Making an Impact: How Yenny Builds Communities and Solves Real-World Problems
We had the pleasure of interviewing Yenny, Senior Director of Engineering at Rapid, to learn more about her experience in tech and communities.
Who am I?
Hi! I am Yenny. I am the Senior Director of Engineering at Rapid. I am originally from Hong Kong. When I was a kid, I never had any idea about the fact that we could major in Computer Sciences until very late. I was in secondary school, and all they taught in the IT class was Excel which I didn’t have that much interest in.
Going forward, when it was time for me to go to university, I ended up going to an American one. I see a lot of appeal in that because in Hong Kong, when you get into a university, you need to declare your major. I was 18. I had no work experience. If you ask me to pick a path that determines what I do for the rest of my life, that was the decision I wasn’t ready to make.
So I went to the U.S., and I studied at Swarthmore College. What appeals to me in the U.S. is mostly that you can go in undeclared. However, I did declare a major as Engineering, but it is quite flexible. You can change it later. I liked Engineering because, in high school, I liked Physics and Maths a lot. And it seemed all good.
I also started taking a few Computer Science classes. I remember there was a conference that I really enjoyed called the Grace Hopper conference. It was by chance that I got a scholarship to attend it. The conference is for Women in Tech. So there, I saw a lot of career paths and a lot of people who I could look up to.
So I was like, I should do Computer Sciences, and that was just when I took Computer Science 101. I can actually see a career for myself in CS. I liked problem-solving. The introduction class I had was in Python. It was a good experience, with a lot of problem-solving, and I had a good teacher. So I just gradually got into it.
After the Grace Hopper conference, I started paying more attention to how I could improve my skills. So I went to Hackathons. I did some side projects.
I remember one side project that I did was about rating your dorm room. It was a hackathon project that I did at Unhackathon. In the U.S., room and board for school are very expensive. I did a review website like Yelp but for individual dorm rooms.
Then after this, there was another review website that I did but this time on course review. The chances are not all professors are great at teaching. Some of them focus on research. Tuition is also very expensive. So we crowd-sourced some data, and we got quite a good adoption. For a university of 1600 students, we had 400 students signing up and actively reviewing.
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So I think what appeals to me to like Computer Science is really solving real-world problems. I think, in general, the theme for me is just problem solving either in Computer Science, programming, product, building apps, etc.
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Building Communities
I worked at Yelp, and one thing about this company is that it really supports our work in building communities. I think there are two aspects. One is that company supports people from a minority background, and they want to help foster that community.
So within Yelp, I was leading the Awesome Women in the Engineering group. I was working in Hamburg, Germany, at that time. We did a lot of community events, like going for lunches, etc. In the headquarters, we had a mentorship program, which I was part of first as a mentee and then later as a mentor. It was a great environment, and I learned a lot from that experience.
My first mentor helped me out the first time I led a project, the first time I had to hire someone, the first time I had to give a conference talk, and more. Afterward, I started speaking at a lot of community events. Mainly I wanted to do this because I have seen the leaders in companies are all very well-spoken. Unfortunately, I was not. Instead, I was a very shy person, and I didn’t do public speaking naturally. But I knew I wanted to get there.
The first conference I spoke at was called Python DE. I submitted the Call for Proposal, and I was accepted. And that talk turned out to be my most-watched talk of all time. Later, I talked at Talk Python to Me. It all started there.
Developers around the world started inviting me to go and give a talk. Finally, at one point, I was given the keynote of EuroPython, and then I gave a keynote at PyCon Italia and PyCon Taiwan.
Later, when I was transitioning to Engineering Management, that’s when I started speaking at more leadership-focused events. I first spoke at LeadDev Berlin, and then later on, I had a lot of engagements with them that included moderating panels to organizing courses for Engineering managers as well as sharing about how to hire, how to retain, and how to talk about compensation and progression.
Also, PyLadies Hamburg and PyLadies Berlin are the two communities that are very close to my heart because they have been there every step of the way during my growth as an engineer and an engineering leader.
Overcoming Personal Obstacles
There are different obstacles that I faced along the journey. First were the challenges I needed to overcome in myself. When I was in university, if I talked for two minutes, I needed to write down a cue card. I just cannot speak comfortably and not even in a crowd. And I've noticed that when I was in meetings when I first started out as an engineer, I was intimidated. I didn’t feel confident expressing my opinion in front of the team.
I think it's like a personal challenge to overcome. However, one thing that I learned was that it was not improv speaking. These are things that you can prepare for and train for, and practice for. Now I feel much more confident in expressing my thoughts. I’m not born with it, but practice makes perfect.
So I just practice ten times, and then, in this case, you can give a really good talk, and you don't have to be afraid. When you practice enough, you know what you're supposed to say. And so gradually, you get better, and you get more confident, and you also get to understand how to come to terms with your emotions when you're on stage.
You'll realize that your body feels nervous, but you will learn how to deal with it. If you forget your notes, you can drink water, you can take a deep breath, and you'd pause for 10 seconds. People probably wouldn't even notice, and then gradually, you got comfortable. So it's like by practice. So that's one challenge to overcome more personally.
In terms of community, I'm fortunate that there are a lot of communities that are welcoming to people who might be a bit different and people from a minority background. I have had bad experiences elsewhere.
As a woman, sometimes people stereotype you. I have experiences where I have gone to a meetup, and I told everyone about some web applications that I was developing. And people were like so you are a designer.
There is a lot of stereotyping and things that are not quite friendly to Women in Tech that goes on. But I'm fortunate to have found communities like PyLadies, Grace Hopper, LeadDev, etc. These are communities that I feel very comfortable with, and they're active in supporting people who are underrepresented in tech.
Mentoring and Coaching
When it comes to training others, I really like the coaching aspects of things. Early on, when I first became an Engineering Manager, I had a lot of good mentors. But what they taught me was actually some coaching techniques. At one point, I also had a management coach that worked with me. That opened up my eyes to the ways of interacting with people that can really bring out people's potential.
The coaching techniques focused on the more open-end questions, and you try not to be leading. If you say, what if you do it like this? That's not a real question. So really open that up and ask questions like what is, in this project, that is challenging for you, and prompting them to come up with a solution is a very good way to coach people.
Coaching is applicable to everyone. However, for more junior folks, I prefer to use a mixture of mentoring and coaching. But as they get more and more senior, turn the questions back to them and provide that guidance to help them find their answers within themselves. I find it much more helpful than just sharing experiences.
Transitioning to Rapid: Finding the Perfect Fit
I started at Yelp as a full-stack engineer doing Python. In the beginning, during Python, we used Cheetah as the front-end framework, and I hated it. So I didn't tell anyone I would do the front end, but later on, we were moving to React. I was like, I am all up for it. I actually like doing front-end work.
So that continued for a while, and at one point, my manager told me that it seemed like I knew how to bring the team together and make them more effective. I like project leading. I like community work. And so he told me that I had shown a lot of leadership work and do I want to transition to management. And I accepted his offer right away.
At the time, I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. Usually, when we look at our managers, we only see the part where they manage us. It's like how they handle the team.
So I thought, being a manager, you do one-on-ones. Later I found out that it is like very more involved than that. Managing up, managing sideways where we have to keep aligned with the stakeholders like PMs and other managers, and managing upright. How do you report to your manager so that they will have enough context of what you're doing to help them be successful at their job?
There is much to learn, but eventually, what drew me to the job is like caring about people. I think it, for me, it's still a lot of satisfaction to be able to grow someone. It would be like maybe someone's career trajectory could have changed because of several conversations that you've had with them.
Help them identify what they can do better and really push them towards where they can be. That is the part that really drew me. That’s how I transitioned into management. And later, I worked at Rasa, which is a conversational AI space.
Actually, in the beginning, I was more drawn by the people, to be honest, because I think it was just a really good team and culture. But later on, I also got really excited about the technology because it's like AI conversational. It also satisfied my intellectual curiosity, which is still a very important part.
Last year, there were several changes happening at Rasa, and I decided to move on. Then Tristan, one of our Talent Acquisition directors at Rapid, found me.
Here at Rapid, we have a huge aspect of developer tools. For example, right now, working with the dev tools team brings me a lot of satisfaction because we're building things for people who are like me. And then building stuff for people like you and being able to be users of your product, I think that brings a lot of satisfaction, and hence Rapid is at the top of my list.
At the same time, I think everyone who works here is of such a high caliber. Like people know how to have fun, but at the same time, I can see that people excel at what they do. And that also really drives me. I feel like we can all push each other to be better. And that's the culture that I really like at Rapid.
I think there's a lot of magic that is going on by the engineers I'm working with. They all care so much about the product they're building. They are not just solving engineering problems, but also they are contributing to simplifying developers' lives and empowering developers everywhere to create transformative software applications.
Balancing Success in Team Management
My day-to-day life at Rapid mostly involves meetings. In this role, mostly your job is to influence. As a manager, you need to give your reports the autonomy and space to explore their solutions. Interfering too much will become micro-management. Well, at least, in my opinion. You want to empower your team to be able to do their best. However, your level of understanding needs to be sufficient to evaluate the complexity of the work, understand what good looks like, and be able to set expectations with your report.
You need to understand and ask questions for the team to educate you. They're the experts. I'm the person who is learning from them. So a lot of the time that I have is spent on first keeping the teams accountable for what they have committed to. I trust the team, but I will verify what they have done to make sure that we're on track and to coach them if things are not on track to see how we can improve next time.
Then a big part of it is learning from the team, what they're working on, and how they're approaching things. And potentially, there are also ways I can provide guidance based on what I've experienced before.
The third aspect is building relationships. Not just with my reports in their one-on-ones, but at the same time, building relationships with my peer. For example, my product counterpart. There are a lot of things in the organization. How do we want to set the culture and the environment? How do we want to think about ownership? These are things we need constant alignment on.
So hopefully, if I have time after doing all of that, I think a few steps ahead. While the team's responsibility area might be focusing on this week or the next, and then for the Engineering Manager, it might be probably three to six months. And then, for a director, you should think a little bit more out in the vision and strategy.
I would say the role is to find a way to help the team to be successful both in the short term and long term. The short term will be mostly on delivery and focusing on the right things day to day. But long term, it'll be to train the people, mentor, and coach them so that they can fulfill the role for your team in the far future.
So in the short term, if you don't do it right, you can also squeeze the team a lot and make them deliver a lot. But that is not going to be conducive to long-term success, which is that you want them to be happy, you want them to have a good environment, and you want to train them to improve. So all the things that I do are around these two things.
My advice for someone who is starting out
Don't be afraid. Just try out things and see what you like and what you don't. If there are things that you're not familiar with, it's okay. Keep having a growth mindset. Like if you think you're not good at something, it's not because you are not born with it.
I would recommend a book called Talent is Overrated. I don't know if I finished all of it, but I think it changed my mind on how to deal with imposter syndrome. The notion of the book is that people are not born good at something. Instead, they practice with feedback to get better.
The book has all sorts of arguments. For instance, for children, if you say that they draw well, they will continue to draw more, get validation, and continue to do that more. And then one day, everyone will be like, you're such a genius. But it's not genius per se. It's by deliberate practice.
So this thinking can help you become a better person overall. If you face something like public speaking that you aren't good at, you can practice and become better. If you avoid doing it, it's never going to get better.
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So I would say for people starting out in their career, don't think that just because you're not good at something now means that you will not be not good at it forever. If anything, try to seek out opportunities for you to practice more. One day you'll look back and be like I did it.
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