S2E17: Getting an MBA as a Front End Developer with Sarah Tan

Laurence:
Hey, it's Laurence Bradford. Welcome to Season 2 of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, where I'm chatting with people who taught themselves how to code and are now doing amazing things with their newly found skills.

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Hey listeners, welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I am your host, Laurence Bradford. In today's episode, I talk with Sarah Tan, a liberal arts graduate who transitioned into web development early in her career and now has ten years of experience in the field. Sarah has worked in higher education, at digital agencies, and in politics. But most recently, Sarah went back to school to get her MBA. In our conversation we discuss how Sarah first got into web development, how her career evolved over time, and what led her to go to business school. Remember, you can get Show Notes for this episode, plus a full transcript, at learntocode.me/podcast. Enjoy the episode!

Hey Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Sarah:
Hey Laurence, great to be here.

Laurence:
Could you introduce yourself really quick for the audience?

Sarah:
Sure. I have a bit of a mixed background personally as well as professionally. I'm originally from Singapore and then I went to school in the U.S. Then I worked there for a little bit and now I've been in the U.K. in London for about five years. When I was studying in the U.S., my major was Linguistics, which doesn't sound, it's not a tech degree. When I was studying in university, I was working at the student help center and that got me kickstarted on a tech degree, on a tech career. That's basically how I worked my way through using my non-tech major into being a web developer working in universities and for agencies. Now I've just finished my MBA, so I'm sort of starting a second career in tech but not coding per se.

Laurence:
Yes, that is so awesome. I was saying to you before we hit the record button, I was on your LinkedIn and going through everything you've done in the past and it's just so impressive. There's so much different kinds of experience you have to pick from and I think you really probably have something that could be relatable to almost anyone listening because you've worked in academia, you've worked as a web developer, you've worked in politics. It looks like you even run your own consulting business right now. We'll definitely get into all that. I want to mention before I forget, I didn't actually realize you were from Singapore and I did my entire senior thesis in college on Singapore's economic development in the 50s and 60s.

Sarah:
Yeah, that's a really interesting time period for the country.

Laurence:
Yeah. I love it. I've been to Singapore, I was actually trying to work in Singapore at one point so I'm a huge fan of Singapore. Anyway, that's a little bit unrelated there but just wanted to throw that in. When you first got interested in technology, it was through working at the help center at your college. Could you explain that a little bit more?

Sarah:
Yeah, it was like 2001, not everyone had a laptop. There was a computer center in college and I got a work study job there. It was based on, I hadn't done that much in tech. I think I literally had built a website with cat photos on it in the AOL days. They were into taking people who were just willing to learn. People who may not have had any kind of tech background. I had a little bit more than most. It was just saving data off of floppy disks, corrupted data, printer jams, really basic kind of IT kind of stuff. Then I got an internship through the college webmaster and so I specialized in web. I had two internships over two summers when I was an undergraduate and that's what really got me going. I worked part time during the school year then full time over the summer. I was just reading a lot of blogs. I did lots of reading on CSS, which was new at the time. Just did stuff, which is still how you learn now. You still learn by doing. There was a time when I had a lot of dedicated hours to learning the employable skill that I've had.

Laurence:
Yeah, that's so funny. I'm thinking back when you're telling that story. I remember in college thinking I didn't have a lot of time. Now when I look back at my time in college I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I had nothing but time." I learned, when I first began teaching myself how to code, it was not super similar, but I was living by my myself in Thailand. I had a job but that's all I had. I literally had no family and friends so I actually had a ton of time outside of work. That really allowed me to dedicate tons of time to learning how to code and build websites and what not. In any event, when I was going through your LinkedIn, one thing I thought was so interesting, I saw that you wrote your college thesis on HTML and the context of natural language change.

Sarah:
Yes.

Laurence:
You said you were a Linguist major and then you kind of combined the web and HTML. It was a bit ago, but can you recall, what was that like?

Sarah:
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting topic even now. It's a little bit outdated. Regardless, so HTML, just because of the way the web developed, you know with Tim Berners-Lee and the browser wars of the 90s, there was a lot of one upmanship and browsers essentially drove the development of the language. HTML ended up evolving in this very fluid way, which is how natural languages evolve. If you look at Beowulf in Old English to Shakespeare to Modern English now, there's a clear continuum, but also, it doesn't happen because someone says, "Okay, now we're going to go to English 3.0 and then in 100 years we're going to go to English 4.0," but that's how most computer languages actually develop, right? Like Python or Perl or JavaScript. They're actually versions, right, you see them in JavaScript six. I was just comparing the difference in how HTML, being a computer language, still developed in a way very much like natural languages as opposed to a versioned way.

Laurence:
That's like the coolest thing ever. When I read that, because I read it on your LinkedIn, I wasn't really sure what it meant. Now that I hear you explain it, that's completely fascinating, like the comparisons. You're so right. You think of, with the English language, I just think of all the slang terms that come out, that get put into use. I always find myself googling a word I hear in a song or some YouTube video, I have no idea what it means.

Sarah:
Yeah, I can tell that I'm getting a little old the more I have to use Urban Dictionary.

Laurence:
Oh my gosh, yes. I was going to say that, all the time. I'm like, "What does this word mean?" I think I know what it means and then I'm usually totally wrong. Maybe not totally, but I'm a bit wrong and I'm like, "Oh, okay, alright, that's what that means." Anyway, so that's super interesting. After college, it looks like you went back to school, and of course just most recently with your MBA, but you studied a few things, right?

Sarah:
Yeah, I have a bit of excessive education, if you look at my resume. Immediately after college, I did a one year Master's in Linguistics because that was obviously, it wasn't really my career trajectory but I felt and my family really pushed me to do a Master's just so that I had that credential. Of course the only thing that I was qualified to get a Master's in was Linguistics. I did that. Then I started working and I was working at Harvard, so a higher education institution, most universities have a tuition benefit and Harvard's no exception.

I did a part time Master's Degree in Digital Media while I was at Harvard, through the continuing education division. That's how I got my second Master's which is in Digital Media. I would say the purpose of that was mostly to feel like I had a credential in my field. Previous I had two Linguistics degrees, but nothing that had to do with technology or with code. That was my way of justifying to myself. I did learn a lot, some of it's outdated, there were classes in Flash. The big thing I would say I took away from that degree was the Master's Thesis. I wrote a full thesis but part of that was writing a web app and then writing a thesis about the web app and the process of creating it, the sociological reason that it needed to happen. It's basically a project management thesis.

One thing that's going back to the earlier part of our conversation about how you learn, right? How you have these blocks of time, especially when you're younger in university, at this point I wasn't. I was married and I was working full time. In order to do that kind of extracurricular work, a thesis is so much work. I really had to have a huge amount of support. I was able to carve out the time because my husband made dinner and when it got really down to the wire, I actually just couldn't balance everything. I ended up going part time for my job for 10 weeks. They were really flexible about it. That's really the only way I was able to go through.

Laurence:
Wow, so this was at Harvard we're talking about.

Sarah:
Right.

Laurence:
So you were working there initially and then you took advantage of their, I'm sorry, what was the word? Continuing education program?

Sarah:
Yeah, and employee tuition benefit.

Laurence:
Got it. Okay, awesome. So you were doing that, and then you ended up finishing, but the last 10 weeks you began working part time. Yeah, that's insane. So you were working full time, going to school pretty much full time.

Sarah:
Yeah, technically it's part time, but when you get to the thesis point, the thesis just takes over your life.

Laurence:
Yeah, wow. That's really impressive. Again, looking at your LinkedIn, you finished that in 2014.

Sarah:
Yeah.

Laurence:
So not too long ago, like three years ago.

Sarah:
Yeah. I finished it and I said, "I am never going back to school again."

Laurence:
But then you went back!

Sarah:
Yes.

Laurence:
So what happened between 2014 and then when you went to get an MBA?

Sarah:
Yeah, which was actually only in 2015. I changed my mind. Part of it was that I really don't think I could ever do a part time degree with a full time job. That is a particular kind of balancing act that is so difficult, and I don't even have children, so I don't know how parents do it.

Laurence:
Oh yeah.

Sarah:
When I did the MBA, it was a full time program. So I just left everything behind. I quit my job. I actually quit my job not long after finishing my Harvard degree. Then I did freelancing for a year which was when I did all of my political work. When I did the MBA, I had wrapped all that up as well, went full time into that and then just had the MBA experience, which is its own intense thing. I also did a one year MBA and most, especially in the US, are two years. So I did it in the UK. Most European MBAs are one year or 18 months. Regardless, they take all the same information, it's just a lot less free time. This sort of traditional US MBA experience where you hear about a lot of partying, a lot of travel, there's just less of that or it's more compressed in the European MBA.

Laurence:
Yeah, I'm really not too familiar with European MBAs, and I'm not even super familiar with MBA programs in the US. I do think it's super interesting. I'm sure there are people listening who either have an MBA right now but want to start working in tech, or work in tech and are considering getting an MBA. I'm just curious, what were some specific advantages. Especially now that you're, are you done or almost done with the program?

Sarah:
I'm just recently done.

Laurence:
Okay, congratulations.

Sarah:
Thanks.

Laurence:
So now that you're done and you made it through, let's start with a person who is thinking about an MBA. Maybe they work in tech or about to work in tech or what have you, what kind of considerations do you think that person should make before committing themselves to that?

Sarah:
I think it depends on what you want to get out of it. I think there's this unspoken aspect to people who decide to do an MBA who've been working before and then go and do an MBA, which is that, it's not a bad thing. But there's something they're a little bit dissatisfied with, or a lot dissatisfied with. If you were completely happy, you would just keep going with exactly what you're doing. Maybe you want to change at least one thing, right? A level or geography, and everybody who goes to do an MBA wants some kind of change as a result. Obviously, it's a big investment, whether or not you're paying for it completely yourself or you're sponsored by a company. I would say make sure that the MBA, as much as you can ahead of time, is the right way to make that change.

For example, for a long time I was looking at going into product management. I still kind of am interested in it. Right now I think, immediately post MBA, we can talk about this in a little bit, that's not my immediate next step. For going into product management from development, it seems like it's not that much of a change, but in order for people to give you a chance, that's what you really need. It's much easier, especially in retrospect, to make that kind of change internally. If you're going from a developer to being a product manager in the same company, people already know you, people will give you a chance and they'll give you that training and mentorship. Trying to get that when you're coming in brand new from outside of the company is a lot more difficult. An MBA can help in lots of other ways, but getting an in to a brand new role, is not necessarily one of them.

Laurence:
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Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm trying to rephrase what you said, but you said getting an MBA can help you get an in for a new role?

Sarah:
It will help you position yourself differently, but people are still going to have to take a chance on you, the same way they will for any new hire. You're always taking a chance when you're in a position of hiring someone. You do the interviews and at the end of the day it's kind of a best guess on both sides. So the thing is that if you can do an internal transfer and that's all that you're looking for, I would say that an MBA is not a cure all for that particular kind of switch.

Laurence:
Yeah, oh that definitely makes sense. The example that you gave, someone who is a developer to become a product manager at the same company, they already have that trust, they already know their peers, it would probably be easier to make that switch than someone coming from the outside as a new hire. I'm just curious, are people in your MBA program, is it tech specific at all or is it all kinds of people wanting to work in leadership and business?

Sarah:
It's all kinds of people. The traditional MBA profile is people in financial consulting and there's definitely some of that in my program, but my program, the reason I chose it at the University of Cambridge, is it's a little more entrepreneurial and a little more tech savvy. So that's not to say that the traditional industries aren't represented, but the percentage is a little bit smaller. I would say it's about half as opposed to 80%.

Laurence:
Interesting. I guess it may be different depending on where a person is based, like US vs. UK vs. another country, but what was the application process like?

Sarah:
For Cambridge it's really straightforward. You have an actual application. You take the GMAT or the GRE, and then it's a couple of essays, all of your academic transcripts, and then it's a recommendation from an immediate supervisor who ideally is current, but if you're in a tricky situation where you don't want to let your manager know that you're thinking of leaving, then it could be a previous supervisor.

Laurence:
Got it. Yeah, I think that's maybe somewhat similar to the US. I was actually thinking more along the lines of the tests, like the GMAT and the GRE. I know in the US those are the two main ones here as well.

Sarah:
Yeah, and of course there's an in person interview if possible, and if not possible they'll do it on Skype.

Laurence:
Yeah. So were you, when you were looking at programs, did you apply to many or only a handful?

Sarah:
I actually only applied to one.

Laurence:
Oh wow.

Sarah:
It just turned out that I got in. I did sort of leave a little bit of room for hedging, so I applied quite early and if they hadn't accepted me then I could have used the opportunity to apply for others, but Cambridge was my top choice because of a lot of the reasons we just mentioned about the representation of other students. I was lucky that I got in.

Laurence:
Yeah, awesome, congrats on that too. I know I hear people applying, maybe I'm thinking more law school, but maybe business schools too where people are applying to 20, 30 different schools. That in itself sounds like a job, you know?

Sarah:
Yeah. And definitely studying for the GRE was a huge job in and of itself.

Laurence:
Oh my goodness, yeah. Bringing back flashbacks when I actually was studying. Before I began learning how to code I was studying for the GRE a lot. Bringing back memories. In any case, this last summer you interned at Google?

Sarah:
Yes, just this past summer. A couple months ago.

Laurence:
Awesome. What was that like? What did you do there, how did you get there?

Sarah:
During the MBA, especially the Cambridge one, it has a couple of opportunities to work for different companies. I don't know if it's by luck or by planning, but I ended up working for pretty big tech companies doing non-tech things. I did a consulting project for Salesforce and then there was an internship at Google. By coincidence, they ended up being a little bit similar in terms of topic. It was sales operations, looking at particular sales teams at both companies, analyzing their processes, and then seeing how they could be more efficient so they could spend more time with clients and then use that time more effectively.

Part of it was an experiment that I wanted to do personally to see, I came from a tech background. I'd been working all my career in programming, in really heavy tech. How far away did I want to go? Did I want to use the MBA as an opportunity to go into something like consulting, strategy consulting, where you don't need any kind of tech background? Or did I want to go partway? So these two projects were an opportunity for me to go into tech companies in the sales side and see how much of that tech culture carries over and how happy am I in those kinds of projects.

What I learned from it is that I was able to apply a lot of my systems thinking, a lot of my logic and procedures and process into those kinds of projects. But the culture's totally different. The culture of a sales team is really different from the culture of an engineering team. At heart, I still really am an engineer. I still want to wear nerdy hoodies. I have an XKCD hoodie and just enjoy that people get those kinds of references. Or just making comparisons to code or just like jargony things like functions. In a sales team, that's just not their lingo. It made me feel like I did know where "home" is, and home is not in a tech company and not on the tech side. Home is still on the tech side.

Laurence:
Yeah. This is actually reminding me, that story. If anyone has watched Silicon Valley, there's an episode where the engineers and the sales team and they're like "Those people aren't engineers." It's a funny scene if any of the listeners have watched that. In any case, as you're speaking about the internship at Google, I completely realized that we have not talked at all about your time spent as a web developer. I'm sort of laughing but it's been so interesting to hear your perspective on the MBA because I think you're the first person I've had on the show, at least that has recently gotten an MBA, that they plan using it. There's maybe been some people that got an MBA and then decided to switch later, I'm not 100% certain. However, could we just rewind real quick so we can just talk a bit about your experience as a software engineer. When was this in your career? Was this before you worked at Harvard?

Sarah:
No, when I was working at Harvard, that was my first real job.

Laurence:
Oh, you were a web developer at Harvard.

Sarah:
That's right.

Laurence:
Yes, I see that. I did see that, I remember now, you were a web developer for four years. Which site were you building, what product were you working on for them?

Sarah:
I worked on the continuing education sites, just kind of coincidental that that's also where I got my Master's because that's where you can take classes as a Harvard employee. I worked on the extension school which is part time programs and non-traditional students. For example, undergraduates who are not 18 years old, who have gone and worked and then want to go back and get their Bachelor's Degree. Or people who are working and want to do a part time Master's, which is exactly what I did. Also they run the high school summer camps and they have an institute for learning in retirement, which I think is really cool. So if you're local to the Boston or Cambridge area and you're 65 and in that retired phase but you want to have a community of other active learners, then they offer programs where you can meet up with other people in your age group and discuss literature or history.

Laurence:
So you got your Bachelor's in Linguistics, then you got your Master's in Linguistics. Then you became a web developer.

Sarah:
Yeah. That sounds like there's this drastic shift, but because, as I told you, I'd been working as a web intern when I was an undergrad.

Laurence:
Yeah, at the help center at your college.

Sarah:
Yeah.

Laurence:
Okay, so your first introduction to tech was back in 2001, back in your undergrad. I'm assuming throughout that time you continued to tinker with computers and building websites.

Sarah:
Yeah, and I actually helped to teach some courses when I was doing my Master's in Linguistics at the computer center there.

Laurence:
Okay, I actually see that now on your LinkedIn, the IT Support Officer. Okay, awesome. Then that led into your position at Harvard where you were a web developer. And following that you did some consulting. I see a bunch of different things here, related to politics and Salesforce, which you mentioned how that ended up helping you get the role at Google because it was sort of similar, similar projects.

Sarah:
Yeah. In between actually, after Harvard, the thing about Harvard is that I was a web developer in a marketing team. It was kind of an old school set up. It was really print marketing and then the website was just the online version of the print catalog. It was fine for a number of years. It was definitely great to get my foot in the door, but I didn't have a team of developers to learn from and to develop with. In 2009, I got a job at an agency so I started out being a web developer there. There was a whole team of developers and it was a really great experience working with people who were not situated in the same office. We were distributed around five offices, but still working on the same kind of projects. I was there for almost five years and during that time I started managing half of the team and then gradually took over the whole team. Also during that time I moved from Boston to London. So there were a bunch of transitions while I was in that job.

Laurence:
Yeah, that's so interesting. It's so impressive to me that you were able to consult at such big companies and universities. I see MIT listed here as well. I think that's so impressive. We're starting to run a bit low on time, but I would love if you could give the listeners some advice on getting these kinds of contract projects.

Sarah:
I think it's a lot about people. Basically, aside from my two full time jobs, so Harvard and Blue State Digital, the agency that I was with, those I just applied on the website and got interviews and then got the job. Those were the kind of black box thing that people tend to say doesn't work but actually worked for me quite well there. All the rest of them have all been through contacts. So MIT was because I knew a guy who was on the web team there and he's actually the guy who taught me my very first CSS when I was an undergraduate. He moved from my undergraduate college to MIT. In that time I had gone to different places, ended up also in Boston. We reconnected and he said, "Hey, I've got this website project, do you want to work on it?" And that's basically how I got it. I've been working with MIT ever since. It's been something like six years. He's actually moved on to another organization, but I still have the relationship there.

Laurence:
Oh wow

Sarah:
I guess this could be how we end the conversation in terms of what I'm doing right now. I'm working with an organization called Ada College, named obviously for Ada Lovelace. It's in London. It's a new school for 16-19 year olds and in addition to the regular educational curriculum, you know the math, the english, the physics, it also teaches digital skills. So I'm helping them out with basically everything web. It's a full school but it's also in startup mode. In that way I don't have an official job title, but I'm helping them with the website redesign and digital operations.

The way that I got that is that I went to a Harvard alumni networking night in London in January of this year, so almost a year ago. Randomly happened to bump into the CEO of this school and so we started talking. I said, "Who are you and what do you do?" It just so happened that I had heard of the organization maybe two weeks before and I had done a little bit of research because it's a really interesting proposition. It lines up so much with everything in my background with education, with women in tech, with general diversity initiatives. I had done a couple Google searches and that was it. When I met him that night, I said, "Oh, I've heard about this," and sort of regurgitated a few facts that I'd found. This obviously made him remember me. We stayed in touch and I thought about engaging in some contract work over the summer but then the Google thing happened. When Google finished he got in touch with me again and this time I was free. So now I'm working with them and it's all because of random coincidences. It's all about keeping your eyes open.

Laurence:
Yeah, I love that. I think every single guest that has come on the show, in one way or another, has talked about the importance of having a personal network and building the community around you. I could not agree more. Definitely who you know plays such an important part in getting these different kinds of opportunities. Whether it's full time, whether it's contract work or anything in between. Thank you so much Sarah for coming on and talking and sharing about your internship at Google and your MBA experience and how you were a web developer before that at Harvard. It's all such interesting stuff. Finally, where can people find you online?

Sarah:
Well, we've mentioned a few times this call I think, LinkedIn is really a good place. Then I'm also on Twitter. It's hard to spell - @wistdom.

Laurence:
Awesome, wistdom, okay great. We'll definitely include that in the Show Notes and other links you mentioned in the call. Thank you again for coming on.

Sarah:
Thanks Laurence, it's been a pleasure.

Laurence:
I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Again, the Show Notes for this episode, plus a full transcript, can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the search icon in the upper navigation of the website and type in Sarah's name. It should show up right at the top of the results. If you like the Learn to Code With Me podcast, make sure you leave a rating and review in whichever podcast app you're tuning in on. Seriously, your feedback helps the show so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.

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