Welcome to episode 211 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 2 of a discussion with Shailvi Wakhlu, talking through her move to 100% people management, how she’s built strategy, thoughts on job leveling, an explanation of what data science is, and resources that can help with a career move into data science.

Original Recording Date: 01-17-2023

Shailvi Wakhlu (she/her) is based in San Francisco and was most recently a senior director and head of data at a sports tech company. During the time Shailvi was there, she ran a department of 27 product analysts and machine engineers. Catch part one of our discussion with Shailvi in Episode 210.

Topics – Targeting the C-Suite, Manager of Various Teams, Thoughts on Strategy, The Manager Who Built Career Paths, Job Levels and Hiring, Data Science and Related Fields

4:37 – Targeting the C-Suite

• Shailvi didn’t get her first fully management role with no individual contributor responsibilities until about 3 years ago. This was a very conscious decision.
  • Prior to this role, 50% of Shailvi’s time was focused on coding or delivering something as an individual contributor. Her title may have said technical lead or manager, but the 50% split was the reality of her true responsibilities.
  • Shailvi didn’t want to move fully into management and stop growing her technical skills. For the longest time she would turn away from any role that was 100% management…until a couple of years ago.
  • Nick says those who have led very technical careers seem to have a hesitancy when they move up into leadership (i.e. loss aversion, loss of identity, etc.).
  • Shailvi says she can identify with these feelings and the desire for staying in your comfort zone.
  • When Shailvi works on code, she can see the impact she is having and can point to more tangible outputs from what she is doing.
  • People leadership is very different. Sometimes it’s all the bad things that have not happened that are a measure of your success. And it’s not for everyone.
• One of Shailvi’s biggest wins over the last 2 years is that out of 27 people only one person left the team. This all happened during what was called the great resignation.
  • Nick says talent retention is important and has heard it costs companies 2.5x someone’s salary to turn them over (i.e. backfill the role).
  • Shailvi says you try to do a lot of things that are right. Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
  • Management life is so different than life as a coder (where Shailvi started).
    • "You do X,Y,Z. You get A,B,C. And there you go. Checkbox. You’ve met your goals." – Shailvi Wakhlu, speaking to life as a coder
  • Shailvi loves being at the strategic helm of a company and making key decisions. She enjoys businesses, shaping businesses, and shaping businesses that will do well.
  • "Look at the jobs that you want, and reverse engineer what needs to happen for you to get there." – Shailvi Wakhlu
• Shailvi wanted a C-suite job. That’s what she still wants and is working toward.
  • Shailvi realized that for a C-suite job you need to have a very good grasp on the people aspect of it such as how to get the best work out of people, how to hire great people, how to grow them, how to motivate them, and how to retain them.
  • There is a big people leadership aspect to most C-suite jobs, and Shailvi realized she needed to go into the roles that would push her into situations which would really help her progress to grow that skillset.
  • Shailvi knows she was a good individual contributor, but could she be a good manager? She did not know for sure yet.
• Nick mentions that communication aspect that was so important for software engineers comes into play here again for the manager who needs to communicate upward (their management) and downward (to the people under them). The way you communicate and the things you talk about changes as you hold roles at different levels within an organization. You have to change and adjust your communication to fit that level, which takes time.
  • Shailvi says getting the right words and the right communication is a lifelong journey. Shailvi still says things that she will think about later and wonder why she framed it in a certain way.
  • "It’s a journey in self-improvement to keep finding the right things to say at the right time and still sound authentic…and still make it clear that you care about the individual situation and that you’re not reading off a play book." – Shailvi Wakhlu

10:19 – Manager of Various Teams

• Is it more comforting to manage a team where you have experience working as an individual contributor in that area compared to a team where you have not?
  • When Shailvi was at Salesforce, she started by doing the work and then later had someone report up to her. She knew how to do the work and was hiring someone who could do the same / similar things.
  • By contrast, when she entered Komodo, Shailvi inherited a team that already existed. Some of the things people on this team did Shailvi did not know how to do (i.e. did not have some of the skills, was not familiar with some of the tools being used, etc.).
  • Shailvi feels she was a successful manager at Komodo despite these things because she understood the business relevance and the strategic nature of what that team did.
  • "I knew how to position the team well for their own success and for the success of the company." – Shailvi Wakhlu on her role at Komodo
• There’s no doubt Shailvi has walked into situations with roles where she felt impostor syndrome at first, wondering if she could really handle it. But, after several months she would come to the realization that yes, she was the right person for the role and that others agreed with that. Shailvi is grateful for this.
• Shailvi doesn’t think a manager needs to know exactly what everyone does for them to be successful at the management piece.
• How can a manager who takes over a team and lacks individual contributor experience in that area set the team at ease?
  • Shailvi likes to understand people’s individual career values and makes it a point to ask those she works with what they care about. In most cases, that is the blueprint around which you want to optimize for the success of your report.
  • Shailvi has now been a department lead twice, and in both cases, she was generally skewed toward managing senior talent who do not necessarily need help with their technical skills. That’s not why they need a manager. They need a manager who understands the concerns they face, who listens, and really cares about solving a problem for the employee.
  • It’s about building rapport. It’s about the employee communicating where they need help and the manager finding proactive ways to unblock them (due to the access you have to senior company leadership).
  • Knowing employee career values is a way to keep honing in on the specific things that are important to people at that individual level.
  • Shailvi mentions if she gets asked to help someone with technical skills (which usually happens if the person is earlier in their career), she will set that person up with a specific mentor who can help the person build those skills.
  • Nick says this a great way to frame up that the manager does not need to be the most technical person on the team.

14:08 – Thoughts on Strategy

• Staying on top of individual career value for your team isn’t a direct input into building strategy. It’s a separate path compared to staying in touch with upward management and ensuring your understanding of company focus (which can mean many things).
  • Company focus can mean what the CEO cares about, what the C-suite in general cares about, what the company advertises publicly, etc. There are many different pieces.
  • The more clarity you can get on where the business is headed and what it needs, it will be easier to map it out with how that fits into what your team can do and what different people on your team want to do.
  • It’s like a match making of what the company needs and what individuals need.
  • "There may not always be a 100% match, and you as the manager, as a leader, have to find the best way to sort of merge those two pieces." – Shailvi Wakhlu
  • If the company asks for something, a leader has to give feedback and let others know what is realistic. Shailvi was a data leader and could leverage the data to show that something would be a better path for them.
  • "Finding the pieces on both sides, actually connecting them, and making sense of them is what the job is." – Shailvi Wakhlu
  • Nick says in doing this you’re giving each employee a heightened sense of purpose and the impact they could make to the strategy.
• Are there strategies at various levels within an organization (i.e. one for a manager’s team, one for the C-suite, one for the board of directors, etc.)?
  • Shailvi says companies have different ways in which they come up with that cohesive strategy.
  • She’s seen companies that are very top down with each department or group trying to match up to that top-level strategy and how they fit into it.
  • Shailvi has also seen companies that are very bottoms up, sharing the general direction in which the company is headed and then asking what departments and teams want to do in your to take steps in that direction / in service of that larger goal.
  • There are pros and cons to both options. In Shailvi’s opinion, going in one of those directions totally does not yield the best results.
  • It’s helpful for companies to be honest with themselves and share their strategy generation tactic (whether top down, bottom up, a mix of both, or if some guardrails are present) so people will know. People can do something good for the company but also do something good for themselves.
  • Nick says the word strategy is used often enough we might sit back and wonder what they really means.

17:37 – The Manager Who Built Career Paths

• Shailvi says we have as an industry made some things very murky. Once you’re a senior enough individual contributor, there is almost this expectation of you going into management.
  • Shailvi heavily pushes back on this mindset, wishing as an industry we would do better.
  • "I don’t think going from individual contributor to management is a promotion. I think it’s a different job. You either choose to do that job, or you choose to not do it." – Shailvi Wakhlu
  • Taking on management as a career is really personal preference based on the things people care about. We should keep repeating the advice that going into management is not the only way to grow your career or progress in some way.
  • Shailvi has a lot of respect for companies who have mapped out individual contributor paths that rise all the way up to principal, senior staff, etc. By having these roles a company is saying there is a place for you at the highest levels of individual contribution which is both valuable and critical to the company’s success.
• Shailvi has managed a lot of new managers in the tech industries (mentoring over 60 or so in a single year at one point), and they have grappled with the question of whether management is the right place for them.
  • Shailvi suggests talking with people in management at the company where you are considering being a manager to find out what it really means to be a manager there. Find out what these people actually do and how they spend their time.
    • The management role can vary a lot from company to company (i.e. comes in different shapes and flavors).
  • Shailvi says we should first decide if we want to do management at a specific company (usually the one where we work) before deciding whether to do it elsewhere.
  • Sometimes taking a management role at your current company is a way to get your foot in the door and gain experience, even if it’s not your preferred flavor of management.
  • Shailvi says it is really helpful when people dive into what it actually takes to be a manager with someone doing the job.
  • Even within the same company, depending on which team you might be leading, it might be full on people management for one team and for another it might be half people management and half technical lead.
  • Shailvi tells us that teams come in all kinds and sizes. People will leave. People will join. There are so many things that can keep changing.
  • "Ultimately the manager has to adapt to a lot of changing situations, and they are the ones who have to prioritize the success of their individual reports above their own individual success. And that can be really hard for a lot of people." – Shailvi Wakhlu
  • If someone is used to receiving kudos as an individual contributor, the measurements for a manager become more along the lines of what kind of kudos are coming for your team.
  • If people are getting promoted off your team to elsewhere that is not necessarily a bad thing.
  • Shailvi has trained new managers to not shy away from having someone report to them who are at the same level or higher than the manager’s current level. If someone you manage out-earns you it is not a bad thing (but it can be uncomfortable).
• Shailvi has done work in her previous leadership roles to ensure career paths exist for those individual contributors wanting to move up to the highest levels without pursuing management.
  • Shailvi cites Komodo as one of the employers that while very good at focusing on the business and its growth, also really and genuinely cared about the people.
  • Shailvi had previously worked at Salesforce, which she cites as hands down having one of the best company cultures she has experienced. She went from there to Komodo (a much smaller company) and cites it as another blessing to experience.
  • Sometimes smaller companies like startups tend to have a misalignment with market reality. Shailvi has worked with many startups over the course of her experience.
    • Sometimes those who bet on a startup over time get an outsized idea of titles, levels, and sometimes even leadership opportunities.
    • Someone could be very good inside this company, but by the rest of the market’s standards they do not stand up to that same level.
  • Shailvi joined Komodo during series B funding, and the company was rapidly growing. They (Komodo) knew there was a need to add more structure to departments like engineering. In this case, Shailvi reported up to the head of engineering and took on owning this structuring framework as part of the engineering leadership team.
    • Shailvi had discussed this need with her boss as well as an HR business partner. She helped create what could be defended against market realities.
  • The ultimate deliverable of this effort was so people at the company could clearly see what growth and progression looked like, what reward and growth looked like, and what expectations at different levels were. It was intended that job level would accurately reflect where employees were in their progression (and to avoid a situation where "everyone here is a principal engineer," for example).
  • Nick didn’t consider that many startups might not have the job leveling in place but can certainly see that if they are small.
  • Shailvi would say (for smaller companies) once you have crossed 50-60 engineers you should have something in place like this (i.e. job leveling).
  • Shailvi says at larger companies teams can be quite small. In her time at Strava, they had a 2-person sub department that reported up to her for almost a year. There were only 2 people in a specific role, and in these cases you have to default to a larger framework the company uses for leveling (i.e. not as specific to the person’s skillset in this case).
    • Once you get past the point where 2-3 pizzas is not enough for everyone in a department, you should probably have something more structured and formalized.
  • Without the structure, you start having promotions based on feelings and not on facts. It will always make people who are not promoted feel resentful since they won’t really know what it takes. Having a good feeling associated with somoene is not the same as the person showing progression of skills and what they can achieve as a result.
• With a manager’s knowledge of employee career values and the clear leveling and expectations defined, it allows an improved feedback mechanism from manager to employee that can be frequent (and not just in yearly / quarterly reviews), pointing out gaps to fill in the progression process over time.
  • If you (as a manager) care about people and you care about growth you have to give them useful feedback. If you’re unsure as a manager of what the company is willing to reward for progression, it is very hard for you to give effective feedback.
  • Companies can default to making decisions based on time / tenure in a role when things like what a senior analyst should be able to do, for example, are not clearly defined.

26:59 – Job Levels and Hiring

• It also really matters that when you hire people that you are placing them at the correct level.
  • When you have experience in a large company and in a startup it can be really hard to align to the right level.
  • Someone could be considered a senior analyst at a company with a department having only 2 people in a specific function. If that person moves to a different company, their skills might not match what a senior analyst is expected to do.
  • Transparency in the things a company values for specific roles is really important here.
• Usually a job description or job listing will show the job level (senior, staff, principal, etc.). Do companies usually share the differences in levels with job candidates?
  • Shailvi has done this in the past, authorizing recruiters to share the internal leveling standards and distinctions with candidates to present a mismatch in level expectation.
  • These are shared in a respectful way to show someone what the standards for the company are. This is about transparency.
  • Shailvi has had job changes where she’s had to lower her title, and in those cases she was ok with it. She does, however, understand that a title can be important to people and that they might not be ok with taking a lower title than expected (even after seeing the standards).
  • Shailvi tells us it is helpful to ask for the leveling standards when interviewing for a role. In her case, she asked for it on at least one occasion and was able to justify a more senior level as a result.

29:24 – Data Science and Related Fields

• Shailvi has what some may consider a hot take on this. She wishes our industry would align the terminology across the board.

  • It is frustrating for candidates to apply for roles that are unclear about what the role really entails.
  • Shailvi worked in a company where everyone who came to be a data scientist expected it to be a machine learning role. In actuality machine learning was barely 5% of what the role required. It was more of an analytics role.
  • In this case Shailvi had to clarify terms and what they meant based on her research.
  • Originally, data science was the umbrella term, referring to the science of data. This encompassed everything from analytics to engineering to machine learning with many other things thrown in.
    • Visualization is an expectation, pipeline infrastructure fits in there, etc.
    • A "full stack" data scientist can do engineering, analytics, and machine learning.
  • A lot of courses started using data science and machine learning interchangeably, and then companies started doing it too. It’s become so pervasive it’s weird.
  • Shailvi likes to clarify what she means when she says data science.
  • The best thing to do is look at the job to see what parts are expected and what parts are not expected. Sometimes it can be more than one piece.
  • For example, sometimes you can be expected to do analytics and data engineering, analytics and machine learning, or even machine learning and data engineering. There can be a mix and match of these. Most roles require some level of visualization, but that can vary.

• People come under the umbrella of data science roles from a variety of backgrounds.

  • Shailvi thinks development and engineering backgrounds are represented quite a bit in this field, but she has worked with data scientists who came from a psychology background, a customer service background, some type of people facing job, some type of research background, people with hard math skillsets, etc.
  • There are a number of PhDs who have become data scientists (former physicists, for example).
  • An aversion to math or basic coding will make getting into this field difficult and are likely disqualifiers for candidates.
  • A desire to tell stories with data helps, especially for roles that emphasize machine learning and analytics.
  • Shailvi has had product managers, marketers, and many others who come from different functions get into the data science field. This includes people who were once IT generalists.
  • There are a number of free resources out there people can use and many who are willing to share their knowledge to help others progress.
  • When people are clear about the subset of problems they want to solve and explore, Shailvi thinks there is a lot of opportunity.

• Recommended tools and courses to get into data science

  • Bootcamps, as discussed earlier, are a way to quickly get a lay of the land, have some hands on experience with actual projects, learn the languages that are relevant, the techniques that are relevant and which to apply in a given situation, etc.
  • There are a lot of resources in the open source community. Shailvi cites the #100DaysOfCode hash tag on Twitter as a resourced used by a number of data folks.
  • There is also the Kaggle Community which hosts projects and competitions as well as courses.
  • Data.gov is a huge resource anyone can use to practice with real data sources. This would allow formulating some problems on your own and seeing if you can get to an answer that makes sense.
  • Nick suggests looking on Meetup.com for user groups in this discipline.
  • Shailvi has participated in the Women in Data Science or WiDS community (lots of resources here), speaking at various WiDS events and keynoting at the Miami chapter conference in 2021 (see keynote video here).
  • Shailvi has also been a part of Data Umbrella. They regularly host events covering core technical training which can benefit anyone.
  • Data Umbrella is a larger community that covers many topics, and Women in Data Science (WiDS) has multiple chapters which are for in-person meetups in specific locations.

• Where does a data science organization fit in a company?

  • The three most common places Shailvi has seen where a company starts to indicate a need for data science (i.e. analytics, etc.) are:
    • Product engineering (you’re building something and want to understand the meaning behind it, measure it, etc.)
    • Marketing is a common place where the first data scientist in a company is hired. They benefit from understanding the return on investment from their (usually) very big expenditures. Staying on top of this is very useful to companies.
    • Finance is always interested in core analytics of product performance, engineering performance, etc.
  • Companies usually start off where a couple of departments usually have their own analyst or their own data scientist. Eventually the company becomes large enough that you decide to centralize that entire function.
    • At Strava they were at the centralized phase where they had product analysts, marketing analysts, and community analysts; but all reported up under one organization. That organization can then report up through product, technology, a chief operating officer, or even the CEO. Any of this can change based on the specific company.
    • Nick suspects if listeners do not work for a software company (or even if they do), they might not know where to look within their own company to speak with someone who is in a data science type role.

• You can find Shailvi on her website, shailvi.com.

  • There are links to her social handles on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. on the site.
  • She also offers free office hours for people who are looking for mentorship.
  • Shailvi is also working on a book titled Self Advocacy, a topic she is very passionate about and has spoken about for years. At the time of this recording she is looking for agents. More details about the book can be found on her website.

• Mentioned in the outro

  • Don’t think of going into management as a promotion. It’s a different job. Don Jones mentioned in Episode 137 that a lower level manager will get paid the same as a higher level individual contributor due to market value of management skills.
  • Check out Episode 45 on Career Conversations with Your Manager for tips on how these discussions should go and what to do if you are not having them.
  • In interviews, it’s ok to ask for job leveling standards for a company that show the impact / skillset tied to the level of the role. And knowing the standard for your title at your current company could help you articulate it to a new company so they can level a new role appropriately for you.
  • Data science personnel, whether in a centralized data science organization or not, should consider the value they can add to a company. They should consider line of sight to revenue. Previous guest Anudeep Parhar mentioned this (line of sight to revenue) being important for executives in Episode 208 and Episode 209.
  • We need to say one more special thanks to Neil Thompson of Teach the Geek for connecting us with Shailvi.

Contact us if you need help on the journey, and be sure to check out the Nerd Journey Podcast Knowledge Graph.