Data Science Hangout | Ian Anderson, Philadelphia Flyers | Moving into Leadership & Managing a Team

Transcript#

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Thank you all so much for joining today and welcome back to the Data Science Hangout. Happy New Year to everyone. I'm so excited to kick off the first one of 2022 with you all and to have Ian Anderson joining us here for his first time as well. But just to introduce the Data Science Hangout for anyone who's joining us for the first time.

The Data Science Hangout is an open space for the whole data science community to connect and chat about data science leadership, questions you're facing, and really just what's going on in the world of data science. So if you ever want to go back and re-watch these or some of the ones that we had in 2021 or share with someone who's missed it, they'll be recorded and shared up to YouTube as well. We really want this to be a space where everybody can participate and we want to hear from everyone. So there's a few different ways you can ask questions during the session today. So you can jump in live, you can raise your hand on Zoom, put questions in the Zoom chat. Feel free to put a little star next to your question too if you want me to read it out loud. Otherwise I can just call on you to introduce yourself and jump in.

But we'll also have a Slido link too where you can ask questions anonymously and I think Tyler will share that in the chat in just a second here. But without all that I'm so happy to be joined by my co-host for today, Ian Anderson. Ian's the Director of Hockey Analytics at the Philadelphia Flyers. And Ian, I'd love to start by maybe having you jump in and introduce yourself and share a bit about your team and the work that you do.

I would just tell people, do the job you want, and that starts now. Like, you could be doing the job now, and it's going to require some extra attention outside of work hours, maybe, and things like that, but it's all doable.

Hiring and building a portfolio

I think it's both, you know what I mean? If you want to take that a step further, and like a lot of people have done, put some of that stuff out in the public sphere, then people will find it. If it's good enough, people will find it. We're always constantly looking, and people love to share good work, and it's amazing the network effects of Twitter and LinkedIn or whatever it might be. I was actively reading a paper I saw on LinkedIn from a connection from years ago who's doing some work in the Bundesliga soccer, right? He did something on passing, modeling passing efficiency and stuff like that. So I'm like, I'm reading that paper right now. Like, that could be your paper. You know what I mean? I could be reading it right now.

You'd be surprised how many people just don't take the time to like customize their resume. Like if there is some sort of like prompt, like I ask questions and they don't fill them out or they don't take time, they don't answer the questions that I'm asking. So I can't even evaluate you because you're not doing what I'm asking you to do off the hop. And then the next thing I would say is really lead with what work you have done that will be most relevant to the position you're applying to.

I just did an interview this morning, a second round technical interview with one of my candidates. And she has great experience. Obviously, I'm moving her along. I think she can do the work. And she dropped something on me. And I'm like, wait a second, this is nowhere in your resume. And we've had, this is our second conversation. This is super relevant to the job you're trying to get with me. And you left it completely off. Like why? And if I didn't ask the right question, I would have never learned that about her. You need to put this somewhere very, very high if it's not with me, the next person, because this is so crucial.

In 2014, when I started, there was a couple of data science programs. And now the applicants I'm getting is everybody has skills, because there's so many great programs. So how do I differentiate those people now, right? There used to be like, I would get 100 applicants and five had skills. So now I'm getting 100 applicants and 40 have skills. Okay, so now that gap is like, there's still how do we differentiate amongst the 40 now should be your question. And the question and the answers I have to that are like projects and things that showcase specific to the our industry, which is sports, right? Show me something that you could apply there. And then now we're going to get into like people that have domain knowledge.

Moving into leadership and managing a team

My 2022 goal for myself is like, and I'm being vulnerable and honest here when I say this is like, I started as a team of one. And to be honest, like I'm learning the management side of things. As I'm going, I'm doing it on the fly kind of thing. And I do believe I need to get better at managing a team, a data science team. So that's what I'm going to focus on this year is going, how do I go from three to six people that are a part of my group, including myself, right? How do we organize ourselves and optimize our group, right?

My progression has been like going from an individual contributor to now going to like a manager, right? And what that entails. And then I'm also part of like a management team that is doing more strategic type work and like, you know, long, short, medium, long-term planning, like things like that. So it's like distinguishing those roles. That's where I get split in two is like, it's not just the contributing data science work. It's the managerial strategic work as well.

Balancing coding skills with leadership

As you go up the ladder of moving from executing day-to-day projects to actually managing a team, it's just something that lingers in my mind because in your current situation, that's how it is, but next year it could be different. So I've always wondered if I moved so far away from the code, so far away from managing, actually executing projects, do I lose my coding skills? And when I'm in the next environment where I need that skillset, is that going to be a difficult process to refresh myself?

Nervous? No, I mean, I think you make time for things that are important to you, right? We all do that on our daily basis. So if exercise and health is important to you, you make time for it. You make time for it. You just do, right? So for me, if coding is something that I want to continue to maintain, I'm going to do it because I enjoy doing it. I'm going to find the time, whether that's at night, that's in the morning. I have two young kids. I mean, I'm juggling a lot of things, right? So it's just time management. And when you have a staff, it's, you know, I've talked to my, with my staff also about maybe having like, toying around with the idea of like office hours, like, okay, 9am to 12pm, I'm like blocked off. Like I'm, that's where I'm going to do my work, my individual work, right? And everybody's going to do their individual work. And then 12 to 1.30 office hours, come with me to any questions you might have, anything we need, we need a decision on or like there's, it's not a clear path, we need to, we need to choose the best way to go.

If I could just give a little piece to Trevor's question and add on to a bit of what Ian has said in the comment from Frank in there. This was top of mind for me like 12 years ago. It's when I really start to transition from a heavy technical role into management. It was geospatial, but technical is technical. It kind of doesn't really matter if it's engineering, if it's coding, if it's whatever. And I struggled with it for about two years. And I think it was because I was comfortable at it. And when you're really comfortable and you're successful or anything like that, but when you're good at something, it's kind of hard to want to leave it behind. But as I matured into my role and I became comfortable of what does it mean to be a manager? What does it mean to lead? I have a bit of a philosophy that I like to carry around. It's the shield and spear. My role becomes less of tactfully putting out widgets. It's more enabling the people to be really successful. So if I try to measure my success by other people's success, and I know that might sound selfish, but it helps rationalize in my head. So if I can chop down and break down all the barriers for them, then they will be more successful. So I sacrifice that technical to enable them to be further. However, I think it's still very relevant to keep your skills at some type of level just for street cred in your team, bringing new people on, having other people within there. If you can talk that language and they see you're like, oh, that's not just some dude in a suit. The barriers come down and you can have those conversations and your communication goes up in a field that is technical.

I like to expand upon that too. I think my approach also is to use a little bit of humility with my team and just go to them and say like, hey, what are you doing here? I see you've done something here, teach me that. I want to learn that. And I tell people that actively that the guys on my team right now and people that I'm interviewing, I'm saying, I said this briefly earlier and I mean it, I want to hire people smarter than me because if I'm hiring people below my skill level all the time, then I'm constantly having to be the teacher where I'm trying to lift up six people myself. Whereas if I'm constantly hiring somebody that's an expert at something above me, then they're lifting me and my group up, the other people in that one domain. And then the next person's doing that in their domain. And so we're spreading the expertise across and we're teaching each other and working collaboratively as a group. The buck still stops with me and I'm still responsible for, like you said, being the shield, as you said, for management or moving obstacles out of their way. And sometimes the obstacles that are in people's way, I've realized is like me or processes.

I want to hire people smarter than me because if I'm hiring people below my skill level all the time, then I'm constantly having to be the teacher where I'm trying to lift up six people myself. Whereas if I'm constantly hiring somebody that's an expert at something above me, then they're lifting me and my group up.