Transcript: Women Who Code — Silicon Valley Full Interview with Sheewon Bak
Empowering Individuals Towards Career Success
Sheewon Bak is the Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) and Strategic Sourcing for Realtor.com. In this role, she guides the company’s initiatives from a revenue and profitability perspective, identifies options or drives tradeoff decisions around business model vehicles, and enables stakeholders to deploy resources efficiently and effectively.
Dianne Jardinez of Women Who Code had the pleasure of interviewing Sheewon Bak to learn about how to empower individuals towards career success, career advice on compensation negotiation, and emotional intelligence. The main content of the interview is below. On behalf of Women Who Code — Silicon Valley, we thank Sheewon Bak and appreciate her time being a part of our #ShoutoutSaturday series.
Dianne: Can you talk a little bit about your career and what led you to the career path that you are on now?
Sheewon: Yeah, absolutely. If you know me a little bit at this point, you know that my answer is never quite the standard answer anymore. I am actually going to tell you two versions of the same story. Both are real, both are relevant. It will give you a sense of how I think about my career, and as well as the things I have done. I would actually go all the way back to the beginning, I had a high school internship at Vanguard which is one of the largest mutual fund companies in the US. That sparked my interest in finance and I decided to pursue that as a major when I went to Penn State. I graduated with a Finance degree with a minor in Economics. I moved to New York City to do financial consulting for large firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Diamond Management Partners, and FTI Consulting. I did that for a couple of years before I made my foray into FP&A in the retail space for about 10 to 15 years, and then I moved over to the tech industry. Overall I have about 20 years of experience in Finance, mostly in FP&A. I would say I spend most of my career solving and analyzing operational and strategic problems and coming up with financial constructs to enable profitability. I graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which to many, is considered the best business school in the world. So I share that, and that’s my cover story. But I also wanted to share my secondary story with you and it will help put the context into some of the other things that we will talk about as well. So I grew up outside of Philadelphia in a small suburb town. My dad refurbished furniture, my mom was a nurse, so by all means very middle-class neighborhood and very middle-class upbringing. My dad actually got me my first internship. He refurbished furniture for the Founder and CEO of Vanguard at the time. He was the one who said ‘oh my daughter is looking for an internship. Would you please consider hiring her’, and so Jack Bogle at that time said, sure, why not. My dad asked me for my resume, I gave it to him, and he handed it off to his then client, and then I got a call from Vanguard saying what department would you like to work in. It sounds very high and very accomplished that I was able to have an internship in high school at a financial firm like that. But to be frank it really came through as an unlikely source as my dad, who is very very not close to the financial industry. In my first job at a school out of Penn State, my best friend’s sister let me stay at her house and she had to show me how to take the subway because I had never been to New York before that, and I didn't have a place yet. So again another place where I got some help there. I did Consulting for a couple of years after undergrad. Frankly, I did the work but I didn't really understand what I was doing and what it meant for the companies that we were helping. So there was a point there where I recognized that as fun as it is, as great as it is to be in New York and live that lifestyle, and at the time Finance, this was before the stock-broker world and Wall Street was started to become vilified. But it was really kind of a sexy job right. So I did recognize that I needed experience in the industry. I was lucky enough to be accepted to Business school. Business school was tough, frankly. I struggled with a lack of confidence and self-doubt throughout the entire time frame. When you go to a great Business school, everyone there is going to be smarter than you to say the least. That kind of took a toll on my self-confidence. I didn't do enough soul searching there which is what I had gone to Business school for. So I exited that year, went back into Consulting, and within my first project I realized I was in the wrong place. So I took that next year while I was in that year of Consulting to really do the soul searching I should have done during Business school. I, fortunately, came across a field in Finance called FP&A (Financial Planning and Analysis) which is a branch of Finance that works directly with the business so you get hired by the business and you work in the Finance team within that particular company. So I worked at Gap for a while. I chose Gap also as well because I wanted to do something that was very tangible to me. Tech and internet and things like that, I couldn't just grasp it as well as I could grasp, maybe literally and figuratively like the idea of making t-shirts. So I went to Gap and I spent about eight years there building my skill set, confidence, figuring myself out, and finding that I really do love FP&A. I think it is a really great place to be for me and what I was interested in, not just my skill set. I did after a while wonder why I wasn't getting promoted though. So I spent quite a long time as an analyst, and then just at the end of my tenure there as a Manager. I kind of said what am I doing wrong and what is it that I want out of my career. So there is again this moment of soul searching there. A couple of things allowed me to finally branch out, I got the nerves to leave the company and try out a couple of other different companies after that. One of them I would say is growing financial stability. I realize that with a career it’s so hard to be brave and really hard to ask for what you want, and move forward when you either have small kids and you have to provide for them or you yourself are just starting out and you don't have a lot of money under your belt. Fortunately with Finance and more so in the Engineering fields, once you get a job and you do start to make some money you have the means to start saving some money. But I found that financial stability was one of those things that really helped me create the foundation to then be able to test my skill sets and go find what it is that I wanted in my career. From there I think things took off and that landed me where I am today. I do want to mention the model of Ikigai. I am sure many of you have heard it before, but I realized that through my soul searching. I am able to get as close to Ikigai as possible, which is allowing me to sort of self-actualize in my career and get as far as I am, and hopefully continue to move forward.
Dianne: I really liked how you shared the Ikigai, I liked how you shared you are really candid about trying to find your place of where would be the best fit for you and the support system that you had even with your father who wasn't in that industry to help you. It seemed like there are these little things that you came upon that really shifted to where you were going towards your career, which kind of leads me to my next question. How did you reach your level of success through all these different pathways of trying to find what you wanted to do and given the industry’s gender gap especially among the leadership?
Sheewon: Yeah I will touch upon a couple of concepts here. I already touched upon a little bit in my description of my own career. The first idea first of all is, everyone has a boss. As high as a VP might be, there is always SVP and CFO or CTO or CDO, and then there is the CEO, then if you are part of a business unit there is the Head of the business unit, and so on and so forth. Everyone has a boss — even the CEO of the largest company; their boss is the shareholders ultimately. I just wanted to say that out loud first. In the context of that, I think it puts a lot less pressure on you as an individual whatever level of the organization you are in. But I would say one thing that helped me reach the level for myself where I am today is about removing the ceiling you make for yourself. There is sort of two worlds — we live in this world that is male-dominated, especially in Engineering, STEM fields and finance is in the same bucket. Men mostly dominate this field and it’s such a different environment and culture for you to navigate. Women make 79 cents on the dollar. There are so many things out there that can tell you that maybe you are not meant to be or maybe you shouldn't, or you are the primary caregiver and I have to take care of my children, that kind of thing. But I also think there is the other side of the coin which is you have got to find that place for yourself where you take that ceiling away for yourself, you hear those things. Each one of them weighing just a little bit more on whether you feel like you can make it to that next level, even other people telling you like you can’t really do that, you are not smart enough, or whatever it is that people tell you. But, I would say a couple of things. I recently read this book called Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, and he dispelled the myth of 79 cents per dollar that women make. We all say that and we all say that we need to get rid of that gap. But the difference is when you start understanding and segmenting the different groups who essentially decide to be an engineer or not, decide to be in finance or not, decide to be a teacher versus nurse versus doctor versus other things. Once you start breaking that down, there actually is no pay gap. That I found truly interesting. So, 79 cents on the dollar, if that weight on you in any little way shape, or form, you can remove that off of your list. It is not a thing. Yes, there are still other issues, biases, other navigating environments, and all that kind of stuff we have to do and other challenges. I am a VP of Finance, and I am very proud of that. Yet I still wash the dishes. I guess I could hire someone to do that but there's something about me that's still domestic because that's what has been ingrained in me for being a woman and growing up as a woman. So I would just say, find those places where you can remove the ceiling for yourself. Determine what your story is — who do you want to be and what do you want to be known for. I just shared with you two versions of my story. They say, think about what you want to be written on your gravestone when you die. There is a similar thing with your career too, like when you exit your career at the end, who do you want to be, what level do you want to be at, and what do you want to be known for. I think that both of those things, not just the level, fields, and accomplishments, but also who you were and how you got there are so important to define because that is what you are going to be known for. So I would say those two things are probably the biggest. I am going to mention one more: navigating the organization and the political environment in your field in your industry in your company. You must ask for the promotion. I cannot tell you how many people I come across that say ‘I don't know why I did it myself for a long time, I don't know why I am getting promoted, I am so good, my boss tells me I am the best direct report they have ever had, I don't know why I am getting a promotion.’ You have to say it. You have to tell your boss very clearly what your goals are and what you expect out of them. You also want to read your organization depending on the different organizations that you are in, sometimes they value external promotions versus internal promotions, sometimes they value consultants versus internal, so make sure you are also reading the environment that you are in as well. If you are not in a place where you know you are good, you have got an excellent skill set, and you are just not able to actualize that in the environment that you are in and/or your boss is not supportive enough to allow you to do that and you will figure it out if you pay attention to it, you should leave and you should find a new place. That is going to let you do that. It is so great right now, in this world we are in right now, there is no better place to do it and there is no better time to do it as well. We as women, have the best situation to be professionals that we have ever had in history. So, let's take advantage of it.
Dianne: I really like that you share this idea of what do you want to do and what do you want to be known for. That really stuck with me because it is like you are defining your level of success, you are defining what level you want to reach. The takeaway I got from that was you should determine what your level of success is and you should reach for that. If where you're at right now isn't going to help you to reach that goal, then it is okay to move to somewhere else and be brave enough to go get that if you feel like you have worked hard enough for it and that you deserve it. Thank you for sharing that. This is common sense, but you don't really think about that! Okay, let us go ahead to our different topics. The question for one of our topics is compensation negotiation. This is often an awkward or difficult conversation to navigate. Do you have any helpful tips for applicants or interviewees?
Sheewon: Yeah, I will keep this short, I realize we are running a little bit low on time. Number one is just doing it. I will share with you an example. As I was moving into Gap, I was thankful for the job offer, and I felt grateful that I found this place I wanted to move into from where I was before in Consulting. Consulting was just not right for me, I was not very good at it frankly, but I was forcing myself into that. There was a relief associated with moving into FP&A, and whatever they offered to me, I was like, where do I sign. Then a couple of months later I went to this women’s conference put on by a group of women (not unlike Women Who Code), and they talked about negotiating your compensation. It was unfortunate because I had just signed my offer and I was already there for a couple of months and then I went to this conference. But it hasn't left me, so I continue to keep this in mind and prepare anytime I move to a new company. The highest ROI, return for your time you will get is the negotiation on your compensation package as you move into a new company. So, if a company comes in and offer you a certain package which might include relocation, etc, it never hurts to ask a question: ‘you know I am leaving a large dollar amount on the table from my last company for my bonus, can you please bump up the sign-on bonus to x dollars’, ‘I am leaving this amount of compensation on an ongoing basis from my last company, you are not quite able to meet that over here, would you be willing to?’. It never hurts to ask, in fact, my thought is when you ask you are basically sharing with them this hard negotiation you are making them go through now is the same type of negotiation you would do on behalf of the company once you're there. So I think it is a good idea to spend a couple of moments thinking about what you want and making sure to ask for it. Even if you get 5000, 10000, 20000 dollars more in your sign-on bonus, how long did it take for you to ask for that money — half an hour, an hour? That's like 5000 dollars an hour basically. So I would say just do it. The second thing I would say is, negotiate as if you are negotiating for a loved one, not for yourself. Everyone here has family, friends, brothers, sisters, kids, someone that you care for. This money that you are earning is not just for you, it is also for the people around you. So if you think of it from the perspective of this is the money that I am going to be suing for my kids’ college funds, then it is more compelling than thinking about negotiations where you want the money to just sit in your account. Frankly, a dollar is a dollar, is a dollar whether you have mentally decided to spend it on your kids’ college fund or to buy a purse. So I would say the mindset you should be putting yourself when you are negotiating is that this is coming out of your kids’ retirement fund, and it is amazing how much your negotiation ability already changes.
Dianne: I like how you attach it to those around you and it is just a different mindset for you and for people around you. I could see that being a motivating factor for someone to help them in the compensation negotiation. Let’s go ahead and move on to our next topic for emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important in the workspace in general. Do you see any concrete shifts specifically in the tech space?
Sheewon: Yeah it is really interesting being in the Finance world and observing perhaps being the outsider with the finance lens observing the engineering organization. I get friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who say I am not sure why I am moving up, I don't really get it. I would say, (if I may generalize a little bit with my anecdotal experience), a lot of it has to do with picking your head up out of all the technical work that you are doing and taking a look around at the landscape. No better way to do it than to increase your emotional intelligence. I actually think that the thing that differentiates is that (my viewpoint externally from the business perspective into the organizations that I have seen personally) the ceilings come from not being able to draw from multiple skillsets including emotional intelligence. You can be that brilliant engineer who knows how to code beautifully and there is a beauty to it. But honestly from the business side, actually I would never recommend hiring such an engineer. The reason for that is because when you get that single brilliant engineer, people around them know their brilliance, people around them the culture becomes off and different. People start changing the processes and operational modes in order to accommodate that one person. Then when that person leaves, there is a big hole which now is very unique and difficult to work around processes that you now have to fix. That’s just my example of having a single engineer and what my general recommendation tends to be. Maybe there are those brilliant engineers out there and you might know a couple of them. But by and large, when you think about moving up in the organization, it’s the emotional intelligence piece that differentiates the CTO from other folks across the company. The ability to connect people, to recognize where something is going wrong, whether it is a people issue or system of process issue, it is really interesting to navigate your career in a sort of technical space and space where you need to know something more mathematically oriented, and then move up into management and then be able to manage teams and recognize issues and verbalize a problem in a way that everyone can understand, so on and so forth. I would just say those couple of things about emotional intelligence and what I have observed in the tech industry and frankly also in Finance as well.
Dianne: Thanks for sharing. What are your words of wisdom for women executive leaders and any tips for success for women in this field?
Sheewon: Yeah I would go all the way back to the beginning of our discussion; what is your story? You need to identify what your story is. What your story is now, what you want your story to be, versions of the story that you want to live up to, what you expect of yourself. The story needs to be there because it allows you to adhere to a north star or something that you want to be. It is more than just, ‘I want to be the Head of___’, ‘I want to be the CTO’, etc. It is how you want to define yourself in the professional world. I will mention two more things — what’s fair and not fair is irrelevant. I say that because I worry a little bit about our environment today. We as women are kind of up in arms about how unfair the world is to us. I think there is still a good fight to fight. I still think that we need to make everyone aware of all the biases that are in the workspace, it is still a big thing that we need to be more aware of and do something about. I also think that if you wait for the environment to be perfect for you to then forage your way, it will never happen. It has never been a better time to be a woman and try to be an executive as of late in this world. Find those ways to make yourself different, unique, have your story, stick to it and use that to help you move forward. Another thing I want to mention quickly is that there is something called the Kruger-Dunning effect. For those of you who haven't heard it, it is a cognitive bias that we have where we overestimate our ability. Frankly, I wonder if we did a study to see where men fall on that scale versus women because I am willing to bet that women generally don't overestimate our ability. That's the Kruger-Dunning effect. The Kruger-Dunning prayer is something that I came across through Adam Grant, a psychologist whom I follow on LinkedIn. He shared the Kruger-Dunning prayer which is ‘Let me be smart enough to know how dumb I am and give me the courage to carry on anyway’. I will end it with that.
Attendee questions
How do you handle unintentional bias at the office in spite of it being done repeatedly?
Sheewon: Actually that has happened to me. A colleague of mine would say really smart snarky remarks to me or put down my work or just in some way. I don't know if he even understood that he was doing it, but ultimately I felt put down. It would happen like once a week, and it was constant. I lived with that for a year, thinking maybe my work wasn't quite right and went into that self-doubt cycle which is something you have to be constantly vigilant against. So I finally confronted him, scheduled a meeting with him. You have got to pullup that bravery, find that place where even though you are super nervous, you still know that you need to say something. I literally just scheduled a meeting and said ‘what’s going on!’. That's all I said, and on his side, he was like ‘thank goodness you scheduled this meeting’ and then it was just this outpouring which was really amazing and I was completely shocked. We were both in a particular situation and his mode of dealing with it was to make a snarky remark or put my work down because he felt that he was in a situation where we had to be competitive, and only one person would get promoted or survive the situation. We had the heart-to-heart and he is still a good friend today actually, despite me feeling like I almost hated him. So I would answer that question that way.
Can you share any encounters of competition against other women or how you have handled it?
Sheewon: Yes, I started my career 20 years ago. You know that movie Wolf of Wall Street, which is based in reality. I have experienced some of that. In that world, you have one female partner that most of the men dismiss or consider a token female. When you get that female, I find that that they are either completely welcoming women or they feel other women are a threat. I feel that a little less in this environment now, but I recognize and know what that looks like. So the question is really how do you handle that, how do you deal with that. Today you actually need to have advocates. You need not just women to look up to, women to learn from. Women Who Code organization is a fantastic place to get together, but you also need those sponsors and advocates in the male community as well. The reason for that is because, yes, we are getting better in terms of permeating the engineering and finance organizations where we have got more women in these fields than ever, but still there are always going to be more men at the top when you look across companies today. So you need to find those advocates, those people who may not fully understand what it is like to be a woman obviously, but are incredibly emotionally intelligent themselves and incredibly sympathetic to the situation in the cause. So as it relates to competition, it is fight or flight. Personally, if I don't like the situation or I don't see a good way to fight, then I will leave. Come back to that place where you told your story to yourself, you are confident enough in your skill sets to be able to take them somewhere else and potentially start new, you always want to have that skill sets and that level of confidence. If you ever move away from that confidence or your skill sets start to lag, go back to it, take training classes, read some emotional intelligence books, evaluate yourself and your skill sets and your life and be able to leave the situation. I think that's extremely important because the ability to leave actually gives you the confidence to fight.
What is the best way to respond when asked about your salary requirements? How about offering the company a one-page summary of your current compensation package with a few notes about what you want to improve?
Sheewon: Once upon a time the company would ask you your current compensation, you could tell the truth or you could lie and they would choose to believe you or not believe you and pay you based on that compensation. I actually don't know if it’s a National rule or if it is only California, but I know in California, hiring companies are not allowed to ask you your current salaries anymore. From my observation from where I sit in Finance, I do see a little bit into that world, and I would say a really good way to go about it is to ask what is the range that this particular position should be paid. If you know a little bit about HR and the compensation process there, a lot of companies will look at buying external data to understand what the current market ranges are. Your position always has a range. If you go in and say this is my compensation and how much I should get paid, I think you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. I would be the first to ask what is the range for this position and I know that at some companies the recruiter will tell you. Some companies won't tell you, they want to know something close to your current compensation. If the recruiter is not able to share with you any range, I would start a little bit high. To the extent that you are comfortable, talk to other people at the company and ask ‘hey what is the compensation range for this, what should I expect?’, because the last thing you want to do is go to the company, find out you are getting paid lower than anyone else there and start off on that foot. To a certain extent, you can also share that exact comment with the recruiter. That is very understandable, and I think there is a little bit of vulnerability and openness there to allow the recruiter to be able to share a bit more with you. Get the recruiter on your side.
Can emotional intelligence be taught? How do you know if you are emotionally intelligent?
Sheewon: The moment you say ‘I am emotionally intelligent’ the irony is that is a sign of not being emotionally intelligent. So that's the funny thing about emotional intelligence. Think of it as a journey, not a point in time, it is not a destination. If you feel extremely emotionally intelligent you can always be more. I myself feel like I started in a very non-emotionally intelligent place when I started my career. Am I great and fantastic? No, but I think to the extent that you can always keep your mind open to other people’s perspectives. From that perspective, I think reading is the best thing that you can do especially during a pandemic. Travel is another thing that allows you to understand other people’s perspectives, like this idea of walking in someone else’s shoes, being able to assess from multiple viewpoints, etc. So when you think of it from that perspective, the best way to get there while we are all cooped up is just to read. Read as much as you can, read voraciously. I say that after being a child and young adult that didn't read.
Is there a particular book that stood out to you, you really enjoyed and would like to share?
Sheewon: I am a self-help, Malcolm Gladwell junkie, I really like those types of books. I mentioned a book called Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. I love that book because it spoke to me in terms of the anecdotes we see and hear in the news and online, like the 79 cents to a dollar about the women’s compensation. I know finance enough to know how an economy needs to work and when I hear these things it just makes me crazy that people speak about things in such simplistic terms when the reality of things is much more complex. I like this book because it kind of marries it both, and I really love it.
For any additional questions, you can reach out to Sheewon through her LinkedIn.
This blog is the transcript of an event run by the Women Who Code Silicon Valley on Feb 20, 2021. You can view the recording of the event below.
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