It was never that hard for her to acquire new language skills. Maybe she just has the talent for it – and the passion, of course, because the facts speak for themselves: she is not only fluent in English, Greek, and Albanian, but has also started learning Turkish by watching shows on Netflix. Turkish, she says, is similar to Greek, but she can also speak Italian and a bit of Spanish. Most likely, she won’t stop here. Her secret? Once you learn the first language it gets easier and easier to learn the next one. You just have to keep an open mind. This skill is perfectly applied to her work at the Data Science team in Grenzebach Hellas.
“I enjoy front-end tasks because it is easier to visualize what I am modifying. Nevertheless, back-end tasks are more challenging and I am able to understand more in-depth how the applications actually work.”
She has always been a visual type, which is also reflected in her hobbies. This seems to come with the family. Her grandpa, a painter, inspired her to do her own sketching at home – also a skill which is easily applied to her work at Grenzebach: with an image in mind, the final code is created out of nothing, and then being corrected and revised over and over, just like drawing on a white sheet of paper, using a pencil and eraser.
Keeping connected
Her team is comprised of only three people, but that has its own advantages. They work closely together, even though they are not on-site at the same location, because she currently lives in West Greece, in Ioannina, and works remotely for the Athens office.
Teamwork is extremely important, and a natural part of their job, Eleftheria Bella says. They divide the daily tasks, use a backlog list, and discuss questions and issues together until they reach the final solution. Daily meetings keep them connected across the city borders. Therefore, even though she misses the front end, she would love to stay in her team of two junior developers and one senior developer who oversees and coordinates the tasks. There is always someone available to support her, which has been extremely helpful and is also part of what makes up the corporate culture at Grenzebach for her.
Being just one of three women on the Athens Data Science teams has never bothered her in any way. If she, for some reason or the other, can’t ask her two team members for help, Eleftheria Bella can always contact her other colleagues in Athens. “I'm grateful for all my colleagues because they were always there to help and answer every question”, she says.
Getting the “big picture”
This year, she completed her master’s degree in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Ioannina. In her master’s degree, she specialized in finding possible “dangerous areas” in arrhythmic heart signals: another code that she tries to picture in her head to solve it. Right now, she is still in the process of learning new things, acquiring new skills at her job at Grenzebach, and just generally getting the “big picture“ of Data Science – and this is what excites her. At work, as well as in her private life, with language, with art, and with the freedom all of this brings. Maybe, at some point, she will come back to the more visual front-end tasks?
Right now, after she doesn’t have to spend her free time after work on the thesis preparation anymore, she is looking forward to having more time for her hobbies, and friends, and visiting her sister in Ireland, where she is currently doing her PHD. When being asked what she is looking forward to the most, though, she briefly ponders the question, “Sleeping would be nice”, she then concludes, laughing.
