A Day In The Life - George He (‘21)
Education: University of Chicago
Previous Employer: Harris Associates
Day in the Life in: Product Manager
Company: Cisco Systems, Inc.
Location: Remote (Los Angeles, CA)
SUMMER OVERVIEW:
This summer, I am working at Cisco as an MBA Product Management Intern in the UCS Compute department. Broadly, the department is responsible for Cisco’s entry into the server and computing space. Within this business unit, I work with the go-to-market (GTM) team which oversees product sales, strategies, and forecasting. As part of Cisco’s broader strategy, the UCS department looks to provide a complete end-to-end solution for businesses seeking networking solutions.
My project this summer was to understand how the hardware that Cisco sold through its various partners was being used, whether those workloads would be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally to give a recommendation on which areas the sales team should focus on in the near term. As a company with a global salesforce and supply chain, this kind of accurate and timely forecasting is critical to the success of the product. After spending some time getting a grasp on the immense data available to the team, I was able to (1) build a predictive model that mapped 80% of revenue bookings to a workload, (2) define key macroeconomic trends facing global businesses in the context of the pandemic, and (3) present a final recommendation for where the company should focus their sales teams.
At Cisco, interns are given a lot of autonomy. You are given a goal for your summer project, and then expected to define your own scope and approach. You are then expected to make a final presentation to senior leadership by the end of the internship. Interns operate independently, with guidance from their managers and stakeholders, and are expected to drive their own projects forward. While I spoke with and learned from many of my team members during my project, my work differed greatly from their day-to-day duties.
COMPANY CULTURE
Cisco heavily emphasizes autonomy and employee empowerment. This emphasis is the main diver of many of Cisco’s activities, from a biweekly check-in with the Executive Leadership Team, to intern events with special celebrity guests. Nearly every person I spoke to about the company had nothing but great things to say about their coworkers and the company itself. As a result, despite its massive scale, Cisco maintains an extremely tight-knit, small-company feel. Employees are empowered to suggest changes and ask questions of everyone in the company, and are encouraged to shift to various teams if they are not feeling challenged by their current role. Individual teams within Cisco tend to be separate from each other, but also mingle often. This means that teams are given the autonomy to act on their own, but aren’t shy to reach out to other departments or business units who may have done similar things before.
The current and former MBA interns were all extremely open and very helpful. Many have gone through similar struggles of being a new employee at Cisco and are more than happy to offer their advice as well as pointing out who to connect to. Managers are also very open to having coffee chats to talk about their teams and backgrounds if you send them an email, though it can be challenging to get on their calendars.
SKILLS AND RESOURCES UTILIZED:
Data Analysis: As an intern at Cisco, you are quickly given the access and tools to the massive amounts of data that Cisco maintains. However, it is up to you to understand how to interpret and parse the data from the noise, of which there is a lot. So, a good portion of the internship is devoted to understanding how data is organized around the company, and what sources of information are available to you and your team. Furthermore, it is not enough just to manipulate the data into a meaningful configuration, but also to interpret it and draw some sort of conclusions from it.
Communication and Stakeholder Management: One of the key skills that you need to use in a virtual internship is communicating clearly and understanding stakeholder’s priorities. It is an art form to tactfully understand what matters to one person’s workload, and how you can effectively use that knowledge to set up meetings and maximize your limited time with them. Meetings at Cisco are often Powerpoint-driven, even if the Powerpoint is very simple or straightforward. I have found that presentations are extremely effective at organizing thoughts and getting the message across, especially in the virtual environment. By using a presentation, you are also able to effectively ask targeted questions and get feedback from your stakeholders.
Autonomous Learning: With Cisco’s large portfolio of extremely technical products, it can be challenging to understand what is going on without even considering the difficulties of remote work. As a result, just to even keep up with the rapidly changing industry and business, you will find yourself doing a ton of reading and research all the time. It is extremely important to take it upon yourself to learn about what you do not know and ask questions when you cannot find any resources to support you. It is common to spend the first few weeks simply reading, watching webinars, and just understanding the product you are working on. Even the experienced Cisconians that I spoke to admitted that they spend a few months getting up to speed on every new product that they work on.
RESOURCES/ DATABASES UTILIZED:
The best resources at your disposal are your team members, and the internal websites. There are plenty of resources available for employees to learn and pick up insights, including internal Sharepoint pages that define the huge amount of Cisco jargon and acronyms that are thrown around. In addition, people around the company are generally very friendly and open to teaching you about their work. Cisco also encourages lifelong learning, and provides many resources to learn skills, including Degreed, Coursera, and LinkedIn Learning. In addition, Cisco interns are offered quick pathways to various certifications, which (depending on your career aspirations) can be extremely helpful.
In terms of quantitative databases, Cisco uses an Oracle database. There is no SQL knowledge required, but because of the sheer size of the business, you will need to keep in mind that you will be working with a ton of data. For example, one quarter of sales data within just a single business unit can easily be over 1 million rows! As such, you will need to leverage the full power of your preferred data processor, whether that be Tableau, Excel, R, or even Python. In addition, knowledge of Salesforce and Smartsheets may help depending on your team.
INSIGHT/TIP:
Start out early with an internship plan and communicate your goals clearly. The earlier you can put together a plan, even if its tentative and unclear, the more quickly you can refine and further define your scope. With limited time and a relatively difficult business to understand, getting this early start will be invaluable as you progress in your internship.
Reach out to your directors early into the internship. Cisco is a hierarchical organization, and it can be difficult to get on director’s schedules. However, keep asking and put time on the schedule even if it’s for the distant future. Ultimately, your directors (with feedback from your managers) will have the most influence on your future success.
Do not be afraid to get technical. Surprisingly, few people at Cisco care only about the high-level strategy; instead, everyone (even directors and VPs) prefer to dive deeply into numbers and methodology to understand your thinking. Be ready to defend your process and to go through every step of your methodology if needed.
Bring a presentation to every project-related meeting. Even if you don’t end up using it, you’ll be better prepared to go through your thoughts and you’ll be organized in your thinking during the meeting. On the other hand, when the stakeholders to whom you’re speaking have questions, you’ll be able to quickly point to your presentation to answer their questions in a format that they’re already familiar with.
DAY IN THE LIFE SUMMARY:
6:00-7:30am: I will usually wake up early in the morning to go for a run. I find that getting a run in early really energizes me for the rest of the day and it helps keep me in shape while we are all stuck inside. It is all too easy to sit all day inside and forget to get sunlight while working from home, so working out outside (while maintaining social distance) has been an easy way to stay sane and fit.
7:30-8:30am: Shower, make coffee, make breakfast, and sit down at my computer. Some of the benefits of working from home are that there is no commute, and that you can have whatever food you want. Personally, I will range from avocado toast, eggs, or yogurt and granola. While eating, I will catch up on e-mails, respond to any pressing messages, and check my calendar for the day.
8:30-9:00am: I have a meeting with a colleague in India. Cisco is a truly global company, and you will find yourself having to work with time zones around the world to get work done. Luckily, everyone is incredibly accommodating and more than happy to work with you to get a meeting scheduled.
9:00-10:00am: Every two weeks, Cisco has a check-in meeting with the Executive Leadership Team (ELT). I think that this is truly a unique event amongst tech companies, and it is a great opportunity to engage in open question-and-answer sessions with the ELTs. It is also a great time to listen to the executives and gain insights on the overall strategy of the company.
10:00-11:00am: Right after the ELT check-in, our team has a weekly check-in meeting. This is the perfect opportunity for me to present my project progress so far, ask for feedback, and get immediate comments on my work thus far. My team is great at giving immediate advice and feedback, and today I get a few people to get in contact with to make some more progress on my project.
11:00-12:30pm: I get some time to incorporate the comments I got on my progress thus far, as well as send off a few e-mails to the key contacts that I was given. I am looking to forecast out key trends in the industry, and I need inputs from these contacts who might be able to give me more detailed inputs from the customers that they deal with.
12:30-1:30pm: Lunch time! Normally, I will cook some food that we have sitting around in the fridge, but today I am not particularly interested in cooking chicken for the hundredth time again. Instead, I go to pick up some Doordash from Westwood. This is also a good time to sit and unwind for a second, chat with my roommates, and gather my thoughts for the afternoon.
1:30 – 2:30pm: I have a meeting with a key stakeholder in my project. I present my progress so far and ask for his feedback and get some more feedback on how to proceed. Even though it is a tough meeting, my manager lets me lead it as I see fit and I manage to learn a lot from the meeting. I go away with thoughts racing through my head, and I take a few minutes after the meeting to think through everything.
2:30 – 4:30pm: I spend the rest of the day working on my project and making progress on my research. One of the most difficult aspects of working remotely is that it can be difficult to know what I don’t know, and I dedicate a significant amount of my time to reading and understanding Cisco as well as the industry as a whole.
4:30 – 5:30pm: Towards the end of work, I host a happy hour for the other MBA interns in the Compute department. Hosting this regular standing happy hour has been a great opportunity to meet and get to know some of the other interns that I work with, as well as a good time to figure out how everyone else is doing on their projects and see where we can help. This happy hour has been a great starting point for many conversations between the interns about how their projects might overlap and how we could help each other. Talk about sharing success.
5:30 – 9:00pm: After work, each day is different. Some days, I will spend a few more hours working out some of the problems that came up with my project during the day. Other days, I will use this opportunity to go on a walk around the neighborhood or pick up some ingredients for the next week. Then, I’ll usually watch a movie or play a game, then go to sleep and get ready for the next day.