Asked how she’s sustained a decades-long career at one employer in a constantly evolving field like tech, Beibei Guo says the answer is that she’s always been on the lookout for new challenges.
“I've been lucky enough to always work on different things, even though it's the same field,” she says. Building experience and working on great projects opens the door.
“I established this cycle of professional reward and satisfaction fairly early on in the process,” she says.” So although I’ve been in the same field a long time, even in the same technology, I always get to do something different. And I’ve felt stimulated.”
The variety itself becomes valuable. “Once you accumulate your track record and ‘professional wealth’, opportunities do come to you,” Guo says. “Someone recently asked me ‘How come you get all the interesting projects?’ I almost wear that as a badge of honour.”
"Someone recently asked me ‘How come you get all the interesting projects?’ I almost wear that as a badge of honour."
Trajectory and height
Holding the title of Distinguished Engineer at CommBank, Guo says the deep experience gained from multiple industry and technology cycles has its own unique value.
“There's heaps of IT lessons associated with going through cycles and knowing what failure as well as success looks like,” she says.
After an early career at Oracle, Guo has now been at CommBank for more than 20 years. “I learned early on the value of understanding that the context of the data far outweighs the medium,” she says.
“It’s also the way that you structure and look after the data. So what is it for? How critical it is? What are the consequences if someone else get it? That sets you up for engineering style response,” she says.
Owning the trajectory
Guo says that wealth of experience also means she can take stewardship of IT “trajectory”. More than the achievements of any individual project, which she describes as the “height” of the engineering and IT advancement arc, trajectory is the stuff that sticks and makes a significant difference long term.
“I think the ‘get ahead’ is the height, the stay ahead’ is the trajectory,” she says.
Guo says her contribution is the “stay ahead bit, making it hold”.
People with other leading edge skills are better placed to deliver the “height”, she says. But for real long-term success “we need both”.
Engineering better careers
Guo describes herself as an “accidental leader”. She says she was never interested in leadership roles for their own sake but came to see that taking on leadership was sometimes the way to get to the outcome she wanted. “So, I'm an accidental leader, if you will,” she says.
Her knack for snaring interesting work means she’s also ideally placed to help boost the careers of others. “When I can, I try to bring as many people along on the journey,” says Guo, who also acts as a sponsor in CommBank’s EmpowerHer leadership advocacy program.
In keeping with her love of helping careers develop, Guo says the thing that excites her most about tech right now is AI’s ability to rapidly transform skills, knowledge and understanding.
With the right guidance and guardrails, it’s possible to use AI models as thinking partners, coaches, advisors, consultants, and mentors. It’s an approach CommBank has recently formalised for all its staff in its $90 million Future Workforce Program.
Guo says using AI and particularly agentic AI could see, for example, a graduate rapidly accelerate in a more serious role that required greater maturity.
And the approach applies just as much to experienced engineers as it does to grads, she says. “I do believe that it applies to people who are changing their technical directions as well.”
Guo says she’s seen first-hand people rapidly acquire completely new knowledge and apply it successfully in projects, using AI as their guide.
“I'm energised about the possibility that people could mature into a new technology or a new paradigm in a condensed and more autonomous manner than before,” she says.
“And I strongly believe CommBank gives people the space to do exactly that: keep learning, take on new challenges, and build a career that keeps evolving.”
