WIT We Love: Lunar Le

In our series, wit we love, we're interviewing women who have made their way into unexpected and multidisciplinary tech careers. 

For our second feature, we had the pleasure of speaking with Lunar Le, Director of Product Management at Simon Data. Lunar obtained a degree in Communications, began her career as a designer, but now works in product management. She has worked in start-ups large and small, in different roles and industries. 

We asked Lunar how to make the leap into the start-up world, and what it takes to be successful there. Read more below!

What does your role as Director of Product Management entail?

I manage another product manager and run product management for my own engineering team, which means working with our customers, and our sales team to discover what the market needs. Product Managers at Simon also look into what problems are worth solving and then work with engineering and design to figure out what product we should build to address those problems.

How did you get into the startup space?

It was my senior year of college, and at that point, I had already done a few big-name internships. I wanted to do something a little different for my senior year, to explore my options. I found an internship at an early-stage startup, and I was able to make so much impact as an intern that I never looked back. 

I started in the marketing function, and I had an interest in product design, so I just spoke to my manager, and I told him that I was interested in design and that I wanted to help in any way that I could. That's the beauty of startups: they’re very fluid, and people are very open to allowing you to move to a different function. He allowed me to help out with the design, and eventually, I was able to step in and take over that role. 

As I matured as a product designer, I realized what I enjoyed more was product management and not the design aspect of it. When I joined Mighty after they raised a seed round, I told the founders that I'm interested in product management. They allowed me to do both product and design, and so that's how I was able to transition yet again, into product management.

What skills do you look for when managing a team of engineers? What do you value in an engineer and their skillset?

I value product-oriented engineers. These are engineers who are thinking about the longer-term problem space. They're not just task-oriented, but want to have a say in what we build. They passionately care about it and want to understand how customers are using the product, and what kind of problems they have. I very much want my engineers to have input, brainstorm with me and figure out what the right solution is.

I value people who are open to feedback and want to better themselves. In scrum methodology,  there’s something called retrospectives, which happens every other week where we sit down as a team, and we talk about: what went well? What didn’t go well? How do we address those problems? How do we improve as a team? 

What advice do you have for women who are still in college or still in their education stage who want to get into the tech space?

I would say that tech startups are a great place to learn and grow at a rapid pace. They very much welcome everyone from every sort of background. I believe that open-mindedness, flexibility, and the "hey let's work together to figure out how to run the best company" attitude is what makes startups special. 

 What advice do you have for women to be successful in their careers? 

Ask for feedback. What I’ve found is that men are almost scared to give women feedback. People can assume that women are more sensitive, so they're afraid to say something, and that's not doing us any favors. In a way that's hindering our growth. As a woman, you need to set expectations that feedback is a priority for you and continually ask for direct input.