132 lines
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7 KiB
HTML
132 lines
No EOL
7 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>Pablo here</title>
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<meta charset="utf-8">
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<meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="../styles.css">
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</head>
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<body>
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<main>
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<h1>
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Hi, Pablo here
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</h1>
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<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
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<hr>
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<section>
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<h2>Valuating data teams output</h2>
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<p>
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- Freedom and fucking up
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- How work looks like
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- This is an economics problem
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- Fairy tail organizational designs
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</p>
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<p>
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In 2023, I had the chance to do something not a lot of people get to do: I started a Data team in a
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startup (<a href="https://truvi.com/">Truvi, formerly Superhog</a>) from scratch.
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</p>
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<p>
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Being in a greenfield situation, both in organization and technical terms, was equally challenging and
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rewarding. It gave me the right space and craving to spend time thinking on stuff I hadn't before. This
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included very foundational questions such as... what should the Data team do? The kind of stuff you
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don't think about much when you land in a cruise ship that's already been rolling for a while, and you
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get told your job is to pull that lever up and down when the light tells you to. Ever since, I've had
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the
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chance to learn and think a lot about embedding a Data team in a small SaaS company.
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</p>
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<p>
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One of the hard and interesting topics is how do you measure the success of the team. How do you look at
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what the team has done and answer the following questions:
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li>How valuable is this thing we delivered?</li>
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<li>Was it the most valuable think we could have done?</li>
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</ul>
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<p>
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These are not trivial questions. Because it's easy to fuck up. Being a nimble team in a small company,
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the amount of flexibility you enjoy is ecstatic. You can (and usually need to) pivot a lot, very fast.
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But with freedom comes responsibility, and the pleasure of having many choices comes with the pain of
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wondering if you're screwing up in what you choose.
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</p>
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<h2>
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How work looks like
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</h2>
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<p>
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I find experience and real situations make abstract rants like this one much more interesting, so let me
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explain a bit what the Data team at Truvi faces on a daily basis to give some context.
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</p>
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<p>
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Truvi is a SaaS company that services short-term rentals (STR) hosts and guests. Our goal is to help
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both parties reduce and manage risk in their bookings. Risk here means, for the other part, the other
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party doing something nasty to you (e.g. your guest burns down your BnBs kitchen, or your host let's you
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know the property you booked is flooded right when you show up at the door on a Monday night at
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11:30PM). We offer multiple services, like screening and protection, to help both parties manage this,
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and we charge fees for it.
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</p>
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<p>
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We deliver our services through a couple of in-house developed applications and some API integrations
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with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_management_system">PMSs</a>, <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_travel_agency">OTAs</a> and other funky acronym-named
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types of companies involved in the STR industry.
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</p>
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<p>
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The Data team's main responsibility, as defined by me, is to ensure people in the company know what they
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need to know. We deliver this in multiple ways:
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li>We maintain a lot of reporting. Some of it might be company-wide KPIs all management looks at,
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some others are more operational detail that only affect certain teams or functions.</li>
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<li>
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We keep ourselves available for adhoc, quick and dirty, one off requests. We rotate this through the
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different members of the team since it's quite disruptive for one's agenda and focus.
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</li>
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<li>
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We deliver adhoc, slow and steady, brainy reports whenever people not only need Data, but someone
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who knows what he's doing because the analysis requires above average data literacy.
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</li>
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<li>
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We support data heavy projects, such as A/B testing or the acquisition of external data sources.
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</li>
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</ul>
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<p>
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Even if this categorization looks neat, the reality is more of a barrage of a million different things,
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coming through the door all at once without any order.
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</p>
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<p>
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Given our humble capacity for delivering and our colleagues heavy appetite for asking, only a sliver
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of what gets requested will be done soon. One of my jobs is to decide, together with the company
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leadership, what makes it in. It's a tough job at Truvi, and it's been a tough job at previous companies
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I've been at. I think that is the case because of poor organizational design. And I think we have a lot
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to learn from economics.
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</p>
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<h2>Economic calculation</h2>
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<p>
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The situation we have in my team is an economical one. We have lots of needs and we can't satisfy all
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of them.
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</p>
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<p>
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This is the same situation society faces at scale: there's plenty of capital and man hours we can put up
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to good use, but we have infinite options. What do we do more, hospitals, more schools or more beers?
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</p>
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<p>
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In society, despite what statists and bureacrats would like, these decisions are not made by a bunch of
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all knowing intellectuals in their parties office. They are made on the streets, by individuals that
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decide how to spend their own money and time.
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</p>
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<p>
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People spend their own very wisely. Even if it might look like they do stupid stuff, they don't. They do
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what's good for them, with their resources and preferences. Even if we don't share their choices. Even
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if we think we know better than them.
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</p>
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<hr>
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<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
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</section>
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</main>
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</body>
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</html> |