How Tackle’s Director of Engineering, Muldair Welch, Supports Her Team by Leading by Example
Muldair Welch wasn’t your average 11-year-old. Instead of playing with toys, she was writing code to check her homework.
“I had just gotten a computer and my uncle had shown me some simple QBasic programming,” Muldair explains. “I was trying to do my homework and I wasn't sure if I was right, so I used the computer to write a piece of software to check my synthetic division.” And it worked!
From then on, Muldair was hooked. “I thought to myself, ‘I can get paid to solve puzzles on a computer all day?’” Motivated to keep learning and developing, she worked through the summers to save up for school. She started college at 16 and landed her first job in engineering at 18 while she finished up her undergraduate.
Nowadays, with just as much enthusiasm, you can catch Muldair pushing her team to keep learning and developing as the Director of Engineering at Tackle.io. We sat down with her to discuss her career journey and three pieces of advice for women in engineering who are eager to advance in their careers.
Foundational skills for career growth
Soft skills, or as Muldair prefers to call them, “foundational skills,” are not typically associated with becoming a successful engineer. Yet for Muldair, along her 20+ year career journey, skills like intentionality, communication, and emotional intelligence have been key as she’s moved up the career ladder.
Her first step was becoming a tech lead—a move she says was “100 percent intentional.” But her move to engineering manager came with some hesitation. “I was afraid it was going to be a career block,” explains Muldair. She was passionate about coding and worried that she wouldn’t be able to solve problems every day like she was used to. “I thought, ‘I'm not an engineer anymore. What if I'm a manager for a year and I lose all of my skills and I can never come back?’”
Although she admits these worries were irrational, she was able to push through her fears. As she immersed herself in her new role, she realized that her engineering skills were still being put to good use. “I was so shocked at how much I loved it because I'm still solving problems, but I'm solving what, to me, are so much more meaningful ones,” Muldair says cheerfully.
Moving up and giving back
Through the leadership lessons and unique experiences she gained as an engineering manager, Muldair was eager to take on another challenge. “If there's an opportunity, I'm going to take it, I'm going to try it, and I'm going to learn from it,” explains Muldair. “I knew that I wanted to take the lessons that I had learned and share them with other managers and help them avoid the pitfalls that I had fallen into.”
Enter Tackle.
Muldair joined Tackle last year as an Engineering Director. She was attracted to the technology and intrigued by the company culture and leadership philosophy. “I saw a company that had a really good long-term vision with empathetic, intentional, and focused engineering,” says Muldair when talking about her first impressions of the company. She describes Tackle as a software company that, “supports not just the technology and the clients, but supports the people that make the business possible.”
As a director, Muldair collaborates with other teams to align on projects, creates sustainable growth strategies, and focuses on optimizing processes. She also meets with managers on her team to assure they’re supported in their daily tasks, as well as long-term projects and career development. “When I'm meeting with [my team], we're talking about career growth, we're talking about leadership evolution, dealing with things that are on their mind,” Muldair explains.
And she still gets to do some of the engineering work that she’s known and loved since she was a child. “I always ask how I can help my team be successful in the endeavors that they're working on at that moment, so I do a lot of hands-on support of engineering managers.”
Leading by example
With her intention of supporting other managers, Muldair has learned that, unlike technology, working with people doesn’t always render consistent results.
“When it comes to people, you give them tools, you partner with them, you let them go and you see if they're successful–and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they fail and you have to help them deal with that and make it into a learning opportunity,” she explains.
Along with supporting her managers through setbacks, she has learned that leading by example is equally as important. She uses time management as an example of this. “If I want someone else to grow and eventually become a director, I cannot establish this role as an 80 hour a week role where you're always on and you never disconnect.” She understands that the time she puts into her work is just as important as turning off her laptop at the end of the day or taking time off. “It's a challenging thing for me sometimes, but it's also been hugely impactful to my quality of life,” she shares. “It's really important to create an environment where people are successful when they're working their best hours for their best life,” Muldair points out.
Three pieces of advice for ambitious engineers
In true Muldair fashion of supporting others, she offers advice for fellow women engineers — especially those who don’t have many role models at their companies.
- Don't push yourself into a mold that doesn't fit you. “When I first joined leadership, there was no one that shared my demographics. There was no one that acted the way that I acted. No quirky, odd, humorous, empathetic people in positions of leadership,” Muldair explains. “I thought if I want to be a leader, I have to be cold, I have to be perfect, I have to be super professional and not connect with anyone. And this was a lie. Success will come when you embrace who you are.”
- Don’t be afraid to show off your work. “Very often, women will not champion themselves, due to societal reasons or the fact that they don't want to appear boastful,” Muldair shares. Showing off projects you are working on, achievements, and demos can be the factor that makes future employers want to work with you.
- Network and collaborate. Something as simple as joining a niche engineering Slack group can open opportunities for support and collaboration. “You will find people who want to be supportive,” Muldair advises. These early collaborations can set the foundation for working in larger teams.
“Failure is not a bad thing, it's a consequence of growth and it's a good thing,” Muldair encourages. “You don't have to change who you are to be successful. You need to embrace who you are to be successful.”
If you’re looking to work in a company whose success is a direct factor of how they invest in their employees, check out the job opportunities at Tackle.io.
Top Tips For Your Continuous Professional Development - Become A Better Software Developer!
💎As a software developer, continuous professional development is crucial to grow your career. Watch the video to the end to get top tips from Def Method into how you can become a better software developer!
📼 Don’t miss these 3 top tips on continuous professional development for your career in tech. Play this video to get three top tips to become a better software developer. You'll hear from Yisselda Rhoc, Senior Software Engineer at Def Method, who has gathered these tips from working with over a dozen companies, and they've helped her navigate her tech career.
📼#1 tip for a continuous professional development is: Learn How You Learn. As a software engineer, there will always be a new programming language and a new framework to learn. It is expected that you will improve your skills as time goes by. Figuring out the best way for you to learn is very important. Assess when is the best time of the day for you to study, and with what duration and frequency you feel more comfortable with. We know that books are very good friends, but keep in mind there's also different types of resources that you can use, like videos, podcasts, and blog posts.
📼 #2 tip for a continuous professional development is: Find Your Community. Yisselda share that finding and building her network is something that's been really helpful for her. You can build your network too! You can join peer network groups, go to tech events, conferences, and just find people that you can relate to, even your favorite coworker. Building this network will help you find mentors and create also safe places where you can ask questions. Overall, you'll just be inspired and challenged to go to the next level.
Continuous Professional Development - Tip #3: Track Your Progress
As Yisselda puts it, it’s very valuable to write down and reflect on your accomplishments. What she likes to do is every other week to write down what she’s done, what she’s learned, and what challenges she overcame. You can find this super useful to later on share your journey, it keeps you accountable, too! And it helps you create new goals for yourself. Start with this, and after, every six months, you can do like Yisselda does: a retrospective on all her accomplishments. This will definitely boost your confidence and help you plan the next steps in your career.
📨 Are you interested in joining Def Method? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to Know Yisselda
Yisselda is a Senior Software Engineer with six years of professional experience in software build, maintenance, and evolution. She’s had the opportunity to work with diverse clients within an array of markets and verticals including FinTech, Fashion Tech, Healthcare, and Music Distribution. Yisselda enjoys collaborative environments that enable her to share her expertise and add value to their businesses. If you are interested in a career at Def Method, you can connect with Yisselda Rhoc on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to mention this video!
More About Def Method
Founded in 2014, Def Method pairs agile development with best practices in management consulting to deliver high-quality custom software. They are flexible to their clients’ needs, realizing that software projects are expensive and complex and require discipline in order to deliver value. By focusing on both product and process, Def Method can help clients build something great.
A Career in Tech at Helix - Inside the Engineering Team
💎Looking for a career in tech? Calling all software engineers in all career stages! Watch the video till the end to learn about Helix’s open engineering jobs.
📼If you’re developing a career in tech, whether in software engineering, data, DevOps, or test engineering, the engineering team at Helix might just be the place for you. Meet Jim Chou, VP of engineering at Helix, who’ll tell you all about the team and why Helix is a culture where you can thrive.
📼A career in tech with Helix means aligning with their mission of empowering every person to improve their lives through DNA. The engineering team at Helix builds the expansive software platform that delivers clinical care, research, and data analytics to health systems around the USA. They also integrate genomic data into patient care and public health decision-making. In response to COVID-19, Helix has launched a high-scale COVID-19 test system, performing tens of thousands of tests every day. Additionally, as part of their viral surveillance program, Helix provides reporting on COVID-19 viral sequences and surfacing variants of concern to the CDC and state-level health departments.
📼If considering a career in tech at Helix, it's essential to understand the languages the team employs. As Jim explains, their backend services are written in Golang, and their infrastructure lives in AWS. A common pattern they leverage is API gateways, fronting lambda indications, as they increasingly take advantage of serverless paradigms. The engineering team at Helix builds frontend applications in React and uses technologies like Redshift and Airflow in their data engineering. That said, Jim stresses that having prior knowledge of these languages and frameworks isn't an absolute requirement to apply! They value language-agnostic engineering experience and believe that a successful candidate can learn quickly on the job.
A Career in Tech at Helix - Career Growth Opportunities
For all of their roles, the engineering team at Helix offers progression to increasingly senior career stages based on the engineer's performance and potential. As engineers advance in their careers, they're responsible for increased scope and responsibility. And for those interested in people management, Helix also offers opportunities to hone necessary skills and transition to a management path.
🧑💼 Are you interested in joining Helix? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to Know Jim
Jim Chou leads teams in building products that can positively affect the lives of millions of people every day. If you are interested in a career at Helix, you can connect with Jim on LinkedIn!
More About Helix
Helix is a personal genomics company with a simple but powerful mission: empower every person to improve their lives through DNA. Helix is dedicated to making DNA learning-accessible and actionable for everyone. They’ve been working hard to achieve their vision: create a world where every person benefits from their biological information and help all of humanity lead better lives. They are collaborators—scientists, engineers, designers, marketers, and more—working across two offices to solve complex challenges locked within the human genome. They are biased toward action as they strive to uphold integrity in sequencing, science, and communication. At Helix, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment drive team members in all that they do.
Plex’s Camelia Roman on Perfectionism and Remote Work
Camelia Roman knows that perfect is overrated—and she’s keeping that in mind as she works on several DIY home-improvement projects.
“I have big plans for microcement. We’ll see how it goes!” says Camelia, smiling.
The Android developer at global media streaming company Plex believes in the power of experimentation in more than just her home improvement projects. It’s something she’s kept front of mind throughout her career.
“Don't demand perfection from others, or yourself. That’s very common nowadays. We’ve all looked for perfection for so long. And we’ve finally learned that it’s not the way to go,” says Camelia, referencing lessons learned during the pandemic.
We sat down with the Romania-born and -based developer to hear more about what she’s learned over the years, including what advice she has for other developers building their careers remotely.
Finding Her Space
Camelia liked math in high school, and when she entered college, she set out on a dual path: psychology and computer science.
Two years in, her program required her to get some on-the-job experience, so she found a role as an Android developer. The job helped her make a decision on her future path, and while she’s still interested in psychology, she satiates that interest via books and Ted Talks.
Camelia came to her current role by way of a startup that Plex acquired in 2017.
It meant going from being a team of one to one of many, but Camelia enjoyed that. “It was a bit intimidating, because at the previous startup, I was the only Android developer, and I was working alone. Here, I have very experienced colleagues, and I was wondering if I would be able to keep up,” she says.
She did, though, and has been thriving at Plex for over five years now.
“I was happy for the change,” she says. “When I met with one of the founders and the CEO, it sounded like an awesome place. And after all these years, I still think it’s true.”
5 Tips on Thriving While Remote
Plex has a headquarters in California, but it’s always been a fully remote company. Here are the guiding principles that help Camelia find success at work, even while working with colleagues in different countries:
- Practically, always have a video backup. “Most people have had those problems: internet stops working, your dog starts barking, computer crashes, et cetera. I’ve learned the hard way to have a video prepared that I can share in case my presentation doesn’t work as I would have wanted it to,” says Camelia, sharing that she once had this problem and accidentally autoplayed a video of her cat to her entire company. “Even though everyone was very understanding, it’s still better to have a video or PowerPoint of what you want to share instead of dealing with whatever the remote demo gods will throw your way!”
- Have the right attitude. “It’s common sense, but accept that we are all humans. We make mistakes, we should own our mistakes, we should fix them and learn something from them if we can, and then move on,” she says.
- If you’re having trouble focusing, let your workflow change as needed. It’s normal for personal to-dos to creep into the workday, says Camelia. But the nice thing about working remotely is being able to control your own schedule, and it’s good to take advantage of that. She gives an example: “Maybe my mom’s coming over and I haven’t done the dishes. Instead of looking at my watch and saying, ‘Okay, in one hour, my mom will come; in 50 minutes, my mom will come,’ it’s better to just wash the dishes and be done with it.”
- Approach imposter syndrome with gratitude. “My colleagues are very experienced and very smart, and instead of being overwhelmed by that, which sometimes happens, it’s better to be grateful that you have something to learn from them, and to take advantage of that,” says Camelia.
- Ask for the help you need—and give it, too. Even now, years into her career, Camelia regularly finds herself confronted with things she doesn’t know. When that happens, she first goes online and looks for help. Her second port of call is her colleagues. “I still have a lot to learn, and that’s what makes me happy, in a way. I’m not stagnating,” she says. “And it’s good to remind ourselves that there’s always something you can learn, or something that you can teach. Teaching is very rewarding, too.”
If learning and teaching at Plex sounds appealing, check out their open roles!
