From Art to Engineering - Hannah Cross

00:00

... and it's such a cliche and I don't know how else to say it, but sort interviewing the company you're applying to is such an important mindset to get into.

00:08

You get to hear the stock answers and then you get to hear the genuine answer.

00:11

And maybe it's about just having the one question you always ask at an interview. What is it that would make the difference for you, knowing the answer to this question?

00:20

So, I've come into tech as a career changer, so when I finished school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I really liked art so I followed that path for 10 years, working in the art sector, charitable sector, and although there are elements of it that I really enjoyed, I was constantly lagged by this feeling that I wasn't really doing what made me happy.

00:42

And so, there was a lot of soul searching that went on, and then particularly, five years ago, when I was really struggling and I was progressing a little bit in my career, but I was becoming very unhappy for multiple reasons and I was introduced to the idea that I could actually go and explore something that I'd been interested in previously but never thought I could pursue, which was programming.

01:08

When I was at school, that wasn't really something that I thought would be something that was available to me because I didn't really like doing maths and you had to do maths to do a comp science degree and all of this and I just didn't want to go down that route, but so thankfully the world has changed and there are wonderful places called bootcamps where you can go and retrain and so that's what I ended up doing about five years ago, and that's led me to a career that I'm finding a million times more fulfilling and a lot more interesting, but bizarrely using a lot of the same skills in the day-to-day, so that...

01:45

Yeah. What are the similarities between your art background and your day-to-day now?

01:53

Fundamentally, I think it's about people, the people I work with. I mean, this sounds really corporate, but the stakeholder management, as it were, the sort of getting people on side, convincing people that something is a good idea, helping people problem-solve or find the optimum solution for something, providing alternative solutions, getting a team working together and actually making something, producing something positive at the end of it. These sort of...

02:24

And I guess you could really argue that these things happen in any industry, in any sector, really, but what's been really great is that I can apply those skills of kind of working with people and facilitating people and their best work in these two different ways and actually, working with engineers, software engineers in particular, has been a million times more rewarding for me personally, because there are lots of other aspects to the role that I find really great, but the reason that I was able to progress to engineering manager at my company relatively quickly, I guess, is because I had this passionate interest in developing and growing with other people, and that's something that I've always had in any job that I've always tried to bring to any role I've had, regardless of what sector I've been in.

03:15

Would you mind exploring the difference between management in art and the art of management of technology?

03:25

It's probably a little bit easier for me to talk about the things that I like about managing in tech, because I think it's something that I've spent perhaps more time thinking about, so I'm able to articulate a little bit better.

03:36

I think there's definitely, putting aside a lot of the kind of toxic cultures that people are aware of and exist within the kind of so-called "male-dominated tech industry". Putting that to one side for a moment, in terms of the kind of attitude to work and attitude to failure, I think the tech industry is waves ahead of so many other industries, because fundamentally, if you're a software engineer or a programmer or web developer, failure is part and parcel of how you progress, it's sort of acknowledged and accepted as an important part of how you do better or how you make a product or how you get to wherever you need to get to.

04:18

And I suppose embracing failure and mistakes and almost actively seeking those things out really changes how people respond to situations, respond to management and interact with management of resources and people in a way that I think in the art sector, my experience was that failure was not an option, you had to get things right the first time.

04:46

The culture of learning wasn't quite so steady across the industry, and it really was individual-dependent, whereas I find, even in the most competitive of... Or, at least, I hear from other people, even the most competitive of engineering environments, there's still that thread of, "You learn because you failed at something, you made a mistake and that's how you learn." Like even Google, something stupid, a stupid percentage of their projects fail, but that then leads them to that one gold dust product that they can release to the world and everyone loves it.

05:23

Yeah. Is this, in part, because, in some way, an artist is relying on moments of genius, fleeting ideas that pop into their head or perhaps an individual talent, whereas software engineering is this odd blend of both that, but you do it as a team sport too.

05:43

Potentially. I think there may be elements of that. I guess to expand a little bit more, so my role in the arts was as a fundraiser, so I wasn't an artist myself, but I was very much about trying to raise money so that artists could do their best work and yeah, there are definitely artists whose practices are very individual, solo activities and there's definitely a pressure and a culture that emerges from that of kind of perfection, I guess, and sort of constantly seeking the potentially unattainable.

06:15

There are artists and collectives that work as groups, but then, again, it's this constant sort of seeking of truth or the sort of the "final thing", I suppose, that moment. There's a pinnacle, I suppose, that they're aiming for, whereas maybe in the tech industry, there's a little bit around MVPs and sort of, "It's okay if you don't have every corner polished just yet, and we'll keep iterating forwards."

06:40

Having said that, artists will start with something at one point and then maybe they'll revisit in their lifetime and recreate something, modify something, change their view, adapt their practice, same way that musicians do, so there's definitely an overlap. I think there's the way that artists and programmers think that definitely sort of intersects in terms of creative solutions and problem-solving, but I think the sort of infrastructure around those creative practitioners is perhaps slightly more spiky in the arts, whereas, in tech, I feel the sort of open-source culture, the kind of... It's not as sort of protective either. Everyone wants to learn from each other. There's some elements of protected technology, but anyone can learn JavaScript, anyone can learn Python, they're not hidden away for only the elite to have access to.

07:39

Was there a tipping point that moved you from one to the other?

07:42

Yes and no. I think it had been something that was building for a while, but it was only really when a friend introduced me to the concept of a bootcamp, she told me, "Oh, my friend has recently done this thing and Hannah, I know you're quite interested in websites and coding." And I was like, "Oh, I didn't know this existed." And so then it started ticking and that was a couple of years before I decided to make the change.

08:02

Toxic work culture was essentially what pushed me to make the final decision. I ended up in a job where it wasn't a healthy place to be at all. Was a bit of bullying, a little bit of intimidation. It was not a very nice place to work. That sort of made me realize, "I just need to change everything now. I can't keep doing this."

08:25

Yeah. Sounds like it was related not just to that job or that company, but more to a more institutionalized problem to make you completely change industries.

08:37

Yeah, yeah, there was definitely something around that.

08:38

I think I was also just in the wrong job, like I was in an industry that I loved, but I'd somehow funnelled myself into this fundraising role. In particular, it was sort of individual giving. So I was dealing, organizing private events for wealthy donors and it was very kind of... It required a certain mindset and skill set and I found it very draining. It drained me of energy as opposed to being something that gave me lots of energy, and at that point, I'd kind of gone so far down a certain path that I didn't know where else to go within the sector. There was nowhere else for me to go other than continue down that path, so I decided to just scrap the path and find a new one.

09:21

And that sort of led me to the bootcamp, then a startup that didn't do so well and wasn't so great culturally either. So I'm under no illusions that the tech sector is perfect or anything like that, but now I've found a company where I really feel like people are valued, learning is valued, and all the things that I think are great about the tech sector are embodied in this company, and therefore it means that I can do the work that I enjoy in an environment that supports me to do that work, so that feels like that kind of holy grail that perhaps I've been searching for for ages.

09:58

You must have learned a lot about how to choose where to work, having gone through those really tricky experiences where you proactively, once before you've retrained, and then once after you retrained, choosing to go into a work environment that doesn't work out in the way that you want. What have you learned from both of those experiences?

10:20

The simple answer is that I've learned what I don't like. I'm definitely very grateful to those experiences, even though it was horrible at the time, because it makes me value the good things when they come along. I think the main thing I've realized is that for me, I do my best not to take work home with me anymore.

10:41

I try not to get emotionally invested, not because I don't care about the work I do or the company I'm working for, but I sort of give myself a fence where I say, "Only let yourself get this bothered this far, because at the end of the day, this is a job, this is a business and you have a life outside of this that is way more important, ultimately." So a bit of perspective, I guess, because previously I think I let myself get embroiled in the emotional turmoil of work and work politics and sort of drama with colleagues and things like that. So there's one element, sort of, kind of create... I found my boundary, which allows me to invest in the company and invest in the work without it taking over my entire life.

11:23

The other element, I guess, is it's about just treating people well and people feeling supported, and I think, for me, if I was looking for another job at the moment, my top priority would be, "How do they treat their staff? What are the things they think about? What are the messages this company sends around how they value their staff? Is it a check-in at 8:30 and everyone's clocked in and everyone's monitored at every minute? Or is it, these are adults and they can do their own job, as long as they're doing the job that needs to be done, they can manage their own time? Do they explicitly talk about wellbeing? Are they aware of the fact that we've been through a pandemic and people want to know that their employers care about them as much as themselves? Do they have a budget for learning? Do they care about helping people progress within the company, or is it a sort of, you come in and then you have to leave in order to progress?"

12:15

Those kind of things around making people feel valued, I think, are my top priority within any company. And then that's also taught me, it doesn't matter what the project is, within reason. If the company treats you well and the mission of the company is vaguely aligned to what you'd like, it doesn't have to be this... You don't have to narrow your field so much to what... I think you can have such an amazing time and learn so much from people just from being in an environment where everyone gets to have a voice and feel valued.

12:45

Some of those telltale signs that you spoke about there are ones that are obvious. You can kind of guess them during an interview process. If they, for example, have a learning and development budget, you can tell. It is so difficult to know if they do truly promote people internally, or if culture exists five meters from your desk or kind of five milliseconds from Slack or wherever, those things are more tricky to understand. What was the difference when you were figuring out whether to work at [inaudible 00:13:18], compared to where you've been in the past? How were you able... Were you able to know, when you were deciding between the two, whether one would be better than the other?

13:28

Really good question and I definitely don't think I would say I knew 100% when I accepted the job in [inaudible 00:13:36], but I would say that I had an initial phone call with the VP of Engineering at the time and when I described to him the kind of work I was doing and the way I was doing it at my previous job, his reaction was like, "That sounds awful. We won't do it like that." That made me feel validated in the first instance that my experience in this job was definitely not one that is the norm. It made me think, "Okay, there's somebody that thinks differently to what I'm experiencing now out there." So that was a good encouraging step for me, somebody that... Because I was kind of worried, this was my first job out of bootcamp, I was like, "Are all tech jobs like this? Have I made a huge mistake?"

14:16

Yeah, so you don't know.

14:16

I don't know. Exactly. And so having someone go, "Oh, no, we've got a different way of thinking about this" was a good first step to me thinking, "Okay, this might be worth trying." And then, ultimately, if you are able to get further down the interview process and you meet team members, I think really owning those interviews if possible and not just thinking of it as, "Oh my God, they're going to grill me on so much stuff", but really asking questions you want to know the answers to.

14:42

And it's such a cliche and I don't know how else to say it, but sort of interviewing the company you're applying to is such an important mindset to get into, I think, and really worth it. So sort of asking them about the last time they promoted someone or asking them about their own journey through the company or what the last team event was that they had, or... I'm sure there's even better questions than that, these are just sort of off the top of my head, but using that time, and because even if that job doesn't work out, it might be because it didn't work out on their side or for your side, but you've learned so much about how a company might answer it, and you start to then learn about, as you go through different interviews, because there's always more than a few, aren't there?

15:29

Sort of, you get to hear the stock answers and then you get to hear the genuine answers and it's kind of worthwhile to then have your own barometer of, "Oh, okay. This company has said something that I've never heard said before. This might mean that it's actually genuine or it's thinking a bit differently to everyone else. That might be something I want to explore."

15:48

Where did you get the confidence to interview the interviewer? Because it's pretty scary for a lot of people.

15:54

It was desperation.

15:58

Really?

15:58

Ironically. I think, when I was just thinking, "I don't know where else to go, I don't know what else to do, I want to be happy in my job, but I'm just not finding it." You sort of just go, "How else am I going to find out if I don't ask?"

16:12

You've just got to do it.

16:13

But I know that that doesn't help everyone and not everyone would necessarily be feeling quite the levels of desperation I did in that particular moment, and so confidence is definitely something that you have to work on.

16:25

And maybe it's about just having the one question you always ask at an interview. What is it that would make the difference for you, knowing the answer to this question? And just having one question to start with. And I think people will be surprised how well-received it is from an interviewer's perspective when somebody asks something that is actually trying to dig deeper.

16:49

Because I, as somebody who has been doing a lot of interviewing lately, really relish the moment when a candidate asks me a question I'm not expecting or gives me the opportunity to talk about something a little bit more interesting or meaningful beyond the sort of basics, because the basics, you can cover over and over again throughout the application process and the interview process, but to be able to have that moment of sort of connection of like, "Ah, so this is something that's important to you. I've got an opportunity to tell you how we can deliver that for you as a candidate." And it's sort of... It's quite nice, actually, so in terms of trying to encourage people to feel more confident, I think 9 times out of 10, I think interviewers actually quite like those questions, those questions where they a bit grilled and get a little bit more sort of... And also a bit more of a steer on what the candidate is actually looking for.

17:42

You said, earlier, something along the lines of "Forget the product, join an environment that isn't toxic." Basically, but it's good. How seriously did you mean that?

17:55

I suppose in terms of seriousness level, it's not 100% serious, but I definitely don't think, for me, at least, it is my driving factor anymore because I tried that approach of, "I love art so I'm going to just go follow art wherever it'll take me." And it ended up not really taking me somewhere I really wanted to be, and so for me, I think the environment has such a huge influence on how you enjoy something or how you perceive something that I would say that that should be the same amount of importance or maybe a touch more important, because also, that then leads you to experiences that perhaps you weren't anticipating or discovering products or missions or business models that you wouldn't have found otherwise.

18:44

But I agree that there's a certain degree of, you have to be interested in the thing that you are working with, because that's often one of the things that unites you with your colleagues, I suppose, that shared mission or shared vision, so it was perhaps a little bit exaggerated to say, "forget the project", per se, but I think some people perhaps emphasize that too much, especially early on in their careers as the thing that they're trying to filter on, and I think perhaps maybe adding a few more filters and not making that your primary one is actually beneficial.

19:21

Do you think that you're a better software engineer and a better engineering manager because you have experience in something very different? And if so, why?

19:35

I think the fact that I have experienced different things allows me to see problems or challenges a little bit differently. I think that would be the same for anyone who's got a lot of experiences under their belt. I think that helps me when I'm working with my team. For example, there's a bunch of different personalities in the team that all have their sort of focuses and strengths and sort of desires to grow within the company, and being someone that has seen slightly different ways of working, I can offer slightly different advice or different perspectives that they won't have experienced themselves, and I think that can be helpful.

20:23

I think the fact that I've chosen to come into this career as an adult and it's not something that I've done fresh out of university, for example, gives me a slightly different attitude towards how I sort of treat problems or challenges as they come up, as well. They're not a surprise in the same way or they don't cause me as much stress in the same way, which I think is beneficial for kind of trying to create a sort of calm and supportive environment for the team.

20:55

I'd like to think it all helps me do better at my job. You'd have to ask the team themselves whether it actually is. But I think, for me, meeting anyone with a sort of a multitude of experiences is always fascinating and it always just adds a little bit more, and this idea of sort of having one single path through your life, I think, although admirable and works for some people, absolutely, I think, for a lot of people, it just allows you to be a little bit more experimental, a little bit more confident. The more sort of different things you try, the more ways you can come at a challenge or a problem or a project and the outcomes are just a little bit more interesting, I think.

21:44

How do you know when you've left a decision too long? And when you look back, do you think that you made the decision too late to move? Or is that just the wrong way of looking about it?

21:59

I definitely don't think I made the decision too late or anything like that. I think I made the decision when I needed to make the decision.

22:09

The whole experience of changing careers has actually taught me that there's no such thing as too early, too late, or... There's no expiry date on this. Lifelong learning has been a concept for a long time, is gaining traction and momentum as we go, who's to say, in another sort of 10 years, I won't decide, "Actually, now I'm ready to try something else", and that's okay and actually really exciting to think about. It doesn't mean that I'm dissatisfied right now, but I think it suddenly makes the sort of possibilities of what you could do for your career, for your job a lot more exciting, a lot more open.

22:54

Sometimes you're going to be all about your career and it's going to be all you want to do and all you want to focus on and really get really good at something and that's amazing, and then there's going to be other times when that's just exhausting and all you really want to do is have a job so that you can spend time with your friends or go on holiday or explore a hobby, which then might evolve into something that you then move into, but who knows?

23:13

And all of those things combined, I don't think you can have a timeline on, and I think the biggest thing that I felt as a student when I graduated was this pressure that you had to figure it all out now, like even when I was doing my GCSEs, there was a pressure of, "You need to know what A-Levels you want to do now." And it was like, "But what if I don't like them in two years' time, three years' time? What if I've chosen something that's going to set me down the wrong path? And the biggest thing is that actually, although it's important to do stuff you'd like, that's actually not going to stop you from changing your mind later, like it's totally legitimate and okay to change your mind, and in some cases recommended, highly.

23:57

As you shared your story, a theme keeps coming up, which is this kind of learning, and I guess there are two areas that popped up most evidently to me. There's learning that you can move career and you can do something different and you can start completely afresh, but then there's also the unique way that you've learned through a bootcamp and how you've kind of picked up a brand new skill through a different way of learning. Has that altered, at all, who you hire now? Like, is there a... "Bias" is the wrong word, but do you see it any differently?

24:43

I think it's influenced how I think about hiring, definitely. I think it just goes to show that your CV doesn't necessarily reflect your drive to do well. It gives you a timeline and it gives you maybe some brand names of universities or companies and sort of vaguely what somebody's responsibilities are, but it's not necessarily a tell-all, and in often cases can be misleading.

25:16

I think what I try and focus on is sort of, how engaged with trying this thing is this person? How motivated are they to give this a go and really embrace the opportunities that this job offers? And what are the things that they feel that they can really bring from whatever experience they have, which I guess, in theory, that's what you'd hope everyone is doing, but I guess what I mean by that is I'm not looking for a university degree, I'm not looking for sort of lots of certificates or lots of awards, although those things are very commendable and demonstrate a lot of hard work in their own way.

26:02

That's not the sole thing that's going to indicate to me that somebody is potentially a really great candidate, and I think it's perfectly possible for people of varying ages, backgrounds to come at, especially a job like programming, I think you can come at it from so many different ways and it would be shortsighted to not explore all those different routes in when you're hiring somebody. So yeah, definitely, definitely influences, but hopefully I think it broadens the pool of people that I would hopefully consider instead of narrowing.

26:38

And if you were on the other side of that interview and you were someone who had just changed career in the way that you did, what would be the guidance that you'd give them in order to help them A, make this decision, but also B, work with you at [inaudible 00:26:58]?

26:58

The thing I struggled with when I was applying for jobs was really pulling together the previous experience I had and sort of articulating that in a way that sort of said, "Okay, so I've only done X amount of time on programming, but these are all the other skills that I actually already have ready to go." And really sort of selling that part of you, because that's a super important part of you, the fact that you've already worked in an office environment, for example, or the fact that you've already led a project or you've maybe managed people, or even just anything that you've done in a work environment is so valuable because that knowledge of stuff that isn't instantly taught, that's something that you gain through experience and that experience can be super valuable, and especially in engineering teams, I think when a huge part of it is team-building and working well with your colleagues, because it is a team effort. It's very rarely a solo effort when it comes to engineering teams.

27:57

So being able to demonstrate that you can work with a group successfully and also really sort of leaning on the fact that you just dedicated three months of your life when you could have been doing paid work somewhere, you dedicated three months of your life to learn something new. That's not a small feat, you've really committed. So really sort of pushing those aspects of your skill set and sort of being proud of that and really sort of engaging with that part of your work story, I think, is really great.

28:33

And then I suppose the other thing is, again, pulling out that strand of commitment to learning. I think you're right to sort of note that I've been kind of coming back to that theme over and over again. For me, I think that's what drives me and that's what makes me think that the career paths that I've taken are so worth it because I've constantly learned something and I think a lot of humans really value and feel rewarded when they learn new things and progress to new experiences, and so if you can demonstrate that aptitude and that appetite and ability to kind of learn and find ways to learn effectively and quickly and yeah, sort of with engagement, then I think that's really sort of the fundamentals that you need.

29:22

Thank you, Hannah, for sharing your work story, and no doubt, if I was in a similar situation to the one that you were in before, it would have really helped me, so thank you.