How to Find and Be a Good Mentor: 3 Tips from Aurora Solar’s Joan Freed
Joan Freed used to have one definition of impact: shipping code.
The more software she wrote, and the more technical problems she solved, the greater her contribution to her team was.
But then Joan, who is currently the Director of Engineering at Aurora Solar, was asked to go from a developer role to a management role.
“Like most engineering leaders, I was thrust into it. It was, ‘Hey, you’re a good engineer; now we want you to lead this team of people you’ve been working with,’” she says of the transition.
And in excelling in that leadership role, and others to follow, Joan realized that she’d found a way to make even more impact: through mentoring others.
“I could actually have a greater impact and gain the same amount of enjoyment from building a team that is building great software, as I could from building great software myself,” she says.
We sat down with Joan to hear more about the transition, including how mentorship smoothed her path into leadership, and about how she pays it forward by being a good mentor to others.
Pushing Buttons, With Others
Joan’s path into computer science was set as soon as she got her hands on an early PC. “What drew me to engineering was a love of pushing buttons,” she says, referencing calculators and adding machines. Once she first started developing games in her spare time for a Commodore 64, she knew she’d found her career path.
She entered the field by way of tech support, but it was an early mentor who helped her learn how to build great software. She’s still in touch with that mentor to this day.
As she solidified her development expertise, Joan expanded her pool of mentors by looking at her peers. “If we had enough of a similarity in the way that we perceived things or viewed software development, it sort of clicked—we became friends, then expanded our knowledge together,” she explains.
It was that group of peer-mentors that Joan leaned on when she made her first move into engineering leadership.
“I got great enjoyment out of helping people find their path. I was doing some of the things that folks before me had done, in terms of helping people navigate technical issues or challenges or growing new leaders,” she says.
Finding a Culture of Growth
When Joan was ready to move onto a new challenge, she knew she cared most about finding a company whose culture aligned with her values. Her main focus in her previous role was creating a positive, collaborative engineering culture, and she wanted to build on that.
“We’d really fostered an environment where people enjoyed coming to work every day because they worked with good people they actually wanted to spend time with,” she says.
In her first interview with the team at energy startup Aurora Solar, Joan immediately recognized a similar environment.
“I could see the commitment to the values—empowering customers and looking for outcomes over egos—in the way people talk and act,” she says. “There’s the assumption of positive intent, it’s very respectful. It’s really the culture at Aurora that drew me in and has kept me engaged and motivated.”
And now, as Director of Engineering there, Joan is tasked with supporting that culture and creating opportunities for her teams to experience career paths like her own.
To do that, Joan is applying everything she’s learned as a mentor and a mentee. She’s developed her own approach to what successful mentorship looks like: an even blend of comfort and empowerment.
“It’s having someone in your corner that you can talk to, where they have enough context to know you and to know the type of work or challenges you’re facing, but they also have that ability to not be in the weeds with you,” she says. “They can provide some level of objectivity to help you tease out the biases you may have or to ask probing questions you didn't think to ask yourself.”
Good mentorship, not unlike good management, says Joan, is “a way of expanding your own thinking.”
3 Tips for Finding a Great Mentor
Whether early career or not, Joan encourages everyone to build their stable of mentors. “A lot of career opportunities, it’s not always what you know, but who you know,” she says. “Make sure you have a good network of people because you never know when your paths may cross again.”
To do that, Joan suggests:
- Think of friends and peers as mentors. You don’t have to go up into the C-suite to find someone who can provide support and advice. “Start looking at people around you, what they’re doing and how they’re interacting,” she says.
- Be aspirational. “Identify someone you’re aspiring to be like, and reach out,” says Joan. “It can be hard to make that initial contact, but it’s very worthwhile.” She’s still in touch with a mentee who reached out blindly, for instance.
- Embrace communities. From LinkedIn groups to MeetUp events to ERGs, Joan suggests expanding your network via built-in gatherings of people like you.
3 Tips for Being a Great Mentor
Over the years, Joan has been a mentor to dozens of developers and aspiring leaders, and plans on continuing the tradition. When she finds herself in that role, she channels the following pieces of advice:
- Remember that you’re helping people find the path that’s best for them. “If that’s a path at Aurora, which I hope it is, then that’s great. But I’ve helped coach people out of my organization if it wasn’t a fit for them. They were struggling, they weren't happy, and I helped them find some other opportunity where they could shine,” explains Joan.
- Listen actively. “Make sure that you understand what it is they're saying and that you're engaged in that conversation with them,” says Joan.
- Be a positive force. “Be their cheerleader when things are going well, or when they’ve done something that put them outside their comfort zone,” says Joan. “Even if they’ve failed at something, help them understand what they can learn from that failure and how they can bounce back from it.”
5 Questions from Logicworks’ Donovan Brady to Help Grow Your Career
Donovan Brady knew he’d found the company he wanted to work for during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
He was doing his first internship at cloud services company Logicworks, and his coworkers brought him to the dedicated conference room for watching the games.
“It was playing on a projector all day, everyday. People were getting work done and going to check on the scores in their free time,” he says. “I felt like I didn’t have to be just a cog. Logicworks truly embodied the value of ‘remember to always have fun.’ I didn’t have to wake up everyday not wanting to go to work. That was really meaningful.”
Now, seven years later, Donovan is the Director of Solutions Architecture at Logicworks and sees plenty more growth opportunities in front of him, whether that’s evolving the company’s diversity and inclusion group (for which he serves as chairman) or enabling his team to be more strategic partners to their customers. Donovan has come a long way from being an intern, and we sat down with him to hear more about his career path at Logicworks and his advice for others looking to make the most of opportunities in front of them.
Helping Technology Drive Business
As a kid, Donovan and his best friend Alan were big into video games. (Donovan still enjoys playing them; his all-time favorite game is Dark Souls, he says, because it’s extremely hard to play until you understand how it tries to trick you—just like life.)
Alan taught Donovan to program, and the two launched a business building computers and fixing Xboxes for their classmates. It sparked something in Donovan: “I decided that this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to start a technology conglomerate that’s going to combat Apple,” he says.
That dream stayed with Donovan until college, where he decided to study computer science and economics to build the core two skills needed for his business, but he quickly realized that other companies had filled that market. (Amazon and Microsoft among them.)
So he decided to pivot and find a role where he could apply his technological skills. His part-time job at his college’s career resource center meant he had an up-close view of the latest internships and job postings, and when he saw a role in cloud computing at Logicworks, he decided to apply.
“It sounded like that might be the direction the world was going, with ‘that cloud thing,’” he says. “So I applied. I had a giant afro at the time and I showed up in a suit. Everyone made fun of me [for being overdressed]—they were in sweatpants. But I had to look good!”
He got the internship (and wore the suit again for his first day—then put it in the closet until he became a solutions architect, but more on that later). His area of responsibility was network engineering, which he didn’t love. When he flagged that to his manager, she invited him back the next summer to try their DevOps and software engineering internship, which he did.
Immediately, Donovan knew he’d found his subject area. “AWS had just come out with Lambda, which was serverless technology and just mindblowing, game-changing stuff,” he says. “I was tasked with deploying our first Lambda function, and I felt really proud of myself for being a pioneer in this space.”
It was Logicworks’ commitment to his growth—listening to his interests and inviting him back for another internship that more closely matched them—that convinced Donovan to join Logicworks full-time after graduation.
In his career there, he’s found that commitment to continue.
First, it was with his coworkers and mentors, Dakota and Phil, who introduced him to solutions architecture. The company had just introduced the solutions architect role, and Phil was the first one to fill it. The combination of business strategy and on-the-ground technology fascinated Donovan.
“It seemed really interesting. Just like architects for buildings, cloud solutions architects design the blueprint for what a customer’s cloud environment is going to look like—they're the producer and visionary, and the rest of the team carries out that vision,” says Donovan.
He couldn’t get the idea out of his head, so he talked to a few mentors in sales about transitioning into a sales and delivery role, and eventually to the company’s CRO and CEO about the solutions architect skillset.
“That’s why I love Logicworks’ culture,” says Donovan. “Who was this 23 year old kid talking to the CEO about his career plans? But they all made time for me and gave me advice.”
Stepping into Leadership
Donovan ended up joining as the company’s third sales solution architect. The team’s processes were undefined and messy, so Donovan raised his hand to build clear deliverables and processes. That set him up to step into a team lead role about a year and half into his new role, which gave Donovan exposure to cross-functional strategy and prioritization.
Two years into that role, Donovan was asked to take on a director role.
“It’s still a learning curve, but if you’re not learning, you’re in the wrong place,” he says. “We worked it out so that it’s a player-coach role, so I can still work with customers doing the work I love, but also be intimately involved with my team and their opportunities.”
The best parts of each week, says Donovan, are his 1:1s with his team. “I love helping people and solving problems,” he says. “I have a great team, and creating opportunities for them and allowing them to succeed is really a highlight.”
Now that he’s also the chairman of Logicwork’s diversity and inclusion group, Donovan is extra motivated to keep making the company’s culture one that works for everyone. Current initiatives include running solidarity sessions that take place every other week for underrepresented employees to talk about things that are bothering them or to raise awareness of issues they face, and creating cultural learning opportunities to share cuisines, history, and art from different groups.
“Things happen in the world all the time,” says Donovan, referencing the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery last year. “That doesn’t mean that the world has to stop, but we should also acknowledge the current political and social climates and how they affect our coworkers with respect to their jobs. I wanted to create space for Logicworks employees to come together and discuss what they’re experiencing to raise awareness for those of us who are unaware of these struggles. I am a firm believer that the only way to grow is to grow together, and I wanted to facilitate that growth at Logicworks.”
5 Questions to Find a Company Where You Can Grow
Donovan’s internship at Logicworks grew into a return offer for another internship, then a full-time job offer, and then several promotions, all the way up to his current role of Director. As he navigated that path, he came up with a few guiding questions for other entry-level or new hires who are evaluating whether or not they see a long-term future at their first company:
- Do you like the culture? “Search for culture first. How do you fit in with the people, with the company, and with what they’re trying to accomplish?” he asks.
- Are they flexible when it comes to transfers and promotions? “Some companies say you have to stay in a role for four years before you can move,” says Donovan. “It’s very rigid and structured. At Logicworks, I said I wanted to do something else, and they said, ‘Great, let’s see how that looks.’ They’ve rewarded me for being hungry.”
- Are they on your side? Donovan was nervous to ask for a raise when he transitioned from software engineering into solutions architecture. “My heart was racing, and I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “I asked for a number that I thought was in line with the market, and my voice was trembling the whole time.” But Donovan’s manager took it seriously and told him they’d work it out.
- Are there people you’d want to learn from? Donovan has half a dozen mentors at Logicworks alone who have helped him determine his career path, and he encourages people to look for their own. “You need somebody you can turn to for advice when otherwise you’d just be alone in it. Find people in your corner that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of, because they’re going to help you go further faster.”
- Can you envision yourself succeeding at the company? “Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions in interviewing,” says Donovan. “You can ask, ‘What's it like to be a Black person at this company?’”
Interested in growing your career at Logicworks? Check out their open roles!
How Culture, Policies, and ERGs Can Support Working Parents: Insight from Zynga’s Cindy Batang
On a given weekday afternoon, you can find Cindy Batang working from the parking lot of a golf course while her younger daughter practices her swing.
She did the same thing for her older daughter. That dedication paid off not just for that daughter, who now plays college golf, but also for Cindy's career. She rose through the ranks of Zynga while raising two children, and is now the Manager of Governance, Risk, and Compliance at the gaming company.
"You learn how to multitask," says Cindy of managing both her work and her home life over the last decade at Zynga. "You find a way to get everything done."
Cindy started her career at Zynga in IT, then transitioned into security and then into management. Over the years, her daughters have worked on her lap while she fixed computers, begged to come into the office to play the arcade games, and "grown up at Zynga," says Cindy.
We sat down with her to learn more about that path, as well as how she juggles being a working parent—and what parts of Zynga's culture, including their flexible work policies and their parent-focused ERG, zParents, have supported her throughout the years.
Finding Fulfillment in Tech
Cindy and her husband have been married for 22 years and together for even longer. She credits him with a lot of what she loves about her life—including getting her into tech.
While she was still in college, he suggested that Cindy take a Windows certification course. Even though Cindy had been exposed to computers from an early age—her dad built them at home (and, when he lived in Nicaragua, also had his own shop where he would rebuild radios and TVs)—it wasn't something she considered exploring as a kid. "It's kind of funny to me that his hobby became my job," says Cindy of her dad's influence.
Cindy took the course and ended up getting a contract IT job, then leaving school to enter the workforce full-time. This was right as the dot-com bubble was heating up, she says, and when the economy crashed a few years later, right as Cindy and her husband welcomed their first daughter, Cindy decided to leave tech for a bit and become a real estate agent.
"I felt like I needed more time with her, and I couldn't do that with a nine-to-five," she explains.
In that job, Cindy recognized how much she loved working with people. But when the real estate market crashed, too, she decided she'd go back into tech—but ideally in a more flexible, more people-facing role.
She got started in a contract tech support role, then worked for a small gaming company where she really enjoyed the more laid-back culture. As a big Words With Friends fan, she'd heard of Zynga, and when someone in her husband's network said Zynga was looking for IT support analysts, she applied.
Because she'd been at a much smaller company where she wore a lot of hats, Cindy quickly took on a management role on Zynga's team. She worked in access control, which gave her exposure to Zynga's security team. She knew the company's CSO and told him she was interested in learning more about cybersecurity—and had another new role a few weeks later.
"He fast-tracked things and created a position for me as a security analyst," she says. "I wasn't expecting that!"
Cindy credits her diversity of experiences at Zynga with the long-lasting career fulfillment she's found there. "One of the reasons I've been here for so long is that I haven't been doing the same thing for ten years," she says. "I've been able to grow and expand. Now I'm in management, I'm able to take what I've learned and work with my team to give them that same kind of flexibility."
Experiencing a Family-Friendly Work Environment
Cindy's daughters were three and nine when she joined Zynga, and now they're in high school and college, respectively. As her career evolved, Cindy says she always felt like her family was welcome at work.
"I'd bring them to the office, especially when I was working in support and didn't have somebody to watch them," she says. "Zynga was a big playground for them, with the pool table and the snacks. My managers never had any issue with me bringing them to work as long as I got the job done."
"[My kids] would ask me, 'Mom, can I go to work with you?'" remembers Cindy, smiling.
Beyond an open and kid-friendly office, Cindy enjoyed getting to set her own hours. If she needed to take an hour off to do school pick-up, she was able to finish her day at home later in the evening. "I liked that they let me step out and understood that at the end of the day, I'd get the job done," she says.
She also took full advantage of zParents, Zynga's ERG for working parents.
"zParents events were the highlight of [my kids'] day," says Cindy. "When the opportunity came up for volunteers, I immediately jumped on board." She currently plays a leadership role for the ERG, which includes putting on family friendly events and supporting employees by sharing available company resources.
Over the pandemic, zParents expanded to Zynga's global offices with virtual resource-sharing and events. "In our Slack channel, you'll find a very active parent support group," says Cindy. "From new parents asking for advice on how to get babies to sleep through the night to parents asking for help with complicated math homework!"
It's the community that Cindy values most when it comes to finding support at work. "When you have your first child, you don't know what to expect. You don't know what's going to happen. You have this life that relies on you heavily, and it kind of stresses you out," she says. "But you know what? It's okay. We've all been new parents and you figure it out."
4 Tips for Paying it Forward as a Manager of Working Parents
Now that Cindy's own children are older, her day-to-day is a little easier to manage (golf practice parking lot laptop sessions aside).
She knows that's not the case for her whole team, though.
"I know that things come up at the last minute, so I focus on giving [employees] the flexibility that I also received," says Cindy. "I encourage people to take the time with their kids, because they're only young for so long. Work will always be here, you know? It's important to spend time with your family."
Cindy also shares advice with working parents on her team, including:
- The importance of communication. Cindy highlights that this should go two ways: communicating with your kids, and letting them know you're there to support them and that they come first even if work responsibilities need to be worked around; and communicating with your management, to set expectations upfront around schedules and flexibility.
- Spend time wisely. There will always be more work than there are hours in the day, says Cindy, who suggests making daily and weekly priority lists and tracking project deadlines against them.
- Don't compare yourself to other working parents. "It may seem that other parents have everything under control. But don't compare yourself. Everybody has different circumstances and a different style of how they manage things. What works for them may not work for you."
- Take care of yourself, too. "People struggle with trying to take care of everybody else and then they fail to take care of themselves," she says. "If you need downtime, take a nap, read a book, go for a walk, do something just for yourself. Something as simple as that can change your perspective for the rest of the day."
She would add one more tip: apply for a role at Zynga! "This is a great company to be at for raising kids," she says. "I can't speak highly enough about the ways that Zynga enables you to be able to manage your work-life balance."
6 Lessons for Working in a Non-Native Language from Automattic’s Naoko Takano
Naoko Takano's title alone suggests how comfortable she is switching cultures: she is a Globalizer at mission-driven tech company Automattic, whose products include WooCommerce, Jetpack, Tumblr, and WordPress.com.
Naoko's job involves working with volunteers in the WordPress community to translate materials and run other localization projects.
"It's about transferring the idea—not so much about just translation, but doing the messaging, and getting people excited," Naoko explains.
Long before she joined Automattic, Naoko had opportunities to practice transferring and communicating complicated ideas across cultures, first as a Japanese exchange student in the U.S., then as a working professional for American companies, and later as a freelancer working with clients around the world.
We sat down with Naoko to hear more about her career journey, how her relationship with language has evolved, and what advice she has for members of global teams working to communicate across languages, countries, and cultures.
Building a Base of Biculturalism
Naoko is based in Tokyo, Japan, but had previously spent 13 years living in the U.S. before returning to her home country.
Her first stay in the States was as a high school exchange student in Missouri. The lack of other Japanese speakers forced her to work on her English, but her confidence took a while to catch up. "Until the last couple of years in college, I was very quiet and didn't like to be in the spotlight," she says.
Recognizing that parts of her personality changed depending on her linguistic context was an important early lesson, as it has taught her to use patience and empathy when working with other people who weren't communicating in their first language. "I'm more outgoing in Japanese," explains Naoko, smiling.
Naoko had initially returned to Japan to finish high school, but didn't like the experience. "Japanese schools are very strict, and they cram in learning at school and after school," says Naoko. "In the States, I thought learning was fun, and even though it was difficult, I could really feel the progress."
At home, Naoko experienced a period of burnout and depression so intense that she stopped attending school—know as futōkō (不登校) in Japan—it was that experience which inspired her to return to the States to pursue education in an environment that worked better for her. (This taught her another key lesson about the importance of surrounding herself with people and places that are aligned with her values, as she has during her 12-year career at Automattic.)
While Japanese had been her favorite subject in her home country, she didn't think she could switch to studying English literature and have the same result. "It'd be hard to keep up or do well," she says. "Another thing I liked was art, so I studied graphic communication."
Visual art and design was another way of communicating, after all. And it led her to her dream career—albeit indirectly.
Learning Alone and Learning with Others
Naoko started her career doing freelance web design. When she graduated college, blogs were just starting to become popular. She'd tried a few other platforms before finding WordPress in 2003, just a few months after co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little first released it, and she immediately committed herself to it.
"I was always in front of my computer doing something, making things. I was teaching myself from the web and some books," says Naoko. One of those books, Naoko says, was actually authored by her now-colleague, Jeffrey Zeldman, a Principal Designer at Automattic.
And even when she had a job in Detroit, working for an auto company where her Japanese and English skills were in high demand, she'd come home from work, sit down at the computer, and keep exploring. Some of that at-home exploration was as a volunteer contributor to the translation and documentation project for WordPress in Japanese. Those efforts led to more relationships with people at Automattic—including Matt, who is now the company's CEO.
"At the time he was just going to places; if you asked, he'd say, 'Okay, if I have time, I'll go,'" says Naoko. So she invited him to Tokyo, and signed up to be his personal translator and guide when he said yes.
Naoko remembers the trip going awry—getting lost, losing her phone, and a few too many drinks—but when Matt got back home, he offered Naoko a job.
"My guess is that he realized that if he didn't speak that language, it was hard to get around and he needed someone to help. So it's like oh, the company will need someone, too, for the tool to be explained," says Naoko.
"I never thought I'd have a chance to work for Automattic," says Naoko, thinking back. "It was a dream company, because I loved WordPress so much!" (Besides making WordPress.com, Automattic also contributes significantly to the Open Source WordPress project.)
Embracing Multiculturalism: 6 Tips
As a Globalizer at Automattic, Naoko works with the incredibly diverse Automattic team, with its 1,600+ people spanning 88 countries and 108 languages, as well as with her own bench of volunteers, who speak at least 200 different languages.
"Day-to-day, I talk to people from 10 different countries," she says. "Though it's all done in English!"
Working with such a globally diversified team means understanding that everyone is at a different point in terms of communication efficacy. "We understand that speaking a second language is not always easy, so we use leeway for understanding someone, or empathizing if someone uses a word or phrase incorrectly, if the intention is good," she explains.
Here are 6 key things Naoko has found especially helpful when it comes to communicating across cultures:
- Lean into written and asynchronous communication. Automattic was a remote, fully distributed company long before the pandemic, and Naoko credits their non-live methods of communication with creating a comfortable environment for non-native speakers to thrive. "You have time to think about your mode, whether it's writing an email or communicating through Slack," she says.
- Use graphics. As someone with a background in graphic communication, Naoko is a big fan of using images, flowcharts, and other visuals to communicate information. "People don't read! If it's an image, they get the idea," she says. "That's especially true for polyglots, so I try to add images all the time."
- Think about your content's structure. Even beyond adding a graphic element, Naoko says she is regularly inspired to communicate better by applying her HTML background to her updates. "You know, writing HTML, you have the heading, body text, bullet points, images, and that's how I construct content," she says. "It's clear, precise writing."
- Look for tools that can help. It's way easier to communicate with a global team now than it was in the early 2000s, says Naoko, thanks to how significantly machine translation has evolved. "We have contributors who don't speak any English, who use Google Translate to communicate perfectly fine," she adds.
- Be patient. "Whatever the native language, people always misunderstand each other. Don't expect that they understand you, whoever they are, whether they are fluent or not. Always keep in mind that you have to explain yourself or your idea won't be communicated," says Naoko.
- Just try. Whether you're the manager of a team that hails from all over, or someone who's starting a new job in their second language, Naoko implores you to just put yourself out there and start to communicate, as that's the only way to learn. "Even though I wasn't fully comfortable, I always took opportunities, even when I wasn't ready. Over time, it gets better. If you keep thinking you're not ready, then you never will be," advises Naoko.
Looking Forward
Naoko isn't planning on leaving Japan anytime soon.
"I have kids, and Japan is one of the safest countries; I like living in Japan," she says.
But she still has a deep interest in other countries and cultures.
Working at Automattic gives her a global life, even when she's based in one place.
"I feel like I get the best of both worlds," she says. "Being in my country, comfortable living my life, yet I can work with these people from all over the world, meeting people from different countries."
Those connections are extra-special because Naoko and her coworkers share their own kind of citizenship, she explains. "Whenever I meet someone new from Automattic, I somehow feel they are very similar. Lori, our HR person, says that it's like we get the most unique people from each class and put them in one room, and that room is Automattic."
"I never felt like I completely fit in, in Japanese culture or U.S. culture, but Automattic feels like good chaos."
If the Automattic team sounds right for you, too, check out their open (and entirely remote!) roles
