From Data Engineer to Data Engineering Manager: My Path at CBS Sports

If you feel trapped in your tech career, you are not alone.

I started my career in Paramount Global in Singapore, formerly CBS Interactive, before the merger with Viacom on April 6th, 2011. I was hired as an engineer for data analytics and search engine optimization (SEO).

I will refer to my time in Paramount Global as CBS Interactive (CBSi) to avoid confusion.

One of the main perks of being in CBSi for my role was learning cutting-edge technologies. I was exposed to Hadoop, recommendation systems and search engines, and Adobe Analytics very early, which really helped in giving me a good breadth of what is out there.

However, being an offshore office in Singapore, growth opportunities in promotion were few. For some reason, even though I contributed and was involved with some big projects with good business impact, promotion wasn’t accessible as there wasn’t availability.

Couple that with the fact that there was a reorganization within the company every one or two years. I later realized that it hurt my career. That’s because on every occasion, I would have a new manager or vice president preside over my role, and it became apparent that I had to prove my worth in the new team.

I still remember when the vice president (VP), who presided over my team, visited the Singapore office. I had a Singaporean manager, and the team hired a director in the States to oversee Adobe Analytics rollouts.

It turns out that the new director didn’t know what he was doing, and because my manager was better in experience and skills, he had to redo my director’s work.

In my one-on-one with my VP then, I asked why she did not promote my manager as a director and had a less inexperienced director to run some of the projects instead.

She said, “We needed someone in the States to do the job.” It then dawned upon me that it didn’t matter how well my manager did then because as long as he was not in the States, he would not be offered the director role.

If even my excellent manager wasn’t given the opportunity to promote, then what about me?

From that day on, I knew I had two options. Either to move to the States to further my career within CBSi or I should leave for greener pastures.

I prayed to God about experiencing a business trip in CBSi. It was one of the perks that attracted me to the role, but I had already been in the company for four years, and I had seen my colleagues travel for work, but I had yet to have the experience.

Shortly after, I went on my first business trip to San Francisco, and at that time, there was another reorg. The VP I worked with became the VP of tech at CBS Sports, and that was when I asked if there were opportunities for an internal transfer.

I also highlighted that I wanted to dive into data science if I was given the opportunity to join CBS Sports since I was working in the central data team with CBSi then and had some experience.

It so happened that there were opportunities to expand into the gambling space within CBS Sports, and we could do some predictive products for work. I flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to meet with the department, and the VP gave me an opportunity to work in Florida so that we could be near to work.

At that time, I was interviewing for a few jobs simultaneously. I already had an offer from a local telco company in Singapore while in the final interview for Facebook.

Eventually, I selected to go to the States, partly because while I was in the Facebook interview, the interviewers seemed perplexed about why I would want to be in Facebook Singapore if I had the chance to relocate to the States and have a more extensive portfolio then what I was interviewing at that time.

So, I left Singapore for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in August 2016.

Slowly but surely, I was given opportunities to prove my worth within the company, and it was a good move because the reorgs that happened in CBSi later did not affect my role. I was tasked to build the Microsoft Golf Forecaster, a campaign for approximately USD 1.5 million, and the NFL Google Assistant for about USD 1.75 million.

After delivering the projects, during my one-on-one with my manager, I said I would quit if I didn’t get promoted. My manager quickly assured me a promotion was coming, but it took some time.

That’s because my jump was from a data engineer to a data engineering manager for data science; they had to work with HR since they were skipping a few levels for my promotion.

The NFL Google Assistant was very pivotal in getting me a promotion. At that time, the company needed to be more confident that we had the skills and expertise to deliver the project, and they wanted to outsource the work to a third-party vendor.

The third-party vendor asked for half a million.

I still remember being relatively upset because I was already working to build the voice assistant from scratch, and the other directors could sense my mood during our meeting with the third-party vendor.

In short, when they asked me to introduce myself, I said, “I’m the person who makes magic in CBS Sports.”

Please don’t do what I did, though. I don’t know what would happen to you if you were to show an attitude.

Ultimately, the company trusted my work as my prototype was nearly complete. I heard that teams from other companies were vying for the Google opportunity, but Google gave it to CBS Sports since they saw how close to completion my work was.

Once we clinched the deal, it didn’t matter if I had to work weekends and late weekdays to get the work out of the way. I had a USD 1.75 million target board behind my back, and I wasn’t going to sleep on it.

Once it was delivered, many of my colleagues and leaders commented that they wanted to build a team around me, which truly allowed me to become a data engineering manager for data science.

So, thank you to CBS Sports for the opportunities I had and my colleagues who believed in my work. If it weren’t for their belief in my work and allowed me to deliver, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become a data engineering manager.