One RAD Year
December 14th marked my first Interversary — one year since I joined Intercom. I wanted to take some time to reflect on that year.
First, a little about me. Before joining RAD@Intercom, I spent two years as a data analyst in a travel tech company after making the leap to data from academic nanoscience research. Anyone who’s made a similar move will know that it takes a while to get comfortable with doing analytics in a business environment, where we have to make recommendations based on less-than-complete evidence. In RAD, we’re all about the impact of our work — we don’t build cool models just because they’re cool — and I’ve had to get even better at dealing with these ambiguities.
The RAD team is made up of researchers and data scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds, and our mission is to drive effective, evidence-based decisions. We’re each embedded in one of the R&D groups, to which we dedicate roughly half of our time. The other half we spend working on RAD or company priorities. You can find more information about the RAD team — who we are, how we’re organised, & what our purpose is — in Karen’s blog post.
I’ve spent the majority of my time in Intercom as the dedicated data scientist for the Messenger group. I’ve also worked with the Automated and Human support groups, who build features to help our customers support their customers efficiently and at scale. The Messenger group is responsible for the end-user facing part of Intercom. I’ve been supporting the development and launch of our new improved Articles in the Messenger product, and the Homescreen Suggestions feature which followed it. This involved working closely with Product Managers (PMs), designers and engineers, providing insights to help with scoping and design decisions, setting outcome metrics, and designing & analysing experiments.
Data scientists in RAD are highly autonomous and have ownership over quite a large product area. Aside from supporting product development and launches, we also help shape product strategy, and design, build & maintain our own data pipelines. This keeps the work varied and interesting, and means it’s easy to see the results of your work. But it can also be quite daunting. Not long after joining, you become the go-to guy for data in your area.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve found is just the sheer scale of the product. Intercom’s surface area is huge and, because it’s one product, everything is tightly interconnected, so you can’t just focus on your corner. It doesn’t stand still either, especially at our shipping pace. It took me a few months to really catch my breath and feel like I had a handle on it, although just when I think I have it, there’s always something new to surprise me. Luckily everyone here is generous with their time and happy to help get you up to speed on any aspect of the product.
In RAD, we don’t spend all of our time working with product groups — we also work on projects which are a RAD or company priority. These projects tend to be quite varied, from helping to develop a management strategy for our data assets, to sizing opportunities to guide company leadership on where to invest. They also tend to be highly collaborative, often involving researchers and data scientists tackling the same problem from different angles, and often involve working with other departments, such as data engineering, finance, or sales.
The team culture is really motivating — expect lots of encouragement, challenging questions, and celebration of good work. There’s lots of really experienced people to bounce ideas off of and to be mentored by, and the mixed discipline nature of the team helps to round out our skills. There’s a real focus on development too — our leaders go out of their way to find projects that match our interests, or which help us develop the skills we’re working on. I’m trying to improve my Python at the moment, and I’ve been given plenty of challenging projects which have helped me get closer to where I want to be.
It’s been a great year; challenging and rewarding. Intercom and RAD are both growing quickly, and it’s looking like an exciting year ahead. If you’re interested in joining us you can apply directly on our careers page, or if you have any questions about life in RAD@Intercom, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
