The Next Chapter

Sitting in front of my laptop and watching the flickering of the screen at 6 AM, I am as excited as a school kid waiting for her first day at a new school.

Today marks my first day at Uber.

During my two-year marathon at Capital One working as a digital analytics manager, I’ve met so many talented professional people, touched interesting products (from Eno, a artificial intelligence product, to an in-house clickstream solution), and built friendships across many teams. I also managed people and evaluated their performances. All of these experiences would be beyond my imagination years ago.

And I did it. Though my baton might not have reached the final line of the race, I’ve done the absolute best that I could and learned a few things during this part of my career.

  • Lead for success – a former manager of mine once told me that the best managers train their employees so that one day they could exceed beyond their current scope and advance to the next level (and perhaps replace the managers). I’ve had the honor of managing two associates at Capital One, and both of them demonstrated different personalities and skills. Though it’s cliché to compare managing people to raising kids, I sometimes find quite a lot of similarities. A prime example, they don’t always agree with my point of view. Something clear and obvious to me might be totally different to them. Occasionally, I had to repeat myself and even mentally prepare for being challenged several times. I learned to be more empathetic and embraced opportunities for “difficult conversations” (a book by the same title that would benefit everyone in this situation). And just like raising kids and wanting the best for them, I had to learn that everyone has different career goals, and that I have to do my best to help my direct reports succeed, for their benefit according to their career goals.
  • Dedicate as if today is the last day at the job – I’m often the last one on my team leaving the office at the end of day. Whether planning for the next projects or preparing for business reviews, I could always think of something that I personally and professionally want to take care of. Not everyone views his work as an extension of who they are, but I take what I do seriously, for better or for worse, because I believe that’s the only way to excellence. This is not to say I’d sacrifice work life balance; rather I’d take responsibility and “get it done.”
  • Never stop learning (even when others challenge you not to) ­– Capital One is a great company with plenty of learning resources. From machine learning, design thinking, to cloud computing, there is always something to learn for all kinds of business purposes. I set a career goal to study for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) certification for the clickstream project because I got frustrated with not fully understanding the concepts and terms “S3”, “EMR”, “VPC” when meeting with data engineers and architects. Sometimes I’d get the comments of “what could you do with a certification?” or “why would you want to learn another programming language?” To me, learning is not for the sheer gratification of license or certifications, it’s for the never-ending process of self-challenge and curiosity. Technology and digital revolution have evolved so rapidly, how can we risk not staying relevant by acquiring new skills?

In response to my farewell email, a coworker used a term “the end of an era.” Indeed it is, for so much I’ve contributed and related to in the digital analytics team at Capital One. This next chapter at Uber would be a combination of growth hacking, media optimization, and product strategies (everything I am passionate about), I truly look forward to making an impact to this $70-billion company with my authenticity and passion.

 

 

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