafiqa said that graduates from other countries already want to work for one of the “Big Five” companies and start getting ready for competitions and internships as soon as they finish school. That’s why top companies like Google don’t hire as many people from Pakistan as they could.
Shafiqa also said that she wanted to be independent, so she chose the field and worked her way up until she was working for a top company like Google.
Recruitment Process
She remembered that during her last interview with Google, the internet didn’t work. When the interviewer asked her questions at the end, the meeting went black because the internet wasn’t working well. Luckily, the interviewer didn’t seem to care. He or she said that no one should belittle anyone’s talent and that Shafiqa is the best person for Google to hire.
Shafiqa hopes to make Pakistan proud in the future by doing well in her job and looking for opportunities with other well-known tech companies. She is learning a lot by working at Google’s Poland Office.
Shafiqa works for Google, but she also writes regularly for Medium.com and has spoken at the Google DevFest 2021.
