Post Interview Notes and Reflection

Q1. What/who was most influential when growing up and how did that affect your decision with your current career? 

Went to Temple, computer science major, studying all these concepts. I started as a java developer and then a tester, switching back and forth. Then I became someone who was on call, that would fix the systems if they ever crashed. I almost quit comcast because the system I was supporting cost so much money when it was down, that getting it back in order required speed and efficiency. It was so stressful. I started looking internally and externally. Wanted to develop, design, engineer, get more into the core of building and designing applications.

10 years later, I went into management because I feel like I can be technical and still manage people to make more of a difference.
I manage a team of developers and engineers. We have a business and product department. Building an app, or a feature. Starting with a prototype. If anybody has an idea, we make it happen.

Q2. Can you describe your career path towards an Engineering and Development Manager at Comcast?

I used to be a butcher while studying , to make money. I used to sew in a factory with my mom, push carts, anything to make money. I used to work a similar position to geek squad. At a small “mom and pop” computer store. I was building, customizing, selling, and fixing computers and that increased my interest. I used to want to do architecture. The internet exploded back when I was younger, websites, email, better communication. I was curious as to how it worked and I wanted to create a website myself. I tinkered around on my own and there was no google, there was yahoo. I picked up HTML by reading books all night after school and I was so happy learning about it all. My parents exposed me to computers. I liked electronics, audio systems, technology, and when I was younger my parents bought me a thick laptop that I used as my entry into the world of tech and that’s around the time I changed my major.

I was consulting for Comcast at one point and they approached me with a job offer that paid double. It completely changed my career. I applied externally and whatever the name of that company was, rejected me. When this offer came along, the company called me back and gave me another offer and it felt great to reject them.

Q2.. Everyone wants to work for Google or any big company. Did you have one of those that you wanted to work for?

Yeah there wasn’t google but there was Vanguard, Lockheed Martin, Nasa. A couple of companies but Facebook didn’t even exist and Google was still growing.

Q3. How did your communication with others within the company change as you climbed the corporate ladder?

As my career and position changes, my perspective and goals change. If you’re an engineer at any company, you start as a development engineer and that’s the entry level position. It requires  you to have to be super technical in ways that are most efficient. In terms of your communication network that’s required, it’s super small; essentially between your cubicles. Your communication mostly consists of technical talk. Having a sense of understanding for what is being worked on. As you grow into a team lead, now that position requires you to interact with other teams which requires more people and communication skills. I used to be super shy and most developers are like that. You have to deliver in a way that’s politically correct and genuine at the same time. There are times where you have to fake though, like for example when I’m angry at people for not doing well. Instead of calling it fake, I call it playing well. As a lead, there is a lot of discussion with other teams.

Communication depends on personal preference but most of the time, talking in person is best. Emails are fine but there is no urgency to emails. Mostly we use slack as a group messaging app. Picking up a phone call is good, texting is good, and in person is best. Meetings and business discussions are kept small to 6 people because of too many opinions that clash, or too many ideas, and no progress will be made. Presentation skills also grow, and they better be good because of a lot of talking, selling, dealing with executives, and occasionally, presenting to the CEO.

Q3.. Are there any rituals that help you with presentations?

Not any rituals really besides talking to myself and telling myself to breathe so I can control how nervous I get. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but as I moved up and had more serious meetings, I’ve realized that personal branding is really important. And with my personal branding, I study everything I’m going to present as much as possible. I try and come up with possible questions so I can be prepared to answer them, and I make sure to know the ins and outs of what I’m talking about to be able to show that I know what I’m doing. It helps them confide in me with these bigger projects.

Q4. Was there a connection you had to establish with higher ups to be able to progress within the company?

To progress within the company, I mostly just had to ask in person. Not through email because that takes the connection away. There’s a reason why Comcast built a new building in the city. It forces everyone to be in one place and that promotes better, more personal communication. I want things to be more organic; I don’t like bothering people or being too fake. I enjoy being real, natural, and genuine.

Q5. What formal or informal training did you get that helped you manage people?

Training and management classes, some of which the company offers internally. I just recently took a class that was 3 weeks long and all you have to do is attend. There are also external classes I’ve taken that have helped me. Whatever that is external, I put on my business expense card because the company wants to grow people and essentially invest in themselves. There were mentorship programs that have me pair up with VPs and directors so I can learn from them, which makes them like a coach to me.

Informal would be through my boss as I see him work. We have these weekly one on ones as a checkup with him so we can give each other updates. I give him feedback and he gives me feedback to keep each other and our employees happy.

Q5.. What types of challenges have you had with management and with people?

People challenges are probably the #1 thing. 

Q6. Did your training help the flow of communication between others on your team or those around you? How?

Getting feedback from my boss has helped so much. Feedback is honestly a gift. You have to be considerate, think about what type of person you’re speaking to, and put it all together. You take the gift and be humble about it. One example would include people performance especially when they weren’t doing well. It was super difficult being nice about it and I had to not be mad. I couldn’t assume things and even when somebody is acting inappropriately, like during a meeting for example, you cannot give such negative feedback. You can’t ask “Why did you do it”. I explained what happened without pointing fingers and ask why that happened. In the end it’s mostly self reflection and I just guide the thought process. Approaching conversations that way change everything.

Q6.. With informal training, do you read anything that helps you?

I have the Power of Habits book which I haven’t finished. There’s a book written by engineers at Google that is called, “How To Manage Geeks”. It helps me run a team from every angle which would include productivity and the level of happiness. How to run a successful team, essentially from a Google perspective, really helped considering they’re so successful. Now that I have the know how to coach people, it has to be something that helps my team members realize their mistakes and have them make decisions for themselves on how to fix it. It promotes a lot of self growth.

Q7. What is the standard of communication between the different teams you manage? 

In person, slack, phone calls

Q7.. Is there a standard to how long people should be replying to messages? And how important is it that people stick to that standard?

A lot of our discussions are in person, if not, phone, then slack, then text, and email would be last. It’s very important. Everything needs to be efficient and productive.

Q7… What is one of the things that you use to stay organized?

I’m still learning to be better organized and I’m getting better. When I was just a developer, I wasn't very good at it. I use the reminders app. I use sticky notes at work, for work. On my regular posted notes it easier to organize by priority, different teams, and projects. I take notes during meetings and then put them on my wall. I’m trying to use more digital posted notes but the drawback includes less screen real estate on my computer and I can’t work with such little space on a 13 inch laptop. I mostly just rely on my reminders though. Everybody uses Apple at work for the most part so that keeps things consistent. If I have an important meeting, like ideas for startups, I put it in my apple calendar.

Q8. What forms of communication do you read? Reports? Documents? Claims? Adjustments?

I mostly talk to product managers, business development department. There are progress reports on a monthly status. It includes mostly presentation slides and sometimes email. Sometimes I use draw.io which helps draw road maps with diagrams. We used to have a business requirements document that changed into technical requirements. As a lead, I would convert business requirements which would be the “what” which changed to the “how”. Something that’s super important which puts everything together is “confluence” which works as like a wiki for everything on the project. It includes road maps, activities and goals, descriptions of parts of the project, team meeting notes. It’s all organized and in one place.

Q9. What do you read in your free time?
I read technical news a lot, google news, things that can help me connect with people at work. I’m personally interested and it just helps that connection.

Q10. What is your next goal and what experience with communication can you apply to help you achieve it?

My end goal is to run a tech business. I want to create the next snapchat or facebook that creates a staple in everybody’s daily lives. More realistically, career wise, is to keep growing and climbing the ladder. Maybe I’ll want to change companies or do something new. At the end of the day, my goal is to keep myself busy and challenged. Creativity and change are my passions. In my experience, managing people is immensely important. Experience is the best teacher. It’s all helped me know how to get people’s EQ (Emotional Intelligence). Basically knows how people feel, knowing how to deal with people emotionally in a way that is very productive, and helpful. Knowing how they feel about certain situations with certain people and knowing how to deal with it determines your EQ.

Post Interview Reflection

Background/Context

I interviewed Mai Wai at ISP. While studying to be an architect at Temple, the internet started blowing up. Google was an infant and Yahoo search was the big search engine in these times. Websites started popping up, email’s popularity was increasing and Mai’s interest increased as well. He started reading books on code for websites and programs, saved up money, and bought a laptop that steered course of his life in a different direction. He switched majors and now he manages a team that makes ideas happen. Building an app/feature and seeing the project to completion as an Engineering and Development Manager at ISP, he is helping evolve the way we communicate with each other through technology.

Summary

A lot of the questions were connected so questions that were scheduled to be asked later, were brought up earlier. Since the topic kept trailing off, we had to come back and reiterate questions often to make sure they were answered correctly. We talked about his journey to his current career, the differences between not just the past and the present technology wise but communications wise too. His communication and personable skills had to evolve as he progressed towards managing people and information rather than just computer code. The way he grew these skills involved training, both formally while at work and informally on his own time. Reading books, news, and taking classes all helped establish a connection between him and his team members as well as higher ups. Often he had to write routine messages to his members to keep morale up and send positive of goodwill messages. Like it says in the book, “to communicate the information or the good news, answer all questions, provide all required details, and leave your reader with a good impression of you and your firm.” This quote has been nice to see in action during the conversation.

We tried to stay on topic but kept taking many “side roads”. Some side roads included the technical processes to building software such as agile road maps which replaced how companies used to develop software. Test driven development, paired programming, different coding languages and the different benefits. We also moved to personal development such as the possibility of learning a new language, such as French, or reading personal development books. Career wise we talked about personal branding and the general concept that goes behind creating your own to enable rapid growth, not just within companies, but to be able to reach our end goals.

What worked/didn’t and why

As an interviewer, I made sure to make the moves that I analyzed in my Interview Analysis with Larry King and Gary Vanyerchuk. I noticed that Mai was anxious in the beginning of our interaction so I made sure to make small jokes to encourage a more welcoming environment. On top of encouraging a comfortable environment, we started outside in a seating area because there was no seating inside the coffee shop. Halfway through the interview we moved inside to provide a fresh setting and subconsciously make ourselves more comfortable during our interview. Changing the setting automatically makes us feel like we have talked to each other on a separate occasion and it makes our “second interaction” easier. Doing this promotes an open floor to ideas and lack of fear from judgment.

I leaned in with a serious face and eye contact to show interest at serious points when we were not joking around. He didn’t understand my questions by themselves so I had to elaborate on almost every question and try and explain it in a way that he would understand. Once I saw the light bulb go off while explaining a question, I leaned back to give him the spotlight. At one point we disagreed on what was considered formal or informal training, and I quickly addressed it as unimportant, and moved onto the next question to keep the momentum for the topic at hand.

The grand tour question was one of the most interesting questions because it shows how he was able to become so successful doing something that he loved. It was exciting for me because he started off poor coming from Vietnam at the age of 12 and didn’t know any English. After learning the language, his intelligence helped him achieve such rapid growth within a reputable technology company where he does what I aspire to do. Another question that sparked and interesting sub-conversation had to do with formal and informal training. Formally, everything he talked about within the company was rather expected. When we got into the topic of different books that could help him and different ways to manage and organize oneself, it gave me insight to how successful people manage their own lives. It makes it more relatable because anybody, including myself, can start these habits early and possibly kick start their own career.

The questions that didn’t work so well were questions that were stated differently but repeated already. One of them included “What type of challenges have you had with management and with people?”. Since the previous questions required elaboration, he gave me a one word answer but went towards a “side road”. After asking what standards of communication he uses, he named them to me in order and that was a very flat question with a flat answer. It definitely helped lead to a more descriptive follow up but it didn’t seem to be a good segway.

Rhetorical situations and textual genres

For textual genres, I’ve learned that this company does what a lot of progressive companies do to work on projects together. They use a program called Confluence. This program works like a wiki for everything on the project. It includes road maps, activities, goals, descriptions of projects, critical path diagrams, and team meeting notes. Confluence organizes it all in one place and popular companies like Nasa, Twilio, Spotify, and Docker use it.
He communicates with other managers from other departments and his team. The other would include product and business development managers that bring the ideas to his team. His team includes engineers and developers. They have meetings with managers because in person contact is more important than trying to communicate through technology. In order of importance, their standards of communication includes in person meetings, an application called slack, phone calls, and emails are usually avoided due to its lack of urgency.
Slack is a popular application used to have people in a project communicate either with their phones or computers. “When your team needs to kickoff a project, hire a new employee, deploy some code, review a sales contract, finalize next year's budget, measure an A/B test, plan your next office opening, and more, Slack has you covered.”