Transcription
Zachary Haitkin 00:05
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. My name is Zack Hagen. I'm a localization project manager at Netflix, focusing mainly on the product UI and the web and mobile experience, as well as initiatives like new members and new markets and personalized user experience. Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to present for love from home, I think I have a good story for you today, my story. And just would love to kind of tell you how I found my way in the world found my way into the localization field. And I'm biased, but I think it's a good story. And hopefully, you all will, too. So let me take you back a little bit to the early 2000s, when I graduated high school, didn't really have a sense of what I wanted to do like most 18 1718 year olds, and so enrolled in college here, I was born and raised in California. So went to a college here on the on the central coast of California, and my major was Business Administration, because business and you want to make money. So you do business. And honestly, I really had no understanding of what that was, and quickly found out that it was something that I was not interested in. And funny, the thing is University as opposed to high school, you don't have to go to class if you don't want to. So I quickly found that I was not interested in anything and just decided not to go to class. So that's obviously had repercussions. And after a few semesters, I was actually expelled from that college, academically disqualified, and it was tough. You know, I really, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do from there. And so fortunately, I was able to enroll in a community college closer to home, complete some of the more general education requirements, because I definitely knew that I wanted to graduate from college, I just didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. So the requirements were a lot of the General Education ones were early on. So I was able to do that. And then went back to the same college, they allowed me back in to do the same type of work and major. And the same thing happened again, I just didn't, I wasn't able to relate to the material, I wasn't able to find it interesting, and it just did not resonate with me. And so I was academically disqualified a second time, which was, which was really difficult. I really didn't understand exactly why I was having issues with this and why things were were were happening. And I just had lost my path. So I ended up getting a job here in Southern California working for a roofing company, just in their in their office. And something that had not even really crossed my mind was in high school, I had taken a lot of Spanish classes and had done really well. I had taken some Spanish in college and done okay, but it wasn't something that I really thought that I could do for a career or move forward in I you know, I'm a native English speaker, but I had excelled in some of those Spanish classes. And so I was working at the roofing company, and the majority of the crew was Spanish speaking. So I would actually speak with them. And they ended up telling me that, you know, your your Spanish is actually pretty good. Have you thought about doing anything with that. And for some reason, I had never really thought about it before. And then something finally clicked. And I decided to re enroll in a different school here in California, way up in Northern California, Humboldt County, actually, and I got back into school and wouldn't you know, it's once you find something you're interested in and passionate about, you end up doing quite well. So I was able to finish college that way. And graduated with almost a perfect GPA at humbled, which was which was great. It was a, it was a good validation and understanding of the path that I wanted to follow. And I knew that it had to do with with language. And even though it took me a little while to find that out, I definitely knew that it was it was the path that I needed to stay on. So. So I graduated from from college in 2010. Didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do with with Spanish language, and ended up going back into a job working in a restaurant and catering because I had had experience in it before and didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do with my language degree. So as I was working in the restaurant, there was a new company that was started here in San Francisco that a friend of mine was driving for called Lyft. And he convinced me to use my own vehicle, which was the way it worked. And I would pick up riders and to drive them around. So it was the early days of the rideshare industry here in the United States. And yeah, this was around 2013. And so one night, I had gotten off from working I was bartending at the time at a high end restaurant here in the in San Francisco and And I started driving after my shift. And I picked up a person who was a Lyft employee. And this was very early Lyft, probably only had maybe a couple 100 people, they were operating in half a dozen cities in the United States. And so he and I had a good conversation, he was a member of the support team, he ended up actually he only lived a few blocks from where I lived. And he invited me to a recruiting event they were having for the support team. And that's how I ended up getting the position at at Lyft. So I started as a entry level support associate just answering emails and phone calls from riders and drivers making sure that if they had an issues that they got resolved. And so I was one of the only there was me and a couple other people that were able to answer phone calls and emails in Spanish. And so that was a way that I was originally able to channel some of the skills and passion that I had for Spanish language into actual real world success. And so I spent a year on the support team then moved to operations where I managed markets, a few markets in the United States, this was very early. So those This was before there were local, general managers and local teams. So I had Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta, all three of those metros had high Spanish speaking populations. And so I ended up doing a lot of driver communications in Spanish. And, again, just trying to really, no matter what role I was in, no matter what I was doing, I always tried to tie it back to what I really wanted to be doing, which was using my my Spanish language skills. And so spent a year doing that then backtracking a little bit about the same time I signed up to be a Lyft driver, I wanted to be an Uber driver. And so I had a lot of access to information that was valuable to lift at the time. So there was a team of Competitive Intelligence Team being formed at the time, and I was working closely with the the person there, there was only one person doing it. And she pulled me on to that team to help build a network of an information network across the United States to capture competitive information, such as driver promotions, right rider incentives, things like that, and get that back to internal people at Lyft, in order to make business decisions. So did that for two and a half years, helped build out a giant network, we had, at one point 1000s of riders and drivers reporting information to us. And around 2018, there was finally an initiative that was sponsored by our CFO at the time to actually localize the the lived experience. Now, during my entire time, no matter what role I was, I had at the company, I was always advocating for there to be a a multilingual experience to facilitate the the to facilitate a better experience for our riders and drivers. And obviously, being in the US and Canada, Spanish was the number one language that we needed to focus on. So, you know, I've been pushing for this for a really long time, but just hadn't really gotten the support that I needed. But fortunately, when there was a initiative that was taken on by such a high ranking executive, that's when the resources really started rolling in. So for about six months, I was doing project management unofficially on the globalization team, helping get things set up and working with a few other people who were running the show and learning exactly what that meant. Because honestly, before I got into localization, I didn't really understand that that was an industry that existed, I understood about translation, and transcreation, and things like that, and moving things from one language to another. But I really had no concept of what localization globalization, internationalization actually entailed. And so during those, those six months of as we were building, the the experience for lifts, I really got a crash course in what localization was, unfortunately, I had a really amazing person that I that I worked under, who taught me pretty much everything I know about about building a localization program. So then, right before we officially launched our first language for lifting in Spanish, I moved on to the team officially as a project manager to help manage internal stakeholders, and build processes around making sure everything gets translated correctly. So spent a year doing that, and really got a sense of this is what I wanted to do. And this is what i This is the industry that I want it to be in because localization is this beautiful intersection between language and technology. And so since we were such a small team, it was me, the project manager, a program manager and a Spanish language manager. We worked really closely together and we were able to use our language skills are our skills at the company and my knowledge having been there for four or five years and watching the company grow from 200 people to almost 5000 People We were really able to drive a lot of change and create a solid program. We also launched Canadian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, pretty soon after Spanish and saw success with those as well, the the types of metrics that we saw in terms of increase of driver ratings and driver earnings for Spanish speaking drivers and French and, and Brazilian Portuguese speaking drivers was was really incredible to see. Anyways. So after about a year as a project manager, I, there was a shift in priorities of the company. And they ended up taking over the entire localization program at lift to run it by myself. And that was a lot. It certainly was a way for me to, it was bittersweet, because, you know, I had to, I had to take it on all by myself, but I knew that it was it was the right path for me to go on. And so I ran the program for about a year, driving different initiatives, making small changes in improving the quality and making sure that the, the breadth of the surfaces that were translated at lifts were always increasing, because there's a lot of different branches of the company. Things like bikes and scooters is one had to make sure that we built that connection between the localization program and that arm of the company. So that's just one example. And then after about a year and change at that, Netflix game calling with a position as a project manager, so I don't want to call it a step down. But it was a step into a much larger organization, a larger globalization org, but it was a more focus in my role. So as I mentioned before, I'm working as a project manager focusing on product UI. And so I made the jump there a little over a year ago, and have not looked back. And so, you know, I just, I really want to reiterate that early failures are not an indication of what your long term success is going to be. And I think it would have been easy for me to give up, or to try and shift to a different career, if if I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be doing. But I did. And so you know, I really needed to make sure that I knew that I can do this, and I want to push and I want to continue to try and find exactly what my path is going to be and no matter how, how I get there. That's what's really important, because I feel like if I, if I didn't continue on this, and I didn't believe in myself and try and continue to work, using the skill and the passion that I had for language, what I really wanted to do is get to a place where I felt content, I felt like I was in my my space. And so the the idea that I want to convey and this is a little bit of a westernized version of it of a Japanese notion called the iki. Guy. And so there's, there's a few I can't share my screen here. But there's, there's four tenants of it. That's what you love, what you're good at what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. And I certainly want to reiterate that this is I looked at it more from a Western version, because any key guy, you don't necessarily need to find exactly in the middle of all four of those to find your passion, but, but for me, I feel like Fortunately, I was able to find that, you know, I love Spanish language, I'm good at it. I can be paid for it. And I feel like I look at it as kind of an accessibility. I look at localization as opening up different platforms to the world, and being able to give more access and allow more people to experience different parts of culture. And so that's where I feel, you know, I feel confident that I am where I am and I want to make sure that I'm I'm always continuing to work on that and find that. So it's, you know, I I feel good about where I'm at now, but I'm always looking for for the next thing I think what this journey has taught me is that I'm always trying to find that spot and whether I'm feel like I'm there right now. You know, I always want to make sure that I'm continuously re evaluating and making sure that I'm I'm staying on on course, at least for me. So anyways, that's kind of my story. It's it's certainly not over yet. But yeah, I always I always wanted to make sure that I gave it my all and really made sure that no matter what, I gave it my best shot and that way I wouldn't have to worry about if I had done this or if I had done that or what would have happened Had I gone down this path and you know, I certainly had my fair share of, of luck. But there's a an old adage where luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And so I definitely feel like I prepared myself and when the opportunity came, I was able to jump at it. So anyways, I'm really glad to have been able to share the story with you. I really appreciate all of your time and let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to reach out and yeah, have a great day.
