Swarthmore Alumni In Tech — Explore Different Careers
Disclaimer: Quotes have been reworded and shortened for clarity and brevity.
Hey Launchdeck Members! Here are some notes from our event Swarthmore Alumni In Tech — Explore Different Careers.
Key Questions We Cover:
- Working at a larger company versus a smaller company?
- What is something that surprised you about your job?
- What’s different about top software engineers?
- How technical do you need to be in order to be a PM?
- Software Engineering (SWE) versus Product Management (PM)?
- What do data scientists do?
- What did you do at Swat that helped you most with your career?
- Any job search advice?
Working at a larger company versus a smaller company?
Main Takeaways:
- Larger company → More diversity in projects, higher concentration of talent, and more resources.
- Smaller company → Learn to deal with uncertain funding situations and changing product roadmaps, solve problems on the fly (create good enough solutions without enough resources), and develop general scrappiness.
“I chose a bigger company to work for because they just had a lot more projects, resources, and mentorship. I’ve also interned at a startup with around twenty people and I found that working at a startup involves a lot of ‘I’m going to throw you into the ocean and you try not to drown.’ A bigger company is a lot more structured.” — Leon Chen (SWE at Google)
“Figure out what you want to prioritize and experience. Treat your work experiences as valuable learning opportunities. You should expect things out of your work experience besides the connections and salary. If for you, early on in your career, you want to be scrappy, learn how to solve problems on the fly, learn to be nimble, operate under the pressures of not secure funding and changing product roadmaps, work with people who might have lower professional standards than you do (because they’re founders and have never had a real corporate job), and if for you solving problems and acquiring skills in those environments is your core motivator, I would tilt towards working at a startup. However, you can still learn all of these things at a large company and it’s true that at a large company there’s more of a variety of projects (this is helpful for people who aren’t quite sure what type of role they want and need to experiment).” — Jerry Qin (Data Scientist at Asana)
“The most important question is what are you after. My perspective is that my time at Uber was great at developing as a software engineer. What I mean by this is that some of the most brilliant people work at large tech companies. Brilliant people work at small companies too but you have to get a bit lucky since there’s more variance. At a big company, you know there are really good people there. So I think if there’s a particular skill you want to develop, like software engineering or product management, I would go to a larger company right out of school. But if at some point your goal is to build something yourself staying at a larger company will never teach you how to be a builder because going to a smaller company teaches you what the real world is like. At a startup, you learn that you can’t always solve something in an optimal way and that sometimes you just need to hack some code together. I think that’s a great life skill — how to solve problems without that many resources.” — Andy Lee (Founder at Basis)
What is something that surprised you about your job?
Main Takeaways:
- No one cares about your ideas if you can’t sell it.
“I’m working on a four-person startup. We have no resources. One thing that I’ve learned is that sometimes it doesn’t matter how good your idea is; it’s how well you sell them. You can have the best idea but you ultimately need to convince someone to help you. I thought if you had a great idea everyone would listen but sometimes people won’t even listen to your idea.” — Andy Lee (Founder at Basis)
What’s different about top software engineers?
Main Takeaways:
- Top SWEs are great mentors, teachers, communicators, and become really good in a certain skill area.
“Senior engineers who are better tend to be great mentors and teachers. Even if the senior engineer is extremely smart and efficient, if they can’t teach me or be a good mentor I think that’s super detrimental. People tend to focus on learning the most languages and skills but I think it’s more important to be able to collaborate and mentor others.” — Ellen Liu (SWE at PagerDuty)
“Communication is what I see in great software engineers. They are hyper-focused on why they are doing what they’re doing and being very vocal about what they don’t agree with. A team’s goal is to always deliver the highest ROI so determining what to focus on is extremely important. You need to always question if what you’re doing aligns with your company’s mission. Being able to do that requires communication with all types of stakeholders outside of engineering.” — Sam Shih (SWE at Opendoor)
“Really successful software engineers laser in on what they’re good at. If they aren’t good at assembly they say ‘screw that’ and become good at system architecture for example if that’s their strength. Once you become really good at your niche people rely on you to solve their problems and you advance really quickly. This only happens if you’re really good at your niche and not just semi-good at several random things.” — Andy Lee (Founder at Basis)
How technical do you need to be in order to be a PM?
Main Takeaways:
- Key litmus test → be technical enough to work well with engineers.
“Whatever you do whether it’s design, PM, or SWE, learn how to build things. Learn how to build technical things whether it’s through a CS class or online tutorials. As a PM if you don’t understand how technical frameworks work or tech in general you will not do well. You have to know enough technical stuff to work well with engineers. It ultimately depends on what company you decide to work for. I know that Facebook has a technical PM role or you go on the super non-technical end which I did when I interned with Microsoft and worked a lot with designers. Having a technical background and knowing how to build an app, for example, will help you. — Michelle Ma (APM at Yahoo)
Software Engineering (SWE) versus Product Management (PM)?
Main Takeaways:
- Try both before making a decision whether that means internships or launching your own product.
- PM jobs are hyper-competitive and if job security is a concern — go for SWE.
“It comes down to exposure. Try to do both before making a decision. However, if you’re 50–50 I recommend going the SWE route first. There are a lot more engineering jobs available. Recruiting is tough and going for a position with more openings is much better for mental health.” — Michelle Ma (APM at Yahoo)
“The day to day of a PM can be taxing. You work so cross-functionally, especially at a larger company. You’re the bridge between engineering, legal, and design. Basically, you’re in charge of the product. I also want to emphasize that it’s a lot harder to do PM later on in your career. There’s this false idea that doing SWE will make you a better product person. They are pretty different skill sets even if it’s true to some extent. Try to launch something yourself and go on Product Hunt to look at what other people have made. If you really like that process PM might be for you.” — Leon Chen (SWE at Google)
What do data scientists do?
Main Takeaways:
- Three types: Product Data Science, Analytics Data Science, and Research Data Science.
- Network with each company to figure out which type they rely heavily upon.
The Idealized Version
“There are three core components of data science:
Product Data Science: For example, at Facebook, each product team has a group of Data Scientists and they own a product. They make data-informed decisions. Skills include basic python queries, A/B testing, and causal inference. They are a PM with a data focus.
Analytics Data Science: For example, at Airbnb, where you write recursive queries to generate dashboards/information that informs people and building pipelines. You’re a high-level data analyst but with a front end engineering component. You’re able to build projects and togglable dashboards. They deliver assets that have analytic value like dashboards to executives or a program that conveniently delivers A/B testing results.
Research Data Scientist: For example, at Instacart, where you’re working on the real-time supply and demand model on where to allocate people and orders. You need to work with engineers to build ML models.” — Jerry Qin (Data Scientist at Asana)
The Actual Version
“You need to do research because it depends on the company what your role looks like. Which of these three buckets does your company index heavily on? Make sure to network and find out because there’s high variability.” — Jerry Qin (Data Scientist at Asana)
What did you do at Swat that helped you most with your career?
Main Takeaways:
- Taking courses outside of CS.
- Meeting people outside of Swat.
“Meeting people outside of Swat. I took classes at Penn and met people who had way bigger ideas than I’d encountered at Swat. I met this girl who started this nanotech startup and that opened my eyes to what I could do.” — Sam Shih (SWE at Opendoor)
“Studying something other than CS. It allows you to build other skills besides CS. Skills like reading and writing are super crucial because being a senior engineer requires a lot of reading and writing. It allows me to see things from a different point of view. You should also really try to connect with professors and take advantage of their knowledge.” — Ellen Liu (SWE at PagerDuty)
Any job search advice?
Main Takeaways:
- Network, network, network.
- Differentiate yourself and show enthusiasm.
“Differentiate yourself. Ping people on LinkedIn and go through the company’s engineers instead of the hiring managers. I also once got an interview question I couldn’t answer and told the interviewer I couldn’t answer it. But what I did say was that I will the hardest worker and I’ll figure it out and I’m really enthusiastic to learn. Enthusiasm can go a long way and always try to find ways to add value.” — Andy Lee (Founder at Basis)
“Play into people’s egos. Validate them and give them attention. Psychology is always much stronger than application quality. Find the people you want to work with and reach out to them on LinkedIn. Also, a good intern has intentionality in what they want in their professional life. Be clear to your team leaders.” — Jerry Qin (Data Scientist at Asana)
