Jiaona Zhang: evaluation

Transcript context

…Is there something you were known to be excellent at in the course of your career? I would say early on in my career, it was actually the fact that I had a strong analytics background. And so when I joined gaming, I came from consulting, I didn't have any CS background or design background, and so it was really creating a reputation around being very analytical, around being able to analyze the datasets of my game and then make decisions. I also learned as I was doing that I was actually really good at execution, and so being able to keep a lot of plates spinning and working on the largest studio and managing all the complex pieces of that, that was what I discovered. I didn't know this, but I discovered as I started working in the role. And so that was something I brought to Dropbox. When I joined Dropbox. It was like I knew that I could work with a lot of different teams and make sure that we hit a launch deadline, and so I would find myself trying to lean into that superpower and then when delivering upon that, getting more responsibility, "Hey, you just launched this really complex thing, this was a project that had to work across a lot of different platforms. We're using Griddle APIs. " And it was a very, very small team and it had a very, very tight deadline. So when you're like, "I can do something like this," you end up getting more responsibility because people were like, "Oh, she was able to do something that was really hard with a small team," and so that's how you get more responsibility. But it has evolved in my career. I think that at the beginning of your career, you do want to lean into some of these pieces. It makes sense, but also even when you start to manage, it shifts dramatically. Being known as the best executor is not necessarily the thing that gives you and your team the most responsibility. So as I've grown my career, whether it's at Airbnb or WeWork or other places I flex into maybe a different... It's like taking your core strength but then flexing it and finding different ways to bring it to life. Much of what I just heard is you just worked incredibly hard and just got shit done. And I think that's very, very important and often leads to a lot of success.…

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