Database Reference
In-Depth Information
in their engineering departments. At Rent the Runway, we're about 25 percent
women in the engineering team, and we have many women in senior positions.
Our CTO is a woman, and she's amazing and truly inspiring. Everyone admires
her ability to get to the brass tacks of things and get everyone working. So
that's really cool.
Another reason is that I've always been interested in fashion. I actually
rented semi-frequently from Rent the Runway before I worked here, so
it made the transition from Bitly easy. I've always been curious about the
fashion industry, and though it still is somewhat of a mystery for me, at least
I can understand how different parts of it work and how they try hard to
part me from my money.
Lastly, I think it's very interesting to understand how to run a business that has
digital and physical aspects to it. I enjoy learning how different people run their
teams. It's very captivating to watch what goes on, because every boss I've had
has been very different, and it's fascinating to see what sorts of things they're
pushing for and how that ends up happening.
Gutierrez:
How does your boss understand and champion data and your
work with it?
Smith:
I think my boss has done a good job of making sure everyone wants
to see the data and has really been pushing that as an agenda. This is great
because everyone wants to see the numbers. They all want to see what's going
on with their particular department. The difficult part is making sure that
we're more like data ambassadors. We know the data better than even they
do, and we know how it interacts with the rest of the company. So we don't
want them coming to us and saying, “We want X, Y, and Z numbers.” We want
to go to them and say, “What problem are you actually trying to solve? Let's
come up with these metrics together and really figure it out as a team.” So my
boss and our team have really been trying to make it more of a collaborative
effort, as opposed to just handing things off.
Gutierrez:
So, much more of a consulting-type team role.
Smith:
Exactly. The problem with that is to support a business, you need a
lot of data going out, and a lot of that is just, “Here are the numbers. Here is
how they're changing week over week.” So we constantly have to figure out
automated ways to provide these reports, so that we can do the more inter-
esting and fun problems.
Gutierrez:
What kinds of data do you see at Rent the Runway?
Smith:
As mentioned earlier, data really excites me about Rent the Runway.
We have a variety of areas where we deal with data. I separate them into a few
different important silos. First, there's the warehouse operations piece. This is
related to how the dress actually moves within our warehouse and how we
capture that movement. We have every dress barcoded and we have stations
