Amanda N. Wegner

 

 

COMPUTER SOFTWARE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES’ SERVICE PROS CREATE AND SUPPORT TOMORROW’S TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

 

From big data to the cloud to customized solutions to help businesses of all sizes run smoothly, the computer software and IT service field needs professionals with a wide variety of skill sets and experience levels to answer today’s technological questions. Here, five professionals from four companies share what makes this a great field.

 

FINDING THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

There’s no ignoring “big data,” and Jeffrey Liu and Siddharth “Sidd” Shenoy are both helping Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, push the envelope in this burgeoning space. And both are leading innovation in this space through their involvement in the company’s Technology Associates Program.

 

Started in 2012, Thomson Reuters’ Technology Associates Program (TAP) is for recent Ph.D. graduates with a strong technology background. Over the course of 27 months, an associate works on three different projects based on personal interest and business needs. The program includes a strong leadership component, including 1:1 coaching, group training, and mentoring by senior leaders.

 

“This program stands out as a unique opportunity for Ph.Ds to develop and grow as technology thought leaders,” says Shenoy, a recent TAP graduate and senior product manager of the Product Research group for Eikon, Thomson Reuters’ flagship desktop product for financial markets professionals.

 

“As part of the Product Research team in our Financial & Risk business, my mission is to develop innovative experiences that delight our customers. Through a combination of groundbreaking analytics and visualizations, we aim to simplify the workflow of our customers while testing the limits of what’s possible,” says Shenoy.

 

With the latest enhancements to Eikon, Thomson Reuters launched a number of new analytics and visualization tools. Shenoy specifically helped build the new Macro Explorer tool, an innovative app that allows customers to easily filter and visualize 400 economic indicators for 200 countries across 25 years.

 

“This project was unprecedented, given the size of the data involved and the intuitive, smooth-flowing interactivity it provides,” says Shenoy, who has various degrees, including a Ph.D. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Over in Thomson Reuters’ IP & Science business, Liu is making his way through the TAP program and helping drive technology innovation and demonstrate thought leadership by conducting applied research in big data to solve emerging business questions, coordinating and evaluating of various projects, and collaborating with technology and business teams across the company.

 

“Big data is undoubtedly transforming the way we make key business decisions, creating new business models, and revolutionizing many industries,” says Liu, who first worked at Thomson Reuters as a Technology Summer Associate in 2012 and returned to join TAP as a full-time employee in August 2013.

 

Currently, Liu is working on Thomson Reuters’ Emerging Research Identification Project, where he worked with a customer-facing team in the Scholarly & Scientific Research (SSR) segment to take a data-driven approach to identifying and annotating emerging research frontiers. Potential uses for this project include research funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation, that want to know the next big thing to invest in and university administrators who need to wisely budget research funding and recruit faculty members, says Liu, who has a Ph.D. in statistics from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

 

“To tackle the challenges, we fully leveraged our rich data and state-of-the-art machine learning, text mining, and network analytics technologies,” says Liu. “We have made good progress toward automated research topics discovery, topic annotation, and trending analysis. My business partners are thrilled about the potential impact to our customers.”

 

While Liu previously worked in both IT and the financial industry, working at Thomson Reuters has far exceeded those experiences, he says. “None of the experience was nearly comparable to the whole package Thomson Reuters offers to me: handson research and technology development, exposure to key decision-making processes, training of business acumen and leadership, collaboration with the most brilliant talent as well as networking with senior executives,” says Liu.

 

With approximately 60,000 employees in more than 100 countries, diversity and inclusion is a key business imperative for Thomson Reuters, including diversity training and new metrics for managers to ensure they are developing diverse teams and leaders, plus a number of Business Resource Groups that encourage professional development and advance the cause of employees who are historically underrepresented in the corporate environment.

 

To succeed in technology, quanti-tative and analytical skills such as mathematics, statistics, and coding are essential, says Liu. However, he en courages students and young professionals in quantitative fields to think more broadly about the business context of their work. For example, who are the customers and what do they need most? What’s the current product offering and what are the pain points? How does the technology you’re developing help improve the products and eventually benefit customers? “Giving some thoughts to these questions may help us better see the forest — the business we’re serving — for the trees — detailed technologies.”

 

Shenoy adds that curiosity and a willingness to stand strong are also important.

 

“It's very import ant to be inquisitive, to tackle challenges that others shy away from and not to be afraid of failure,” he comments. “The people who are the most successful in a technology-related career are those who never stop learning and easily adapt to new trends.”

 

And Thomson Reuters is a great place to be to do just this and lead the data revolution.

 

“Thomson Reuters is the most trusted provider of information, be it financial, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property, and science or news,” says Shenoy. “With the rise of big data, our customers are drowning in a sea of information and have turned to us to help make sense of it all. This has created many exciting opportunities that call for innovative solutions to a wide range of problems.”

 

BUILDING BENEFITS AT AUTODESK

“Basically if you can imagine the hub of a wheel with all the spokes going around, my team touches almost every aspect of Autodesk as a whole in the same way,” says Armundo Darling, mechanical, electrical & plumbing (MEP) engineering and fabrication senior technical marketing manager for Autodesk. Darling and his team work with product managers, legal, finance, sales, and other teams in the company, taking their information to create training materials, dataset models, sales materials, web copy, images, and videos to better articulate the business value of Autodesk products to its end customers.

 

Located in Mill Valley, CA, Auto desk is a world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software and services.

 

“We help create what’s needed to help our sales force, channel partners, and technical specialists be evangelists for Autodesk and our products,” says Darling.

 

For instance, he recently finished writing Web feature copy for several products available in the upcoming 2015 Autodesk Building Design Suite software. “It’s not just about writing words aligned with the images, but explaining what a feature does and what the benefit is to the customer. By identifying what the benefits are, a reader will be more inclined to investigate and make the investment, because we’ve better outlined how it fits their needs or solves their problems.”

 

While Darling works in marketing, his engineering experience has been critical to his success at Autodesk. A MEP engineering professional by trade, he worked as an engineering assistant while serving in the Air Force and held a variety of engineering positions, including a brief stint as a drafter at an aeronautical engineering firm. With all his experience, it was his ability to develop and communicate a workaround to an issue with Autodesk software and an opportunity to speak at Autodesk One Team Conference as a customer that landed Darling a job with the company in August 2005.

 

“I’ve always considered myself a problem solver and after communicating several workarounds I’d developed for a challenge Autodesk faced, I was asked to do an article for them that won an award,” explains Darling. From there, he was asked to present at Autodesk’s annual One Team Conference and eventually to interview with the company.

 

“I thought I would be challenged working with marketing, but because I understood the software, industry, and the technical side, and because I was a CAD manager, I was used to training others and explaining very technical elements in understandable ways,” says Darling. “It can be very easy to up-level this and explain what something does in very technical terms, but in marketing, it’s about the benefit. For instance, if you can click something two times instead of seven, that’s productivity, saving the company time and money. That’s what I think and write about, and my engineering background is critical to that.”

 

What makes Autodesk a great place to work, says Darling, is the people.

 

“They’re very personable, passionate, and driven to solve problems and do the best they can for the customer,” says Darling. “Coming here, you come to a family where your differences aren’t something to make you stand out, but help you be part of the group.” The drive to solve problems is critical to success at Autodesk, says Darling. “Here, it’s about drive and really trying to think outside the box and truly being a problem solver … that’s the kind of attitude we’re looking for.”

 

GETTING SOLUTIONS UP TO SPEED AT CONCUR

As technical consultant for Concur Technologies, a leading provider of travel and expense management solutions, Al Drears helps get the software up and running for clients.

 

“We work with project managers to help prepare our software solution for clients,” says Drears. “We do a lot of testing, help set up databases, and get the solution up to speed and prepped to go into production.”

 

It’s a lot of problem-solving and troubleshooting, adds Drears, who joined the company in August 2012 after finding the job on Craig’s List. “It’s a databased job, and we work very closely with the project managers to ensure the client gets exactly what they need.”

 

While the computer software and IT services field can seem out of reach for many, Drears says it’s actually a very open field that employs people with varied professional experience. Drears himself has an undergraduate degree in political science, did some graduate work in communications, obtained an MBA, and worked as a daycare teacher before taking an internship in the IT field.

 

“I think it’s very important for people to understand that you don’t need a major in computer science in this line of work. Yes, you have to have a technical background, but most of my colleagues started in technical support and moved on from there.”

 

And while IT and computer software is a diverse field, Drears is passionate about the need to attract more African-Americans to the industry.

 

“People of color who do the job I do are kind of rare,” says Drears. “I think there is a perception about these types of positions, especially among African-Americans, that they are for people who are white or Asian and that you have to be an engineer. I really want that perception to change. There are opportunities out there … people like me just need to go for them.”

 

A global company with almost 4,000 employees, Bellevue, WA-headquartered Concur takes diversity seriously.

 

“From our leadership down, there’s a strong call to keep Concur a diverse, well-rounded workplace,” says Drears. “I love the ability to work with all kinds of people from all over the world.”

 

Concur is also serious about ensuring the employees are passionate about the product, the company, and the mission. To achieve this, the company holds quarterly launches, which are gala events that serve as an orientation to Concur.

 

“They go out of the way to make sure everyone understands what Concur does, and, with the launch events, you leave with a good sense of what Concur is about and what is expected of you,” says Drears. “They really go out of the way to make sure you know what kind of organization you’ve joined.”

 

In addition to facilitating a deep connection and understand with your company, empathy is another important trait for success in this field.

 

“When working in a technical field, you get caught up in technology, but the purpose of this is to serve someone,” notes Drears. “Empathy goes a long way to providing topnotch customer service and will carry any young professional a long way.”

 

BUILDING INTUIT’S ROADMAP

These days, people and businesses can do just about anything in the cloud, including their accounting. Elba Linscott, a product line manager for Intuit, helps ensure that development of the company’s newest cloudbased products and programs goes smoothly.

 

“As a product manager, I am responsible for making a roadmap of new products and programs at Intuit,” says Linscott. “It’s my job to focus on what we’re going to be doing, how we’re going to make it happen, the resources and people needed, and making sure everyone is aligned and all driving toward one common goal: to get it done.”

 

Founded in 1983, Intuit is the maker of QuickBooks, the top-rated small business accounting software, and has more than 8,500 employees. Its headquarters are in Mountain View, CA.

 

Most recently, Linscott worked on a program to automate usage reporting and billing for public cloud hosting. The outcome, she says, allows Intuit employees to have visibility into their public cloud hosting use and costs.

 

Linscott, who joined Intuit about two years ago after working at Cisco, specifically does product and program management for private and public cloud hosting. She began her career in sales engineering, which included supporting sales with demonstrations, presentations, and answering technical questions, and moved to IT ten years ago.

 

“One reason I made the switch to IT was to get a lot closer to new technologies coming out,” says Linscott.

 

That includes public cloud technology, which Linscott started working on in earnest four years ago. The public cloud is a shared online environment where multiple users, whether individual people or businesses, all have a slice of a server; by contrast, private cloud computing involves hardware, storage, and a network dedicated to a single user or company.

 

“Intuit is rapidly moving to provide our financial services on the cloud via SaaS, or ‘software as a service.’ So instead of inserting a disk on your computer or through a local network, you can access the online application instantly on your computer.”

 

Adds Linscott, “When I found an interesting position at Intuit, I pursued it immediately because Intuit is the No. 1 best place to work in the San Francisco Bay area, and No. 8 in the best 100 companies to work, according to Forbes.”

 

One reason Intuit is a great place to work is its commitment to building community, inside the company and out. Intuit has a number of employee networks. Linscott is a member of the women’s network, and the Bay area leader for Latinos Connect @ Intuit. In this role, she helps plan professional development opportunities, community events, and more to get Latino employees active and engaged in the company.

 

In addition, she says, a key value at Intuit is caring and giving back, “which empowers employees to volunteer and have meaningful impact in the community,” she says.

 

To succeed in the field, it’s important to have a technical background to understand and speak the IT language. “For instance, even if your work has nothing to do in building or configuring a server, you need to know what a server is and what it is for,” says Linscott.

 

It also helps to be a fast learner to keep on top of fast-changing technologies and advances.

 

Linscott offers a closing thought, which is the best piece of career advice she ever received and something that is applicable to any professional in any field: “build and maintain, with an emphasis on maintain, a good personal brand.”