The Career Journey from Data Engineer to Tech Leader
Introduction
Currently, Baris McKenna Ishida is helping to develop a data platform as his first foray into the data sector.
A computer aficionada, Baris has always loved tinkering with devices, changing out hardware, writing programs, contributing to open-source projects, even fixing the bugs that will inevitably crop up.
"So when it came time for university, there was no choice but computer science," he explained.
Now, he has the opportunity to explore a new avenue in an increasingly data-driven space and work directly on projects.
"While working in banking, HR, security, payment processing and basically any other industry I've worked in, the management, throughput, privacy and optimisation of data handling have all been interesting challenges that I've been involved with, but without having the opportunity to really step in and build solutions directly.
"Thanks to the boom in AI and insight-driven decision- making I think we're all becoming more and more aware that the modern world depends on data, so moving into ensuring that supply of quality and reliable data seemed like a natural step both for my career and sense of curiosity."
What's the best thing about working in this area?
Well, from a practical point of view, you're never going to be short of employment opportunities. The data sector is only growing and there's more and more need for skilled people.
From a personal point of view, I've always enjoyed working on the cutting edge of the industry and with the growing importance of AI and general data- based decision- making it seems like the place for innovation is here.
The variation of problems that need solutions is really unlike other software I've worked with because the constant volume of data and the computer required for processing it, along with the challenge of getting the handling and optimisation correct, leaves a unique design space that makes simple things require novel solutions.
What's the most exciting development you've witnessed in your sector since you first began?
I think it would be hard to argue for anything other than the unexpectedly fast growth of AI. It brings a swathe of interesting problems to solve around data quality, privacy, throughput, basically everything needs to be looked at in a different lens.
We've recently released some major AI tools in the AI Assistant and Workhuman iQ, which we believe will make it much easier than before to get rich insights from your own data. Our AI assistant leverages the world's first recognition program.
There are some controversies around the usage of AI, particularly when it comes to art or replacing systems that already work well without having any AI input, and I think I'm largely on the side of "don't put AI into everything, especially art," but for this kind of number crunching, comparing data against other data endlessly until you find interesting correlations? I think AI really does make a massive difference and is the right tool for the job.
Have there been aspects of the job you struggle to get to grips with?
The cost of getting performance wrong is much higher than other areas I’ve worked in. When you’re dealing with large quantities of data, any optimisations you fail to implement correctly can end up costing millions down the line.
In the beginning I found this to be a challenge, particularly as the optimisations require deep knowledge in multiple domains like the databases to ingest from, the specific tools for moving large amounts of data, the tools for transformation and the orchestrators suitable for these heavy pipelines.
Over time you get used to it though and it becomes a good excuse to update assumptions you had on best practices that seemed solved.
Has mentorship or coaching been important in your career?
Yes, hugely. In every organisation I’ve been a part of, I’ve always looked for someone I could learn from. Ideally someone that’s in a position I’d like to be in within the next three to five years.
In a previous role, the director of engineering and I had a shared interest in breaking ChatGPT and would have weekly one-on-ones which were largely spent sharing our novel approaches to getting around the new safeguards that would be put in place by OpenAI.
Sounds a bit silly, but it really taught me a lot about how these LLMs work and why they’re incredible for some things and have this huge range of abilities like being able to construct images or video, while at the end of the day just being machines that pick the most likely next word in any sentence.
Right now I’d say I have a mentor in my director as well and this time I’m really getting a lot out of the interactions by bouncing my ideas off them and taking their feedback on soft skills in terms of knowing when to stand my ground. It turns out always isn’t necessarily optimal and knowing when to take a more diplomatic approach, compromising on things where I might have a different opinion, but ultimately don’t matter hugely in the long run, has been important.
I really can’t recommend enough that you should find people you really respect and try to learn from them, whether you have a formal mentor situation or not.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about a career in your area?
Go for it. I don’t think there’s a career that has a better quality of life to salary ratio, especially considering the general flexibility of tech roles compared to those in finance or other industries.
I think it is harder to break into than it was when I started, but that’s due to how good a field it is and the popularity going up because of it. If you’re looking to get in for the first time at the beginning of your career, the generic but correct advice is to work on projects as much as possible, particularly open-source ones where your contributions are going to be public and you’ll have people and project standards to learn from.
Beyond working on projects, I’d also advise being open to different roles to get your foot in the door. If you have always wanted to be a Python developer but have no tech industry experience, then great, go take that front-end dev role, network engineer role or QA role and so on.
In the reality of the market it’s most important to get closer and closer to your goal rather than holding out for the perfect one from the get go. Your career will be long and there’ll be lots of opportunities over time.
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About the author
Baris McKenna Ishida
Baris McKenna Ishida is currently a Manager of Engineering at Workhuman.