Transcript: Women Who Code — Silicon Valley Full Interview with Swapna Savant
How to Be Intentional About Career Growth as an Engineer
Swapna Savant is an Engineering manager at Headspace currently leading the engineering teams responsible for expanding the platform capabilities for Fortune 500 companies and enterprise partners. She has 13+ years of industry experience in building large scale systems and high-performing teams. She holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina. She started her career with multi-national companies and later decided to move to start-ups to feed her creative mind and have a significant impact on the success of the business. She grew from an engineer to Technical Lead to Engineering manager and worked in various product domains and technology stacks. She is highly passionate about improving diversity and inclusion in tech and is associated with LeanIn Circles. When not working she likes to spend time hiking and exploring different places with her husband and dog.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Swapna Savant to learn how to be intentional with your career in terms of prioritizing and communicating career goals and the qualities of an engineering manager. The main content of our interview is below as well as additional questions from attendees that were answered during the event and unanswered questions that we were not able to get to during the event. On behalf of Women Who Code — Silicon Valley, I thank and appreciate Swapna Savant for being a part of our #ShoutoutSaturday series.
Prioritizing Goals
How do you prioritize which experiences to pursue when there are a few, several, or many options that interest you?
So before I answer any questions, first, I wanted to say thank you for having me here. I’m honored. And the way I’m going to approach all these questions about my experience is through my perspective of my journey. Again, every single individual has their own experience, and from that experience, they might have a different perspective.
Now, going back to your question, Dianne, on how do I prioritize the experiences to pursue. When I was beginning my career, my favorite quote was to “Aim for the moon and if you will even miss that you might land among the stars”, which is a win. But now in the course of my journey, I have come to an understanding that success is a progressive realization of a worthy goal that you might have. Having said that, what I’ve started doing is, I’ve started categorizing my development goals, I would say one of the goals is the things that I want to personally work on to drive my growth and development. And the second piece is the things that are aligned with my organization. So their objective goals, their key results, and how I can help my company grow. And then whenever I have any task in my mind, I try to put them against my goals and if I’m not able to, then depending upon the situation, I either politely say no, or most of the time, I’m able to delegate it to someone who I feel might benefit from it. For example, when this opportunity of being here with all of you came to me- when I saw that email from you, that really excited me, because that also fits into my personal growth, or one of the objectives that I have been working on this quarter, which is to influence people outside my organization. So for me, this particular opportunity was more like, if, after this conversation, I’m able to help somebody grow in their career, that’s a win for me. And that’s how I actually thought that, okay, this is a great experience for me, too. So for any task, I always have a running document, I call it like 1:1 with myself. And I always talk about all the tasks that I have, all the opportunities that I get and try to bucket them in all these goals that I have.
It sounds like you try to set yourself to get the best experience possible. Is there anything additional that you do that helps you set yourself up for more experiences like those to reach your goals?
This is something that I have realized, I have started reaching out to people now. Earlier, I used to wait for the opportunity. Now my whole goal is always like, “What can I do?” “Is there any feedback that I can get from somebody”? Or is there somebody from my networks like Women Who Code? I’m always active in the Slack channel so I will keep looking, and I will keep seeing if there is anything coming up there that might actually fit into the goals that I have. And I never shy away from reaching out.
Communicating Goals
In terms of being intentional with your career growth, especially switching from an engineering role to a management role, what were the steps that you took to get to that?
When you are trying to be intentional about your career growth, be it engineering, be it management, the very first thing is to always think about where you want to go next. What is that next role? Yes, you should always have a five-year plan for yourself but you should also have a short term plan of what is that next role that you want to do, and make contacts accordingly, like start looking at LinkedIn and search for people who are already doing that role, and try to connect with them. this is something that I have done in my past and I have failed. And then I realized why I was failing is when we say connecting with those people is not just sending them a LinkedIn invite, because most of those LinkedIn invites might not get accepted. Because why would they? Always if possible, try to find their email, if not send a message in LinkedIn. Research that person, try to understand what they are passionate about, what is it that connects you both, and try to make an appeal of why you are trying to connect with them. And most of the time, I can guarantee you that people out there are ready to help and that they will definitely have that conversation with you trying to understand your goals and trying to give you an insight of how they reached theirs because usually, it is very important for us to understand that path if you want to go to that next goal. For example, for me when I was an engineer, and when I wanted to become an engineering manager, I had no idea how to make that move or how to make that switch. It was after talking to people who already made this switch made me realize what were the things that I was missing or what are the things that I need to work on.
And after doing all of these things, the next thing that I feel is very important is to be very vocal and explicit in what you’re looking for. Do not expect your manager or even your colleagues or anybody to know what your goals are. Even if in your mind, it might be like, “Oh, yeah, I’m an engineer the next jump for me is an engineering manager.” That’s not necessary. Not everybody wants to be an engineering manager, some of them might want to be an architect. You have to be very vocal about it in your 1:1s, in your discussion with your managers, you need to explicitly mention it and ask for feedback on what are the things you can do.
And as I mentioned earlier, I have a one on one document with myself. Always have a monthly check-in with yourself. What were your goals? What are the things you achieved this month? It is totally okay if there is nothing that you achieved this month; it’s totally fine. But the moment you keep on doing this monthly check-in, there will be a point in your life that you will realize that for the past two or three months, I didn’t do anything, maybe it’s time for me to step up and make some change in myself or achieve some goals that I have. Or there might be something where you are continuously doing something and not getting anywhere. That might be the step where you might take a step back and say that, okay, this is not helping me, what is it that I am doing wrong? Let me get back to my drawing board and figure out what are the things that I might be doing wrong, or reach out to somebody at that point.
And the last, but nevertheless, always prioritize yourself. This is something, I think, women lack. They forget about their career when there is a dying project that they need to work on. They forget about what they want in their career when somebody comes and says that this is a really important task. And you need to be heads down finishing this for us right now. Yes, that is important. But your career is also important. Whenever you’re having conversations with people whom you think can help in your career, make sure that you have time to talk about your case, and not just about your current projects that you’re working on. It’s a very natural tendency. We get bogged down so much within our day to day routine, that we forget to take that step back, we are always tied up with the task and assignments and everything that we have to do that we forget that beyond this, we have a career to talk about.
Qualities of an Engineering Manager
Last question, what are your words of wisdom for engineering managers? And any tips for success for women in this field?
I know that many people who are engineers would like that next step to becoming an engineering manager. Some of them also like to become architects or even enhance their skills from a technology standpoint, but I have seen great engineers failing to be good engineering managers. I think one of the reasons for that is they are not able to let go of their previous role. So the very first thing I will say to them is to learn to let go. We get so attached to our code, we get so attached with the love and bonding with our code, that we can’t let go and I have seen engineering managers take that position as a manager and then taking that step back and still trying to help somebody code or do some projects for themselves. And for engineering managers when it is your first time, be prepared for that little awkwardness at first, because it is hard to move from spending your day where you are coding all the time to now you are strategizing and planning what needs to be done next. You always need to understand that you’re going to make a mistake.
Be kind to yourself. Because it is very hard to realize that people won’t always agree with you. Understand their perspective and change accordingly. So if you are a person who is ready to take feedback, you will be a great engineering manager. Always be approachable, because if you are approachable, people will actually come to you and tell you what are the things that are blocking them, or maybe even give you feedback, which is something that I feel is very critical in this area.
The next question you asked was tips for success for women, I actually have two, I have seen this and I have done this myself; don’t wait until you can check all the boxes before you apply for a job. I have seen that most women will wait until they can check all the boxes before they apply for a job. While at the same rate, men can apply for a job which they are 50% qualified for. Because according to them, if they are 50% qualified for a job, the next 50% they will learn it on that job. But that’s not the case with women, they like to know it all before they even get to it.
The second thing is as I have been hiring for my own team, I have realized that and statistically also proven that, on average female candidates list 16% fewer keywords in their profile compared to the male candidate. We are very humble. For example, if you have worked on React.js, or if you have worked on Elasticsearch, but if you feel that, “Oh, I just did it for six months. So that’s not like a skill I can say I have.” No, it is. If you have worked on it, you know it, and you can prove that you know it on the job. So please start adding your keywords, adding all the skills that you’ve worked with because right now I feel our applicant tracking systems rely on these keyword searches and now are inherently biased towards male profiles. And this is something that nobody can help. It is just we can help us by just adding those keyboards.
And when you mean by keywords, can you elaborate a little bit about what you mean by keywords?
This is something that I realized in my previous job when we were building our recruiting platform. Any male candidate or any female candidate who is doing the same job in the same company, the system or the job search engine is what we call it, will pick up a male candidate or a female candidate who knows those skills. And the reason behind it is, if you look at any male profile, they would have explicitly mentioned what all they do, they would ask them, they will talk about their HTML skills, CSS skills, React skills to any machine learning languages they might have used, whereas a female candidate tends to not add all of the skill sets they know. They will only add those skills which they feel they have the highest experience. For example, if tomorrow, if somebody asked me which skill set I know the best — I have been an engineering manager for a while so I haven’t been coding for quite a while so for me, it is hard to just keep on saying that I know Node.js, I know React.js, I have worked on Golang and even pioneered it in some of my previous jobs. But all of these, I wouldn’t say out loud. Whereas a male candidate would because they did it at some point. And now they know that maybe in the next two or three weeks, they can get it going and they can start coding in that language again.
Attendee Questions — Answered during the event
Let’s open this up to the audience to answer some questions, what steps would you recommend someone take to prepare to enter this field? Anything specific to Headspace?
As I mentioned earlier, being an engineer, and being an engineering manager, require different skill sets. So the very first thing that I would say is the leadership skill, it is a skill that we all need, whether we move to management, or even at this point if you continue growing as an IC (individual contributor). While it’s an abstract scale, there are things that you can do currently in your career that can help you develop those skills. For example, in your current company, you can lead or organize an event, maybe in a hackathon, maybe a coding event, maybe organizing a meetup. Once you start organizing an event, you would know what are the nitty gritties? What are the things that are involved in doing non-trivial things involving several people end to end and understanding how we even plan an entire event; that will help you in your future.
Always try to take ownership of a problem area within your team or within your company. And it can be anything, it can be like a coding standard, or interacting with the customer, pick what you want to do, and try to take ownership. But remember to make sure you always finish what you started because that is a key to being a good leader because there will be many people in your organizations, and also I have seen this who talk the talk, but they never walk the talk. So you need to show that you can actually walk that talk. So always finish what you started.
The second piece to it is also like how can you help your manager by addressing key things for developer happiness? Because that is one of the things that is the role of a manager, even if you’re not a manager right now, what are the small things? Too many bugs come into your production or the deployment cycle is too slow? These are the small things that you can pick up and tell your manager that you would like to fix and try to come up with a plan on how we can fix it. That will go a long way because basically, you are now helping your manager because this is one of your manager’s tasks.
That brings me to the third point: one of the key things of an engineering manager is to be a servant leader. We are those invisible ICs(Individual Contributors), who jump in whenever there is something that nobody wants to take but at the same time that needs to get done as we call it like the non-sexy stuff, non-sexy tasks. Try to pick on those tasks and try to help fix those tasks.
Now come certain things that will help you understand how to give feedback. Always try to give critical or crucial feedback, try to mentor, give credit to others. It is very easy to take a step back and it is sometimes really amazing when you get called out for great work. Think about the reverse, right? Call out others for the good work they have done. That’s a trait for being a good leader. And once you keep on doing that, leadership will look at you as a person who empathizes with others. And that is a quality that a good leader should have. And if it is possible if you have interns in your team, try to be the interns’ manager, that is the mentoring aspect and try to see how you can mentor like pair programming or code reviews. Whenever you’re doing code reviews, be very diligent about it, that will really help.
This is something that I learned the hard way, Management books never interested me. But there are some books out there, which actually help you to be an effective leader. Try to pick on those books and try to actually go through it and learn it. And whenever you’re going through management books, it is very important to summarize what you learned because once you read a book, and then make one page of notes of what you learned and keep on going through what you have learned, that will help you build your muscle memory of learning leadership skills. Because we engineers are really good at coding, analyzing and figuring out over data, but we never think about the leadership aspect of it.
What do you recommend someone can do to build their management skills if they are currently a software engineer trying to get into management?
As far as mentoring is concerned, you won’t always have interns in your company. So one of the things that you can do is to have informal one on ones with your developers. You don’t want to step on your managers’ toes, but you want to understand what are the pieces they find frustrating and how you can help them with that. If you are a developer, this will actually help you not just to mentor some of your ICs(Individual Contributors) but also your manager to look at you for any critical tasks that might be there because they know that you can take the team and rally the team with you.
One more aspect to it is not just mentoring but also volunteering to teach somebody. For example, if you are learning something, you can volunteer to give a talk in your company itself, about what you have learned in a different or specific technology. Then, even if you want to push it further, then you can see if you can actually incorporate what you have learned in your current company or in your current team. That will go a long way.
Do we need to have a versatile technical stack work experience, to become an Engineering Manager?
One of the traits of a good engineering manager is they must know the technology well and specifically the technologies that their current team members are using. If you know that, then you become very credible, you can have discussions with your ICs(Individual Contributors) and give them your feedback. You also can transition into a very strong mentor for them.
An engineering manager job is usually a balancing act, I would say, to get involved when needed and to take a step back when you think that your ICs got it, and they know exactly what they’re doing. So you would need to know the technologies, but in breadth not in-depth. What I mean by that is, for example, if I start talking about Microservice Architecture, and how it can easily turn out to be a nightmare for any engineer, you might think that I’m a backend engineer. On the contrary, if today I even start talking about how weird it is at
React v17.0, I think 17 is the latest version, 17 was released with no feature update. And it was just all about developer happiness, it was just about how we can upgrade React quickly. Now, you would think that I am a frontend engineer. And now I can even go further and talk about some technology, which is DevOps related or infrastructure-related. I know about these technologies because I have been reading what is coming, what is the next, what are the latest and greatest things that are happening around what is happening to our current architecture? Or what are the things that are improving in our current technology that Headspace is using? For me, it is very important that I know what is happening and what can be helpful for engineers in Headspace and to be close to technology innovation, but not necessarily how to upgrade React at this point. For that, I would need to basically take a step back and see how things were done when I used to code. And then I will definitely be able to do it. There is no three ways about it. But I will take some time for that. So when we talk about versatile tech stack, I would say you would need to know the breadth of all the technologies. Not deep tech at that point, if that makes sense.
Are there any certifications that would help us for getting selected for interviews and what are some important keywords for job search engines while transitioning from engineer to manager position?
Having a STEM degree definitely goes a long way. Having said that, nowadays, I have seen some creative engineers and even engineering managers who have gone through some amazing Bootcamps. I know there have been React.JS Bootcamps and Computer Science Bootcamps out there, which really helps. In my current role as well as in my previous company, I wouldn’t say that we look for any specific degree, we really look at that person’s technical ability, and how great they are with that problem-solving skills.
The second question you had was about what are the keywords that are used? I would say leadership, hands-on engineer, and I’m not just coming up with keywords, look at it from a standpoint of if any person right now is looking for an engineering manager. If I’m looking for an engineering manager for my team, and I am interested to hire somebody from the outside, the things that I will look at, is that this person needs to be a really good hands-on engineering manager. The reason hands-on becomes very critical at that point is because I have never worked with you. So I need to be sure that you really are technically able to lead these technical engineers. If I have to put the keywords at this point to hire an engineering manager for my team, I will say engineering manager leadership skill. My team right now uses React.JS, Node.JS, and Microservice, I will even put those keywords along with that. And that really comes back to the point that we talked about women. The advice that we were trying to articulate for women engineering managers is, make sure you’re adding all the skills that you have that are technical as well as management skills, that will really help you grow in your career.
What are the traits of a successful woman leader being in a male dominated industry?
Oh, you would be surprised, but I personally feel that female engineering managers do better than a male engineering manager. And the reason behind that is we are naturally very empathetic towards people. And having that empathy towards your people that you are managing is really important. That is one of the major traits that you need to have as an engineering manager, along with, of course, your leadership skills and, and your technical skills.
The three values that are really appreciated in leadership skills are having that selfless drive in you to put others’ career above yourself. Because right now, as an IC(Individual Contributor), we always think about our career, we always think about what is the next thing. Now think about it as an engineering manager, you have to think about your career, and you have to think about your reportees, your engineers also. So for us, it is very important to empathize with them, and understand how you can help them move forward. And I think women engineers really do that job well.
The second trait I would say is to be articulate and speak up about what you feel about a certain strategy. That is being very courageous, because sometimes when you’re talking about certain strategies around your company or your team, you also sometimes might have to go against some of the other leaders who are thinking things differently. We wouldn’t say going against, but having different opinions on that. So the two traits now we are looking at is empathy and the second is to articulate well, in a concise way, and speak up for the values that you believe in.
And the third thing is being very curious about what’s happening in other teams and other squads because one of the things that the engineering manager needs to do is bring up all the interesting work, or make sure that your team has a roadmap planned in a way that will interest your engineers, and you can really do it well, if you’re curious about what’s happening around the company, and not just your team, you’re not just focused on your team, you’re even focused around what other team members might be doing. And that way, you can help your team members and you can also help the company.
What would you recommend aspiring engineers who want to become a manager?
So how would you actually like to foresee your career? Are you thinking about your career to be an engineering manager? And if you’re, you’re thinking about it more from a leadership standpoint. And If yes, then you have your answer at that point. I would always say that, what you’re always trying to learn and let go. Because if you want to be an engineering manager, you have to have that selfless drive in you to allow other engineers to actually take the forefront and you being that servant leader, who is helping them grow in that career. If you really want to be a leader, you have to learn how you are going to help others in their career. And always have that discussion with your engineering manager, I would say, it’s because you need to understand where you fit in your organization, right, it’s great that you already know that you want to be an engineering manager. For me, the moment you have already decided that you want to be an engineering manager, 50% of your job is done because now you are on track of your goal; you have set your goal.
Now the next thing is how you want to get there. So the very first step would be talking to the engineering manager and coming with specific timelines on what are the things you need to do to get there. Sometimes there might be a situation where your current company might not be able to provide that role, at that point maybe you have to look outside.
That comes to the second aspect of it is whom you’re going to contact. Now you have to contact not just people within your organization, but also people outside the organization, who are currently doing that role to understand what it takes to move to that company. One thing actually I should have mentioned earlier is this engineering manager role is different in different organizations, some organizations look for technical engineering managers, some organizations look for a people engineering manager. You need to understand or you need to make a decision for yourself, where you where your interest lies at that point.
If you were to name one person who helped you grow in your career, who would that be? And what are your favorite management books?
So I wouldn’t name that person because I haven’t asked that person that I can name him or her but I gotta tell you a story, which kind of changed my life, the whole aspect of looking at my career, the whole aspect of me being very intentional having this monthly check-in with myself. That’s from my previous company from my VP. The career that I have right now, if you go back and look at my LinkedIn, I have been a senior engineer for three different organizations, got promoted as a tech lead in three different organizations, and then jumped to the next organization back as a senior engineer. So I was a senior engineer — tech lead, moved to a different company back as a senior engineer — tech lead, moved to a different company back as a senior engineer — tech lead. And in my previous company, one of my VPs, I was just having a very regular one on one with him asking about career goals and roles. And he kept on asking me, “What is your five-year plan?” And I had a very candid interview reply that I always give everybody, I gave him that reply. He kept on digging further and asked me a question, “Why do you keep on proving yourself again, and again, you have been a senior engineer, and been a tech lead in three different organizations. What is the next step?” And at that point, I realized that I had that “Aha” moment that I don’t have to keep on moving to a different company thinking that I have to prove myself again, as an engineer, I now need to take that next step and the next step is being an engineering manager. So for me, that person really gave me that “Aha” moment that I am repeating myself, I am just having this circle of an imposter syndrome.
Going back to the books, I have a couple of books that I have been looking at. There is usually a very long list out there But there is one book that really helped me and that was The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael D. Watkins. That is huge. It is not an engineering book, per se, but it is like a 30–60–90 plan, a three month plan that they have put for a practical guide of how to consciously focus on getting up to speed and faster. That really helped me, and then there are other books also out there, which, which you can look at.
Attendee Questions — Unanswered during the event
Do you recommend choosing a female mentor?
In my experience, a good mentor will help you see beyond your current role (At that point gender doesn’t matter). Trying to find a mentor of specific gender will add an unconscious bias to your search.
What is mentor vs sponsor vs advocate?
A mentor is someone who works with you very closely and helps you in your day to day work. Maybe they might help you specifically on a project or a skill that you are working on.
A sponsor is someone who has an influence in the organization you currently are and can help you grow in your career.
An advocate is someone who really knows you well. Knows your passion, knows your work, and basically is your cheerleader and will advocate for you in every way.
What is your take on workplace politics?
Play it! Healthy politics is always good for your career. Definitely neutralize negativity like rumors, aggression, or argument. My mantra is to always remain professional.
What advice would you give to a first time engineering manager?
- Learn to let go
- Always listen
- Be approachable and prepare to reinvent yourself
- Remember not all great engineers become good managers. It is a different skill set and you need to work on it.
What kind of education, training, or background does your job require?
Having a STEM degree definitely goes a long way. Nowadays, I have also seen many great engineers and managers who have gone through some amazing boot camps.
Do you find any gaps between engineers and management? If so, from your experience how do you fill those gaps?
As I mentioned in my previous conversation engineering and management is a different skillset. You need to work towards your management skills to be a good engineering manager.
For any additional questions, you can reach out to Swapna Savant through her LinkedIn.
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