DeepSummary
Fiona Tan, the Chief Technology Officer at Wayfair, shares her journey from growing up in Malaysia and Singapore to studying at MIT and Stanford, and her experiences working at companies like Oracle, TIBCO Software, Ariba, and Walmart. She discusses the importance of education and sports in her upbringing, her love for problem-solving and coding, and the challenges of being a woman in the tech industry.
Tan talks about her transition from engineering roles to leadership positions, the decision-making process behind job changes, and the responsibilities of being a CTO at a public company like Wayfair. She emphasizes the need for self-advocacy, recognizing when "good enough is good enough," and the importance of building a diverse team with complementary skills.
Tan also reflects on the lack of women in STEM fields, advising to start early in encouraging girls to pursue math and science. She highlights the objectivity and quantitative nature of computer science as an attractive career path for women, and cautions against being swayed into non-technical roles that move them away from technology leadership.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Pursue your passions and don't let external perceptions or biases discourage you.
- Build diverse teams with complementary skills while maintaining a shared vision and commitment.
- Be willing to acknowledge mistakes and pivot strategies when necessary.
- As a leader, focus on enabling your team's success by removing obstacles and creating an environment for them to thrive.
- Encourage girls to pursue STEM fields early on, highlighting the objectivity and meritocratic nature of fields like computer science.
- Recognize when 'good enough is good enough' and balance perfection with efficiency and prioritization.
- Continuously challenge yourself and step out of your comfort zone to grow and learn.
- Seek out mentors and champions who can advocate for your professional development.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I think there are aspects of, for example, me being a little bit just maybe ignorant or whatever, just not really understanding the whole landscape around me. And maybe in that little bit of ignorance that it was actually maybe helpful.“ by Fiona Tan
- “I think a lot of it's around, like, you want to ideally put together a team that's going to be, you want them to be diverse enough so that everybody has different skill sets. But also there's that common thread where you feel like we can all sort of row in the same direction and we're going to be happy rowing in that same direction.“ by Fiona Tan
- “Right now, that's all it is, isn't, like, the better that I can enable and whatever roadblocks I can do to remove for them and however I can make my team successful, that's it. That's all that matters, right? Because then I'm successful.“ by Fiona Tan
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Episode Information
She Leads
Carly Malatskey
3/12/24
Fiona is the Chief Technology Officer at Wayfair, an American e-commerce company that is the destination for all things home – a place to find the right furniture and home goods online. With 25+ years of experience leading technology teams, Fiona began her professional career working at top technical companies, including Oracle, TIBCO Software and Ariba. At TIBCO, she rose up to be the Vice President of Engineering in her 16-year tenure at this intelligence cloud data company.
Prior to Wayfair, Fiona served in executive leadership roles at Walmart – first as the Senior VP of Engineering for Customer Technology at WalmartLabs and then as the Senior Vice President of U.S. Technology at Walmart.
Fiona earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT and her masters in computer science from Stanford University.
In this episode, we cover the following topics:
1. Fiona's childhood and the emphasis on education
2. Studying Computer Science at MIT
3. Gender disparity in Computer Science
4. Transition from college into the professional workforce
5. Her long tenure at TIBCO software
6. Transition from Consumer to Enterprise Software companies
7. Impact and challenges working at Walmart
8. Hiring and building a team
9. Transitioning from coding into managerial role
10. CTO role
11. Balancing perfection from good enough
12. Reflecting and learning from previous mistakes
13. Women in STEM
Fiona's life-time craft she is honing? Cooking
▶️ Video interview available on Youtube.
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