Interview: Google Technical Program Manager (From Bioscience Researcher to Tech Program Management)

number one is don't stop trying and number two is prepare your story thank you for your time today really really appreciate your time um can you maybe tell me a little bit about yourself i'm currently a technical program manager at google and i think my path has been all over the places going transition from a biomedical researcher to business analytics professional and right now i'm a technical program manager uh initially uh when i uh my undergrad was in chemistry and biology and then i came to us to study biomedical sciences pursuing a phd program but during the phd i decided that i wanted to go on the business side so i quit it and then i got an mba at the university of north carolina chapel hill yeah go heels for sure go hills after uh yeah i went from the same school and then after mba um i was all over the places i did a consulting corporate strategy during my mba internship and after graduation i first worked in the operational management operational planning and analytics space then i took a three-month gig at a venture capital firm that was super interesting from there i joined the two i joined one with support for the startup company um at that time to be the one-person data team running all sorts of analytics yeah and during that time the startup was growing very fast very exciting went from serious a to csb uh in just uh yeah i was there for almost one year and then an opportunity came and i landed into google at first i was in the legal operations role as a data analyst in google's legal department without any legal background whatsoever um i was in the legal department for one and a half year until i decided to make a career switch like internal transfer into my current role which is a technical program manager in security in security privacy and safety and i work still focusing on analytics um you mentioned something about how you got an opportunity and then you jumped to google can you maybe share a little bit about the process like did you were you were approached by a recruiter or did you like apply with the referral and also what did like the interview process looked like and like how long did it really take from applying to actually getting the job offer yeah here's a well non-secret secret is i applied to google so many times maybe more than 10 times and that was the only time uh that was the only time when i actually got into the interview phase like before that i applied to google before my mba during my mba summer internship and after mba but all those times i uh like my resume never got into the phone screening phase there was a time when um when i was working in a startup in a startup company and i um initially i heard my friend from google was who told me about an opportunity that really interests me so she referred me and although that particular position in her team does not didn't work out in the end i simultaneously applied to some other roles at google at the same time so and i ended up interviewing for google like two different positions at google at the same time one is for so both of those positions are like data analysis role that's in different teams one indigo one in another team and i went through the whole interview process for both of those roles actually um yeah there's something interesting at google like you can literally simultaneously apply to multiple roles and every rows are evaluated independently until at the phase where one of the roles recruiter told me hey we're going to move on uh for you to get into the hiring committee decision and at this stage you have to decline or you have to you have to withdraw your other open applications gotcha yeah so i said oh okay um i'll i'll go with this one gotcha that's interesting um so tell me about what you do as a technical program manager um and it seems like you're doing technical program management in the big data and analytics side oh yeah i think this is super interesting role because um this is a role as a technical program manager we are to we are bridging the vision and execution like as a program manager we are the force multiplier and we are the activator and then with data as a focus data is our tool that we say for example in my role um i'm pretty much spending one third of my time like doing building data pipelines integrating with engineering systems lots of collaboration with engineering teams and another one started my time is about say analyzing the data and generating insights then another one started my time is about the program management parts um yeah like um yeah i just mentioned bridging the vision and execution and communicating across the board make sure that the people from across different factions are working um working together gotcha um what's the difference between technical program manager and and it just a program manager is it about the engagement with the engineers oh yes so a technical program manager is program manager plus technical and by being yeah by being technical um means that you you can make technical decisions and you uh you're expected to have that uh technical judgment say for example you um like like i i may write my own pipeline and sometimes i will um i will like write code just as a engineer would do and some other times i would critique uh engineers design doc or i would write my own design document being created by engineers uh like i need to have a technical judgment and i think the judgment um somehow can weave into the way we manage program say for example we need to as a program manager we need to consider um all different different edge cases different dependencies and to prioritize things based on say do some risk management how can we estimate the risk the impact to um to make the decision now where we should prioritize our effort how are we going about scheduling and all those different dependency management yeah those decisions has a lot of like technical expertise going into it as a technical manager we're expected to own that but if as a program manager um it is not expected that you have that technical technical expertise so program manager would rely very heavily on their ng counterpart to make those technical decisions so for a technical program manager will you be expected to have like a engineering background or experience in tech to be a technical program manager this is a very interesting question i got it i got asked many times so i would say oh hey uh i'm not i'm not from an engineering background so when i first transferred from the legal operations analyst role to a tpm role and that time our organization was called circuit engineering and i like to joke oh secure engineering i have no security background i have no engineering background at all what i was in second engineering then i found out that actually in my team our team is the ba team uh business analytics team supporting the whole security privacy engineering all of us are coming from the background not security not privacy so not engineering um but we're bringing in a growth mindset yeah sometimes we we bring the fresh mindset like a lot of times i think it's about we as a tpm we were there to bring to bring the diverse perspectives together some of those perspectives coming from our own and some of those are what we were there as a bridge but because of our diverse background let's say for example you and i are from mba backgrounds and thus we have some common language while speaking to your finance or marketing or whatever like like those functions right um if we are in an engineering product meeting then we should we should represent whoever uh the mtc is on the table to bring those voices together so that we can make more informed decisions and i think this is our unique strength like to i guess to summarize uh being a tpm does not require engineering backgrounds gotcha no i love the answer um unique perspective and being the bridge can you tell me about what you like the most and then maybe something that you don't like that much about your role yeah so what i really like about the role uh as i said is really being the bridge and collecting the dots the role is very dynamic um i couldn't think of any two days where i did exactly the same thing uh like we're facing different challenges every day and also very interesting say for example literally something i did recently uh on one day i might be presenting to vp to give a 30 000 feet view of our um let's say or security posture of different google products and uh some data driven recommendations risk risk modeling about where we should invest our resources in yeah and then literally on the second day i was talking to our engineer partner and help them unblock some engineering problem and i said hey there's another team which is building such this and this and they have that tiny little uh module maybe you can plug it in to unblock your use case yeah and then i collect them together and then yeah unblock them so those are very interesting uh moments like it doesn't happen every day it's like the role is so dynamic and that's what uh makes it real challenging um if you ask me what's the difficult or the part i don't like uh there is a trade-off like say sometimes i think about my startup environment of that such a big impact in very short amount of time i i think yeah i some i'm sometimes still like maybe it's about people people who are at a startup let's say so that that's the part that um sometimes i don't like but then it's understandable yeah we are at google we are facing like we have products touching billions of users and there should be of course lots of checks and balances to put in place in the system so yeah we have a lot of responsibility for sure tell me about tell me about google's culture and maybe work that balance a little bit uh i'm sure you heard lots of things about culture and google so to give you my perspective um as someone who lives like living that culture i think google's culture is rather light-hearted or sometimes quirky okay and i can go on and on to give you all yeah jokes so well basically uh it's just a small example like once when i was writing my code uh submitting a change list i added a vm in my change list but yeah to make a light of a mistake that i did and then um and then the next day i got another vacation say i was added uh on a badge saying this badge was awarded to people who have men in their change list to to yeah to encourage people um having fun at work it was it's kind of very very like a light-hearted sound culture so when you think about google wow um like i have a lot i've met lots of interesting people like from very interesting people from all walks of life diverse backgrounds when you have interesting people working on interesting problems of course we're having lots of fun over it yeah like say security and privacy it is a very serious topic we have serious um uh yeah we have serious responsibilities but on the other hand we're having fun um and this does not go just in work in project but also in lives too like say doing this whole pandemic there was a work from home talent show and uh oh wow um yeah so i thought i performed in that work from home talent show that was for the first time i showed my uh some like outside talent okay that's that's interesting yeah i i think that's what i heard prevailing like you know the fun and work hard and then have fun kind of for culture at google yeah um my last question is advice for those who want to join google i would say actually okay two parts number one is don't stop trying and number two is prepare your story uh i would say number one don't stop trying um really for myself i've tried more than 10 times and finally got into google and it helped happens a lot and not just me when i sometimes i chat informative with my google colleagues lots of people had um either like failed interview experience or when they apply to google didn't even get a chance to interview et cetera so it's very common like say if you got rejection from uh from google please don't give up just keep trying and you might try different roles um like lots of times it's just like at the right time right place right role yeah yeah and also don't be discouraged if you don't have engineering background i don't have engineering background at all but i was a tpm but i'm a team right now yeah um and uh lots of people are like me so like your background does not determine what uh it's not necessarily what you will be doing or what you like to do yeah really uh pursue what uh you love and then the second part of it is uh craft your story i think this goes into like say when we were in b school we were lucky to have like career uh career consultation uh services where we are we are taught to say for example in behavioral questions uh answer it in a very structured format like star situation task action result i would also add as a takeaway or learning in the end okay so think about say when you are preparing your interview um try to like create a spreadsheet oh here are all the folders that this job job requires and different roles and say in different columns here are my stories three one three two and every story will touch upon some of the qualities required for this job and think about this way and then for every story think about a star format and especially at the end what's your learning what's your take away um so some questions i um i was asked and i often asked as an interviewer is if if this project is highly successful even if it's highly successful i would still ask hey if you were to do it uh do it over right now yeah what are the things you would do differently yeah i so always have that reflective mindset i i love how you mentioned that because i always say that um use the star l format where you have the learning at the end that kind of gives people that you are always you know willing to learn and grow exactly love how you put that um yeah i think that was all for today i really really appreciate your time today thank you so much thank you so much john it was super fun i love chatting with you yeah thank you

Channel: Career School

Views: 2,628

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: google, life at google, google jobs, google tpm jobs, google tpm, google program manager, google technical program manager, google technical program manager jobs, google program manager jobs, google interview, google recruit, google recruiting, google interview process, google interview help, google program management, google technical program management, google job advice, google interview tips

Id: VnSnD54kETc

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021