Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil, and for
today's episode, Stephanie Hwang shares, her personal journey of
growth, learnings and a transition into more technical
roll over at Google Cloud. She's currently head of
developer engagement and award-winning speaker engineer,
as well as content creator dancer and an advocate dog
lover. Ha, I'll put the links to our
socials in the description below.
And with that being said, enjoy the episode.
I always believed in, you know, telling your stories as openly
as you possibly can. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree
with that. What are the things I saw?
When I researched you, as you did a podcast and it was called
where the internet lives and at that goes into Data Centers in
the people that work there and for me at first I was like a
data center is a thing and that has like server racks and
everything. I didn't think about anything
that goes into that with regards to the security, or the scale of
the operation, when I first started out.
So throughout my career, I learned about that but I'm
really curious as to what you learn through doing that podcast
and talking to those people. Oh gosh, that podcast was such a
highlight in my career so far because I absolutely love this
idea of physical infrastructure that underpins the internet and
cloud. And so to be able to investigate
through the people who truly are supporting, this physical
infrastructure was such a great honour, and it opened the door
to let me see. Truly how many people are
involved in such an operation. Should have scale as well as the
variety of roles that exist. That people just simply do not
know about which is actually by Design, right?
You're not supposed to know when data centers are operating
because the whole point is that they're happening, smoothly
behind the scenes and if something goes wrong and you
feel it, or you notice it, then it's not doing its job.
So to really get to a point where we're able to support that
at a global scale for a company like Google.
You have to imagine just how many people are involved along
with the technology. Itself.
So that podcast gave me the opportunity to hear their
stories but not just about the day-to-day job that they had,
but about where they started the countries that they were from
their educational environments, their family environments, the
struggles and the triumphs that they had experienced to even get
to a point of being a candidate for Google.
So it's really, really interesting just from a host
perspective to hear their stories really even just Side of
the podcast. Yeah, yeah.
I listen to one of the episodes and I think I'm absolutely going
to listen to more of those because I picked up one on.
One of the things you said, it's when it's a smooth operation, no
one notices anything about it, right?
And the fact that I didn't think of okay, what goes on behind the
scenes, is a fact that it is a smooth operation and it's going
really great because you barely notice anything.
The only thing you notice might be when everything is down, and
that's a huge issue. But then I could only recount
Ain't it happening once which was like two years ago and I
couldn't Google why Google or YouTube was down which was quite
interesting. But yeah, there's a there's a
huge scale of operation going on there.
I think it's just really cool that you got got to do that.
Yeah, and we actually recently won a 20:22 Webby award for the
podcast for best technology podcast.
And we also won the people's voice award which was selected
by the public. And so it just gave us this huge
honor and like stamp of approval from this body of Judges as well
as the public. And I think if anything that I
got out of that was that these stories are interesting and they
There and people are curious about not just data centers
themselves, but the people who keep them running and also
exciting is that I think we're going to be working on a third
season. This is a podcast with me as a
host so you'll be hearing more for me.
There, that sounds great. Congrats on the award.
I actually didn't know that. Thank you.
You mentioned listening and learning from people and how
they got to be here. That's kind of what I love on
the show as well. So I'd love to know how you got
to where you are. Because we spoke earlier in a
pre-show setting and you mentioned you don't have a
technical background either. Yeah, that's true.
I've been talking a lot about that this week because I came
out with a video this week. Talking about a four step
process for people, from non-traditional backgrounds, or
non technical backgrounds to get into cloud.
And I'm hosting a Twitter space tomorrow which by the time this
airs might be in the past but it's also about the same topic
from different influencers who have gone from being in theater
acting dancing for me. I had, you know, I Been a dancer
and a pageant contestant and made their way into engineering
or Cloud. So it's just been a huge theme
that I have been advocating for in my career because when I
first joined devrel, I was extremely intimidated and felt
an immense sense of imposter syndrome because I didn't have a
traditional background. I was never a self-taught
developer or computer science major.
So I really had to learn Everything in the job and by
doing all of this content. So I think it's just so
important to be authentically yourself, not only because we
want to increase the diversity in engineering and in Tech.
But I also think it's important because it'll bring you much
more fulfillment in your life and the end, if you're doing
something that you enjoy. But you can be 100% yourself and
use your interests outside of work to infuse what you do at
work. Yeah.
A lot of sense, I mean, I agree with you that humans are
multifaceted, right? There's different components and
I usually say there's different versions of me, right?
Um, I might be grumpy in the afternoon or when I wake up or
I'm Different at work. I'm different when I was a kid,
I was different talking to friends and talking to my
parents, there's different versions, but they're all you.
They're all part of you, they're all the same, you just in
different settings and in different context and I think
that's exactly true. If you can be your true self.
Also a work that Will be more fulfilling than when it's just
some version of you and you can't be your true self.
Yeah, exactly. I'm also going to give a talk on
imposter syndrome for women techmakers in a couple weeks as
well. And I talked about, you know,
not operating from a point of fear of being an imposter, but
truly understanding the environment that you're in and
why you are getting any sense of that, I think, especially for
women, we often feel like we are comparing ourselves to the
highlight reels of other people, especially if you don't see.
And that looks like you and your environment in your career and
so I'm all about moving past that because for me I've gone
through imposter syndrome, pretty much in the biggest
Trends transitory moments or Transitions and my career going
from school to my first job going from my first job to my
second job. And Cloud going from my first
company to Google and then going from like sales engineering over
to devrel. So it's really natural, I guess
is the first point to make and also, Of all the people who feel
impostor syndrome are usually the highest Achievers.
So it's like, you got to kind of recognize that you're already
doing much better than a lot of people.
Yeah, it's weird. Right.
The, the biggest critic usually is yourself because you're like,
oh, I could have done better, I could have done this, I could
have done X Y & Z. I could have not watched that
Netflix show and actually put in an extra hour and then other
people would be like, and you already work x amount of hours
after our Yeah. I'm 100% that person where I
plead guilty when I'm not working or being productive and
like my partner all the time is like, I don't think you actually
know how to relax. I think you need to learn how to
relax on the weekends and do it. So, yeah, I'm absolutely that
person I'm guilty of that, but I also know that I try to strike a
good balance and always try to maintain a grounded mindset, so
I can just have more sustainable Lifestyles coming forward and
That's why I doing dance and pageants and extracurriculars
outside of work is super important for me because it's
like, totally my outlet. So I'm still on a dance team at
Google. I still do stuff outside of work
too. Yeah, I really like that.
You said it grounds you, right? If I think about myself, if I
wouldn't have anything else. If I didn't go out with friends?
If I didn't play my video games, if I didn't watch my YouTube on
the side to relax, I would probably only be working and I
notice it. Especially I live with my
girlfriend. If she's not here, if she's in a
different country because she lives in Italy.
And she's with her parents. I work overtime.
I notice because she's the person that grounds me the most
and is, like, hello, you've been staring at that screen for x
amount of hours you haven't even eaten anything.
So it's hard. You need those things or even
those relationships to ground you because otherwise, you'll
probably burn out here. Yeah, I mean, whether it's an
activity or a person to pull you away from a screen.
You need something, like, even if it's reading a book or
anything else. But yeah, going back to your
question because you asked me what my background was, or how I
got into the position. I am today.
I went to University for communication studies, so if
people ask me, if I have a CS degree, I tell them.
Yes, technically, you're right, but it's computer communication
studies noxious and so I love making that joke because, yeah,
I just, it's just become a part of of who I am.
I've always been passionate about communication and I did am
a minor in digital Humanities which was a new field at the
time which allowed me to get an introduction to Information
Systems internet Concepts, and do some analytics related to
social media and current events, okay?
So that kind of gave me the edge to get my first job in Tech, but
prior to that I didn't really know what direction I wanted to
take. So I ended up doing a bunch of
internships in the entertainment industry, because I'd always
been passionate. About video production and
media. So I did internships for Warner
Brothers records which is a music label.
I also did some YouTube channel internships that involve dance
and I did want to add one small tech company as well.
So like many people I had no idea what I wanted to do and,
you know, just experimented because that's the only way to
find out, right? It wasn't until I started my job
hunt that I ended up applying To Oracle for my first job as a
sales engineer, which I had no idea what that meant but I did
assume that it had something to do with doing business as well
as engineering and it like a pretty good fit given.
I had some analytics experience and some information systems
experience but also Communications.
So I gave it a go because I had always grown up in Silicon
Valley. Knowing that Oracle was a pretty
big name and they were offering training for entry-level
positions and I thought You know, along with my parents we
thought that that was a great Foundation to start your career
with and they were right. So I go ahead, I went ahead and
did that and was in that role for a year-and-a-half learned.
A bunch about how to work with clients and how to be a
technical counterpart and kind of a consultant.
And then after that, I decided to transition into Cloud because
I felt like it was a big industry.
Mover a lot of conversations would R themselves towards
Cloud. So I ended up joining customer
success team at Oracle, which was the first one that was
post-sales to help onboard customers and get them to use
the products. So I became a lot more Hands-On
and instead of focusing on analytics, I moved to focus on
cloud platform and infrastructure as a service
which again gave me more experience in some more
technical Concepts. Now, this whole time I'm still
questioning whether its sales engineering and post-sales
Customer success is the right role for me.
So I'm also applying to grad school thinking that I might go
back into journalism or tryout journalism.
And only to realize that it wasn't really feeling, right?
And it wasn't sticking for me. So, I dropped out of that
approach and decided to continue just gaining experience and
taking off time to travel. Yeah.
And at that point, I had already tried to apply to Google most
multiple times, because it was a dream company of mine.
But they just never they rejected me every time.
Yeah, so I kind of let that, you know, it's fine, they ended up
reaching back out after three years of me working in the
industry. Hello.
If I wanted to be a sales representative at Google Cloud
interesting, which is great, but it just wasn't the role that I
wanted to do because I wanted to maintain some of my technical
skills and, you know, maintain sales engineering.
So I decided to just do the interview anyway as a learning
process. I got the offer and then I made
the difficult decision to actually turn down the offer
from this company that I had been trying to get a job at for
years. Even as a receptionist and we
just have three guns. Yeah.
Oh I talk to tons of people like my parents and friends and
co-workers and yeah, everyone gave me mixed answers.
So I ultimately decided to just follow my intuition.
Yeah, and poured it down and it ended up being a great choice
because three months later, they Reach back out about a sales
engineering position that opened up and they all the interviews
you did Count, you did great in them but we're just going to
have you do several other technical interviews.
So I did that. And really work my butt off for
those interviews and ended up getting the job.
I cut my travel short and join Google cloud from there.
So I will stop there because there's a whole nother story,
believe how I transition to devrel, but yeah, it was an
unexpected path. You both the position and the
industry that I wasn't really expecting from the start.
Yeah, it's weird how you, I think how we all sometimes end
up where we don't really expect, we will end up, especially when
you look back. But there's multiple things that
I really love that, you lay it out.
First one is you want to experience things, right?
You can read up on things. You can read a book or listen to
a podcast, but the way to truly know if something is for you,
You is by experiencing and joining a first position where
you can experience as much of that.
As you think you need is a great choice.
I think through that you'll learn.
Okay, this is for me and even by learning, this is not for me,
that is also information, right? And you'll move towards where
you'll eventually end up and your, I don't even know if this
is going to be where you're gonna be for the next x y, z
years, but eventually you'll move on.
You'll be like, okay, I've done this.
I'm going to To this. Now I'm going to try things out
experiencing is I think the best way to learn at the end of the
day I'm not saying reading or listening to podcast.
It's not great. I think it is great inform
yourself but do we experience and to try out those things
especially where's there's a chance at an opportunity you can
still stick to your guns like you did and say.
Okay this is not for me or jump in and be like, okay, we're
going to do this now and see how it is.
Really cool. Yeah, exactly.
I struggled a lot with this myth that you have to find your
passion. Or because there's a saying, if
you find your passion, you'll never work a day in your life.
Yeah. And I think I over index on that
a little bit too much out of college because I was looking
for a sense of normalcy a path certainty in a time where it's
going to be ambiguous for everyone unless you're on a path
to A doctor or a lawyer, right? So I just kept searching for
answers and of course, looking back on it.
I'm like, how would I have known?
What my passion was? If I only experience, like 21
years of my life at that point, there's so much more in the
world to offer, but, of course I was, I was young and I didn't
have that perspective back. Then, looking back on it.
I always tell people now that the best way to find a passion
is a, of course, experience new things.
Try new things and you might be surprised that a Ian might
emerge from you, trying these things and the more you add
effort to a certain area. Yep, the more that you may find
that this passion is interest starts to harden and really
crystallized in your life, and that's what's happened to me as
a result of creating content and telling stories.
Yeah, that makes sense. So when you joined, either your
first position or your transition into Google, right.
There's always multiple things I look at for my Little job.
And for my personal environment is the people I'm doing it with.
It's the thing that I'm doing, it's the future career that the
company might have or actually how much of an impact we're
having which one of those facets like counter really towards your
own decisions in that. I think transitioning into
Google some, and I've actually gone through this exercise
before when I was deciding on, you know, jobs and grad school.
I remember one of my mentors was like, if you had to rank all
these things like Mission sense of responsibility.
You know what the company stood for or you know how much you're
going to learn in the role. This is my rank.
Yeah and at that point in my life I realized that learning
The most important like learning, maybe the company
product, or the mission. And then, you know, down the
line, it would be like sense of responsibility, Etc or like
money, but learning was extremely important.
And it still is today for me, I think at Google what I wanted to
get the most out of it was the ability to learn and I knew that
I was I would be surrounded by talented people from some of the
best other companies in the world.
It's like this key. Duration of these extremely
successful people in in across all fields.
And so, the key thing for me, was to dive into an environment
where there wasn't as much red tape as there was in some of the
other environments. I've been in where I could
easily cross boundaries, where cross-functionally, share ideas
through like really just osmosis across the organization.
Nice, and not feel like I was bound by any conventional means
or ideas and I felt like Google gave me A lot of that
flexibility and freedom to learn and quench.
My thirst for curiosity but also provide really great structure
in place from an organizational standpoint.
Like, you get freedom, but you get the guardrails the structure
and the resources available of a large company.
That was what attracted me there.
What do you mean by kind of structure?
Because I have a hard time imagining that for me too much
structure would mean I can't go as fast and I love being able to
put an idea into practice, right?
Right. Sure.
I have to have to have had challenged my idea by a few
people but at some point, I do want to put into practice.
Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a
healthy amount of structure that's good.
I think that, you know, to get to a size of company that Google
is that they had to have implemented structure in process
for not only pushing out products, but also in operations
in employee relations, and collaborative ways of
collaboration communication, They have all of their HR
systems in place. They have all of their work
streams in plays. They have their engineering best
practices. They have some of the best ways
of achieving a high level of like SL aslo for the own company
to operate. So I think that it's a good
place to understand guidelines on how to achieve some of those
levels that you can take with you elsewhere.
And so that's kind of why I've stuck at a big company so far
because if I decide to go to a Smaller company where you get
even more freedom in some ways and less structure and other
ways. At least you walk away from your
experience at a big company. Having learned some of those
things. Yeah, that makes sense if we
move back into kind of your personal Journey, the things I
hold a lot of value in is the relationships, I created along
the way, and I think I'm really lucky that I had good mentorship
guidance, and good leadership. At least my direct manager.
I was usually Happy with because they made sure to open the doors
for me. If I was like, okay, I'm happy
with what I got. Give me more responsibilities.
I want to move into that one. I want to try things out with
regards to databases infrastructure Network because I
started out in operations, they would open those doors either
make those introductions or you like do you want me to make
those introductions, or do you want to do it yourself?
They would always give me options in a way to move
forward, a path towards what I wanted to grow.
And I really I'm really grateful for that.
So, I'm wondering, what was your experience with that kind of
leadership or guidance? I feel like I've been so
fortunate in my career because I haven't had a blatantly negative
experience with managers or, you know, people that I look up to.
So, I think I've been really lucky that in my first job.
You know, if at worst I had an apathetic manager.
But at best, you know, in the next manager I had they were
great. You know, they were there
weren't like the best manager ever but, you know, they were
helpful. But yeah, I think there are key
players in my life. I have really enabled me, one of
them going back to even just in high school.
I had a mentor that had encouraged me to apply to
universities that were way outside of my league.
I thought and encouraged me to continue to keep doing those
standardized testing to get, a better score, to put the work
in, to get to write. It even better personal
statement to apply to these schools and end-to-end.
I didn't actually get into any of those far-reaching stretch
goal. Schools.
But and I was crushed, but at the same time, it taught me that
you don't really you miss, every shot that you don't take, right?
It's better that you go for the shot then to not at all.
So, that's what I took away from that, and I still really cherish
that relationship that I bought with that Mentor at such an
early age. And then nowadays, I mean, my
current manager at my team has been by far, one of the best
coaches I've had because he along with my skip level have
both opened up doors, just in the same way and have been
Sponsors where if they're in a room with another manager where
they ask where they're talking about, hey we want to find
someone who is going to be this person to build a relationship
with marketing, to be the voice of the company, to be the voice
for developers. You know, my skip level was the
one who put my name in the Hat and if it weren't for that
opportunity. Then, you know, I would have
missed out on the last year and a half of all these leadership
opportunities I've had, as well as the relationships that I've
built with product management. Contingent earring and
marketing. So that really, really helped
Propel the trajectory of my career.
If he were in the room, he'd probably say, well I wouldn't
have said that unless you put the hard work in and you really,
you know, allowed yourself to be that that candidate.
But it's just that kind of great relationship that we've built
that is so fruitful and yeah, but my manager has also just
really taught me a lot about creating technical artifacts
that will help you in your career how to tell your Own
story for performance reviews to get good ratings and to, you
know, build up yourself and your career and then behind closed
doors. When he's talking to other
managers about my performance. He's always fighting for me too.
So it's those, it's what happens when you're not there.
That proves to be really, really helpful and pivotal in your
career. You mention.
Let's get a skip Lowe. I hadn't heard that term yet.
What is that? Oh, skip level is the person
that your manager It's 2:00 in that way.
So that's why I was just, yeah, yeah, okay, exactly.
I do the qualities than of your of, your skip level or your
manager. What do you think makes them?
Good leaders. Is it they really listen and
fight for you and believing you or what do you think makes them
good managers with regards to other packages that you had I
think that they practice this style of leadership that's
service-oriented leadership. They are not self-serving.
They are there to build up their teams and by enabling their
teams they can enable themselves in a sense, right?
So I think that they're really in it to coach other people and
see their own reports succeed. And my manager has always said
to me today, I'm going to be reporting to you and it's the
kind of message that it's A joke, somewhat.
But it's like, it's just you get so much meaning out of that kind
of statement because, you know, that they're really in it to set
you up for success and to make sure that you're happy in the
role and that you're doing your best work and you feel excited
to come in every day. So I think that the style of
leadership has left such a big imprint on me because I'm going
to take so much out of this experience.
So when I manage a team, I will practice that level of empathy
that level of Advocacy and that level of service oriented
leadership for others. Yeah.
And Pay It Forward right eye this morning, I had a thought I
was like whatever because I move a lot from environment to
environment and one of my mantras is I try to make it or
leave it better as when I came in.
So whatever I do as long as I go away and it's better.
I'm happy right? Because you don't want to come
in, make it worse, and then leave, right?
That would be the worst feeling at least for me, personally.
And if everyone does that, then everything should get better
step-by-step, right? The only factors then that you
have is external factors which are mostly not people related,
right? Like right the environment right
time, right? Place contact stuff like that
and it really made it click when you said okay when I am in that
position or when I will be in that position or I might not be
in that position but I have a conversation like that, I will
pay it forward in that way as well.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, and the other thing that
they've always said to us is that if we take anything out of
our experience on this team, it's that we walk away feeling
like we've gotten something out of it.
We feel like we've grown from our experience on this team
because this is one distinction that they make very clear.
It's that they don't just think that you're going to leave the
team one day or hope that you won't leave the team.
One day is that they occur. Expect you to leave the team one
day and that you're able to use it as a stepping stone to get
into the next position that you want to be in.
And so they have always underscored the importance of
us, being able to walk away from our experience on that team
having grown. And so it's that kind of culture
that they've built. That is a non-negotiable for
them and I think it's just imperative for every liter to
truly understand the importance of that.
Yeah, that's something I haven't seen everywhere.
That people are like we expect you to leave because This is a
step in your career, right? You need to move forward or we
expect you to grow. If you're not growing, the
something's wrong, right? Do you not want to grow?
Do not want to get better at whatever you're doing.
Do not want to experiment and try things out.
Then something is missing or you you have the lack of drive.
I guess I've never experienced that, but the expectation that
someone moves on from what they're currently doing.
I think that's very healthy. Yeah, I haven't seen it
everywhere. Yeah, I mean it's not surprising
that you haven't seen it everywhere because at the end of
the day, when you're working somewhere and you may be a
leader somewhere, it's still a business.
You have to operate a business, you're responsible for a team
that has expected outputs. So a lot of leaders don't have
the liberty of being able to say that in all cases.
I think it's a really amazing aspiration to have.
Yeah, and I think it's really important, but I think there's a
lot of pressure coming from Hello from your employees and
also coming from above to deliver outputs.
And so it's easier said than done to make that kind of
culture. Maintain that kind of culture I
get that, but that if that strain, is there from, from kind
of an upper echelon, learn upper management layer that strain
kind of trickles down right throughout the management layer
throughout the hierarchy that you have.
One of the things I always loved in, whatever, I had was
transparency, I blew my mind when I joined the company and
they were like OK. These are the Net profit
statements of this month, and this is the, the ability or the
average bill ability of like, all that information was
available in a presentation, I didn't ask for it and then it
was like, if you want more information, full transparency,
just ask, whatever you need, whatever you're interested in,
because you might not even need that information.
You might just be curious and I have a very curious mind.
So I asked everything. Yeah, yeah.
Transparency is another one that I didn't even mention, but it's
It's refreshing. Once you have it.
Yeah, I think that's something else that I've really cherished
on this team is the transparency from the management and just
across the team in general. Because, you know, like I think
there's a lot of generalizations that a lot of managers can say,
to you to protect themselves and to, you know, keep the status
quo and keep everything as is but it's really nice.
When you do have a managers and coaches who can just tell it
like it is and say, you know, you know, overall they're Posed
to be what our managers sometimes say is like the the
shit umbrella, they're supposed to be like the BS umbrella.
They umbrella you and shield you from a lot of the political
stuff that happens to make sure that you can focus on your best
work and they just let a little bit trickle in.
So you kind of understand the the State of the Union, right?
You kind of understand what's happening just enough to you
know be on edge a bit. But overall like having the
transparency to tell you like what's happening this is this
current status, this is where you need to improve.
This is how the company and the team is doing like that's
tremendously helpful. In feeling, like you're safe on
the team in some ways and just, like, psychologically safe.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. I had a thought, but I lost it.
You mentioned earlier thing about experiencing imposter
syndrome, and I have a very distinct memory was probably
like 22 as very early on in career and I had automated like
a part of the business and I went to a colleague and I I
said, listen, we normally have this procedure, we do this, we
don't have to do it anymore because this is the underlying
cause, and we fix that and they insisted on continuing with that
process to a point where I pushed back out, I tried to
explain my words again, and sure it was probably late Friday
afternoon and a lot of factors happen there, but they lashed
out on me. I got yelled at and I had never
experienced something like that before, and then I was like,
okay, I look to the other colleagues because a lot of
people had already gone home. A lot of feedback there when,
when the colleague went away, I asked that was like, did I do
anything wrong? No, they were like, it was
completely fine. It's probably not your fault,
but then over the weekend I wouldn't even work.
I was like, should I have seen something differently?
Should I have done something differently to the point where I
had to talk to my manager and be like, listen I don't want to be
in an environment where someone can just yell at someone else,
right. Sure context matters but that's
not how I want to work with someone else so we had a
conversation and We put it behind us, but that's true.
They when I was like, okay, something I made a mistake, this
is all me. This is all my fault and I
should have handled it differently.
Well, the problem was probably either in the middle or it was a
different issue, right? It wasn't about that was
something else, but that really made me reflect and be like,
okay, do I actually belong in this space?
Or is this not for me? Yeah, I mean it's good to
recognize that you know, the environment that you're in and
whether you align with the culture that is around you
because it's hard. Like when you especially on a
team like mine where just to kind of touch on how I joined
this team, I was creating content on Google Cloud on the
side as a 20, like not even 20%. Officially it was just kind of
me doing it for fun. After I met someone on the floor
as a sales engineer. So we started you know, too.
Occurring with cameras creating videos doing demos, until we got
noticed by some folks in devrel who asked us to do it officially
for the Google Cloud Tech Channel.
And so that's how I started building that relationship and
getting more opportunities. And to a point where I met the
director and he asked me to kind of join see if I was interested
in joining this team. So we started chartering this
team me and my current teammates like Priyanka, you know, started
chartering this brand new team of content creators for
technical Intent and so we were able to build the culture.
So what it is today and operate off a culture of.
Yeah, transparency respect, great collaboration, really
embracing reality as things are and so now that we're at a team
of, you know, over 15 people in this direct immediate team.
With every addition to the team, it's really hard to maintain
culture, because you want to make sure that every single
person, Is living up to the values that you've already set
out. For since the beginning of
culture, is not something that comes from top down, it's
important that it comes from top-down, of course.
Right to set a precedence, but every single person is
responsible for maintaining that culture as well.
Yeah, it's kind of a kind of clay, I guess and you add piece
by piece and it kind of morphs into a different set of culture,
it adds to it or I don't know if it ever subtracts 2.
Maybe someone goes away but it always keeps evolving, right?
And if you've kind of molded it and you're happy with that, you
need to figure out, maybe puzzle is better but you need to figure
out if and actually moves together in the way that you
think it should. Yeah, exactly.
Like what do you do? If there is a bad apple?
Like what if you what do you do? If it's a just a really
difficult time on the team, like the pandemic and maybe some
part, some people are being super - or do you like offer and
extend your helped. You do like all these changing
and situations really affect both the individuals and the
culture. And as a leader on the team, not
even as an official manager, but just a leader on the team, you
bear the responsibility of how to You know, be an addition and
not to subtraction. Yeah, exactly.
I remember it because we were talking about growth earlier and
kind of leadership you've transitioned from, where you
started to, where you are now, right.
And in there you've grew grown to what you're doing now
wondering, what, what have you learned that works for you when
it comes to kind of personal growth either in the past or
even the things that you're doing now?
That's such a broad question because I feel like I've had a
lot of personal growth in many different areas.
I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but I actually am a dancer
outside of work and I also competed in pageants as well.
And so I think I've had a lot of personal growth both in those
environments and at work and I think they're actually very
interconnected as parts of who I am.
Being a dancer has allowed me to express myself since I was
three. I've always been a performer at
heart and and pageants was a newer thing.
Once I started working that, I just wanted to try for fun to
get closer to my Heritage because it was related to
Chinese culture and after winning and becoming a part of
that Community more. I met so many amazing people and
lifelong friends and really learn how to be confident on
stage and speak on stage and again, perform and be this like
Ambassador and leader in my community.
And then, when I was in technology, you know, I really
started as As someone who knew nothing on the floor to learning
everything while doing the job going from absolutely zero,
technical experience to finding this great niche of an area
where I can be Technical and build Solutions but also create
content and write stories about it for developers.
And so I think a lot of the personal growth has just been
finding my voice in the area and being confident in that voice
and being Thought leader in the space in the industry as a
whole, finding my creative outputs and which parts of the
process. I like everybody on the team has
their own ways of creating content.
And I think what I really enjoy most at this point, is being
able to tell other people's stories or stories about the
technology and the people who make them just like that data
center podcast. Yeah.
But I've also done stuff like the data center video where I
got to tour Data Center and show the layers of physical security
which did Sue. For a while and also won a Webby
award last year. But I also created a video about
subsea, cables and how subsea, cables, and terrestrial cable
networks support. The amount of scale and speed
that you experience in Cloud as well.
So yeah, I just have this like Fascination and I've been able
to learn how to both represent myself through communication,
but take a small idea and work through it.
One of em big ambiguity to make it a reality in visual form and
at that takes working with a lot of people from many different
teams. Yeah I can imagine you start out
with only when you started out you had a certain Vision on how
you expected things to go. But I'm imagining that Vision
has grown and you really not have kind of a step on the
horizon of, okay? I think this is where it should
be and you work towards that. Do you think because you're not
head of developing gauge moment, I think.
And if I remember that correctly, you think you'll
always do this? Because what you explained is so
broad, right? If you're interested in a
certain topic, you go ahead and do that.
Create content with regards to that.
Educate Engineers for that. Are you ever going to stop doing
that and move to the next thing I do.
I never speak in absolutes. Oh, absolutely.
I'm going to do other things and that's like, actually a big
question because I don't know my Five-Year Plan.
Because five years ago, I didn't even think I was going to be in
this. All.
Yeah, because it didn't exist so it's just proof.
That five-year plans are great but also maybe an obsolete way
of planning your life out. I always wonder what I'm going
to do next. I love what I do now absolutely.
But I have so many interests and experiences to be had.
And so I fully expect myself to be doing something totally
different in my career or maybe even five things.
Like, I love the idea that you don't need to have one career in
your life. Gone are the days of Me thinking
that I needed to find one passion in my life.
I'm fully comfortable with taking risks and trying out new
things, whether it be going into Venture Capital working with
startups to help support them or becoming a broadcast host for
news about technology. Who knows?
I think that's the beautiful thing about this role is that I
can take it any Direction I Want, but that's also the
beautiful thing about life, you know, I think, you know, you
might be getting in your own way.
I think people can really Make their this is cliche but they
can make their own realities by taking those risks.
Yeah, I agree. It might sound cliché but it is
something I fully stand behind that.
I love that answer. I usually cannot make a
five-year plan. I always struggle with that
because it is dynamic, right? You you're going to set a plan
and trade. The act of planning might be
helpful that at some point you're going to be like, okay,
we absolutely going to deviate from this plan because five
years is just way too much ahead in the future.
Yeah, it's always great to have a plan.
Keep a eye on the prize, but to be flexible enough to deviate
from the plan and adapt. And that is a huge, huge
learning in my life. That has really positioned me
well for pivoting and being adoptive.
So I think it's a really good quality to have.
Yeah, yeah, 100% agreed. Thank you for coming on
Stephanie. I really enjoyed learning about
your journey and kind of your learnings and The way as well.
Thank you for coming on and sharing.
And thank you so much. I'm sorry.
No worries. I was gonna run it off.
There was there anything that's still kind of left on the table.
You want to share? Well, I love connecting with
people and sharing and hearing their stories.
So reach out to me, connect with me on Twitter at Steph, are
underscore Wang and or on my website stuff are Wang.com.
And I'm looking to actually create more short form content
on Tick-Tock Etc. About some of these professional
learnings that I've been able to have throughout the years.
So stay tuned for more on that. Yeah, living that I'm going to
put all the links to Stephanie's socials in and description
below. Stephanie won't check her out.
And with that being said, thanks for listening.
We'll see you on the next one.