Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Gutierrez:
How do you teach and communicate with people what you and
the data team are doing?
Smith:
My strategy is to become friends with everyone so we can talk about
the problems we are tackling in our respective teams. That way I can tell them
what I'm working on, and how it helps them and what my team is thinking
about, and then ask them, “What are you guys doing? What do you think of
what we're doing? What do you think we should be doing? Do you even know
what we're doing?”
Additionally, our group has biweekly or once-monthly meetings where it's
open to anyone in the company to come and see what we've done. It's a
forum where we present the latest findings that we've looked at, what areas
we're pursuing, and they can give their feedback and opinions, as well as ask
questions. So I think it's all about being open and being very transparent about
what we're working on.
Gutierrez:
How do you deal with the dichotomy of data being very propri-
etary and controlled, while data science techniques are being, for the most
part, very widely shared?
Smith:
That's something I've been working on regularly, because at Bitly I was
given a lot of free rein to give talks, and here, nobody's really done that, at least
not about data. So there's a lot of guarding of the data. There are written and
unwritten rules about what you can and can't say about any of the numbers.
You can talk about how we're doing things, but you can't say what kind of
success we're having, or you can't say how much of a problem this actually is
for us. I think that will lighten up, and I think it's just getting trust from other
people in the organization.
The data guarding is really interesting, not only internally but at other com-
panies as well. I feel like it's hard to get people to separate from their babies.
I think a lot of that is just letting them be able to express that they're upset
about it, and then being like, “It's okay. We'll make sure that everything's fine.”
Being very patient with people goes a very long way. One of our company's
core values is that happiness and positivity are a choice, and that's a very good
way to think about it. You have to be open to new ideas.
I've been reading
Team Geek
, and I really resonate with that book since it's
all about engineering and how to work together well.
1
Though it's software
developer-focused, I think it can be applied to everything. They have this
acronym, HRT—“heart,” which stands for humility, respect, and trust. I think
those are things you really need to cultivate, not just within your team, but
also within everyone else in the rest of the greater business. Then, once you
have those, you can go and stretch a little further.
1
Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman,
Team Geek
(O'Reilly, 2013).
