Tech & Innovation Blog
Career Journey from a Filmmaker to a Conversational Designer (CxD)
Voice of Our People, Innovation, Career Insights
For anyone who wants to work as a conversation designer, the first step would be to understand how human-computer interactions (HCI) work.
Career Journey from a Filmmaker to a Conversational Designer (CxD)
By Azfar Rizvi, the Conversational Designer
If you look at my current role at ADP, you might be surprised with my professional background. For a decade, I was a journalist and a screenwriter traveling and producing films for global news and media networks. In collaboration with World Wildlife Fund and the British Council, my last films toured across Europe and the UK, garnering a mention from editors at Rolling Stone Magazine.
Who would’ve thought I’d be a good fit at ADP?
It wasn’t until 2015, when I was asked to consult as a screenwriter for an Amazon Prime Video project, I realized how transferable my skills were from screenwriting. Being part of a writers’ room at a significant streaming network pushed me to explore my fictional dialogue and screenwriting chops! And I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge.
What Is a Writers’ Room?
A writers’ room is a workspace where TV writers brainstorm
each element of a TV series including episode breakdowns,
the series arc, the season arc, character development, and
various substories within each episode or each season. A writers’
room is where the direction of the season is determined and refined,
& where all the creative minds—the showrunner, producers, and writers
—brainstorm the ways in which they can help create an excellent show.
– MasterClass
As I emerged from my journey through Hollywood, I consulted on a year-long Conversational AI project for Google Assistant. This was a daunting undertaking. My Conversational Design work surfaced in front of over two billion users worldwide overnight. The new GA experience combined text and voice interaction ranging from songs and jokes to easter eggs and riddles. We pioneered an interface to bridge the gap between human conversational intelligence and artificial intelligence. Millions of these users were migrants from diverse backgrounds – so embedding grace in the experience to produce content that resonated with everyone took a significant amount of self-reflection and research. When we launched, we hit it out of the park. That was the day I truly understood what it meant for content to converge in the sweet spot between AI tech and storytelling.
I fell in love with this new universe and this journey eventually culminated at ADP!
Q: Why did you come to ADP and why do you stay?
This is a great question, and the answer constantly evolves for me. Arriving at ADP during the pandemic, I saw the team’s efficacy in the work of Conversational AI. Thousands of users and clients were trying to access accurate financial information using our existing platforms, and I saw an opportunity to be a part of these exciting acts of service – to be able to make lives easier by serving the best possible solutions in the most empathetic manner.
I continue to stay and grow at ADP because I love the learning opportunities provided by our UX leadership. The people-centric open-door policy here is unlike anywhere I’ve worked. I collaborate with an amazing team where people and culture triumph in service to overcome personal challenges every day. What more can one ask for!
Q: Let’s talk about using your creative and technical skills at ADP!
My role at ADP is a combination of conversation design and process ideation. From a CxD perspective, I collaborate with Product Owners and Managers. At this stage, we dive into what use cases we need on our roadmap and the tradeoffs. Internally, with the User Experience team, it becomes more hands-on as I design the conversational experiences and mockup the technical and functional base of what a multimodal experience could look like.
For the conversation design process, I leverage skills acquired across my previous work: UX writing, VUI design, interaction design, and audio/visual design. I like to think of my role as that of a bricklayer – understand the user needs, embrace the tech constraints, figure out the underlying logic (APIs, etc.), and design a detailed specification document that represents the complete user experience. The last step is to curate this experience and work with the developers to produce it. This journey forces me to leverage a combination of both industry chatbot standards, and the direction our ADP UX leadership wants our virtual assistant, A.V.A, to take.
Q: What is a piece of advice for candidates looking for jobs in Conversation Design (CxD)?
For the past decade, Conversational AI has been incorporated into a diverse collection of form factors empowering users to interact more organically with automated systems. This is when A.V.A, ADP’s virtual assistant comes in place. A.V.A combines digital concierges and AI-powered chat solutions, extending our users’ significant level of intelligent service automation and personalization.
Conversation Design (CxD) at its core is the craft of delivering a comprehensive experience users might engage in to arrive at a pre-determined automated outcome. It is the discipline of producing a series of detailed design flows/outcomes leveraging the businesses’ purpose and underlying logic to curate a holistic user experience.
CxD is a new field so there are quite a few pathways into the industry. For anyone who wants to work as a conversation designer, the first step would be to understand how human-computer interactions (HCI) work.
A good place to start would be to get comfortable with ambiguity. Begin with diving into UI (User Interface) and UX design. Understand the basics of a storytelling arc. Read, write, and analyze dialogues and screenplays. Utilize existing CxD platforms where you can design interactions, preview prototypes, and implement the final experience. Both Google and Amazon have detailed design tutorials for their Assistants. Use these resources to create experiences for your portfolio and start sharing these with peers on LinkedIn.
Q: What is some overlapping, essential skills required in both filmmaking and designing?
Before ADP, I produced conversational experiences for virtual assistants at Google and Verizon. A significant part of my skills is a continuation of my learnings from screenwriting and storytelling — understanding the user journey, how can we use context to create an empathetic user experience, and how can we continue to iterate on the results. Take a feature-length documentary as an example: you start with a core narrative, shoot the right visual, and edit to create a final product. The same logic applies to conversational AI chatbot. Before coming to ADP, I spent a lot of time poking holes in my own work – showing it to friends and family and asking them what works and does not work for them.
Q: What are leaders like at ADP? What is your team’s dynamic?
The UX leadership at ADP is unlike none other I’ve worked with in the past. These are some of the most empathetic and seasoned professionals in the industry who continue to push the envelope. The conversational AI technological roadmap is constantly being iterated upon and is just one of the hallmarks of ADP’s current work. We have a Design Guild where we show up to support each other’s work, experiment with emerging CxD and UX use cases, and future-proof ADP’s brand. Our leadership is committed to uplifting all of us through weekly 1-on-1 sessions and biweekly feedback walkthroughs.
Q: What inspires you outside of work?
My curiosity and passion for storytelling inspire my day-to-day outside of work. Before we were plunged into the Covid world order, I was working with emerging entrepreneurs to empower them to share their stories outside of their communities. ‘Life of I’ is my passion project that has fueled live storytelling events across cities in Canada, the US, Afghanistan, Australia, and Pakistan. I personally work with a select few storytellers who narrate a personal story of their choice in front of a live audience. We’re currently pioneering a new remote storytelling format in collaboration with a local NYC-based co-working space!
In addition, I am still involved with my original screenwriting team. We’re putting together a spec script for Netflix about a girl who travels across different magical worlds through a portal in her bedroom’s closet. The team’s super excited about this story of resilience and empowerment, and we start shooting in September. Fingers crossed!
Q: What do you look forward to the most in the future?
Deep down, I identify as a storyteller. I started my career as a radio producer around 20 years ago. Back in the day, it took me over two hours to line up the right theme music and queue up the correct songs for a 45-minute radio show. Today, the same can be accomplished in less than 5 minutes. The days of DATs are gone!
Behind all this evolution is the power of AI and automation.
AI’s technological development has constantly been transforming the way businesses nay the world operates. Developments in VR/AR space, the Metaverse, and the haptics have proven humanity’s desire to continue to push the proverbial boundaries. Over a decade ago, the first smartphone was launched, and it rendered keypads on mobile phones redundant. With this change in the traditional user interface, it was evident that technology will continue to evolve, reducing the size of our devices. Every ten years, human-computer interaction completely changes – Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, Bixby, and other AI-powered virtual assistants are a testament to this change. And A.V.A. our virtual assistant is a step in that direction.
Interested in a Conversational Design career at ADP?
We are hiring! Click here to see what we have available.
Tech & Innovation Blog
The Five Key Elements of a Product Champion
Career Insights, Voice of Our People, Career Advice
If you are passionate about making sure people have a smile on their face when they open their payslips, you might have what it takes to become a product champion at ADP.
The Five Key Elements of a Product Champion
We spoke to one of our Product Leaders who had years of experience implementing ADP’s product development approach, recently leading the GlobalView Core Payroll product for the APAC market. He shared five elements of our product development framework that helps turn product managers into product champions.
***
“When I first joined ADP, I had worked in supply chain and fintech for 15 years, but the payroll domain was new to me. As a product manager, I knew that my role was to envision how to build products and what features we needed, but I wasn’t sure how to best understand my end users to do my job better,” the leader said. “Fortunately for me, ADP has a framework that guides the learning and skill-building needed to take a person from a product manager to what I like to call a ‘product champion’—someone who takes ownership of their work, leading products team to make people happier.”
Although our product leader believes each piece of the framework is essential, he highlights two foundational components: passion and empathy. “No one does everything perfectly, but if you have passion and empathy, the following five elements will help you become a product champion,” he said.
1) Speak up for the customer
When developing new products, a product champion needs to put the customers first and advocate for them, especially when there are different ideas on moving forward. It’s common for a product manager to make many decisions on different architecture types and marketing strategies. Since users cannot give feedback at every stage, it helps if the product manager thinks from the customers’ perspectives.
A true product champion understands the users and their pain points. What makes their lives easier? What solutions are available? The goal is to save time and money, helping the customers better serve their employees. The shift in perspective helps solve the customers’ absence in the product-building processes. We are confident that we are solving the right problems when we advocate for the customers along the way.
2) Know the market
In addition to becoming a customer’s advocate, a product champion needs to be a market expert with a solid understanding of the trends and competitors within the space. We design irreplaceable unique strategies our competitors can’t easily copy in the development stages, creating long-term life cycles for our products and businesses. Remember that our products should make us stand apart, and understanding the market helps create this differentiation.
Product managers benefit from the massive amount of data we have here at ADP, enabling real-time understanding of what people want and need. In addition, we hire highly strategic research analysts dedicated to market research. A product champion connects and learns from these experts to benefit from their expertise, pairing qualitative data with quantitative analysis. This extra step helps a product champion paint a complete picture of what’s happening.
3) Zero in on the goal
We measure success by outcomes, whether a single feature or a whole new product. One of the most critical tasks in product management is to track the team’s steps and measure if they will lead to the desired objectives and outcomes. Progress is incremental, but we can increase business awareness and gain more sales and new users while increasing customer satisfaction with it.
How do you track whether 38 million people and 920,000 clients are happy or not? At ADP, we know when our users find and use new features. Even if a new function is three screens deep, we know immediately when clients navigate through them or have problems with the latest features through our deep user research. Product champions look for and understand these choke points, and they use artificial intelligence (AI) and other tools efficiently, monitoring the outcomes of the enhancements.
4) Build teams and consensus along with a product
Every product manager is a builder. Behind the scenes, we evaluate how fast and efficiently our teams are moving. A product champion sits at the center to coordinate engineering teams, ensuring we progress towards the final products and keeps everyone on the same page.
Coordination often becomes challenging when every team member has their vision of an ideal project. The solution to this challenge is what differentiates a product manager from a product champion. A product champion builds consensus allowing the team to work together while delivering what the customer needs.
5) Empathize and influence
Part of the building process is selling the product’s vision and communicating the customer’s pain points to the teams involved. A product manager who has empathy will speak up for customers and build consensus. If you know what makes the customers’ business operations difficult, you can identify their needs and improve their lives by providing better solutions. This approach also applies to internal teams. It’s also crucial to suggest alternatives when an expectation is not feasible.
***
At ADP, product managers have the opportunity to learn from people with deep expertise who allow us to elevate our work to the champion level. “We can’t quickly draw a line between what’s in our responsibility and what isn’t,” the product leader said. “A product champion claims both success and failure, always looking for improvements.”
Becoming a product manager is a huge commitment, so passion is a deciding factor in hiring. People who are passionate and dedicated will go the extra mile to become product champions. “If you are passionate about making sure people have a smile on their face when they open their payslips, you might have what it takes to become a product champion at ADP,” the product leader said.
Interested in Product Management positions at ADP? We’re hiring!
Click here to search for your next move and visit Who We Hire.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Great Place to Work® Named ADP Brazil Labs one of the Best Companies to Work 2021
Award, Brazil Labs, Why ADP
At ADP Brazil Labs, the top two areas ranked most highly were pride in exercising the profession and teamwork.
Great Place to Work® Named ADP Brazil Labs one of the Best Companies to Work 2021
Great Place to Work® (GPTW), a global authority on workplace culture, named ADP Brazil Labs one of the best companies in the Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. GPTW has a mission to build a better world by helping organizations become a great place to work for all. ADP Brazil Labs was ranked 20th in the medium-sized category and was recognized as one of the most successful companies implementing people management.
ADP Brazil Labs
How does GPTW rank companies?
GPTW uses a comprehensive method to measure employees’ work experiences and analyze the organization’s practices and culture, setting standards in the industry. The research includes a variety of criteria and ranks the best work environments. The survey covers associates’ evaluations on growth opportunities, quality of life, credibility, a sense of respect, impartiality, and aligning with values in the company. At ADP Brazil Labs, the top two areas ranked most highly were pride in exercising the profession and teamwork.
ADP Brazil Labs Associates Bringing Awareness to Breast Cancer
Over the past few years, ADP Brazil Labs has further strengthened its people management strategies and practices, including team development, improvements, and consolidation to encourage professional growth. The lab values people’s voices, promotes associate engagement and offers management tools. These practices sustain an organizational culture marked by associates’ self-development, leading to great recognition.
The award reinforces ADP Brazil Labs is heading in the right direction. “Being certified by the GPTW RS seal is only possible thanks to our associates,” said Julio Hartmann, the Vice president of ADP Brazil Labs. “They give their best day after day, fulfilling our purpose in building the future of work through technology and innovation.”
Interested in a tech career at ADP Brazil Labs?
Click here to search for your next move and visit Who We Hire.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Discovering Tech Bootcamps
Career Advice, Bootcamps, UX
Accessible Video Controls
Video: Considering a career in Tech? Try a Bootcamp
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TEXT: Samantha, Senior Platform Engineer]
I went to boot camp at Hack Reactor in 2016. And there I learned how to code, so everything from just JavaScript basics just to really get our feet wet, to learning how to work on Node, which is what we use here, and front end frameworks, databases, all the really core pieces of what you do day to day.
[TEXT: Stephanie, UX Designer]
I attended one at General Assembly. It’s called User Experience Immersive. And for me, I didn’t have the ability to quit my job to do this full time. So I definitely took on the part time study. And upon completing the course and getting my certification, I started looking for opportunities within ADP.
[TEXT: Jack, Software Engineer]
When I graduated from that programming boot camp, I was just looking for a solid job. And I just really appreciated all that ADP had to offer. It was a really fun product, for one thing. As I got to meet what would be my fellow software engineers, I found that I really had a really solid rapport with them and got along with them well. So between the culture, between the people, and the product itself, it really just seemed like the right fit for me.
[TEXT: Aimee, UX Designer]
After I’d completed my boot camp program, I was looking for a way to network that worked for me. So I don’t really enjoy going to events and just sort of talking to random people. I thought the best way to be would be to be involved in organization and that people would get to know me and how I work by actually working with me.
And the way that I found out was Margot, the Director at ADP for User Experience Design. She was actually on the board, and I was as well, of an organization called User Experience Professional Association. And she happened to post about an opening under her department. And I reached out to her. And I told her, you should consider me if you haven’t hired anyone yet. And she just kind of put me through the regular recruiting process by starting with the HR person contact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TEXT: Ready to design what’s next? Visit tech.adp.com/careers.]
[LOGO: ADP, Always Designing for People]
[TEXT: ADP, the ADP logo, and Always Designing for People are trademarks of ADP, LLC. Copyright © 2020 ADP, LLC. All rights reserved.]
As a technologist at ADP, there are many different ways you can find yourself working in one of our innovation centers. One of those ways is by being recruited through a technology Bootcamp. Our Associates share how they found their first job in their technology careers at ADP through Bootcamps. Added bonus- the networking they were able to do through the program!
Tech & Innovation Blog
Advancing Your Career
Lifion, Career Journey, Leadership
Accessible Video Controls
Video: One Product Manager’s Take on Advancing Your Career
Video: One Product Manager’s Take on Advancing Your Career
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TEXT, Chintan, Director, Product Management]
The opportunity that exists here, to anyone else you know starting out, I really kind of just showcase my journey here, which is that you have the ability to come into the organization as a developer, in my case, you have the ability to then contribute. If you decide to make a career change, you have opportunities within ADP to make those career changes. And I went from working in the development area to product management where I really loved it. And if you continue to enjoy what you do, be successful at what you do, then you continue to get more opportunities to continue to follow the path that you want to go down.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TEXT: Ready to design what’s next? Visit tech.adp.com/careers.]
[LOGO: ADP, Always Designing for People]
[TEXT: ADP, the ADP logo, and Always Designing for People are trademarks of ADP, LLC. Copyright © 2020 ADP, LLC. All rights reserved.]
Meet Chintan, one of our product managers in our New York City Innovation Center. He started at ADP as a Developer and since that time has grown into new roles, like his latest one as Product Manager. ADP has the ability to offer new experiences and untapped opportunities for those who want it.
ADP Women in STEM Profile: Manjula Ganta
Manjula’s mantra: “Don’t focus on fitting in; figure out how to stand out.” After reading about her hard work, success and leadership, you’ll see Manjula walks the talk — and encourages others to do the same.
Growing up, Manjula Ganta wanted to be a doctor. She loved science and biology and was fascinated by how the body works as a machine. But med school was financially out of reach, so she chose a career in mathematics. Manjula’s mother encouraged her and her sisters to learn computers.
“My mother was a visionary and could see technology evolving even before the internet existed,” Manjula said. “From her experiences and struggles as a homemaker, forgoing a job opportunity due to culture constraints, my mom inspired her four girls to be independent and encouraged us to pursue our careers. She is the greatest influence on who I am today.”
From India to Omaha
Manjula grew up in a small town in southern India near Hyderabad. In school, she was very outgoing, smart, and well-rounded – a trait she carried into adulthood and her career. Manjula pursued a bachelor’s degree, majoring in mathematics. She simultaneously enrolled into a Diploma in Systems Management program that introduced her to computers. Manjula later earned her MBA with a major in finance, and graduated as class valedictorian.
She moved to Hyderabad to work for a financial services company as a management trainee. Manjula was quick to learn the intricacies of the business and even as an intern courageously presented her ideas. Soon she had an opportunity to design the development of an integrated app to better manage the company’s branch reports. “Curiosity and rapid technology changes led me to learn relational databases and the integrated enterprise application software,” Manjula recalls.
A few years later, Manjula married her high school sweetheart, who had moved to Omaha, NE. She moved from Hyderabad to Omaha, and they started a family. “It was a big adjustment for me, both culturally and professionally,” Manjula said, “and it took a while to figure out how to balance my career and family.”
Manjula began working in Boston as a Peoplesoft consultant for the state of Massachusetts, going home only every couple of weeks. “It was a very challenging time in my life, being a young mother with a traveling job – staying away from home and my toddler son,” she recalls.
Manjula then worked as a Peoplesoft technical consultant for a project with General Electric (GE) in New York in variety of roles. She successfully implemented various Peoplesoft modules, leading offshore teams. After a few years, Manjula’s husband took a new job and they moved to Atlanta, where she continued to work with GE remotely.
Have grit and break your own expectations – expectations can be a weight on your shoulders.
– Manjula Ganta, Director of Application & Development, GPT
After her nine-year project at GE, Manjula joined ADP National Accounts Services (NAS) Outsourcing (COS) division as a senior business systems analyst. “It was a big shift going from development to a business systems analyst role,” Manjula recalls. “I would still get into the code and give the developers inputs about the issues.” She laughingly added, “I think they got frustrated sometimes, but it also helped improve our communication.”
Manjula’s role soon expanded to managing the same development team across analytics, robotics process automation (RPA) and other web/cloud tools and technologies, and she was tasked with managing diverse virtual teams as a single global team. “I was responsible for helping the team see and execute the vision, removing any roadblocks and partnering with other leaders to make it successful,” she recalls. Manjula’s ability to combine business acumen and technical competency, along with her pragmatic approach, enabled her to be decisive and impactful across the COS business.
Manjula then became the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the NAS Tools & Technology Operations, where she worked on several technology and transformation initiatives to develop, support, and enhance ADP’s internal and client-facing tools.
Manjula says she’s taken this approach throughout her career: “As a thoughtful leader, I strive to create a positive and collaborative work culture with emphasis on employee recognition – helping teams to look beyond their differences. Celebrating associate birthdays, work anniversaries and key project milestones helps everyone feel valued and included.”
Currently, Manjula is a Director of Application Development, Global Product & Technology (GPT), where she takes an even broader responsibility for building ADP’s core products from a technology architecture, design, quality and user experience standpoint, to make them more effective for ADP’s clients.
Developing Self and Others
“ADP has a unique culture in which they put their associates first,” she says. “Prior to ADP, most of my development was self-initiated, but here we have many career development opportunities, mentorship programs, stretch assignments, networking events through employee resource groups, technical workshops, etc. You just need to be motivated and find the time to develop yourself.”
Manjula had the opportunity to enroll in an external Pathbuilders mentorship program. “The program helped me to become more self-aware, building my own personal brand inside and outside of ADP,” she says. Manjula is thankful to the leaders, mentors and sponsors who invested their time by providing her exposure at the business unit level.
Carrying it forward, Manjula helps mentor others at ADP and through various non-profit organizations. She is an active volunteer for Women in Technology based in Atlanta, which helps girls and women succeed from the classroom to the boardroom. Manjula recently joined the ADP GPT Women in Technology Leadership Mentoring Initiative (WiTL) that helps develop a diverse leadership talent pipeline through a formal mentoring program. She also volunteers for the American Heart Association, Special Olympics of Georgia, and leads several ADP business resource group events in the Alpharetta location, creating awareness and raising donations for causes she cares about.
Best Advice
Manjula offers this advice for women starting their careers in STEM: “Have grit and break your own expectations – expectations can be a weight on your shoulders. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes; it’s important to learn. Life is not just about success; it’s also about failure, difficulty, and learning to recover. Focus on the present, stay positive, and keep going.”
Manjula also recommends finding a mentor. “Mentors have helped me realize my worth and have inspired me to speak up, be myself, and encouraged me to take on the next challenge. One of my leaders would say, ‘I wish you had had your voice earlier.'”
“Always find your support system, family, friends or coworkers and don’t be afraid to seek help or delegate,” Manjula said. “You don’t have to be a perfectionist or do it all.”
She is very grateful for her husband, Ranjith, and two sons, Abhitej and Ritvik, who have always supported her career, helped at home, and offered new and different points of view.
“Have fun, no matter how hard things can get. Humor and fun can always make the journey (personal or professional) easier.”
Through all the learning and big changes as an Asian Indian immigrant and a woman in STEM, Manjula’s best advice is: “Don’t focus on fitting in; figure out how to stand out.”
Read about other ADP Women in STEM and learn about careers at ADP.
Tech & Innovation Blog
Meet Anshuman: ADP’s Inventor of the Year
Inventor of the Year, Voice of our People, Career Path
Through ADP’s patent program, Anshuman’s name appears as an inventor on ten patent applications filed within the last five years, seven of which have registered.
Anshuman Gaur was named ADP’s Inventor of the Year. Through ADP’s patent program, his name appears as an inventor on ten patent applications filed within the last five years, seven of which have registered.
Since joining ADP 11 years ago in Hyderabad, India as a Test Analyst, he’s been an amazing contributor to our organization. We recently caught up with Anshuman to ask him about the patent process, his advice for other inventors, his cricket experience, and more!
What different roles you’ve had during your time at ADP?
I started as a Test Analyst in the Next Gen PayExpert team. From there, I moved to a business analyst role, and then a Sr. Business Analyst role within the same group. By this time, PayExpert had transformed into a single database Workforce Now (WFN) solution with HR, Payroll, Time & Benefits all running on the same platform.
In 2014, I moved to Alpharetta, Georgia, as a Product Manager for WFN shared products such as reporting, analytics, PaaS, etc. In this role, I had the opportunity to work on the launch of DataCloud, an HCM analytics product targeted at mid-market clients. After a short stint with the DataCloud product team, where I had the opportunity to pilot ADP’s compensation benchmarking and predictive analytics features, I went back to the WFN team as a Director of Product Management in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Video call with the team
In early 2018, life came full circle when I received the opportunity to lead the WFN Next-Generation product. We work on the future of work and pay every day, including some cool features like on-demand pay, punch to pay real-time calculations, etc. We have an awesome opportunity to challenge the status quo and lead in the market with a competitive next-gen offering.
In a nutshell, I’ve had so many roles and so much fun! 🙂
What did you think when you first learned you were ADP’s Inventor of the Year?
It was quite surprising, to be honest! Many great products and features are being built across the organization, so it’s an honor to be recognized with this award. Also, being on the same list as Frank Villavicencio, VP, Product Management, is an absolute privilege.
What’s your process for coming up with ideas that would be great for a patent?
That’s a great question, and something we focus on quite a bit in our day-to-day work. It’s a combination of client need awareness, market and competitive awareness, and problem-solving skills. I am lucky to have a great team of developers, UX designers, and product owners who bring these skills to the table. We look at how we can solve problems that give the customer a delightful solution and, at the same time, gives us a competitive advantage.
We recently filed a patent for a solution that not only eliminates some key challenges and pain points but also exceeds the competition. It’s worth securing those features with a patent.
What is the patent process at ADP?
It’s quite straight forward. Once you have identified a feature or an idea for a patent, you can submit an invention brief on our internal associate portal under the ADP Patent Program. In this document, you provide a brief summary of the invention, the problems it solves that couldn’t be solved before, and how the solution is unique.
Once this is submitted, IP lawyers make the magic happen coming up with claims, preparing the filing documentation, etc. You need to participate in reviewing these documents during the process. Once the application is submitted, you can easily track progress on the portal.
What advice do you have for other inventors?
We solve many large-scale problems here at ADP. Our inventions are unique to our size and our business, and so I encourage everyone to take a moment to ask a couple of questions as they discover new ways to solve problems:
“Am I creating an intellectual property?” If the answer is yes, “Does the solution solve a problem in a unique way that can be secured by a patent?”
These questions are a simple way to guide inventors through the decision-making process of securing IPs. There is no doubt that inventions are happening here. We need to take the additional and essential step in securing it.
What do you like best about working at ADP?
There are many things, from passionate people to amazing culture to great opportunities. But if I were to pick one, I would say it’s the large-scale problems that I love to solve working with various cross-functional teams.
What advice would you give to your 16-year-old self?
Don’t ever stop playing cricket no matter how hard and busy life gets! For the cricket fans out there, I used to bowl right arm, medium-fast.
What is your must-have app? Yelp & YouTube
Anshuman Gaur is a Senior Director, Product Management at ADP based in New Jersey.
Being a first-time Engineering Leader
“You did a great job as a senior engineer. You are now promoted to a manager to lead the new team that we just formed. Congratulations on your new role!”
It is something on these lines that most people get promoted or at least that is how I remember when I was promoted to a manager. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with promotions such as this. The key though is in recognising that the expectations change when this happens. As we moved up the individual contributor (IC) ladder we learnt to solve harder technical problems. This change in role, though changes the operating field a little. It is in this context that I am listing out a few things that would have helped me transition into my role as a manager better, when I started out.
Transition from a maker to manager schedule
Staying hands on — in other words writing production quality code is a reality for most first time managers making this transition. It is also likely the first time where you end up navigating both kinds of schedules on a daily basis and it is a hard thing to do. Learn to be protective of your calendar. You could do this by:
Blocking your time in the calendar where you need to stay heads down. I’d suggest at least 3 hours at a time and then adjust up or down depending on what is an ideal chunk of uninterrupted time for you to get something meaningful done
Being ever more mindful of how you now schedule time with your direct reports. Just because you have moved onto a different schedule does not mean they should have to. If you are conscious of how you set up these meetings, that is one more thing you are doing for your team
Doing what you can to string your meetings into one contiguous block. Better yet, define your meeting times and agree with your peers. With a little back and forth, this usually works well for everyone and is another barrier for folks who gatecrash into your time with unplanned meetings
If you want to know more about different types of schedules, Paul Graham’s article explains it quite well.
Stay hands on
You are most likely a manager of a team with highly opinionated ICs. You need to be able to have a conversation with them, ask the right questions, pressure test their approach.
Pressure on your time as an IC will only increase as you grow and if you don’t strive to stay hands on, very soon you will find yourself too far from where the action is. You don’t necessarily have to pick up the most critical problem to solve but do what you must to stay relevant and make a meaningful contribution.
Impediment remover, not always a problem solver
After years of being an IC where you are used to solving problems yourself, it can be hard to take a step back.
Be the person who helps your teams get over the hump even if you are not the one who identified the problem or fixed it. Serve the team in the capacity that is best needed at the time and avoid being a seagull manager. With a young team, it could mean leading with a solution while with more mature teams, it could just be about asking the right questions. And in some other cases, maybe it is just carrying pizza!!
Carve out time for career development
A key reason you choose to be a manager is that you genuinely believe that you can have a greater impact on your purpose by developing a strong team. Be interested in each member’s aspirations, be on the lookout for their strengths and biases. Provide timely feedback. Help identify opportunities that will help them hone their newly acquired skills. These are all things perhaps any standard course on “New Managers” will refer to. There are many talks and articles out there to drive home the point that when you can align aspirations with the organisational goals that is when you are likely to have the most impact, but also derive personal satisfaction. Do the most you can to make this a practice.
Bar raiser
You have to do this at every opportunity you get, not just when hiring someone into the team. You have to be the cheerleader during your team’s journey towards excellence. Raise the bar when it comes to technical excellence; be the torchbearer when it comes to upholding your organisations credos and values. Often in the quest for an organisation’s immediate imperatives culture takes a back seat. Protect, sustain and improve your organisation’s culture like your organisation’s life depends on it; because it actually does.
Manage upwards and sideways
Managing upwards or to the side is typically seen by engineers as an ugly part of organizational politics. Other than the typical activities that are required to manage information, the biggest reason to do this is because software development is a collaborative activity. Managing in its purest sense is about aligning priorities across teams. You will be able to achieve your goals better if you can influence your peers to row in the same direction and are aligned with the direction your manager has in mind. At the same time, this is also about course correcting if need be and ensuring people on the impacted teams understand why a correction is better for everyone.
Conclusion
Doing some or all of these things will not turn you into a super manager overnight. I like to compare this to going to the gym. You will not notice any change after your first day at the gym, but keep at it long enough and the results will be clear for all to see.
Tech & Innovation Blog
On Elephant Graveyards
Career Mobility, Career Advice, Voice of our People
Some years ago, I heard someone sarcastically say, “This is where elephants come to die” in response to me asking them why such intelligent people as themselves were still at that company.
Since then, I have been referring to “elephant graveyards” when describing companies and teams that don’t have headroom for intelligent people to rise the ranks and grow as engineers.
An elephant graveyard, when applied to a corporate setting, is a team, company, or some other set of conditions, in which otherwise bright engineers take positions or assignments where there is no hope for future career growth. In this post, I hope to define the conditions that must be present for an elephant graveyard to form, how to detect them, and how to navigate them.
Defining career growth
An engineer’s career growth has three dimensions: skills, recognition, and compensation.
Skill growth is a function engineer learning new skills and becoming an expert through practicing newly acquired abilities on real-world projects.
Recognition is a function of showing initiative, applying new skills, and being recognized by supportive leadership.
Compensation is a function of recognition and skill growth.
Conditions required for an elephant graveyard to form
An elephant graveyard forms when the three dimensions of career growth become stagnant.
Skill growth stagnates when the project reaches a certain level of maturity and is either no longer growing or is in a terminal decline. Projects reach maturity when they reach a critical mass in production and are no longer rapidly evolving. When the active development phase is over, the projects are often scaled back. When projects don’t rapidly evolve, there is no room for the acquisition of new skills.
Another reason for skill growth stagnation is the presence of the Smartest Person In The Room. The Smartest Person In The Room is either the developer themselves (which means they’ve outgrown the project and are now a toxic influence on it) or someone else (who created the conditions in which only his ideas are good).
The emergence of the Smartest Person In The Room is toxic to the team, and good leaders should discourage it. Since only their ideas count, the rest of the engineers can’t grow and earn recognition.
Recognition stagnates when skills stagnate, or the engineer loses leadership support, including management incompetence. When leadership is unsupportive, new skills don’t often earn any recognition.
When both skill growth and recognition stagnate, compensation stagnates as well. Chances are higher if you work for a well-run company, the reward system is in line with skill growth and recognition. Poorly run companies, not so much. Companies that create artificial limitations barriers, like title hierarchies, run the risk of losing technologists for compensation reasons.
What to do if you find yourself in an elephant graveyard
First of all, try and detect an elephant graveyard before you join the company. Ask questions about team dynamics and the project maturity cycle. Don’t join a company or a team where elephants come to die.
If you find yourself in an elephant graveyard, however, it’s not all over. Evaluate your overall situation. Is work-life balance important to you at this phase of your life? Are you fairly compensated at this moment in time? Are there opportunities within your company on other projects? Is there an opportunity to shake things up on your existing project?
As long as there is room to grow, there is no reason to be restless. You are not an elephant, and you are not in a graveyard. Not yet, at least.
Published by Oleg Dulin
I am a software engineer and technology architect in New York City / New Jersey area. All opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent the opinions of my employers and customers, nor should my opinions be construed as opinions about my employers and customers.
Reprinted/Edited with permission. Read the original post.
