Finding Needles in Haystacks #3 | Alan Tang
This is the third interview for Finding Needles in Haystacks, where we interview people who have unconventional paths into startups and the tech world. Applied’s head of people operations, Cam sat down with Alan Tang to chat about operations, squiggly careers, and company culture.
What’s your name and what’s your job title?
My name’s Alan Tang and I’m a community director for Fearless.
Can you talk a bit more about Fearless? It sounds like a really different approach to working.
Fearless is a design agency in the UK. But It’s unique in the sense that it has a talent arm, which focuses on culture and changing organisations within the design world. As an agency we work on special projects, advising and changing aspects of design in organisations.
I think that a lot of companies are still quite old school and have loads of processes not really suitable for designers who want to be agile. We go in and help them change that. At the same time, we also help find the right place for designers and help people find the right roles.
I lead our design community which is a social impact community of global designers. We try to do social good through design under the tagline ‘design a better world.’
Have you been working on anything interesting lately?
Recently, with what’s been going on, we’ve helped out with orphanages in Ukraine. But a big thing that we started a while ago is a scholarship for individuals from less privileged backgrounds. With that, we’re currently shortlisting two women from Nigeria, which if you don’t know has a huge unemployment rate, and if they win it could enable them to use design as a way out of their existing scenario.
There are a lot of issues going on in Nigeria at the moment, including the university strike which has had a knock-on effect. If we can find them a role and give them the tools to develop from there, they can train others or develop a community within that village and their community to work. It’s kind of like microfinance (where we’ve seen a lot of impact and benefits).
Wow, that’s a lot to take on
Yeah, and that’s just one of my roles. To be very transparent, I am a consultant, so I have four different clients at the moment. One is Fearless, one is Wiser where I’m the Head of Special Project, which basically means I’m a Swiss army knife.
I try to sort out a lot of the problems they face whether it’s to do with scaling, growing, clients, anything and everything — building desks, sorting out ISO accreditation, the list is endless.
I’m also a Director of Operations for a company called Eaten Alive which is a kimchi manufacturer in the UK. And finally, I teach at an online school called Synthesis which I’m really passionate about.
That’s amazing, what is so special about this online school? What makes it different?
These days schools only really teach you to pass exams, they don’t teach you life skills. So, this school is founded on the concept of giving someone the tools they need to approach a problem, to then solve it. It’s trying to teach people how to communicate better, delegate tasks, how to make decisions under pressure — and they do all of this through games. Games are a very easy way to get kids involved and give them that mental stimulation, engagement and that buy-in to learn.
So, it also sounds like you have a lot on your plate. Do you have a normal day? What does a normal day look like for you?
*laughing* Yeah, It’s a bit busy at the moment. A normal day is different every day. I have a lot of things to do for the communities, so finding speakers, sponsors for scholarships, and speaking with big companies about partnerships — that’s a big part of the role. Also, engaging with members within the community to make sure that they’re happy.
Today I was looking at ex-hotels and farmhouses as we’re looking to build a hub for our staff at Wiser outside of London. I was also working on ISO accreditation (certification for product security) and that’s quite, in-depth and complex. So, lots on the side of the job, a bit of homework and research, but it’s interesting. I’ve also been teaching two classes this week, so I had to prep for that. It’s a very packed day.
I think you also might be one of the few people who describes researching ISO as fun.
I wouldn’t say it’s fun. I mean, I like to learn and I feel like if you’re doing the same thing over and over…it’s just not me. I want to push myself while I can still develop.
You sound exactly like the description in David Epstein’s Range. He talks about how people with this sort of range (the swiss army knives and jack of all trades) are incredibly hard to find because they don’t have typical career paths or CVs because they go off on journeys to add more skills to their toolbox and they’re always hungry to learn more and keep adding different and varied skills.
I think you’re too kind. But, I like it just because of the variety, or maybe it’s because I’ve got a short attention span. If I’m doing the same thing over and over again, I would just quit. Maybe that’s the reason why I keep doing different things.
So, you have lots of different jobs. Do you have a memorable job that you applied for or maybe one of the first jobs that you applied for?
The most recent one that I applied to was the teaching role. Whereas the other jobs I’m doing at the moment came out of the blue. I don’t believe in fate, but it feels like fate.
And it’s been like that since my chef days. A while ago I got to a point where I was quite disillusioned with the corporate lifestyle. And I was scrolling through Twitter where three of my favourite restaurants were hiring chefs. I saw it as a sign and I handed in my notice before I even had a job. I just went for it.
I turned up to the restaurant in my suit and I went to the back door and knocked and the chef was like, sorry, mate, you’ve got the wrong entrance. And I was like, Nope! I haven’t got the wrong entrance. I want to be a chef. He looked at me like I was a madman.
Did anything come of it!?
Yeah, they invited me back for a trial shift. I survived it. I still have all my fingers, no burns. And surprisingly all three of my favourite restaurants offered me a job, which blew my mind. It made me think actually if I can do this, then anything is possible we just need to try things out and be experimental.
This switch in my head kickstarted a few other things. After three years as a chef, I moved into startups and started off in safer roles (finance operations, and legal roles, because that was my bread and butter). Making the move back into finance roles was what I needed to get back into the swing of things because I really hadn’t done it in three years. Then it evolved into other roles and eventually, I worked at a consultancy and then started my own business which I’ve had for 2–3 years now.
Did you get your most recent role in a similar way?
The teaching role was also on Twitter. I’d been following the founders for a while. I didn’t think I’d get it. I didn’t think I was young enough, I hadn’t played computer games for a while, and I was super nervous going into the interview.
It wasn’t really an interview. It was more of an assessment where you’re in a room with 40 other people and you’re asked to play one of the games that the kids would normally play. So, you have to work as a team, collaborate, ask what they think, etc. And I did feel a bit out of place and thought… what am I doing here?!
But then with this interview/assessment, I thought I’m just going to be myself because ultimately if they’re going to hire me, I have to be myself. Surprisingly, I got offered the job and I’ve been there ever since.
That’s so great, it sounds like a really interesting place
It’s such a cool place. They have this growth mindset where they don’t really have any hierarchy. If something doesn’t work, they move on and do something else. There are a lot of companies that say that they’re agile and have a growth mindset and everyone can contribute but when you get down to it, it ends up being top-down where the CEO makes the decision and it’s all kind of micromanaged. And this school just isn’t like that.
That reminds me of the classic management book case study on company culture and productivity where kindergarteners are pitted against MBA students to see who can build a structure faster.
Yeah, it’s kind of like that — you definitely get institutionalised right? And this is why I really like Synthesis. It’s the kind of school that doesn’t teach you a solution. It’s helping you give or discover the tools, to figure it out on your own — if you’re smart enough and you have the initiative, you can do it.
Have you seen other ways that companies get company culture right?
Company culture is a really interesting topic because everyone says Netflix is the best. You know, everyone references them and I’ve read ‘No rules, rules!’ I agree with a lot of it, but it’s very cut throat. They only hire the best and if you’re not good enough, you’re gone. And I don’t agree with that. I think you should look after your people.
One of my clients, Wiser, recently hit 100 employees and to celebrate it they invited everyone to an office strategy day which turned out to be their own version of a fun squid game. Instead of getting killed, you would get vetoed off and the winner got £5,000 in cash.
Can you imagine being told you’re going to a boring strategy away day and then showing up to a squid game?! This is where I think startups can really define culture and set the stage.
It sounds like you’ve been in enough companies to get a good sense of good/bad cultures, have you picked up on any kind of secret sauce to it?
Obviously, there are those kinds of away days and things like that. It’s a hard question because culture is unique. And I think a lot of companies make a big mistake thinking that culture is a set thing and that it doesn’t change. Culture evolves, it’s a living breathing thing. And it changes every time you add someone new, that secret sauce changes and you have to adapt. That being said, there have to be core pillars that you believe in that form the basis of all your decisions — is it enjoyable, are we passionate about it, is it making us money, is it getting us out of bed in the morning? — if it doesn’t tick all those boxes, we’re not going to do it.
And it’s led to some pretty difficult decisions including making a whole department redundant. It was money-making, but we were never going to be the best at it. This decision ended up strengthening our culture and our offering because we were very transparent with everyone through the whole process and were able to have better focus because of it.
So do you think culture needs to be top down or bottoms up?
A lot of people feel that culture is driven from the top and I’ve been at companies where that is the case. And it’s good to have that, like someone almost being the pillar of it. But if you’re the only one driving it, it doesn’t become a thing. It doesn’t synthesise across the company. It needs to be driven from everywhere and people need to be champions of it and they need to live and breathe those values.
The only way you can do that is to push those values into everything that you do in your day to day and give people an incentive to do it.
I think it needs to be something that you really believe and trust because if you read a lot of value statements out there, they all sound the same. And you have to ask yourself, is it really you? or are you just trying to appease a piece of the population?
Totally, there’s a really great MIT Sloan management review project where they scrape Glassdoor (and other places) and synthesized the most impactful values down to about 9.
It reminds me of an article I read today from the CEO of Shopify and he basically said, ‘we’re all different, and yet if you try and conform, you’re going to be like Tetris — once you fit in, you’re going to disappear’. And it’s very true because if you are just trying to fit in, you blend in, and you don’t get noticed.
You used to work in larger corporates, correct? Did you start off in corporate finance?
I did work in corporate. I started at Grant Thornton and I did my grad scheme there. It was great and the people were nice but I didn’t feel that I was free to do whatever I wanted to do — it’s very structured. But I learned a lot, I did a stint in audit, a stint in corporate finance and I learned a lot. I realised that if I wasn’t working towards becoming a partner that there wasn’t really a future for me there and then began thinking about what else was out there and what else I could experiment with.
When do you think that switched for you? When you had that realisation that you didn’t want to be like everyone else? Or become a partner?
I remember dreading the appraisal season, because every year you go for something and it’s not really based on how good you are, it’s based on how much your manager likes you.
It just felt like every year you would do everything and they would say I can’t promote you to this because you haven’t done xyz. And in my brain, I’d think about all the other things I would be doing above and beyond where I was at. You end up having to jump through these hoops to get to a stage with so many different levels and job titles — you are first associate, then executives and then associate manager, manager, senior manager, and associate directors — but then you start asking yourself, where does it stop?
At that point, you just realise it’s a game. Right. And I didn’t like that, the fact that you had to just jump through these hoops and be there for 10 years.
And when I look at startups, for example, my brother moved from a customer service assistant to head of data within like two and a half years and that’s how it should be. He was good. He got the culture. He delivered and progressed. I think a lot of companies try to emulate that, but they can’t because they don’t have the right structure or they can’t help people progress. And obviously, your progression structure has to match your business and your culture as a company, but it should be there to promote meritocracy.
Do you think companies could grow, scale and exist without some sort of progression framework?
From my experience, you can kind of get by to about 50 people. But as soon as you hit 98, everything collapses because you don’t have the infrastructure in place. So I believe in having some infrastructure, but I also believe in having the culture and the freedom to speak up. You know and do things which contribute value and make the company better and part of that is the progression of structure, right? It can’t be too complex. It can’t be too hierarchal, but it needs to have enough tiers so that people understand that you have something to aim for. Because it’s confusing if it’s flat, but your salary goes up. Though I should say, I don’t care about job titles, they don’t mean anything to me. But for a lot of people it does because it looks good on your CV — and without that you can’t get on to the next step. So I get that but at the same time, results should speak for itself. And I think that’s a change that society as a whole needs to understand.
There’s something about job titles, where I think it takes a long time to realise (and maybe it takes moving through a few different companies or worked for a better part of your life) that not all job titles are created equal, even though they might appear to be equal.
Yeah, like is a VP more senior than a director? You could be head of operations of a two-person business. You could be the CEO of a one-person business. I could call myself a CEO, but I don’t because I think it’s a bit pretentious.
And I think on your point as well, I think like you have to have worked at a few different places or had a few promotions to realise that actually, job titles don’t mean that much. I mean, personally, when you get promoted and become more senior you do start to move away from the thing you liked doing most. If I was a designer, and I moved to the C-suite, I don’t really get to design. I get to make strategic decisions.
On the topic of job titles, when you think about recruitment what are the 5 words that come to mind?
- long-winded
- commissions
- unreliable
- human
Okay, I have one last question about hiring. We just talked about progression and job titles. How could you see hiring be better? You used to be a Head of people and deal with a lot of the HR side of things. What are the things that companies could do better?
I think it really depends on the company, but I think there are a few fundamentals. The first is that recruiting could be a lot better. Right now, a lot of recruiting is just mass email blasting and sending out blank statements to candidates. And I understand that you need to deliver volume and volume of candidates, but right now it’s throwing a thing at the wall and hoping something sticks. I still get recruiters sending me messages telling me about their great graduate scheme and I just I think, I’ve been working for like 12 years, I shouldn’t be getting these kinds of messages.
At the same time, a good recruiter can make the biggest difference. I think it’s important to find the right partner, someone who really understands your culture. You can sell your story because let’s be honest, candidates have a lot of choice right now, especially in design, and especially in product.
What do you think the solution is?
You have to really sell yourself and tell candidates why they should work at your company. They can probably get more money at Google, Amazon or Netflix so you have to offer them something else — and by the way it’s not equity. I don’t see equity as a driver for candidates — you have cliffs that you need to hit and then at the end of it you need the capital to actually purchase the equity. And there’s lots of ethical issues there because companies are supplementing income with equity. When you sit down to do the calculations, there are some people who could be losing out on $200K of salary.
Equity, salary, working from home - those are some things but they’re not everything. You need to offer a bit more and part of that is the culture, the story, and the mission, and especially for younger generations, they want to work on social impact. People want to leave something behind and social impact is part of that drive to have a legacy.
The second part of this is obviously having the right infrastructure in place and having someone that they can learn from, having a mentor, outside of your manager that they can speak to makes a huge difference.
