Every unique and talented Avantee is a co-creator of the Avant culture we love. We hope the @Avant series helps you get to know who we are, how we do what we do, and what it looks like to build your career at Avant.
Sosuke Kohda
Product Manager on the Data and Analytics Platform Team
Joined Avant in 2023
What’s it like to work @Avant? We asked Sosuke for his take on our culture, and here’s what he said:
1. How would you describe Avant’s culture?
Even during my internship at Avant, before I worked here full-time, I noticed that everyone is very collaborative and helpful. Back in school, I was one of those people who tried hard and pulled their weight in group projects, but there’s always people who don’t show up and don’t pull their weight. I didn’t like that. Here, it’s good to have people around you who you know will always help.
A good example: I was looking at a direct mail data set, and I wasn’t familiar with it so I reached out to someone who was. That person answered every question I had, and helped me understand where the data was coming from and what it entailed, until pretty late at night. He helped me think about how to use the data set for my project. It’s really nice that when you need help, you can always get that from someone. They will be there for you.
2. Why are you happy/successful here?
I’m happy and successful working here because Avant enables you to make a lot of impact, if you and your team are passionate, capable, and successful. An example: The team I was originally hired for, the ML Ops Team, was very successful—what we built met all the user needs and was very stable, so we had additional capacity to help other teams. Recently, we added more scope and responsibility and became the Data & Analytics Platform Team. That creates a great positive cycle. When you’re successful, you are trusted with more responsibility, so you get to learn new things, and it keeps repeating in that positive cycle. You’re constantly learning and accomplishing new things and it never gets boring. It’s very fulfilling to work that way.
3. What’s something Avant is really good at? What’s something you’d like to see us get better at?
One of the things Avant is good at is making sure everyone understands how their work contributes to the metrics that we care about as a company. Those metrics are always available for everyone to see, so you can see how your work translates into the bottom line, no matter how far removed you are from the business. That makes you feel like you’re part of the company, no matter where you are. Avant has gotten a lot better about this over the last year or two, and I am really happy to see that improvement.
4. If you were to describe who you are and not mention your work at all, what would you say?
I am very competitive in nature. That applies to anything in life, whether it’s a sport, studying, video games, all these things. A good example of that is the Chase Corporate Marathon Challenge last week. I signed up for it because a coworker encouraged me to, even though I don’t like running at all. But because I am competitive and I like to be good at the things I pick up, I ran 2-3 times a week since signing up, and I ran pretty well! Although to be fair, with this, I did have a foundation of running and sprinting because I used to play basketball. But that’s how I approach a lot of things. I like competing.
5. How does your work at Avant fit into the rest of your life?
As a Product Manager, my job is to understand the needs of our internal teams and then communicate those requirements to the engineers so that we can decide what to build. I’ve been in my role for almost a year and a half, and I write a lot of documents that I share with lots of stakeholders, engineers, everyone. Different stakeholders have different levels of understanding and technicality, and I need to make sure that my documents are phrased in such a way that everyone can understand. So I try to be a very mindful and clear communicator. And what I’ve noticed recently is that, because I do that day to day in my job, I started caring about those kinds of things even when I write personal emails and messages, or even communicate in person. I think, how can I deliver my thoughts so that the other person will understand very clearly? That helps me a lot in communicating with friends. That’s something that I wasn’t really expecting that came out of nowhere.
6. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
One of the dream jobs that I had as a kid was a train conductor. I grew up in Tokyo, Japan, where we have great public transit. I saw so many different trains, and I had all these miniature trains as a kid. I was never a car person, I was a train person. I thought it would be really cool to be on a train and manipulate all the handles and buttons. Fun fact – I had a group of friends and we went to different cities to ride these very exclusive, super local trains when I was in elementary school back in Japan. That’s how much I love trains.
