In a recent episode of the Engineering Manager Community Podcast, host Steven Tedjamulia welcomed Matthew Yough, a seasoned data engineer with a diverse background in engineering disciplines. The episode, supported by Open Teams, delved into the crucial role of versatility in engineering and its relationship with specialization.

The Importance of Versatility in Engineering Matthew Yough emphasized the significance of versatility in engineering, particularly in the realm of data engineering. He highlighted that real-world problems vary greatly in nature, and thus, being versatile is a key trait for effective problem-solving. Yough pointed out that the ever-evolving landscape of data engineering tools demands engineers to be adaptable and constantly updated.

Tackling Real-World Problems Yough shared his experience in solving a specific challenge where a company struggled with organizing data for executive-level reporting. By reorganizing the SQL database and adjusting data streaming to a BI dashboard, Yough demonstrated how versatility and problem-solving skills can lead to successful project outcomes.

Fostering a Learning Culture For engineering managers seeking to encourage continuous learning, Yough suggested allocating time for skill-building and providing resources for learning. He mentioned platforms like Free Code Camp on YouTube as valuable tools for learning new techniques in data science and computer programming.

Encouraging Versatility and Specialization Yough believes in the balance between encouraging versatility and allowing engineers to specialize. He suggested that managers should provide freedom for engineers to gravitate towards areas they enjoy and excel in, coupled with dedicated time for developing new skills.

The Role of Mentorship Mentoring, according to Yough, is crucial in achieving balance in engineering teams. He advocates for a two-way mentorship approach, where managers not only guide their teams but also learn from them, fostering a successful team environment.

Working with External Mentors and Consultants Yough, who also offers consulting services, emphasized the importance of respectful communication and collaboration between consultants and in-house teams. He stressed the need for clear goal setting and regular collaboration for project success.

Bridging Software Development and Data Engineering Drawing from his own journey from software development to data engineering, Yough shared how skills in both domains are interlinked and beneficial to each other. He advised aspiring engineers to be open to continuous learning and networking.

Conclusion The podcast episode with Matthew Yough provided valuable insights into the interplay of versatility and specialization in engineering. It highlighted the importance of continuous learning, mentorship, and effective communication in fostering a successful engineering environment. Listeners were encouraged to seek Yough’s expertise in navigating the challenges of data science projects within their organizations.

Join The Engineering Manager Community: Are you looking to stay ahead in the dynamic world of engineering management and connect with like-minded professionals? Join the Engineering Manager community on LinkedIn here. Our community is a hub for the latest best practices, insightful articles, and engaging discussions tailored for engineering managers. It’s an ideal platform to expand your network, share experiences, and learn from industry leaders like Matthew Yough.

How OpenTeams Can Help: If you’re seeking to hire expert engineering managers akin to Matthew Yough, visit OpenTeams.com. Here, you’ll find a diverse pool of talented professionals ready to bring their expertise to your organization. Join us today to enhance your knowledge and elevate your team to new heights!

References

Transcript

Steven Tedjamulia (00:01.43)
Welcome to the Engineering Manager Community Podcast. And we thank Open Teams for allowing us to do this podcast. Today we’re thrilled to have Matthew Yough, a seasoned data engineer with a remarkable journey across multiple engineering disciplines. Matthew’s expertise spans data engineering, project management, software development, and hardware literacy. In this episode, we’ll dive into the vital role of versatility in engineering.

and how it interwines with specialization. Let’s get started. I’m Matthew, thank you for being here.

Matthew Yough (00:36.835)
Thank you for having me.

Steven Tedjamulia (00:38.97)
So very excited. We just put out an article out there so you guys can refer to it and we’ll also dive into it in this conversation. Matthew, could you share your perspective on the importance of versatility in engineering, particularly from your experience in data engineering?

Matthew Yough (00:58.05)
Yeah, sure. So I think it’s no secret that like real world problems come in all shapes and sizes. And I think versatility is a key trait of being a good problem solver and being a good problem solver allows us to be good engineers. I’m going to be able to implement the best tools to accomplish a task, whether it be like a solo task or a task within a team. In terms of specifics and data engineering, there are countless tools in the data engineering.

space and there’s always new being added to that repertoire so it is key to be versatile enough to be able to adapt to the ever-changing landscape.

Steven Tedjamulia (01:39.218)
Specifically towards problem solving, has there been an engagement you can think of where they had a specific problem and they said, look, and they couldn’t figure it out and it could be technical or a process, and they called you in and help you solve it, and then what did you do to solve it and how did you make it happen?

Matthew Yough (02:00.274)
Yeah, so I could speak to maybe a project that I’ve worked on recently where essentially there was a company that had like a production level SQL databases And it allowed their company to run smoothly. However, it was not very conducive to accurate and organized reporting. So they brought me in to solve the problem of being able to

kind of pull that data and then stream that data to a BI dashboard in order to be able to pitch their data in their company and track their company progress to executive level people that may not be engineers. So initially I went in to solve that problem, working with the subject matter experts who are experts in the actual data itself.

Matthew Yough (02:57.034)
So I was able to pull some of the kind of messy production level data into more organized views within the SQL database. And then initially we set it up to directly stream that data directly into there by a BI platform. However, when we did this, another problem arose and we found that this kind of direct streaming in the server that everything was running on.

couldn’t really handle that kind of continuous data refresh. So we had to go back in and solve that second problem. And instead of making a continuous refresh, just schedule those refreshes for off hours. So it would give the server time to catch up. And that definitely, those changes and those problem solve definitely helped that process and that project become very successful.

Steven Tedjamulia (03:51.918)
Sounds great. No, that’s a perfect example of how you did that. And going on with following your article, you got problem solving, there’s new capabilities, new challenges that come up in the projects like you discussed. Can you discuss a little bit about fostering a learning culture in your organization? What are some tips you have for engineering managers that wanna help employees to continue to learn so they can be able to…

tackle these problems.

Matthew Yough (04:22.706)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is to just as a manager, set aside that time, right? So the world’s a fast paced place and the engineering discipline is also very fast paced. So as an engineer, I’m going to go in and spend my day doing what the team and what I feel is of high priority that day. And oftentimes that doesn’t lend time to…

you know, skill building and kind of branching out on what you do on the day to day. So as a manager, you can set aside maybe, you know, whether it be like a little bit of time every day or a week or month or whenever that would be to say, okay, this is the time that I’m basically saying, telling you to focus on skill building, whether it be, you know, whatever duration of time that may be.

Um, and I think that will foster that kind of focus in skill building. And I also think being able to provide, um, just resources on where people can go to, if they wish to foster that, um, new skills. Um,

One such thing that’s been very helpful for me in the past was it’s just a YouTube channel called Free Code Camp where I learned it to a bunch of new data science and computer programming techniques. And it’s a free YouTube channel. Anybody can log on and see, and they have some great resources, just kind of things like that, that I think if people are aware of, they can definitely take advantage of.

Steven Tedjamulia (05:50.382)
No, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, continuous learning is very important as you tackle bigger problems, especially in the field of data science. How do you balance encouraging versatility with allowing engineers to specialize? What is your recommendation for other engineering managers?

Matthew Yough (06:07.238)
Yeah, I would definitely, I definitely think that when it comes to um, allow them to be specialized, I think that as engineers, if we have a certain level of freedom, um, during the job that we are doing, we wouldn’t actually kind of gravitate towards those things that we enjoy and excel in. Um, so I think kind of being a little hands off in that way as, uh, maybe a manager, um, could be very beneficial in helping people just strive to be the best in what they, um, are already good at or enjoy doing.

And then being able to kind of balance that with also encouraging versatility. I think doing things like we just mentioned in the last question, like carving out specific time to build those new skills and providing resources to foster that can also work wonders.

Steven Tedjamulia (06:55.519)
Let’s touch base a little bit on mentoring. How important is mentoring for being able to help engineering managers achieve that balance?

Matthew Yough (07:04.69)
Yeah, I think mentorship is a great thing. And I think when we think of mentorship, we think of more of like a, I’m initially on the top thing of like a one-way street as someone’s mentoring somebody else, but I think it often works best when it’s a two-way street. So if you think you’re, especially if you’re a new manager,

having that two-way communication to not only mentor the people that you are, I guess, quote unquote, in charge of, but also getting that feedback from them to kind of grow as a manager yourself is also really important. I think also kind of what feeds into a very successful team environment.

Steven Tedjamulia (07:45.806)
Let’s talk a little bit about external mentors, right? You offer your services to be able to come in and help companies tackle big problems, technical problems, also being able to coach, mentor, engineering managers, and developers with their needs. What are some of the best practices that you use in mentoring when someone hires you to solve some of these problems or to help them?

Matthew Yough (08:12.498)
Yeah, I think just respectful communication is kind of the key thing there. Um, and my situation as a consultant is I think a little bit unique in that aspect because, um, whenever I’m brought in on a job, I’m expected to have that technical expertise to bring the tools and capabilities to help them solve the problem that they have, that’s why they would hire me in the first place. But that being said, it goes back to, um,

they’re still the subject matter experts, right? Like for example, whenever I was on that project that I was talking about, yeah, I had the SQL capabilities and the BI capabilities to kind of make the project be successful, but I was brand new to their data, what their data meant, what they were doing as a company. So having that respectful communication to kind of help each other out was crucial.

in that project and in that kind of team environment.

Steven Tedjamulia (09:12.266)
Yeah, and you’re well known for doing that, to work collaboratively with the clients. Is there any strategy that you’d like to offer engineering managers that would help them work best with consultants as yourself to ensure that the projects can be a success, that the consultants can be well integrated into the team? What strategies do you have for engineering managers?

Matthew Yough (09:38.406)
Yeah, I think one thing that’s great is just being open to questions and being available. Right. So it kind of goes back to what I was saying is whenever you bring a consultant in, it would not be great to just think, okay, there are the consultant, we hired them to do this, they’re just going to do it. Right. So.

Yes, as a consultant, our responsibility is to be that expert in the technology or domain that they want us to help them out with. But again, we still need to know the context and what you want to be able to provide the service to our best ability. So, again, just being open and available for that two way communication is crucial.

Steven Tedjamulia (10:26.442)
That’s very good feedback there. Jumping around here a little bit around, how do you bridge this gap between the software developers and data engineers? We talked about collaboration, versatility, and how has this contributed to your versatility?

Matthew Yough (10:47.914)
Yeah, I think, and these two fields specifically, they are very, very closely linked in overlap, right? So I think my experience as a software developer has definitely helped me be a better data engineer because inevitably there’s a lot of software development that goes into being a good data engineer and being able to build a good data infrastructure. So for example,

Um, as a data engineer, a lot of it is, you know, building pipelines, handling large amounts of data. And I could build something that works, but if it’s going to take, you know, hours or days to run, it might not be very beneficial to a company or a client. But if I can, you know, provide, put good software development principles. To my data engineering solutions, it might make the process much neater, less prone to bugs, more readable for other people.

and much more efficient. And I think that allowing those fields to kind of play off of each other has definitely helped me grow and be versatile in my field.

Steven Tedjamulia (11:52.378)
And can you explain a little bit about your experience into data engineering from software engineering? How did that happen? And then any advice you have for people that try to follow the same path you’re in?

Matthew Yough (12:08.146)
Yeah, so I guess I can go back to graduate school. In graduate school, I was a part of an engineering group that developed kind of new rehabilitation technologies, a lot of research and development laboratory type work. And as you can imagine with that requires a lot of software and data work to not only help run the different processes that we were doing, but also handle the large amounts of data that we needed to process.

And I kind of just fell in love with the whole software, drawing insights from large amounts of data and building up that infrastructure. So from there, I kind of did some of the things that I’d mentioned that might be good for building skills. I dove into different educational resources like the Free Code Camp YouTube channel. When I sometimes organizations or universities provide free access to platforms like Coursera or Udemy,

I definitely dove into that and just kind of explored those passions, but also used those platforms that also helped me in my day-to-day work as it was needed. And I think that was great for my development and just being open to constantly learning new things has been crucial.

Steven Tedjamulia (13:29.83)
And what advice you have as someone’s pursuing that same path that you’ve taken.

Matthew Yough (13:36.378)
Yeah, again, just be opening, just open to continuously learning. Talk with people that might be, you know, further along in that particular path than you. You can always reach out on LinkedIn. My experience in reaching out to people on LinkedIn is, yeah, like some people aren’t going to respond, people are busy, or they might not be active on LinkedIn. But out of, if you write a very respectful and inquisitive message, my experience is it.

that out of 10 people, at least five or six are going to respond and be open to talking with you and that’s really helped. And they can provide even more resources, sometimes even direct mentorship and that and I think that’s been very beneficial for me.

Steven Tedjamulia (14:21.114)
So tell me about your services now. How can you help companies today, or engineering managers today that may need more data science, data engineering type of work? What are, explain to us a little bit about what you offer, what you can provide, how you can help them.

Matthew Yough (14:38.13)
Yeah, so a lot of what I do at M&S and what we do in M&S consulting is we can come in and build up good data infrastructure that can be robust and efficient to help, whether it be reporting or building up apps or anything to help.

the business intelligence or software within a company. And again, bringing those technical skills and being very versatile in what technical platforms we have access to helps us be able to provide good quality work to a variety of different teams, whatever technologies they want to use.

Steven Tedjamulia (15:33.534)
And is there, can you share some examples of some of the projects you’ve been working on or have worked on? And you know, you could be general about them. So those listening can know this is kind of what you’ve done and you already shared one earlier, but if you have any others.

Matthew Yough (15:42.603)
Yeah.

Matthew Yough (15:47.846)
Yeah, I guess I won’t go too into specifics, but kind of some general things that our team has worked on in the kind of the data engineering team at M&S. So anything that has to do with SQL, whether it be SQL Server, MySQL, handling database management, data warehousing and anything in platforms such as like Snowflake and those platforms, AWS.

any of those cloud platforms, cloud computing, business intelligence reporting. So in platforms such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, things like that, being able to handle the data infrastructure from start to finish. So going back to database management all the way to reporting to executives and helping teams out with that is something that we certainly specialize in.

and building up data infrastructures to help companies out.

Steven Tedjamulia (16:48.878)
So if you had to outline the key things to make a project successful that you’ve seen, right, with regards to the data engineering side of things, what would they be? What are the things that engineering managers could say, hey, I gotta get these things done, you know, I hire Matt and his team, and let’s go at it. What are the key ingredients?

Matthew Yough (17:09.67)
Yeah, so I think the first thing is being very transparent on what is needed in a task. So it’s definitely very beneficial to know precisely what is required to have a target to shoot for. Being available to kind of collaborate regularly so we make sure everything’s on track and not as things change and shift is.

is ideal. And then in terms of making a project successful on either side is just being… Can you repeat the question again? I kind of got lost.

Steven Tedjamulia (17:55.062)
What are some of the key things you’d share with the engineering manager, you know, as they’re going into these data engineering projects and looking at how are you that they should do to make it successful?

Matthew Yough (18:06.194)
Yeah, so I think, yeah, in terms of like an engineering manager working with us as a consultant is that kind of clear communication, clear goal defining steps. So we have a target to shoot for and then just being open and available to feed questions and provide feedback as we try to meet their goals and their expectations.

is crucial. And then hopefully from there, we’ll have the expertise to kind of take once we have the clear outline, us as consultants could kind of go from there and give you everything that you were wanting from us.

Steven Tedjamulia (18:47.662)
Matthew, that’s great advice. You are, you know, you’re an expert in the field, a humble collaborative. You have a team that can support the engineering managers with problems that may have. Urge listeners to contact Matthew, get his advice. It always helps as you’re engaged in the project, trying to build your team, trying to position it from just developers to data engineers. He shared some wonderful advice today. So thank you, Matthew.

Matthew Yough (19:17.963)
Yep, thank you for having me.

Steven Tedjamulia (19:20.023)
Uh, to our listeners, we hope this episode inspires you, um, to balance versatility, specialization in engineering. And it helps you provide a guide to getting your data science projects successful, uh, in your environment and organization. Thanks everyone. Stay tuned for the next episode of the engineering manager community podcast. Thank you everyone.