Engineering Exec Paul Zugnoni Talks Rejoining Wish and Leadership Lessons
For this employee spotlight, we’re highlighting Paul Zugnoni, Director of Production Engineering. In rejoining Wish, he brings two decades of infrastructure engineering and operations experience, from inventive architectures for bandwidth-breaking video streaming, to globally scaled networks for social networking. In this interview with Monica Kielawa, Wish’s Employer Branding & Talent Communications Manager, learn how Paul has been making an impact, leadership lessons, and his thoughts on critical skills for engineers.
Monica: How would you describe your journey at Wish? What brought you back?
Paul: My first experience at Wish started with a graph. The lines showing growth in customers, merchants, and site activity were soaring. The infrastructure was being pushed to its limits. The challenge to augment, refactor, and rebuild infrastructure quickly was clear and demanding. The years in which we accomplished major infrastructure shifts were very formative for the organization and for myself. Being held accountable for the results of taking necessary risks carries its own stress, but the reward in succeeding extends beyond myself or site availability metrics: A whole org that can be proud of the outcome. After a brief departure to try something completely different, I returned because I enjoy how we address interesting technical problems and the overall endeavoring spirit at Wish that enables a culture of adaptability.
Monica: How has a career in Data and Infrastructure been for you at Wish? What helped you make a mark for yourself here?
Paul: Wish’s scale as an eCommerce player had just started to explode when I joined. A few of us who joined around the same time met the workload head-on with very pragmatic solutions for speed. Each of us had some toolkit of prior experience to apply right away, and we kept an inventory of the gaps that could afford to be solved later. The alignment among leaders enabled infrastructure teams to succeed and served as a model for other teams. Exercising restraint around flashy new solutions or features and instead taking a very pragmatic approach has been a good lesson and continues to pay dividends.
Monica: What leadership lessons have you learned while being at Wish? What advice do you have for those wanting to join technical leadership roles here?
Paul: Keep driving forward in the direction that defines you and defines your team, whether things are going up or down, especially in times of ambiguity. Leadership is critical when there is indecision and uncertainty around you, which will always happen. You will need to fill in those gaps, guided by what you have available — sometimes data, sometimes instinct. Be ready to take those risks.
Monica: What motivates you to stay at Wish? What projects are your teams responsible for that motivate and inspire you here?
Paul: The collective intent of the people on our teams to continue quality engineering is a strong motivator, especially considering the wildly diverse set of professional experiences people bring to the table. It is a good challenge and wonderful reward to engage with our teams in the regular discourse that occurs, whether it be addressing broad engineering topics or even the very minute things at lower layers that have an expanding effect at scale.
Monica: What key skills are important for engineers to have?
Paul: Nearly every organization, but especially Wish, benefits when people can adapt their hard and soft skills to the problems. This often demands that professionals work “on the edge” of their skillset rather than at their core. This can be uncomfortable - you risk not being seen for the individual excellence you hold dear. While skills and creativity are important, one thing that is just as critical is one’s ability to adapt to the demands of a situation that exists outside their core.
