March 20, 2024 • 19 mins
Welcome to our debut episode of "How I Met Your Data," a podcast that aims to break down the complexities of the data world from a human perspective. Today's episode briefly introduces your hosts, Sandy Estrada and Anjali Bansal. We hope you enjoy it and decide to join us on this journey by subscribing!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the very first episode of How I Met Your Data.
I'm Sandy Estrada, and together with my colleague and podcast partner in crime,
Anjali Banzal, we're about to take you on a journey that's a little bit different
from what you might expect.
You see, Anjali and I have been working in the data industry for nearly 25 years each.
During this time, we've learned a lot about the human side of data work.
(00:21):
So our focus here will be on the stories that happen behind the scenes,
the topics that go beyond the right architecture, the right tooling,
the je ne sais quoi that really drives the success or challenges that make data work so very unique.
To us, it's all about the people, their unique methods, and how different organizations
work together or sometimes don't to achieve their data goals.
(00:42):
So on today's episode, we're not just introducing ourselves,
we're sharing our vision for the podcast.
And of course, once we get started, it won't just be Anjali and I at the mic.
We envision a podcast as a window to the the vibrant data community that we know and love.
Therefore, we're planning to showcase seasoned data leaders,
advisors, and software executives with unique voices, compelling experiences, and perspective.
(01:06):
The thing I'm most excited about is that I get to share this great data community with you.
Whether you're new to data, an experienced professional, or simply curious about
it, we've got you covered.
Sit back, relax, come along for the ride, and without further ado,
let's get this party started.
Music.
(01:42):
How are you? I'm good. I'm good. What's the name of this podcast?
How I Met Your Data. How I Met Your Data, yeah. Why did we call it that?
I don't remember. Do you?
Well, we are consultants and we meet our clients' data often.
They're kind of in strange places, right? I get a lot of data in my day.
(02:05):
You want to make this into the SNL thing? When I hooked up this microphone,
that's exactly what I thought of. What did your data do last night?
Yeah, there you go. Do you know what your data did last night?
What are your dirty data secrets?
I'm not editing that out, by the
way. I'm staying in. Yeah, that's why we called it How I Met Your Data.
(02:29):
I'm super excited about this. I've wanted to do this for a long time,
and I'm realizing I'm better one-on-one chatting with folks than in a larger audience and group.
I find that I love that interaction, bouncing off ideas off of somebody, et cetera.
So I know you and I have had many, many conversations, and it always goes from one thing to another.
(02:50):
So it'd be fun to do this with you and then also to include others outside of
our firm to other data leaders that we meet and know and bring them to the table
and see how we interact with them. So that would be fun.
Yeah, oh, for sure. For sure. And when you first came to me with this idea, I was like, absolutely.
Like we've got so much we can talk about, but I am also really excited in hearing,
(03:15):
you know, some of our friends, clients, and peers' challenges and what keeps
them up at night and what they're excited about in the data world that's just ever-changing.
And, you know, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
Yeah, this should be a good time. So Anjali, I've known you for a little over a year now.
Do you want to tell our audience who you are, your background,
(03:36):
a little bit about yourself?
Sure, sure. So I'm Anjali Bansal. I am the Global Lead for Data Governance and Trust with Cervelo.
You know, I came into kind of this crazy world of data thinking at a school
that I really wanted to be a true technologist.
So I spent, you know, spent my early career doing Java development when Java
(04:02):
was the new cool object-oriented programming language.
I hated Java. I hated Java, but go on.
Well, I think most did, right?
Especially in the early days, but I did it because I was good at it,
not because I actually genuinely enjoyed it, which actually led me on this path.
(04:24):
Yeah. So, you know, Java development into just asking a lot of questions of why,
you know, being the, you know, the, the junior developer on the team,
I was the first one to get the worst requirements and, you know,
the first one to hear when they didn't work.
So I started asking a lot of questions of why do you want to do this?
(04:45):
You know, what are you trying to achieve?
And then just over the years that that's kind of helped me leapfrog through these different,
you know, of different facets of the technology world as we went from building
stuff and not really thinking about who we were building it for and taking this
mentality of build it and they will come and nobody came to,
you know, what are we trying to help our customers,
(05:07):
our clients, our peers try to achieve and talk about what data will get them there.
And from there, having been on the consulting side and professional services side for so long.
I've had so many difficult conversations where we believed our path was the right path.
Then we did something that in our gut we knew was the wrong way to go. Well, we did it anyways.
(05:33):
Yep. And then suddenly had to have this really difficult conversation about
what was done, why it was done, but then why it was the wrong thing to do.
And so just having enough of those conversations and having enough heartache
and and sleepless nights about preparing for the conversation and then trying
to figure out the right remediation path, I just started asking,
(05:56):
what else could we have done?
What can we do better? There's got to be a better way.
And at the time I started asking those questions, there wasn't really something
that was called data governance.
We just need a better approach. But just over the years, honing that curiosity
and honing that desire to just stabilize our approach and have an easier way of doing things really,
(06:22):
you know, developed my kind of data governance background and approach.
That's great. That's beautiful. Yeah, I like that story.
And as you were talking, I thought about a couple other episodes we could have
and themes that we could put in here,
because it's your whole point of those moments when our clients,
(06:43):
where we're doing things that we know are probably not going
to work and we do them anyway because we're
either told to or there's no other way because
the you know there's other challenges within an organization and their culture
and whatever it may be that limits our ability to do the right thing and i think
that that's that's an interesting conversation because it's either an interesting
(07:05):
conversation with a bunch of
other consultants just to kind of get a a feel for or how do you do that?
And where, like, what, what are we doing something wrong? Right.
I think culturally I can go on a whole tangent here, but I won't.
But the, my, my point is that I think there's so many paradigms in terms of
how like organizations work with consultants, how organizations work internally,
because there's always internal consultants.
(07:26):
I find that fascinating besides work. I know you're an avid pickleball player.
You do some other dragon boat thing. a little bit about your fun times. Oh my gosh, of course.
So yeah, so I am a pickleball player.
I dragged my husband into this crazy world of pickleball as well.
We try to play a couple tournaments a year. So we actually have one coming up.
(07:49):
So we're doing mixed doubles.
Defending our gold medal from the last tournament. Gotta win that.
Yeah, exactly. You gotta bring home the hardware. And on the same day,
I'm also doing a women's doubles tournament and defending our bronze title,
but hoping for a different spot on the podium. I do dragon boat.
(08:11):
So one of my girlfriends, I've known her for 20 something years.
She was an avid dragon boater, had been trying to get me to join her team and
I always had an excuse. use.
And then she just decided to start her own team. That's great.
And yeah, it was awesome. But she needed a number two.
She needed a co-captain. And I just couldn't say no.
(08:34):
And here we are going into our fourth season as a team.
That sounds like a lot of fun. I think I would really enjoy that.
I've seen pictures of those kind of events.
And I always just like a blast. If I'm not down, we might need a sub.
Yeah. You tell me, I'll be there.
But you also have a lot of hobbies. And I think that's who I am too.
(08:55):
Like I have a lot of hobbies.
I pick them up. I drop them off. I pick them up again. And I stay with them for a while.
But I definitely collect hobbies
as well. So I think that's one of the things that we had in common.
Yeah, for sure. So what is your favorite hobby right now?
At the moment, I don't know what the terminology for it is. Reef keeping? I think it's called.
(09:16):
So I have a, some people say it's not a hobby, but once you get into it,
you're like, no, this is definitely a full-time job.
So it's a, I have a saltwater tank. It's small.
And the thing with saltwater is that you're constantly testing the water.
It has to have very specific parameters for calcium, magnesium, phosphate.
I mean, it goes on and on, but I became a scientist. I didn't even know it. It is time consuming.
(09:41):
I'm testing that thing every Every couple of days, I have coral in there.
What's that Pixar movie, Finding Nemo? So there's a character.
Have you watched that movie?
Yeah, there's a character, Darla, who comes up to the tank, and she terrifies
the fish at the dentist's office.
And Darla's here, and they start hiding. So my wife calls me Darla. Oh, no.
(10:04):
Because I'm constantly tinkering with the tank and looking at it,
and she thinks I'm terrifying the coral and the fish. I'm going to have to do pictures.
Yeah. For sure. But you also like to travel. So what do you do with your coral
while you're traveling?
Good question. My mother comes in and there's no testing, obviously,
but my mother comes in and feeds.
(10:25):
So she has it down. There's something for her to do. So she enjoys that.
Cool. Well, how did she get into that, though?
My cousin, when I was growing up in his house,
even in high school, he pulled out a side of the wall on his headboard where
the wall is, pulled out a side of the wall, put a fish tank in there and built,
(10:45):
I think, a hundred gallon fish tank as his headboard.
But I still remember that. And always, from that moment forward,
I was like, I want a fish tank. That's amazing.
Mine's not as impressive. It's 16 gallons. It's very small. I'm not allowed to get anything bigger.
So for now, for now, petitions are in. We'll see what happens.
Now, did you have a waterbed as well? I did, actually. How did you know that?
(11:07):
And I both had waterbeds. That's pretty funny.
Yeah, I think it was a 90s thing, though. I think that having a waterbed was
definitely a 90s, 80s, but definitely 90s.
But yeah, so in terms of me and who I am, so I, I don't know,
I'm, I don't even know what I do anymore. more.
I started my career as a Java. Well, I got hired as a Java developer.
(11:29):
And that's why I said I hate Java. So I got hired as a Java developer,
my first job out of college. And I remember we had like a month and of training.
And within the first few days, I literally got up out of class and went to go
talk to the hiring manager and said, I can't do this, which was in retrospect,
I think about that all the time. And I'm just like, I can't believe I did that.
Like I totally went up there and I was like, I'm not doing this.
(11:52):
Like I want to do something else.
So you guys have JavaScript or something here and literally talked myself into another job.
So within just a few days of hiring, they, they, they changed my team and I
was in a much, we had hundreds of Java developers and maybe that was part of
it. I didn't want to be part of the crowd.
I don't like being part of a crowd. So I became a JavaScript developer,
(12:12):
you know, and back then it was 2000, but late in the a year.
So right before the crash, the dot-com bust back then.
And that job definitely landed me a job with a consulting firm that handled data and analytics.
And back then when you're building data and analytics solutions,
everything was custom digital.
You had to code every single widget on the page, where the widget is.
(12:33):
It was all custom digital pages, right? Things you do today with like React, right? So-
I did that for a while. But in that consulting firm, it was all data analytics,
budgeting, forecasting systems, all financial, mostly financial data.
And so I learned that I learned budgeting, forecasting while I was there.
And then I went off to financial services for a number of years.
(12:55):
And I just constantly just, my thing was, what am I passionate about?
What am I interested in? Almost like a hobby in data and analytics.
So I went from coding to caring about how teams reform, to caring how projects
are run, to caring about.
So my job always changed depending on what I cared about.
And since joining where I am now, Cervelo is the same thing.
(13:17):
My focus changes depending on what I care about.
So right now, I'm really focused on helping our organization and their clients,
primarily our clients, figure out what are the right strategies, how can we help them?
So I'm always at kind of the front end of that conversation,
really driving where we help our clients and how we help them and ensuring that
(13:39):
they understand how we can, you know, help them overall.
So yeah, that's my short end of the story. But yeah, I thought I was going to
be an accountant when I went to college. So I don't know how.
How did you make that leap right from your business background,
your accounting background into starting with technology.
Yeah, I mean, it happened in college.
(14:02):
I changed my focus while I was there. I think we had to take a marketing statistics
class or statistics, yeah, sophomore year.
And I was probably the top student in my class. I loved statistics. I loved data. I was like,
hooked. And I love the problems, right? How do you cluster your prospects?
(14:23):
How do you target your audience correctly, et cetera, and market to them well?
And those business problems really resonated with me. And I was always fascinated by it.
But more importantly, I was fascinated by the data and the statistics and the structure.
And my marketing professor pulled me aside.
I still remember this. He pulls me aside and he goes, what's your focus?
(14:44):
And I I was like accounting. And he's like, why?
Oh no. And it's like accounting. He's like, why? I'm like, ah,
and he goes, have you thought about, he's like, you're doing really well here.
Have you thought about management information systems? And I said,
no, I haven't thought about that. Absolutely not.
I'm not technical. And he goes, yeah, but you like this class.
You're pretty technical. And I had no idea of what I was doing was kind of pseudocode
(15:06):
and, you know, problem solving and all those, those capabilities that you pick
up and you don't even realize you're doing them at the time.
And he, you know, and I said to him, why not marketing?
And he said, well, what's your background? And at the time, I mean,
I went to that school on grants and scholarships. I had no money.
I had told him about my background. And he basically said, if you go into marketing,
(15:27):
you're never going to make money, go into management information systems.
I promise you this is a future.
And quite frankly, you know, looking back 28 years later, he was right, Right.
Right. Like this is the future and we're at the precipice of another technology
change in data and digital in the way we interact with it all. So thank you.
I forgot his name and I wish I remembered it. We're in the middle of it.
(15:50):
We're in a cusp of something new again.
So yeah, I was thinking about that as well. That could be another podcast episode
for us in terms of have we seen this before? Because I feel like we have.
Did you hear about Devon?
So Devin is the first AI that you can tell it that you need like a certain type
(16:10):
of code and it will write it for you. Oh, okay. Yeah.
So people are freaking out over that. I think it's pretty funny.
I'm just like, it's okay.
It's okay. I used to build dashboards from scratch and now Power BI exists.
So I think we've seen that before.
We got to find other things that we can add value with other than coding.
(16:31):
But yeah, there's a whole machine against that. Right.
So yeah oh for sure like i mean we've absolutely
seen this before that's why i ended up as a java
developer there you go and not not
c++ right so so it's
funny because over time i've said you know my background my my educational background
(16:52):
is you know i have my an undergraduate degree in comp sci and math and a master's
degree in software engineering none of which i use but as things were or converting
over from customized code,
a new build every time to low code, no code options.
I'm like, this degree was a waste of paper. Yeah, but still,
(17:15):
I mean, we haven't completely been able to reallocate people's skills to not
have the need for software development or software architects or anything like that.
Yeah, that's still gonna exist. It's just gonna take a different form.
Yeah. That's all. It's nothing to be afraid of.
Amazing. So let's change our focus here.
(17:37):
How about talking about our first podcast or second episode?
Actually, this is our officially our first wild, wild ride.
So we'll see how that goes. But I think our, our first real episode will be around.
I think the title was data by the people for the people for people. people. Yeah.
Yeah. So I'm like super excited about that conversation and we'll think about
(18:00):
whether we want to tackle it or bring another to the fold.
Yeah. That would be interesting for sure.
I think that, you know, as we evolve this podcast, it will definitely be dynamic.
Like this conversation has been not scripted. I don't want to have any scripting
of this or preceding. If people can't need questions ahead of time,
(18:22):
I'm happy to give it to them, but I don't want to to know their answers until we get in the room.
So we can deal with that that way.
And let's have a dynamic conversation, a real conversation.
Again, just like you, I'd much rather have an organic conversation with true
reactions and feedback,
as opposed to like kind of going through a scripted experience where it almost
(18:43):
feels like it's too, too structured and too boxed in.
Yeah, I don't do well in structured and boxed in. I also don't do extremely
well organically. but I'll figure it out.
I'll figure it out. It's, it's okay. It's okay.
Yeah. I'm so excited about this. I'm glad. I'm happy to go on that journey with
you. I think that you're a great thought partner. So very excited.
(19:05):
Oh, same here. Same here. I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
Learn a little something along the way too, which will be great.
Yeah. And if you're still listening and at the end of this episode,
thank you for listening along.
We would love some feedback. Go ahead and give it to us. But yeah.
And if you're interested in being on the podcast, reach out to myself or Anjali,
and we'll definitely throw you on the list.
(19:27):
We're super excited about this and I hope you stick with us. Thank you. Thank you.
Music.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the very first episode of How I Met Your Data.
I'm Sandy Estrada, and together with my colleague and podcast partner in crime,
Anjali Banzal, we're about to take you on a journey that's a little bit different
from what you might expect.
You see, Anjali and I have been working in the data industry for nearly 25 years each.
During this time, we've learned a lot about the human side of data work.
(00:21):
So our focus here will be on the stories that happen behind the scenes,
the topics that go beyond the right architecture, the right tooling,
the je ne sais quoi that really drives the success or challenges that make data work so very unique.
To us, it's all about the people, their unique methods, and how different organizations
work together or sometimes don't to achieve their data goals.
(00:42):
So on today's episode, we're not just introducing ourselves,
we're sharing our vision for the podcast.
And of course, once we get started, it won't just be Anjali and I at the mic.
We envision a podcast as a window to the the vibrant data community that we know and love.
Therefore, we're planning to showcase seasoned data leaders,
advisors, and software executives with unique voices, compelling experiences, and perspective.
(01:06):
The thing I'm most excited about is that I get to share this great data community with you.
Whether you're new to data, an experienced professional, or simply curious about
it, we've got you covered.
Sit back, relax, come along for the ride, and without further ado,
let's get this party started.
Music.
(01:42):
How are you? I'm good. I'm good. What's the name of this podcast?
How I Met Your Data. How I Met Your Data, yeah. Why did we call it that?
I don't remember. Do you?
Well, we are consultants and we meet our clients' data often.
They're kind of in strange places, right? I get a lot of data in my day.
(02:05):
You want to make this into the SNL thing? When I hooked up this microphone,
that's exactly what I thought of. What did your data do last night?
Yeah, there you go. Do you know what your data did last night?
What are your dirty data secrets?
I'm not editing that out, by the
way. I'm staying in. Yeah, that's why we called it How I Met Your Data.
(02:29):
I'm super excited about this. I've wanted to do this for a long time,
and I'm realizing I'm better one-on-one chatting with folks than in a larger audience and group.
I find that I love that interaction, bouncing off ideas off of somebody, et cetera.
So I know you and I have had many, many conversations, and it always goes from one thing to another.
(02:50):
So it'd be fun to do this with you and then also to include others outside of
our firm to other data leaders that we meet and know and bring them to the table
and see how we interact with them. So that would be fun.
Yeah, oh, for sure. For sure. And when you first came to me with this idea, I was like, absolutely.
Like we've got so much we can talk about, but I am also really excited in hearing,
(03:15):
you know, some of our friends, clients, and peers' challenges and what keeps
them up at night and what they're excited about in the data world that's just ever-changing.
And, you know, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
Yeah, this should be a good time. So Anjali, I've known you for a little over a year now.
Do you want to tell our audience who you are, your background,
(03:36):
a little bit about yourself?
Sure, sure. So I'm Anjali Bansal. I am the Global Lead for Data Governance and Trust with Cervelo.
You know, I came into kind of this crazy world of data thinking at a school
that I really wanted to be a true technologist.
So I spent, you know, spent my early career doing Java development when Java
(04:02):
was the new cool object-oriented programming language.
I hated Java. I hated Java, but go on.
Well, I think most did, right?
Especially in the early days, but I did it because I was good at it,
not because I actually genuinely enjoyed it, which actually led me on this path.
(04:24):
Yeah. So, you know, Java development into just asking a lot of questions of why,
you know, being the, you know, the, the junior developer on the team,
I was the first one to get the worst requirements and, you know,
the first one to hear when they didn't work.
So I started asking a lot of questions of why do you want to do this?
(04:45):
You know, what are you trying to achieve?
And then just over the years that that's kind of helped me leapfrog through these different,
you know, of different facets of the technology world as we went from building
stuff and not really thinking about who we were building it for and taking this
mentality of build it and they will come and nobody came to,
you know, what are we trying to help our customers,
(05:07):
our clients, our peers try to achieve and talk about what data will get them there.
And from there, having been on the consulting side and professional services side for so long.
I've had so many difficult conversations where we believed our path was the right path.
Then we did something that in our gut we knew was the wrong way to go. Well, we did it anyways.
(05:33):
Yep. And then suddenly had to have this really difficult conversation about
what was done, why it was done, but then why it was the wrong thing to do.
And so just having enough of those conversations and having enough heartache
and and sleepless nights about preparing for the conversation and then trying
to figure out the right remediation path, I just started asking,
(05:56):
what else could we have done?
What can we do better? There's got to be a better way.
And at the time I started asking those questions, there wasn't really something
that was called data governance.
We just need a better approach. But just over the years, honing that curiosity
and honing that desire to just stabilize our approach and have an easier way of doing things really,
(06:22):
you know, developed my kind of data governance background and approach.
That's great. That's beautiful. Yeah, I like that story.
And as you were talking, I thought about a couple other episodes we could have
and themes that we could put in here,
because it's your whole point of those moments when our clients,
(06:43):
where we're doing things that we know are probably not going
to work and we do them anyway because we're
either told to or there's no other way because
the you know there's other challenges within an organization and their culture
and whatever it may be that limits our ability to do the right thing and i think
that that's that's an interesting conversation because it's either an interesting
(07:05):
conversation with a bunch of
other consultants just to kind of get a a feel for or how do you do that?
And where, like, what, what are we doing something wrong? Right.
I think culturally I can go on a whole tangent here, but I won't.
But the, my, my point is that I think there's so many paradigms in terms of
how like organizations work with consultants, how organizations work internally,
because there's always internal consultants.
(07:26):
I find that fascinating besides work. I know you're an avid pickleball player.
You do some other dragon boat thing. a little bit about your fun times. Oh my gosh, of course.
So yeah, so I am a pickleball player.
I dragged my husband into this crazy world of pickleball as well.
We try to play a couple tournaments a year. So we actually have one coming up.
(07:49):
So we're doing mixed doubles.
Defending our gold medal from the last tournament. Gotta win that.
Yeah, exactly. You gotta bring home the hardware. And on the same day,
I'm also doing a women's doubles tournament and defending our bronze title,
but hoping for a different spot on the podium. I do dragon boat.
(08:11):
So one of my girlfriends, I've known her for 20 something years.
She was an avid dragon boater, had been trying to get me to join her team and
I always had an excuse. use.
And then she just decided to start her own team. That's great.
And yeah, it was awesome. But she needed a number two.
She needed a co-captain. And I just couldn't say no.
(08:34):
And here we are going into our fourth season as a team.
That sounds like a lot of fun. I think I would really enjoy that.
I've seen pictures of those kind of events.
And I always just like a blast. If I'm not down, we might need a sub.
Yeah. You tell me, I'll be there.
But you also have a lot of hobbies. And I think that's who I am too.
(08:55):
Like I have a lot of hobbies.
I pick them up. I drop them off. I pick them up again. And I stay with them for a while.
But I definitely collect hobbies
as well. So I think that's one of the things that we had in common.
Yeah, for sure. So what is your favorite hobby right now?
At the moment, I don't know what the terminology for it is. Reef keeping? I think it's called.
(09:16):
So I have a, some people say it's not a hobby, but once you get into it,
you're like, no, this is definitely a full-time job.
So it's a, I have a saltwater tank. It's small.
And the thing with saltwater is that you're constantly testing the water.
It has to have very specific parameters for calcium, magnesium, phosphate.
I mean, it goes on and on, but I became a scientist. I didn't even know it. It is time consuming.
(09:41):
I'm testing that thing every Every couple of days, I have coral in there.
What's that Pixar movie, Finding Nemo? So there's a character.
Have you watched that movie?
Yeah, there's a character, Darla, who comes up to the tank, and she terrifies
the fish at the dentist's office.
And Darla's here, and they start hiding. So my wife calls me Darla. Oh, no.
(10:04):
Because I'm constantly tinkering with the tank and looking at it,
and she thinks I'm terrifying the coral and the fish. I'm going to have to do pictures.
Yeah. For sure. But you also like to travel. So what do you do with your coral
while you're traveling?
Good question. My mother comes in and there's no testing, obviously,
but my mother comes in and feeds.
(10:25):
So she has it down. There's something for her to do. So she enjoys that.
Cool. Well, how did she get into that, though?
My cousin, when I was growing up in his house,
even in high school, he pulled out a side of the wall on his headboard where
the wall is, pulled out a side of the wall, put a fish tank in there and built,
(10:45):
I think, a hundred gallon fish tank as his headboard.
But I still remember that. And always, from that moment forward,
I was like, I want a fish tank. That's amazing.
Mine's not as impressive. It's 16 gallons. It's very small. I'm not allowed to get anything bigger.
So for now, for now, petitions are in. We'll see what happens.
Now, did you have a waterbed as well? I did, actually. How did you know that?
(11:07):
And I both had waterbeds. That's pretty funny.
Yeah, I think it was a 90s thing, though. I think that having a waterbed was
definitely a 90s, 80s, but definitely 90s.
But yeah, so in terms of me and who I am, so I, I don't know,
I'm, I don't even know what I do anymore. more.
I started my career as a Java. Well, I got hired as a Java developer.
(11:29):
And that's why I said I hate Java. So I got hired as a Java developer,
my first job out of college. And I remember we had like a month and of training.
And within the first few days, I literally got up out of class and went to go
talk to the hiring manager and said, I can't do this, which was in retrospect,
I think about that all the time. And I'm just like, I can't believe I did that.
Like I totally went up there and I was like, I'm not doing this.
(11:52):
Like I want to do something else.
So you guys have JavaScript or something here and literally talked myself into another job.
So within just a few days of hiring, they, they, they changed my team and I
was in a much, we had hundreds of Java developers and maybe that was part of
it. I didn't want to be part of the crowd.
I don't like being part of a crowd. So I became a JavaScript developer,
(12:12):
you know, and back then it was 2000, but late in the a year.
So right before the crash, the dot-com bust back then.
And that job definitely landed me a job with a consulting firm that handled data and analytics.
And back then when you're building data and analytics solutions,
everything was custom digital.
You had to code every single widget on the page, where the widget is.
(12:33):
It was all custom digital pages, right? Things you do today with like React, right? So-
I did that for a while. But in that consulting firm, it was all data analytics,
budgeting, forecasting systems, all financial, mostly financial data.
And so I learned that I learned budgeting, forecasting while I was there.
And then I went off to financial services for a number of years.
(12:55):
And I just constantly just, my thing was, what am I passionate about?
What am I interested in? Almost like a hobby in data and analytics.
So I went from coding to caring about how teams reform, to caring how projects
are run, to caring about.
So my job always changed depending on what I cared about.
And since joining where I am now, Cervelo is the same thing.
(13:17):
My focus changes depending on what I care about.
So right now, I'm really focused on helping our organization and their clients,
primarily our clients, figure out what are the right strategies, how can we help them?
So I'm always at kind of the front end of that conversation,
really driving where we help our clients and how we help them and ensuring that
(13:39):
they understand how we can, you know, help them overall.
So yeah, that's my short end of the story. But yeah, I thought I was going to
be an accountant when I went to college. So I don't know how.
How did you make that leap right from your business background,
your accounting background into starting with technology.
Yeah, I mean, it happened in college.
(14:02):
I changed my focus while I was there. I think we had to take a marketing statistics
class or statistics, yeah, sophomore year.
And I was probably the top student in my class. I loved statistics. I loved data. I was like,
hooked. And I love the problems, right? How do you cluster your prospects?
(14:23):
How do you target your audience correctly, et cetera, and market to them well?
And those business problems really resonated with me. And I was always fascinated by it.
But more importantly, I was fascinated by the data and the statistics and the structure.
And my marketing professor pulled me aside.
I still remember this. He pulls me aside and he goes, what's your focus?
(14:44):
And I I was like accounting. And he's like, why?
Oh no. And it's like accounting. He's like, why? I'm like, ah,
and he goes, have you thought about, he's like, you're doing really well here.
Have you thought about management information systems? And I said,
no, I haven't thought about that. Absolutely not.
I'm not technical. And he goes, yeah, but you like this class.
You're pretty technical. And I had no idea of what I was doing was kind of pseudocode
(15:06):
and, you know, problem solving and all those, those capabilities that you pick
up and you don't even realize you're doing them at the time.
And he, you know, and I said to him, why not marketing?
And he said, well, what's your background? And at the time, I mean,
I went to that school on grants and scholarships. I had no money.
I had told him about my background. And he basically said, if you go into marketing,
(15:27):
you're never going to make money, go into management information systems.
I promise you this is a future.
And quite frankly, you know, looking back 28 years later, he was right, Right.
Right. Like this is the future and we're at the precipice of another technology
change in data and digital in the way we interact with it all. So thank you.
I forgot his name and I wish I remembered it. We're in the middle of it.
(15:50):
We're in a cusp of something new again.
So yeah, I was thinking about that as well. That could be another podcast episode
for us in terms of have we seen this before? Because I feel like we have.
Did you hear about Devon?
So Devin is the first AI that you can tell it that you need like a certain type
(16:10):
of code and it will write it for you. Oh, okay. Yeah.
So people are freaking out over that. I think it's pretty funny.
I'm just like, it's okay.
It's okay. I used to build dashboards from scratch and now Power BI exists.
So I think we've seen that before.
We got to find other things that we can add value with other than coding.
(16:31):
But yeah, there's a whole machine against that. Right.
So yeah oh for sure like i mean we've absolutely
seen this before that's why i ended up as a java
developer there you go and not not
c++ right so so it's
funny because over time i've said you know my background my my educational background
(16:52):
is you know i have my an undergraduate degree in comp sci and math and a master's
degree in software engineering none of which i use but as things were or converting
over from customized code,
a new build every time to low code, no code options.
I'm like, this degree was a waste of paper. Yeah, but still,
(17:15):
I mean, we haven't completely been able to reallocate people's skills to not
have the need for software development or software architects or anything like that.
Yeah, that's still gonna exist. It's just gonna take a different form.
Yeah. That's all. It's nothing to be afraid of.
Amazing. So let's change our focus here.
(17:37):
How about talking about our first podcast or second episode?
Actually, this is our officially our first wild, wild ride.
So we'll see how that goes. But I think our, our first real episode will be around.
I think the title was data by the people for the people for people. people. Yeah.
Yeah. So I'm like super excited about that conversation and we'll think about
(18:00):
whether we want to tackle it or bring another to the fold.
Yeah. That would be interesting for sure.
I think that, you know, as we evolve this podcast, it will definitely be dynamic.
Like this conversation has been not scripted. I don't want to have any scripting
of this or preceding. If people can't need questions ahead of time,
(18:22):
I'm happy to give it to them, but I don't want to to know their answers until we get in the room.
So we can deal with that that way.
And let's have a dynamic conversation, a real conversation.
Again, just like you, I'd much rather have an organic conversation with true
reactions and feedback,
as opposed to like kind of going through a scripted experience where it almost
(18:43):
feels like it's too, too structured and too boxed in.
Yeah, I don't do well in structured and boxed in. I also don't do extremely
well organically. but I'll figure it out.
I'll figure it out. It's, it's okay. It's okay.
Yeah. I'm so excited about this. I'm glad. I'm happy to go on that journey with
you. I think that you're a great thought partner. So very excited.
(19:05):
Oh, same here. Same here. I think we're going to have a lot of fun.
Learn a little something along the way too, which will be great.
Yeah. And if you're still listening and at the end of this episode,
thank you for listening along.
We would love some feedback. Go ahead and give it to us. But yeah.
And if you're interested in being on the podcast, reach out to myself or Anjali,
and we'll definitely throw you on the list.
(19:27):
We're super excited about this and I hope you stick with us. Thank you. Thank you.
Music.
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