We spoke with Workhuman’s Baris McKenna Ishida about his role in a data-driven industry and the advice he has for like-minded professionals.
Currently, Baris McKenna Ishida, an engineering manager at human capital management firm Workhuman, is helping to develop a data platform as his first foray into the data sector.
A computer aficionado, he 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 variety of problems that need solutions is really unlike other software I’ve worked with because the constant volume of data and the compute 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.
From Workhuman, 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-specific language model, making it easy to surface profound insights on skills, performance, culture and DEI, as well as recommend strategic action to solve your most elusive pain points all powered by the unique data from your own 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.
What’s been the hardest thing you’ve had to face in your career and how did you overcome it?
I think like many people in the industry, it would have to be the downturn in the tech economy following the Covid-19 boom and the layoffs that came with that. It’s always very hard seeing people you’ve worked with day in and day out end up leaving due to circumstances outside of their control.
It’s an unfortunate reality of the tech industry and how deeply integrated with high volatility stocks a lot of the major tech companies are. I try to deal with it as much as I can by helping those affected where possible, with things like shoring up their CVs, working on mentoring for new skills that are hot in the market, generally just giving as much advice as I can from my own experiences.
If you had the power to change anything within the STEM sector, what would that be?
I would push for more of a focus on purely trying to build good products that help fill needs and grow long-term sustainable businesses that can do some good, with less focus on short- or medium-term shareholder value.
As I mentioned above, a lot of tech companies are deeply integrated with high-volatility stock and a ‘line must go up’ mindset that leads to major focus on annual or even quarterly financial growth. While this is an understandable part of being a profitable business, when handled badly it means cost-cutting or tech debt pile-up that leads to major long-term losses which ultimately make those short-term gains harder and harder to come by.
I strongly believe that building reliable, high-quality products that solve genuine problems and provide a good customer experience are the key to long-term growth. If you’re sacrificing any of those in order to meet quarterly goals, I think it’s almost always a mistake. The one exception I suppose would be if you really are on the edge and need those short-term figures just to keep the company alive, but honestly that’s not where you want to be anyway.
‘I don’t think there’s a career that has a better quality of life to salary ratio’
Which of your personality traits makes you best suited to your job and this sector?
It feels strange to say it about yourself, but I think I have a lot of empathy which helps me to push for sustainable development practices that protect our teams from some of the common pitfalls in tech such as crunch. I lead a team of nearly 10 people and this trait is so important to have in a role like this. It also ensures that your team is supported in their own growth and development also.
While I haven’t always succeeded in those ambitions, I have always tried to make sure that I make up for the mistakes by giving back more than my staff had to put in. In general, I do my best to plan our work in such a way that no one has to feel stressed or put in unusual hours to meet a deadline.
Of course that can be very difficult sometimes when you’re managing awkward timelines that are outside of the team’s control, but I try to make sure I listen to the teams as much as possible so I can represent them in the best way and ensure they get what they need to be successful and satisfied with their work.
Is there something in your personal life that helps you in your job?
My dog. Can’t really be stressed about anything when you get to play fetch with her. Best dog in the world.
How do you make connections with others in the STEM community?
These days it’s mostly tech conferences and networking through organisations I work with. I do miss the huge tech meet-up culture we had in Dublin pre-pandemic, but it’s been slowly returning here and there over the past couple of years, which is nice to see. I think it’s fantastic especially for people who are new to the industry to be able to make connections by meeting people and being inspired by the cutting-edge tech at these events.
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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