Haiyan's Career Path

Originally Published: May 12, 2022 

Brave the Winds and Waves Without Fear

"All your accumulation now will definitely be rewarded at some point in the future."

Haiyan S.'s inner strength is reflected in her words and actions, guiding her to reach distant places in her heart.

Haiyan has been a strong logical thinker since childhood and chose engineering as her major in university. After graduation, she also became an engineer as she wished. Every day, she worked on complex data, sorting out ideas from many symbols and figures and finding solutions. Day after day until 2010, she changed from an engineer to an agile coach by chance. Her work suddenly changed from purely technical discussions to discussions on company structure and development, which forced her to learn about management and psychology and put them into practice in her work.

"Agile coaching is set up to help organizations transform. In the process of transformation, there will be a lot of conflicts and inconsistent interests, and everyone is at a point, so how can we pull everyone into the same channel requires brainstorming and requires that I can put myself in each other's shoes."

With the increase of experience, Haiyan gradually learned how to observe herself inwardly and how to relax and put herself in each other's shoes. This experience not only injected a lot of strategies and emotional perception for her linear rational thinking, but also laid an indestructible foundation for her promotion to senior manager in merely two years.

Avoid arrogance and impatience, and time has its repercussions

"Don't aspire to be the best in the team but try to be the best for the team."

When Haiyan S. first joined the Dell Technologies R&D PV (Patch Pack Testing) team, she was put to the test in a wave. At that time, the team was just established, and the proportion of graduate development plans was as high as 40%, which also led to a great duplication of manual tasks. After a rational analysis of the team structure, Haiyan thought that the team was growing with a lot of young people, so she decided to organize a learning group for senior staff to share their work experience and technology, and then adjust the workflow to automate the manual work.

After half a year of hard work, the team successfully automated the routine testing of patch packages and automated the verification results. After that, Haiyan approached the patch package production team to explore the possibility of automating the production of patch packages, so that the production of patch packages and testing could be done in one click. Finally, with the joint efforts of the two teams, it took one year to implement the one-click system, which was highly recognized by the boss of the business department and won the Engineering Excellence Award.

Although Haiyan S. is a sister who braves the winds and waves in others’ minds, she thinks of "leadership" in an extraordinarily pure way.

Whether in the work or the process of growth, Haiyan is a "spontaneous" person and does not set any special clear goals for herself, but only hopes to have more feelings in a limited life, to try more things that have not been experienced before, and to give others as much help as possible.

"Many times, this return cannot be reflected in material terms, but I have felt and received the effect which is enough for me. It's a joy to see the growth of the team and the effectiveness of my help to others."

With softness in my heart, I face the world firmly

"There is no outstanding superiority or inferiority of gender, so what we should emphasize more is the diversity of the team."

The world is always strict with girls, but Haiyan S. uses her personal experience to prove that there is no difference between men and women and that a girl can be an excellent technical leader.

"I think women have the advantage of being patient, empathetic, and easy to bring people closer together. When faced with a direct conflict, women can also use the female position to ease the tension and are easier to consider from the interests of different parties; of course, women also have women's disadvantages, such as women are easier to compromise, immerse in their own emotions, and be passive in front of the challenges and opportunities. There is no outstanding advantage and disadvantage of gender, and we should put more emphasis on the diversity of the team to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses for growth."

The proportion of female employees in Dell R&D department has been on the rise in recent years, and the proportion of female employees in Haiyan's team is relatively high at present, which is also in line with Dell's vision 2030 - by 2030, most of the global workforce and global managers will be female.

With the light in heart, the temperature in eyes, and the graceful and calm attitude, give the world sincerity and calmness, which is the firm voice of all female leaders to the world with a soft heart.

Learn more about Dell's D&I goals here.