I recently sat down Tasneem “Taz”, who is an engineering manager at Yelp. Tasneem shared how she transitioned from being an individual contributor to manager, and how she’s handled the challenges that have come with each transition.
Yelp is a website and mobile app that connects people with great local businesses. Yelp was founded in San Francisco in July 2004. Since then, Yelp communities have taken root in major metros across 29 countries. Yelp had a monthly average of 139 million unique visitors in Q3 2014. By the end of Q3 2014 Yelpers had written more than 67 million rich, local reviews, making Yelp the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists. Approximately 73 million unique visitors visited Yelp via their mobile device on a monthly average basis during Q3 2014.
Listen to the interview
Poornima: Today I am here with Taz, who is an engineering manager at Yelp. We’re going to talk about how Taz got into engineering, why she decided to transition from her corporate job into working for a growth stage company like Yelp, and what many of you out there be wondering, how to go about managing an engineering team. Thank you Taz for meeting with me today!
Taz: Thank you Poornima, thank you for coming down to Yelp. I’m really excited about this interview.
Poornima: I want to start by asking you, what got you interested in technology?
Taz: I grew up in India. I didn’t really have a computer at home till I was a sophomore in college. But in school, in 7th grade I happened to have a lab in school with two computers, and my computer teacher got me interested in computers early on. My first computer program was in Basic, and I was so excited about that. I was like ooh I want to do more. At the time coincidentally my brother had moved to the US to do a computer science program, and that’s what led me to think that’s what I need to do when I grow up.
Poornima: So you majored in computer science?
Taz: That is correct. I did my Computer Engineering back in India, and then came to the states to do a Computer Science program at USC.
Poornima: A lot of people after they come here will opt out of engineering, what kept you interested and motivated to stick with it?
Taz: That’s a good question! I’ve been in the industry for 10+ years, and I’ve worked on all kinds of stuff. I’ve worked on many products like Windows, Surface, and Bing. I’ve worked on backend services, front-end UI, and developer SDK. I continue to be fascinated by how people use technology and innovative thinking to make great things happen. Our industry has helped us create drones, find our best friends, or take me: find the next job! Services like Yelp that help you decide where you’re going to go for happy hour. I think it’s amazing businesses like Yelp are disrupting traditional businesses and making consumer experiences better. That’s what keeps me going.
Poornima: So it must have been a real challenge to move from India, come here, and pursue engineering school. What was it that kept you motivated while you were in college?
Taz: College was a lot of fun! It was very different. Learning and growing with the Computer Science program in the US was very different from back home: there was a lot more practical implementation. My greatest learning in college was how to figure things out, and how to do something you’ve never done before and be confident enough to just tinker and figure it out and keep going. That’s what I’ve kept with me. I probably don’t remember everything I learned in college, but the attitude is what I kept, and it keeps me going.
Poornima: What was your first job out of college?
Taz: I graduated right after the dot com bubble burst, and it was actually a bad time to graduate. Some of my smartest colleagues were finding it hard to get a job. At the time, I decided to call a company that had offered me an internship. I did not take their internship, but I went somewhere else. But I decided to give them a call and see if they’d give me a full time job. It was a crazy idea, but honestly I really needed a job, and I didn’t have a better one, so I decided: let’s go for it!
Funnily they did. I started working at a midsize ERP company, working on their workflow systems. They went through 2 acquisitions and mergers, and at that point I decided to quit and join a Fortune 500 company, that was my start in the industry.
Poornima: Did you know what ERP was before you started?
Taz: I did. The company was focused heavily on payroll and HR systems. But I didn’t have a sense of what building a workflow system is like and what it entails, so that was completely new domain for me, it was a lot of fun.
Poornima: When you graduated from college and go this first ERP job, did you have a 5-year plan?
Taz: Earlier in my career, I wasn’t lucky to have a good mentor. I had great technical mentors who were guiding me on how to get the job done on a day-to-day, but I didn’t really have a career mentor. So earlier on, I didn’t really think through about the need what it could be like to have a 5-year plan. As I moved along in my career and joined a Fortune 500 company I got lucky and had some good training and mentors. Along the way I realized the potential of having a plan. Now I have more of a 10-year plan. At some point in my career I want to work for a non-profit. More like Bill and Melinda Gates or Acumen, focused on basic human needs. That’s where I see myself, and I’m trying to grow into a leadership role to be in a better position to work at a non-profit later.
Poornima: Now that you’ve got your first job under your belt. How did transition from being an individual contributor to managing a team. That’s something a lot of people struggle with, because they think, “Oh I know how to write code. Oh wow now I need to help others.” How did you make the transition?
Taz: My transition into management a few years after I had been an engineer, as I was transitioning from the mid-sized company to the Fortune 500 company. My manager at the time offered me his job. I would lead the SDK for Microsoft’s Surface. As exciting as it was to think about, it was also nerve-wracking. Honestly, looking back I felt like I wasn’t ready for it, but I was ready for the challenge. So I decided to take it on.
Poornima: What made you feel like, even though you weren’t ready for it, you were ready for the challenge?
Taz: I’m happy to talk about why I felt like I was ready to become a manager or a leader. It goes back to my childhood: a person left an impression on me who was running a library back home in India. She was a very empowering woman, who was running the entire library in Hyderbad, and it was an international institute. To me that seemed super compelling, nothing to do with technology, but a woman who was holding that position. That stuck with me, and that it was something I wanted to do later on in life. This opportunity was the plunge I wanted to take. It did require a little bit of hope and faith. So even though I wasn’t ready, I decided to go in and take the challenge.
Poornima: So it was a good model?
Taz: Yeah it was.
Poornima: What made you remember her?
Taz: For some reason it had always stuck with me. It was the way she carried herself and ran the institute. It was very much an impression that stayed with me over the years, and that’s kinda where the intention of becoming a leader someday came from.
Poornima: When you finally did the transition what was one of first major struggles you had?
Taz: Yeah it was actually really rough. The first year was the toughest it’s ever been. Now I’ve a manager for many years. It was the roughest, because I was figuring out that transition between should I do it myself, or should I trust my team and delegate it. Also I had a few personnel challenges: I had to deal with someone who had performance issues and work them out while one of my peers felt that they should have had my job. So working through transitions was pretty stressful, but I grew leaps and bounds through the process, in hindsight it worked out well. It was a tough year, but I came out ahead.
Poornima: Did you have anyone coaching you through that year?
Taz: Yes the same manager, who had given me the job was my mentor. He was helping me through the process. He was guiding me on what to do and what not to do.
Poornima: The first year has gotta be tough, what do you think helped you pull through it, aside from the mentor?
Taz: I was actually very lucky that I started my management career at a Fortune 500 company, and even Yelp, pays a lot of attention to growing their managers. I think that’s critical, I was lucky to get a lot of good training along the way and also get guidance from mentors who had been doing that job for many years.
I highly recommend mentorship even for someone who is just starting out in their career, getting technical mentorship, or trying to do career change, getting some sort of career mentor as a guide.
At Yelp when someone joins the company, we try to give them a technical mentor. So everyone gets a buddy essentially for the first few months at Yelp. That helps them get onboarded and assimilated into the culture. Then people maybe want to transition into a different role like a project lead or a technical lead a few years down the line, that’s when having a career mentor can be really powerful.
Poornima: What do the technical mentors do? Do they do code reviews or explaining the architecture?
Taz: All of the above. The technical mentor is basically your buddy for the first quarter. They’ll help you push out your first ticket into production: a bug that might be assigned to you and you’re fixing the bug then pushing it out to production, understanding the architecture of the system, understanding how to write good code, the coding best practices we follow at help, the nuances with tool and platforms that we have in place. Essentially your technical mentor is your buddy to get you onboarded and understanding the systems better.
Poornima: What are some suggestions you’d give to people who are really eager and want to make a contribution, but feel like they’ll be fired in 3 months if they don’t push some code out?
Taz: It’s a natural phenomenon, you’re always going to have that fear and concern. Some of that stress is healthy because it gives you that drive and motivation to strive for more. If that stress is weighing in and causing you to not be productive, then at that point my advice would be: one go talk to your manager or mentor, who has been through something similar in the near past so they can talk you through some of their experience and how they overcame the challenges that might be particular to the team or company you’re in.
The other thing is, occasionally it does help to take a break and step away from the problem. Go for dinner with friends, and step away from the problem because when you come back to it you’ll be re-energized and it won’t be weighing in on you the same way. You have to just be convinced that it will be stressful, but some of the stress will be good stress, just don’t let it weigh in on you.
Poornima: Another question that often comes up, and in a company like Yelp that has grown, there are often different technology stacks, there are also a lot of different products that are talking to each other, and it’s hard to know in the code base, “OK this is where my code ends and someone else’s begins”, and to develop that level of context for the architecture. Do you have a way in which you mentor people to ramp up and be OK with not knowing it all, and to proactively go out and talk to other folks?
Taz: The root of that competency I see as dealing with ambiguity. I think I’ve noticed this amongst a lot of junior engineers, they struggle to deal with that ambiguity. And that’s where I’m looking at what they’ve done in the past, and I’m looking at their process for introspection because I’m trying to gauge their ability to deal with ambiguity.
Any problem you are trying to solve or any team you go and work for, you will always be in a situation where you don’t know everything. There are people who are just OK with the fact that they don’t know everything. They are comfortable with solving the problem at hand. But there are people who want to know it all before they go solve the problem at hand.
I’ve had experience on both sides. I think engineers who are of the former category tend to get less stressed about not knowing it all. My guidance to the later half is to start making a list of everything you don’t know. It’s a reminder to yourself, “Hey I don’t know these 10 things on my list, and I’m going to get to it at some point, but that point is not now.” it’s a conscious reminder to say I’m going to deal with the problem at hand, and yes I’m there are other things I want to get to, but I’m not going to get to it now.
It helped me a lot in my first few months in this new job. I was a manager, and I was trying to know it all, and I needed to know it all. I still to date, don’t think I know it all, but I have that list somewhere that says these are the things I need to go cross off, and at some point I need to know of.
Poornima: Is there anything on engineering management that you would recommend?
Taz: One critical point I’ll make on engineering management is, make sure you really want to do the job. A lot of times good engineers think that is their only path forward, that is the only way to success, but that’s not necessarily true. Good engineers end up being managers and unhappy because that’s not what they signed up. The skills required for an engineer role and a manager role are different.
Taking the time to figure that out, will help you make sure that you are making the decision for the right reasons. Make sure you are stepping into the management role with the understanding that want to do that job.
Once you’ve gotten there, of course training helps, but there is nothing like learning on the job. There will always be things you along the way. Make sure you have a good mentor who has been through that, and can guide you. It also helps a lot to talk to other colleagues who are experiencing the same problems as you, because bouncing ideas off of each other and sharing can be powerful.
My guidance is try and adopt a style that is authoritative but also empathetic, and inclusive and impartial.
Poornima: Thank you so much Taz for having this interview with us. I’ve learned a lot from listening to you on engineering management, getting junior developers up to speed, and listening to your story. It’s been really inspiring, and I’m sure readers will love it.
Thank you for coming, and it was a lot of fun. One things I’d advise on, I know it’s simple, but hard to follow is to not get comfortable. Change can be healthy, if it’s the right change for you. If you’re consciously thinking about, “What will help me maximize my strengths and what is the role or position that is going to ensure that I’m working on problems that are exciting to me.” Make that choice and go for it!
Poornima: Awesome and thank you again!
Just to recap, here’s what we learned from Tasneem Minadakis:
You want to have solid mentors, who can guide you throughout your career. Find people who can help you develop your skills and people who will help you work through challenges and the tough unexpected moments.
You might not be ready for a new opportunity, but it’s more important to be ready for the challenge.
You will always be in a situation where you don’t know everything, make a list of the things you don’t know that you need to know. As you learn, cross each item off the list, and someday you’ll know everything on it!
Don’t get too comfortable. Embrace change, and look for opportunities that will give you the chance to maximize your strengths, and work on problems that are exciting to you.
Read additional interviews with engineering leads and founders, in How to Transform Your Ideas into Software Products, it include 7 other in-depth interviews with founders & early employees at startups like Thompson Nguyen from Framed Data and David Cummings from Pardot.
