What do the career path and day-in-the-life look like for a Data Engineer at PatientPing?

We connected with Heidi Schmidt to find out!

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Where did you grow up?  What did your parents do for work?  

I was born in Columbus Ohio and most of my childhood was spent in Columbus and Dayton Ohio. My Mom worked in the Hotel Industry then in Hospice care. 

My Dad worked as a Mechanical Engineer for Kroger Bakery for most of his career. 

Where did you go to college?  What did you study and what were some of your initial jobs out of school?

I went to college at Ohio State University and took 4 classes my 1st semester. One of them was architectural history and from that I wanted to study Architecture. 

I had 3 jobs in college. One working informally for the Architecture Computer lab, The Smith Physics lab, and the MAGNUS computer group. 

Outside of school I was a paper delivery person from 10 years of age to my summer before college. 

I volunteered at the Center Of Science and Industry (COSI) all through high school. 

I worked remodelling houses and doing jobs for my Dad and step mom as well. 

What has attributed to your success thus far and has helped propel you to the position you have now?

A willingness to be an uncarved block. A desire to learn new things and make the world a better place. 
 

Any tips for someone considering a career in Engineering? 

Technology has changed so much so that we have tons of options. So many that it’s hard to reduce the noise to signal. My advice would be to get out and meet as many different people and see how you can help. 

Day in the Life

Coffee, tea, or nothing?

Tea in a large oversized mug

What time do you get into the office?

Typically 9AM -- though the MBTA can make it a challenge

What are three things that motivate you in your role?

The desire to make the world a bit better than I found it. Solving a puzzle. Collaboration. 

What time do you head out of the office?

I head out of the office around 4:30 p.m. because the MBTA is so variable. I end up checking things outside of the office and also do work when needed off hours. 

Do you log back in at night or do you shut it down completely?

Depends on what is needed.  I check my phone on the train as I try to stay focused during the day. Most of the time I shut down being available from about 9PM to the next day.  I check in the a.m. before I get into the office to be prepared for anything that may have occurred (mostly on the train) 

Any productivity hacks?

TextExpander rocks my world. It saves my brain a bunch of typing and can run quick shortcuts and commands that I use frequently. 

What are the 3 apps that you can’t live without?

• Headspace

• DataCamp

• Sudoku 

What professional accomplishment are you proudest of?

At Gillette I reached out to the factory floor team to ask what their pain points were with their databases I supported. Their Boston database was not keeping up with reporting. After sorting out scope, the vendor, the types of needs for the software and the database options I was able to template the solution for 3 of the 5 factories, increase the speed, space, type, and throughput of the bare metal hardware, upgrade and tune the Oracle Database for one particular use case pattern, and provide them their reports in 8-10 minute that had been left to run for weeks on a dedicated work station on the factory floor.  Through my work the executive team was able to fix the original contract, obtain updated software, and get the deliverables promised by the vendor years ago when the system was first implemented.

For the 127th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Doron Reuveni, Founder and CEO of Applause.

Building a successful company is incredibly difficult. It is definitely not a sprint, it’s not even a marathon… it is more like an Ironman competition where you have to train for multiple events and do it at a massive scale. Well, Doron can definitely relate to this analogy, as an Ironman competitor, biker, and marathoner.

He and his co-founder, Roy Solomon, disrupted the software testing industry with a new approach by leveraging a crowdsourcing model. Applause went on to raise over $115M in funding and was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2017.

Here’s a fun fact: Applause was originally known as uTest and they were one of the very first sponsors of VentureFizz. It was uTest, General Catalyst, and Akamai. Without their support in the early days of VentureFizz… we might not even exist!

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like:

• Doron’s background story and professional history.
• How the idea for uTest originated, how they built out the community of testers, and started to gain traction with customers.
• The story behind the rebranding of the company.
• The current state of their business in terms of size and scale.
• Advice for founders on how to remain as CEO of your company over the long term.
• The hardest part of scaling a business
• How to build a management team.
• And so much more.

Did you know that you can get customized job alerts delivered to your inbox every day? It’s a great way to keep informed of the over 4,000 jobs listed on VentureFizz and have jobs from a specific category sent directly to you. Don’t let that career-defining opportunity pass you by, go to venturefizz.com/email to sign up.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there! 

Jackie Swansburg Paulino graduated from the University of Richmond with a degree in communications and a desire to start her own company and work for herself. Her father, himself an entrepreneur, had passed down a sense of self-determination that drove Paulino to work for him in her first years out of college, during which she had the opportunity to open a yoga studio, help manage one of his golf courses, and partner with him to flip houses to earn her living through the first few years of her career. 

Soon, Paulino realized that she enjoyed the marketing and advertising aspects of each of these businesses the most. She took what she had learned about management and customer service through each of her ventures, combined those with her emerging interest in advertising, and landed a job at Neal Advertising, both small firms where she managed a team that ran Google Adwords campaigns for clients. 

“I was thinking of all these ideas to improve how the searches were working, but it's hard to move mountains and change anything that Google's doing,” Paulino said. “I decided I wanted to work for a small software startup where I could work in advertising but still have my finger on the pulse of what's going on and help build the product I’m advertising.” 

Pixability proved to be a perfect match. When Paulino started at the video advertising platform as a senior data analyst about six years ago, she was one of a handful of employees working in a single, small room. While the company has grown considerably since then, with Paulino now holding the title of Chief Product Officer. 

Despite the company’s size, Paulino still feels the same entrepreneurial spirit in the company that drew her to it in the first place. 

“I like that roll-up-your-sleeves, everybody-does-everything vibe,” Paulino said. “I still have that sense of entrepreneurship at Pixability, but I get to do it in a less-scary way, at a company that’s been around for 10 years and has solid footing.” 

In her current role, Paulino is responsible for four teams: account management, advertising operations, insights, and sales strategy. Each is responsible for connecting with customers in its own way, from boosting retention rates to reaching them through the purchase of social media ads. It’s that customer connection that helps Paulino keep each team organized and stocked with the resources they need to be successful.

“Everyone’s focused around our customers,” she said. “We’re a pretty small, agile company, so we’re able to bend over backward for our customers.”

One of the ways Pixability does that is by creating custom solutions for larger clients, then using those programs repeatable for smaller customers. Paulino encourages the same repetition in her team and works to automate as many of their recurring tasks as possible, leaving more time for innovation.

Thanks to their efficiency, Paulino isn’t necessarily looking to increase the size of those teams at the same rate as Pixability’s revenue growth. The company plans to develop a new self-serve product that allows for more customers to use the product with less hands-on support. Pixability also intends to add connected TV buying on top of its YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram buying. 

Paulino is enthusiastic about the prospect of helping the company become a SaaS business.

“We’re in the right place,” she said. “We’re at this great acceleration spot for the company.”

Quick Q(uestions) and A(dvice)

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I like to read business books and books about other tech entrepreneurs. I also like to hang out with my dog, who just turned 13, watch sports, and play golf.

What are your strategies for managing stress?

I just downloaded the Calm app, so I’m trying to get into meditation. Working out and listening to audiobooks on Audible also help.

How many cups of coffee do you have in a day?

Two, and I need them both desperately!

What’s one of your favorite places in the Boston area?

I’m from the North Shore, so West Beach in Beverly is my favorite spot. In Boston proper, Night Shift Brewery is a new hotspot for our office.

What do you consider one of your proudest accomplishments?

Building a team that has a high retention rate of customers, and whose members stick around at Pixability. Building a team that likes to work here and is proud of the work we do makes me really proud.

How does where you are now compare to where you saw yourself 10 years ago?

It’s much more stable. I never thought I’d work for anyone else, but I’m happy to be in a good place at a growing company. In my 20s, I sometimes envied those cool startups where other people were working, so I think it’s cool to actually be a part of one of them now.

What’s your advice for recent college graduates?

My advice would be to start small. It’s great to work for a big company, and that’s definitely the right move for some people. But if you work at a small company like Pixability, you get to do a lot of different things. We give our younger employees a lot of responsibility. When you’re working at a small company or startup, you get to try out things you otherwise wouldn’t get to because you don’t have one job. You have a hundred different jobs, and you might like only 50 of them, but you’ll get an idea of what you’re looking for in your next role through those. I wouldn’t try to focus on one thing or get caught up with job titles right out of college. If you can work for a cool company, you should do it. Take a risk, because this is the time in your career when you can do that. Learning what you don’t like is just as important as learning what you do, so try different things and try them early.

Samantha Costanzo Carleton is a Contributor to VentureFizz. You can follow her on Twitter @smcstnz.

I dropped my oldest daughter off at college this last weekend. If there was a picture of the word “bittersweet” in the dictionary, it would likely show a picture of her on campus.  As a parent, this is one of the goals, right? Raise your child to be independent and ready to navigate the world on her own? College is the perfect gateway to that dynamic. While I am exceptionally proud to see her already loving her classes and making a gaggle of new friends, I’m not going to lie...life without her in the house is a total bummer. 

My younger daughter is still in high school, with two years left to go. And then when she inevitably ships off, I’ll have a brand new life without daily mom responsibilities. It’s left me already contemplating what I’m going to do with that free time. 

I’ve always been a rather insatiably curious person. I’m dyslexic, so school never provided my favorite way of learning. Just sitting passively listening to someone lecture somehow doesn’t connect with how I learn. Worse, feeling like I was there solely to be tested left me stressed out about receiving good enough grades to get into college. It wasn’t until I got to graduate school and then a series of start-ups that I actually began to love the experience of learning. Nowadays, if you put me in a situation where I can engage - whether it’s through experience, be hands-on or even just a conversation with someone - I’m bound to dive right in. And just exactly why is this important? Change is inevitable. And whether it's a change in your career, your company, or your personal life, embracing the need to learn and evolve is pretty critical. 

Consider this:  When you are self-motivated and driven to learn, you’ll always be in a position of not just acquiring new skills, but developing new opportunities for yourself. And while I have to believe that no one would ever admit to actively wanting to stagnate, it happens all too often. Maybe we get lazy, or just don’t know where to begin. It doesn’t matter, really, the reasons we don’t do it. The important bit to focus on is the benefits of actually motivating ourselves to make this a part of our everyday. Still need convincing?  

I WANT TO BE RELEVANT

You may be the master of your domain at some point in your career, but if you don’t stay on top of current trends, edit your skills, and expand the set of people you learn from, you’ll be left in the dust.  

Challenge Activity: Head to an industry conference, and really engage and learn.  Share that new knowledge by sharing with your colleagues at work, and highlight how what you’ve learned may have advanced the way you thought about X. 

I WANT TO FEEL PREPARED

Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. Rather than sitting around worrying - or worse, not worrying at all - about change happening, it’s best to be prepared.  Maybe your company got bought and you find yourself out of a job, or perhaps your partner decided to accept that amazing opportunity in Asia. When you apply the mindset that you should always be learning, you’ll likely be able to push out of your comfort zone a little easier and take advantage of new doors open to you. 

Challenge Activity:  Test out a free month of content learning through LinkedIn Learning, enroll in Udemy or one of the other prolific online learning sites.  These resources offer an abundance of content at incredibly affordable prices - all on your time schedule.  They virtually erase any excuse you might create for why you don’t have time to learn. 

I WANT TO BUILD MY CONFIDENCE

Is there a better way to develop confidence than to have gained some competence in a particular area? Diving in and learning new things aids us in building a feeling of accomplishment, which leads to confidence building.  

Challenge Activity: Been learning and want to test your newfound confidence and knowledge?  Step out of your comfort zone and host a “lunch and learn” at your office about your topic of expertise, or head to a meetup and discuss with other like-minded people.  

I WANT TO ENHANCE MY PERSPECTIVE

Diversity and inclusion are a huge focus for most companies interested in thriving long term.  Exactly why is this important? Aside from the obvious humanity-focused reasons, having a diversity of mindset is an incredible skill to have.  When we open our minds and challenge our perspectives and attitudes, we expand our mindsets.  Being able to see different sides to a problem will build your understanding and increase your value to your team.  

Challenge Activity:  Take a look at your calendar this month.  Carve out and prioritize time to learn every day. Whether it’s listening to a podcast while you are getting ready in the morning, or watching a TED Talk, committing a little time learning something new every day is your ticket to expanding your mind.

The majority of us say we want to be lifelong learners, but when it comes down to truly committing to the work to actually claim that title, we can all get a little passive.  The first step is understanding truly how important this mindset is to your career and your personal development. The second is actually committing to do it.

Pardon my language… I just wanted to make the point.

I’ve had the opportunity to create a new hire onboarding experience. When I took on this task, I thought, “How complicated can this be?”   

Seven months into this project, I’ve learned how layered and most importantly, how impactful this responsibility is to the organization.

After personal reflection and sharing my challenges and successes with friends and colleagues, I’ve come to a few conclusions that I’d like to share with you (you awesome new hire experience builder, you!) in the hopes that it sets you up on the right foot when you develop or improve your new hire experience at your organization.

It’s time to break out your tour guide flag – it’s tour guidin’ time!

After coordinating my first new hire program, I had a flashback to a vacation I took with my family in 2011. It’s been a while so it’s not something I think about all that often, however, memories of the trip were sparked in my mind because there were a number of commonalities with the trip and the early success I had with the first new hire program.

For fun background, my family and I took a trip to Ireland and I highly recommend it! Serious question/sidebar - is everyone in Ireland a comedian? Because everyone we met was so funny, didn’t matter what age, gender, profession – all hilarious. Even the sheep were pretty funny. Or it may just be my admiration for Conan O’Brien, one may call it comedic brilliance by Irish association.

Besides the funny sheep, there are seven elements that our great Irish tour had lead by an awesome tour guide that made it such a great experience. This is how you can apply lessons from that tour to improve your onboarding experience. 

1.     Share the itinerary of your journey

Here’s a little healthy work/life lesson for ya, did you know that just the act of planning a vacation will make you happier and more excited about taking a trip? Go ahead, nibble on that little factoid or better yet, wrap it up and save it for later. It’s all about anticipation, people. You’re welcome.

Part of a great new hire experience is creating excitement, highlighting what we will accomplish and setting expectations. A week before new hire orientation, I send a welcome email that summarizes what to expect during the new hire program, (for us, this is a schedule for the first three days of a new hire joining). It also includes expectations on what to wear - no need to dress in a suit, we’re a casual office.

Rather than going into the details of the agenda (need a little element of surprise), I highlight the overall theme for the first three days, it includes:

• Day One – New Hire Setup & Understanding the Company History, Customers and Key Personas

• Day Two – “Around the World” Understanding the Different Functions of the Organization

• Day Three – Understanding the Technology

Structuring and sharing the itinerary this way is helpful because a new hire knows what to expect and what they’ll be learning each day. This helps avoid any unnecessary stress or concerns if someone wants to cover a certain topic, they can be rest assured when we’re going to cover it.

This also provides a structure for scheduling the speakers. Having an overall theme and intended outcome for the day provides guidance for what each presenter should share during his or her presentation.  

2.     Stick to a schedule

All aboard the new hire onboarding train. To get the most out of this journey, we can’t be zipping around all willy nilly. No, we have to stick to a schedule. This was a bit of a difficult adjustment but it was well worth it. We decided to standardize when new hires join to be the first full week of every month. This makes it possible to pull resources from across the organization without overburdening presenters every time we have a new hire. Instead, we have everyone join at the beginning of the month and this means we can put a focused effort into creating a great experience and they have the opportunity to bond with fellow new hires. Win-win. 

 3.     Designate a guide  

It can be quite overwhelming to step out of a plane, train or automobile in a foreign place. So I’m sure you can appreciate what it’s like to have a friendly face greet you and make sure you’re in the right place and guide you on your new journey. 

This has been a simple way to have a significant impact on the quality and experience of onboarding. It’s one thing to schedule different sessions by inviting speakers and organizing the agenda, however, it takes it to the next level to have someone join as a facilitator throughout onboarding. It makes such a big difference!

I participate in all of the sessions for our onboarding program, that way if a session ends a little early or runs a little late, I can coordinate and set expectations with the presenters and participants. In addition to creating a smooth schedule, this also helps to build trust with the new hires and me (the facilitator). It helps to establish me as their go-to person, not only during onboarding but as the new hires are getting up and running in their roles. 

I’m essentially a new hire security blanket. 

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

It’s important that everyone involved in the new hire’s journey is informed of what is going to happen that first week. This includes hiring managers, talent partners, presenters and buddies that we assign to each new hire (more on that later!)

At least two weeks in advance, it’s important to confirm all of the new hires and start confirming the agenda with everyone participating. 

At the end of a new hire’s first week, we invite them to introduce themselves during our weekly office happy hour. We want to be sure they have a chance to communicate and share a bit about who they are with the team.

5.  Signify the importance

This lesson came about because I learned this the hard way. One of my earlier onboarding sessions, a presenter backed out of the presentation 10 minutes before the session saying, “She didn’t feel prepared for the session.” Dang. The powerpoint was done, I’d already confirmed with her a week prior. So I felt I had done what I needed to do to be all set. At the end of that onboarding program, I took a step back and reflected on why she felt she could drop-out last minute like that. And I realized, she didn’t understand the importance of the program.

As a result, I now print off the full agenda, leave a copy on each presenters desk with their section highlighted one-week prior to onboarding. This gives it weight and significance. It also shows how many other people are committed to participating. 

I’m pleased to say I haven’t had a dropout since doing this. Win!

6. Sprinkle in the fun

At different points throughout the new hire journey, it’s important to have some fun. Here are some ideas to do so:

• In the welcome email, we include a link to a Spotify playlist with all of the songs that our company band played at our company kickoff 

• We start off the first day with a “Buddy Breakfast” this is a fun and light way to ease into the day. Each month we ask for volunteers to sign up to be “Buddies”, and the expectation is to check in with their new hire once a week for the first 6 weeks. To make it fun and social, we kick off the first day with a breakfast for everyone to calmly meet and greet one another.

• We have an office and neighborhood tour (weather pending, but so far we’ve been lucky) to take a break, meet people and stretch our legs. 

7.  Ask for input to iterate and experiment 

Don’t keep doing things the way you’ve always done them. Ask for feedback and look for ways to continue to iterate and improve.

For example, at an HR meetup, I learned about the VIA Character Strength Survey. Now we incorporate taking the survey and pairing with a partner to discuss the results as a fun ice-breaker and a break from all of the company-focused materials. 

We’re going to be trying out two new things in our next onboarding - one is comedy-related and the other is about creating your own career path. Needless to say, I’m quite excited!

If you have any cool ideas to share, please feel free to do so!

And finally, be sure to share your appreciation for everyone who makes onboarding possible. It takes a village to create a great onboarding experience. Be sure to let everyone who participates know how much it impacts the program.

Best of luck in your next onboarding program! It’s going to be awesome!

For the 125th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Amy Spurling, Co-Founder and CEO of Compt.

By the time Amy started Compt, she was well-versed in the world of startups. As a COO or CFO for multiple venture-backed companies, where many had exited, she knew the playbook around raising funding, negotiating an acquisition, and running the operations of a startup. This experience all led her down the path to where she is today as a Co-Founder & CEO.

The idea behind Compt came from a real-world problem that Amy was experiencing. Companies give a standard list of benefits, but not all employees are able to leverage them. So, Compt’s is changing this with their platform that allows employers to develop and manage lifestyle spending accounts so employees can get the perks they want and need the most.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like:

• Amy’s background as a northern California native and how she ended up on the east coast.
• A walk through her career and how Amy methodically prepared herself to run a company.
• All the details about Compt and the company’s mission to empower employees to choose their own benefits.
• How you need to think about the valuation of your company when raising funding and why you shouldn’t always swing for the fences with the highest number.
• Advice on how to negotiate the sale of your company.
• When a company should think about hiring a CFO.
• And so much more.

Did you know that every Monday at 9:15 & 10 am, we send out two weekly digest emails? There is one for Boston and one for NY. It is your weekly email to stay connected to all the “must-know” information from the local tech scene. It includes information on companies, jobs, events, deals and more. Go to venturefizz.com/email and look for the “Weekly Tech Buzz” to sign up.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!