Waters Wrap: When looking for tech & data jobs, be curious

Like so many people, I fell in love with the TV show “Ted Lasso”. The show came out during the height of the pandemic. Its uplifting message made you feel good while watching it, in a refreshing contrast to the endless amount of cynical, sarcastic shows and murder porn that populate streaming services.

In episode 8 of its first season, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, makes a wager with one of the show’s antagonists, Rupert, before going on to tell a heartwarming tale of how he had always been underestimated.

I won’t get into the details of it—you can watch the clip here—but Lasso is an American football coach who goes to England to take over as the manager of a European soccer club. (The ol’ soccer/football debate.) Rupert underestimates Lasso because he’s a Yank and thinks Lasso has no chance of winning. As he’s throwing his final three darts, where he needs to make all three to win, he delivers this monologue:

“Guys have underestimated me my entire life, and for years, I never understood why—it used to really bother me. But then, one day, I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman. It was painted on the wall, and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ I like that. So I get back in my car, and I’m driving to work, and all of a sudden, it hits me—all them fellas that used to belittle me; not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything figured out, so they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me—who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would have asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ To which I would have answered, “Yes, sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age 10 until I was 16 when he passed away. Barbecue sauce.”

He then throws the wager-winning dart. Like I said, heartwarming.

Be curious, not judgmental. I like this on many levels.

I’ve been hiring reporters right out of college for more than a decade, and I’m proud to say that I only have a few misses. I think my track record shows that I have an eye for talent. The reason is that I’m not looking at the college they went to or the internship they landed. Instead, I wonder whether they’re curious. If an interviewee hasn’t asked me a single question by the end of our meeting, I won’t even consider them, even if their credentials are impressive. If they’re not inquisitive about the job and the industry we cover, they’ll never be able to understand the complexities of data management, platform design, engineering, market structure, or regulation.

I mention this because a few weeks ago, I was speaking with Tony McManus for the “Waters Wavelength Podcast”. McManus is the global head of Bloomberg’s enterprise data division. He has a ton of experience and is an enjoyable conversationalist. I asked him whether there are any new skills that he looks for when hiring, compared to five years ago. His answer surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.

He noted that if you want to work at a company like Bloomberg, then yes, you need to understand the basics of data from a semantic perspective. But you should also come into the room with an opinion on semantic data and show an interest in data generally. He said that unless the job specifies a certain expertise for a particular function, he’s not expecting them to be experts on the subject. But show an interest.

“If you’re intimidated by that stuff and you shy away from it, that’s going to be very obvious very quickly,” McManus said.

He said that young adults coming out of college tend to “over-index” the value of their knowledge of Python, Pandas, or AI development, but “under-index” the fundamental talents they’ll need to succeed at Bloomberg. He said that he’s looking more for people who are inquisitive, who are good at collaboration, and will fit in culturally. Again, that shouldn’t have surprised me—because it’s exactly what I’m looking for out of a reporter.

“I often will throw curveballs at people: What do you think of open source? Something very open [ended] like that, just to see if they have an opinion,” McManus said. “You might catch someone out on one topic, but if you throw three or four of those questions and they don’t have an opinion on anything, you’ve probably found someone who is not particularly curious because they’re not stretching their domain knowledge and their interest in various things that are around our industry. People might come in very well prepared to talk about AI or data science because that’s the role and that’s the company, but some of those more peripheral topics are where you really understand the person that you’re speaking to.”

At this year’s North American Financial Information Summit, which was held on May 15 in New York, several senior technologists echoed McManus’ sentiments.

Rachel Zhang is a managing director and head of front-office fixed-income technology at Jefferies. She said that she wants to hire people who are excited about the prospect of solving a problem that hasn’t been solved before, and they can’t be afraid of the challenge. And they need to be invested in constantly improving and growing their skill sets.

“Someone who is going to retire in five years, it’s okay for him not to learn [any new skills],” she said. “But if you want a longer career, guess what—you have to constantly learn new things.”

Randy Goldsmith, managing director and head of global institutional rates technology at Tradeweb, agreed.

“We’re looking for people that can piece things together, and that generally starts with the question of, ‘Are they inquisitive?’” he said. “We’re looking for people who ask questions that at least connect a few dots. The buzzwords will get people into the interview room, but what we’re really looking for is people who will ask questions. There’s no way to put together sales, trading, operations, and analytics without asking questions.”

Or, to put it more plainly, be curious.

The world of tech and data is constantly evolving and becoming more complex. If you had said “generative AI” to people in the industry in September 2022, they would likely have known what it was, but I doubt that many of them knew how much it would dominate their budgetary roadmaps just a year later.

Having the right technical skills and industry knowledge is incredibly important—no one debates that fact. But firms that don’t have curious technologists and data professionals, who ask questions, are doomed to fall behind in the race for discovery and innovation. Barbecue sauce.

The image accompanying this column is “Aristotle with a Bust of Homer” by Rembrandt, courtesy of The Met’s open-access program.