People Behind Visier: Cindy Yu

Name: Cindy Yu

Title: Data Engineer II

Residence: Burnaby, BC

Hometown: Guangzhou, China

Cindy’s journey at Visier started back in 2018 where she learned about Visier at a career fair. Shortly after, she joined Visier as a Data Management Engineer, then became a Data Model Designer. Today, Cindy is a Data Engineer working on our product developments in AI. In this role, she is responsible for building a pipeline with our customer data that allows data scientists to develop our Risk of Exit model, which is used to predict whether an employee is at a risk of leaving the company. 

Cindy believes that data is an important asset in this ever-changing world, and by using data in the decision-making process, it allows people to see patterns and trends which can contribute to impactful decisions down the road!

Let’s dive deeper into Cindy’s work and her life: 

Work Questions:

What’s your motivation for doing what you do?

Being part of the AI @ Visier project is amazing. This project offers an unique opportunity for me to learn new things and tackle new data challenges every day at work. I feel lucky to be in the journey of using AI to empower our users to make better decisions for their company.

Any career goals you’re working towards?

Having moved to a new role recently, I am working towards my goal of becoming an experienced data engineer to better support our product. I’m also constantly learning how to create and design an awesome solution!

What has been a big learning moment in your career?

My big learning moment was when I first transferred to the Enterprise Performance Measurement project team.  I learned more about the business side of Visier, such as the key finance metrics to monitor and predict corporate performance and how OKRs can drive revenue growth for the organization. I also saw how customers use our product to translate business questions into impactful and actionable data in their organizations.

What Visier feature do you think is super cool?

I personally think the entire platform is very cool, but in terms of feature, I specifically like our predictive analytics (eg. Risk of Exit feature) and Driver Charts. I think they are very informative and easy to read, which helps empower and guide our users to make better decisions. I also think our product’s ability to store large databases and the feasibility to build beautiful visualizations for different domains is quite neat!

The Risk of Exit FeatureDrivers Chart

What is something that you are professionally proud of?

I am proud of the small victories in my day-to-day job, such as overcoming platform limitations and creating a cohort analysis for our internal project. I am also proud that I got recognized as the Division Award winner of Strategy & Solution in our 10th year all-hands meeting!

Show us your home office!

Cindy’s Home Office

Life Questions: 

What’s the best advice you were ever given? Who was it from?

The best advice that I have ever received was from my previous manager, Roland Urbanek:

In our line of work, it’s easy to get motivated to find a ‘band-aid solution,’ but by repeating the question “Why?”  five times, it encourages us to dig down to the problem at hand and try to identify the root cause of an issue. While this requires more investment, I find it extremely efficient over the long term. We can find the answer to any question in the universe via a powerful chain of five whys.

What’s one hobby you’d love to get into?

I would love to get into photography since my family is all involved in it! Another reason is that photography inspires me to go out more often and it allows me to share my life and experiences in a more meaningful way. Not only that, but I also enjoy playing around with lights, colors, and different composition concepts!

What is your dream travel destination and why?

I would say Iceland because I want to watch the northern lights and take a ship to the Arctic Circle!

What book are you reading?

I am currently reading The Three Body Problem, a science fiction novel written by Liu Cixin. This book is quite compelling and has some interesting ideas such as the Dark Forest theory, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in a good read.

Do you have a fun fact about yourself that you would like to share?

I have a strong fear of birds also known as Ornithophobia. 

Connect with Cindy on LinkedIn