CodePath EES2024 WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY - Careers In the Frame: The Life of an Early-Career Engineer

Welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome. I am Anthony Davis, senior manager of employee development and engagement with Copath.

We are so excited to have you all here on our third and final day of EES. Before I introduce the speakers, I do just want to go over just a few housekeeping rules is what I like to call them. We definitely want to hear your feedback and your thoughts.

Make sure that you are utilizing the chat but within that chat please make sure that we keep the topic of of conversation relevant to that to the actual chat. Okay. Also make sure that at the end of this particular presentation you’ll be able to submit a survey.

Make sure you submit that survey as well. There should be a resume drop link going around that you all can actually fill out. Make sure you fill that out as well.

Okay. So, let’s get into our first speaker. Stephanie has worked at Warner Brothers Discovery for three years on the global tech and product internship and new grad program and this is her fourth year at fourth year partnering with Copath.

Let’s bring Stephanie to the stage and she will introduce the other speakers. Hi Anthony. Hi everyone.

Nice to see you all. Thank you for that introduction. Yes, my name is Stephanie, but please feel free to call me Steph.

I’ve been here for three years and loving it every minute and excited to be working with CodePath again this year. We have a really great session for you all today. And so I’m super excited to meet to to meet you all and also introduce three wonderful new graduates from our program here.

And so without further ado, if they can also be brought on the stage as well, we can we can get going. And if there’s any questions y’all have in the chat, please feel free to put it in the Q&A feature over to the right. And if you see a question that you really would like answered, upvote it and we’ll know to we’ll know to get that answered too.

But hello everyone. Stella, IO, and Michaela, thank you for joining me today. I am really excited for you to get to meet all of these three lovely ladies here on the screen.

So, let’s just get right ahead into some questions that I have prepared for you. We’ll start with you, IO. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Warner Bros.

Discovery? Yeah, so hello everyone. My name is Io Opio and I’m currently a software engineer one on the Cotlin ad techch team at Warner Bros.

So essentially I work on all like the ad related features on all your if you use the max on Android and you see the ad UI that was me I help with that and yeah that that’s basically it. Wonderful. We’ll get into more details as well later on.

Michaela can you answer the same for us please? Yeah. I am a data analyst on our business intelligence team.

So my team works a lot with the subscriber data for Discovery Plus and Max. We look at what people are watching, when they’re joining, when they’re leaving. We also support launches when we u launch in different regions as well as different promotions and then also just any requests that come up as part of the business.

Lovely. And Stella, tell us about yourself and what you do here. Hello.

My name is Stella. I’m a software engineer. I currently work on a team called Sauce, which is an internal content management system.

So we support lifestyle brands like Magnolia and Food.com and Golf Digest, things like that. And we offer them a way to create and manage content. So what I do is not necessarily customerf facing, but it’s used by editors within the company to kind of plan what goes live on websites.

Update show schedules, things like that. Awesome. Thank you so much.

All right, we’re gonna go into what does your typical day today look like? And Michaela, we’ll start with you. Yeah, I think we’ll all have the answer that every day looks a little different.

But a typical day, I’ll usually go through any requests that anybody has put in for looking at different subscriber data or viewership data. To answer those. I’ll usually write SQL queries or pull together charts or point them to the right dashboards and things.

And then we my team will like create dashboards for any upcoming promotions that are going on or like when we’re launching new regions like I said earlier. So every day is a little different on what I’m focused on, but that’s the the large overview. Yeah, I know it’s it’s going to be different everywhere.

But Stella, generally day-to-day, what do you think your day looks like? Yeah. So, my day is definitely a mix of like software development, as well as like daily meetings.

I meet with my team once a day, just to check in and make sure that we’re all on track. I also meet with any of our like client teams, and sometimes product as well to discuss different tasks and making sure that we’re all on the same page. Yeah, and then I also spend a good amount of my time doing development.

I work mostly in JavaScript React. So I do do web development which is nice. I also we also work on like peer reviews.

So I’ll I usually spend probably like 30 to 40 minutes a day looking at peer reviews which are other team members code. We like to get a second set of eyes on it and go over things like that. So yeah, that’s my day.

Awesome. And I what about you? Yeah, so right now I currently spend most of my day working on bug tickets.

So like for example right now I’m working on doing a huge refactor for one of the features that I developed because we have a really annoying issue for D+ that we’re trying to get fixed. But yeah, most of the time if it’s not bugs, I’m usually helping with like doing any like feature work. And also peer reviews as Stella mentioned.

Right now we’ve been kind of having a lull, but I try to spend at least around like an hour, sometimes two hours depending reviewing code other team members wrote. Or going through like tech approach documents for upcoming features I have work I have to work on. But yeah, but like as Michaela mentioned, like each day is different, but for right now, mostly bug work and daily standup also.

And I have one sneaky question that was not originally included that I prepared you all for, but Stella and I I saw this I don’t know this this this article title and it was actually also in the last session I was watching through CodePath. How many lines of code on average do you think you write a day? Because the number was way lower than I expected.

Yeah, I think that’s a a bit of like it’s it’s kind of complicated because like sometimes it’s a lot, sometimes it’s a little. I would say it’s definitely is less than you think it is. I would probably guess like between 50 and 75 would be like my guess for what I write daily, but that can definitely vary.

In Iowa, what do you think? Yeah. No, for sure.

I sometimes sometimes honestly I don’t even write any lines cuz other other times I’m kind of just like either either helping someone else with their ticket or it’s otherwise I’m just reading documents but sometimes yeah the article said seven lines and I was like what yeah that sounds on average that sounds about right it can be like a oneline bug fix that took you a day to figure out what line was pausing it so it’s like a decent amount of work but not a lot of code. Yeah, I hear you. Most of the time you’re just trying to figure out what is happening.

Isn’t that what we’re all wondering? What is happening? Okay, Brena, bring it back down.

And Stella, we’re going to start with you here. Do you work with any other teams or departments on a daily basis or weekly basis with WBD? Yeah, if you asked me this a year ago, my answer would have been no, but we’ve definitely expanded.

So my team is one of three content management systems that are currently used by the lifestyle brands within WBD. And a big project that’s currently going on is an effort to consolidate those three. So we’ve kind of merged the three teams together and we’re working on like one United platform.

So not only am I working with now the other CMS developers, but we’ve also expanded the scope of like the clients that we serve. So recently we started or we’ve wrapped up a project as part of like the Bleacher Report 2.0 launch. And that was a big like cross team effort.

We had to meet with like a lot of different teams that provided different APIs. Like we’re not used to having external APIs and dealing with external data. Like typically everything is just like fed to us and then kept within our systems.

So that was a little bit new. We had to work with a lot of like authentication to make sure that we were authenticating right to access the different APIs within the company and kind of get outside our own team. So, it’s definitely been a challenge like moving from being more self-sufficient team to a more dependent team just because like sometimes you have to wait on things and if the other people don’t get you what they’re working on then you can’t do what you’re working on.

So, it’s definitely like a a good test of like communication skills and making sure that like you’re following up with people and being clear with other teams that are dependent on you as well and making sure that like if the timeline changes you make that clear to everybody involved in the project. So yeah, now I do end up working with a lot of people and I actually do enjoy it. It’s nice to meet a lot of new engineers and and see what’s going on at the company.

Yeah, I know. I always think and I’ll ask IO Michaela next to you. It’s but the company is so large and I just feel like we can never stop learning about the different departments and different folks.

So IO do you also work with other departments and teams? So on adtech we work very closely with our player team for depending on the platform. I I’m right now working very closely with our player team to burst my current issue.

But yeah, so it’s mostly just the player team. I haven’t unfortunately gotten a chance to work with any other teams like outside of that. But I do keep in close contact with our product team members because obviously they’re very involved with like oh you know compliance issues, stuff like that.

So, but right now mostly just our player team folks. And Michaela, how about you? Yeah, not a day goes by where I’m not working with like three to four other teams.

The way that data is set up at Warner Brothers is every team kind of owns a different piece of it. So, my team has all the subscriber data, but then another team might have the content data. So when somebody comes in with a request, it’s not usually just can we see how many subscribers were on this day.

They want to see how many subscribers were watching this certain show during this certain time period. And then if they left the platform afterwards. So then we’re working a lot with like all of the other data teams to pull all those pieces together.

And then also working with whoever had that request. So my team’s main stakeholders are the strategy and finance teams. So we kind of prioritize their work first, but then we also have a help channel which has tons of messages coming in all day long from, you know, marketing, product, basically any team that wants to know something comes to that help channel.

And we’re there to answer it and then we send out reports to all of those teams. So then they come back with more questions on our reports and those sometimes go up to all the way to like the CEO level. So, working with basically everyone here at Warner Brothers, when they want a question answered, we’re usually their first stop.

Yeah. And even on the early talent team, too, we we I we work a lot in tech in the different departments within streaming. But also we’re getting more into what I would call the corporate internship program, too.

So, then I did a lot of ad sales hiring for interns or business intelligence or, you know, production facilities. And so, getting to work and meet those hiring managers was really cool. I was like, if I could turn back time, I probably want to be a facilities intern because they got to go run around the studio a lot in California taking care of it.

I’m like, that just sounds fun. So, it’s just it just kind of brings you back down like this companyy’s so massive. There’s so many areas and there’s so many different, you know, pathways and avenues.

And so, it’s cool to see that you all get a glimpse that, you know, of meet people that we’ve never met before. Okay. Excellent.

Stella, we’re going to come back to you. What was your career journey like to get to where you are now? Yeah, my career journey has been pretty focused on Warner Brothers.

When I was a junior in college, I applied for the internship and interviewed and ended up getting it. And then I did the internship summer of 2021. Which was really great.

We were hybrid at that time. We were fully remote, I guess, because the company was hybrid at the time, but we were interns were still fully remote. So I did that internship and then I received a return offer for after graduation, which was really great.

And when I interned, the company was still just Discovery. And then when I came back, they had merged and become Warner Brothers Discovery. So, it was a bit of a shift like companywise, but it was really cool to be able to be here during that process.

And then I came in as a software development engineer level one. Which all new grads like I’m pretty sure you start at the level one. And then almost as soon as I started, my boss was very big on like trying to explain to me how I would get to the next level.

And so we would sit down in our weekly one-on- ones and we’d honestly go through the hiring sheet for a level two engineer and say like, "Okay, here’s what you’re already doing to meet these goals. Here’s where I think you need to improve. Here’s where we’re going to focus for the next like month or two." and so we worked on that together for about a year.

And then we got together and got my promotion packet together, which is basically just like evidence of all those things. So like it’s they reach out to people that you work with teams that you’ve worked for things like that and they get recommendations and all this information together to kind of prove that you’re ready for that next step. And then in April of this year I got promoted to a software engineer level too.

Yeah. So that’s my career path. Lovely.

And then I what was yours because yours is a little different. Yeah. So, I actually applied to Legacy Discovery as a new grad and I did that during the GraceHopper conference.

My interviews I think yeah I interviewed during the conference luckily got the offer. Yay. Joined under legacy discovery as a software engineer one and at the time I think we could stack we could stack rank like which type of development work we wanted to do.

I said backend and then a few months later after graduation I got an email from my current director for adtech and he asked me which team I want to join and I said well I worked I’ve done Java kind of so I think cotlin sounds cotlin team sounds pretty pretty good and it’s been great ever since I was I I have been talking with my manager about possible promotion my packet has been getting together so I’m hoping to hear good news soon fingers crossed. But yeah, but difference I joined as a new grad. I applied straight through I think I my original I originally applied via LinkedIn and I think it was you Stephanie that asked me if I was going to be at Grace Hopper and that’s how the interview happened.

Full circle. Amazing. I love it.

That’s pretty much it for me. And Michaela your journey. What was that like too?

Yeah, mine was similar to Stella’s as well. But before my internship at Warner Brothers, I had a business development internship, which was like sales doing market research stuff. Not really what I was super interested in, but it was the internship that I was able to get.

So, I started there, moved into a data science internship in that same company. And then once I had a little bit of experience on my resume, I went and applied for the Warner Brothers internship last summer. And then I was placed on the team that I’m currently on now.

And then I luckily got a full-time offer coming back. So, pretty similar to Stella. I just started three months ago, though, so I haven’t had too much career growth in that time.

They’re not looking at promotions quite yet, but soon. Fingers crossed. Yeah, eventually.

And Michaela and I go a little bit farther back as well. We actually met probably a year before you ended up applying for the internship through one of my very first 2021 new grads. He was like, "Hey, I have this student from my school.

I would love you to meet her." We had a call and I think we were just offseason and you were a little bit too young in your university career journey at that point. And so we we ended up meeting like 10 11 months before you actually ended up applying and now here we are today. So that is just exciting that networking works.

Everyone on this call. I know it is very frustrating to hear to you know everyone your your classmates and your teachers and your mentors telling you to network but do it. It’ll definitely pay off sometime and practicing it helps too.

And so even if it’s just connecting with some alumni on your LinkedIn to ask them if they can get you an in that’s also a great route as well. So u please network if you take anything away from this section session please network. Yes it works.

I I had started as a science major. So my sophomore year, I had no technology. So I just focused on networking.

And by my junior year, I had an internship at Warner Brothers. So I’m a success story. So network, network, network.

Yes. Thanks, Michaela. Okay.

Excellent. Let’s see. Next question.

This one, well, I mean, all these questions have been fun, but I like this one a lot. IO, what gets you excited about this role? The funny thing is, it’s so funny.

So, on one hand, it gets so frustrating when you get like an issue and you’re just like banging your head against the wall, but at the same time, it’s just like the thrill of like I don’t know, like whenever I get a new bug, I’m just like I can’t wait to dive into it and just figure out what’s going on. And like it’s it it gives me an opportunity not only just to fix it, but just also learn more about the the system underneath it. I can’t even tell you how many times when I just go on a deep dive because I’m just trying to like, okay, I think I understand what’s happening.

I have to go deeper and deeper and deeper. I don’t know. It’s just like a feel.

It’s like a It’s just like a weird happy feeling. It’s hard to explain. But basically, I just love I just love like solving problems.

So, yeah, exactly. The challenge. It’s just I don’t know.

I find it very fun. Frustrating but fun. Frustrating but fun.

Yes. If it’s not challenging you, it’s not changing you. That’s what got me through college.

And Michaela, what makes you excited about your role? First of all, I completely agree with that. Like, you run into challenges all the time, especially because this is a new role for me.

Basically, any time I try to do anything, I have to ask a million questions first. So, what gets me excited right now is when I know how to answer a question and I don’t have to reach out to 20 people first. But then also just seeing how other teams use the insights that like I’m able to provide them.

Like earlier this morning, somebody sent me this super cool tool that they use or that they created based on data that I was be able to provide them. So, that kind of stuff is is super cool for me to see. And also just working with this kind of data like it it applies to us.

I’m watching Max and when I log on onto the these dashboards and see like oh my gosh this many people were watching the same show that I watched last night like it’s kind of cool to see. So it’s fun to work at such a cool company and I will talk about that after a little bit. But Stella I want to hear from you first too.

What is exciting about your role? Yeah I definitely agree with both of the both of the points that have been said. I think working with new brands is something that’s been very exciting for us within the past year on my team.

Like we onboarded CNN so that we’re handling their user profile moderation which is really cool. It feels like that’s you know important. Same thing with the Bleacher report like it’s been really cool to see like a companywide effort and how we can play just like a little piece in that.

And I would also say like working with new people is exciting. Like I feel like the co-workers that I’ve met and that I’ve gotten to work with recently like within the past six months have just been so great. And it’s it’s really cool to see how different teams work even within the same company and how everyone has their different like organization of how they run their meetings, how they handle data, how they even just the process of development can be different between team to team.

So it’s been really cool to kind of step outside my team and see what’s working on other teams, what’s not working on my own team. Like we can kind of always evolve and always change even just by like accessing other information within the company. So I think that’s really cool.

Yeah. And yes to everything except maybe I when you said bug fixes that doesn’t get me excited. But also just like sometimes when I’m also banging my head if I have something difficult to do or you know a deadline to make sure I’m writing and rushing to finish I have to step back and be like we work at Warner Bros.

Discovery. This is content in media. No one’s dying.

No one’s doing heart surgery. Like it it’s just such a fun environment. And I think maybe all three of you can agree too.

Like the people we work with as well, I think have that very similar outlook of like we can chill out for a second and just like celebrate that we work for content. If you’re watching something worst case and you don’t like it, you just change the channel or you know switch to Food Network and HTT like we have options here. And I think that also kind of brings a part of like the community at WBD and the culture is just very like fun and we all like TV.

There’s always time for TV corner. But I think that’s to bring it back like that’s what’s exciting about this role. I get to talk about content and media and TV with you all, with the interns I meet, with the new grads I meet, and like it’s just fun.

What other kind of job you would do you get to do that with? So, I could go on and on. And I won’t cuz I want to make sure we get some more questions in, but maybe at the end if we have more, I can keep rambling.

But we will go next to Michaela. Was there anything that surprised you when you first started in this position in either your internship position or now that you’re back as a new grad? Yeah.

So, basically going off what you’re saying, I was so surprised how collaborative all of this is. Like when you think of a tech role, you kind of think sitting at your desk head down coding all day. And that I mean that’s the case sometimes, but definitely not every day.

I’ve been really surprised with how collaborative my own team is. Whenever somebody runs into a bug, you’re always going and asking in our channel like, "Can somebody please take a look at this?" or "Has anybody seen this error before?" and that was really surprising to me because I feel like school can kind of be different sometimes when you’re just working on a homework assignment and it’s very self-focused, but being at a company like this, everyone’s working towards that same goal. And then I was also surprised at the amount of attention to detail that is necessary.

Especially working in data. In school they give you a data set and it’s all nice and and clean most of the time, but here there’s a lot of digging into the little things to make sure that everything is perfect before you go and send it off to these stakeholders. So that was a little bit surprising, but it’s been something that I’ve really been enjoying as well.

Oh, good. I’m glad to hear it. I hope you keep enjoying it for days to come.

And Stella, same question here. Anything that surprised you when you first started at WBD? Yeah.

I would probably say the amount that like it’s expected that you’ll just like learn on the job. Like I when I was in school, I was a computer science major and I’m not going to lie, like I really didn’t like school. I didn’t like what I was doing in classes.

Like I often felt like I was like, "Oh my gosh, what if I’m not meant to be a computer scientist?" Like I liked coding and theory, but I just never connected that much with like the content of my classes. So when I had my first internship with Discovery and I kind of like got to the job, I was like, "Okay, what am I going to do?" like and then you just like learn on the job like you you can do like yes obviously like your education is important like I learned a lot of like problem solving skills in school but the actual coding stuff I picked up so much of it on the job and so much of it is dependent on the codebase that you’re working in and the team practices that your team has and things like that and I found out that I really loved it and I was like that was just such like a positive moment for me in my career when I was like oh my god I actually don’t hate computer science and so it’s just been fun to like learn and get really wellversed at like my team and our code and our clients. And that’s something that surprised me about the job.

I kind of thought that I would know more going in or that I would be expected to know more going in. Because like when you first join, even now like on my team when we hire someone new, we don’t have an expectation when they join, even if we’re even if they’re joining as like a level two, level three engineer, we don’t have the expectation that like day one they’re going to be understanding the entire codebase and be able to produce like high quality perfect code. Like so much of it is about learning and understanding like team to team.

So that’s something that really surprised me. Good. I’m glad you got like a fur affirmation that you’ve picked the right major too.

That’s always scary. And what you said too, like whenever I talk to interns coming into the internship, too. It’s like you don’t have to be 100%, you know, perfect word for word for the job description.

We want you to learn on the job as well. And so whenever I get interns asking me, "What can I do before to get ready for the job?" It’s like relax, read a book, like spend time outside. Like we will train you when we get on the job if there’s anything else we need.

So, I’m glad it’s still going that way, you know, 2 3 years later. IO, same question. Anything that surprised you?

Honestly, it’s kind of the same like like what Stella mentioned. I was kind when I was I can’t tell you how terrified I was before my first day because I was just like, "Oh my gosh, like I hope I hope I don’t mess up. Oh gosh, what if what if my manager expects me to know all of this and I’m just like on the floor like a very like but like it but I was like shockingly surprised like at how like friendly and like welcoming and how supportive like my team and my manager was cuz yeah like my when I was having that the my first like talks with my manager, he essentially told me like yeah like I didn’t expect you to really know anything like you’re like here’s a work you’re getting a work buddy you know you’ll work closely with him, but like please, please, please if you ever like have like issues, please reach out in the Slack channel, paste your issues, like ask for help because chances are someone else has that same problem as you, don’t feel like it’s a stupid question because there’s nothing stupid about it.

And I was just like, "Oh, okay. Thank you." So, it’s it’s it’s it was very like as I’ve had like past like work experiences where that was it was the case where it was like expectations didn’t match what my skill set were. So, it was really nice coming in like full-time knowing like, okay, so it’s it’s okay if I can learn on the job.

Like, it’ll take time for me to get up to speed at the codebase, but it’ll happen eventually. And to be honest, it took me around like two years to get even like very familiar with our codebase. It’s pretty large.

But, I would say that that if it wasn’t for that welcoming, supportive environment, it it would have been a lot harder. So I would say essentially the collaborative very warming welcoming atmosphere that I experienced and I hope going down the line that’s not surprising for anyone going forward who joins WBD like I wish that was more wellknown but you’re right Michaela something you said too it’s like tech is so like oh I’m just going to do my own thing with my hoodie up and just like go at it at my computer screen but in this environment too I think we’ve all shared that it’s very much like one team is something that u one of our our standard standards are at WBD and to be one team together and I feel like that I’ve heard some of that in all of these stories here too. And also with the there’s no silly questions or dumb questions.

I think I also get caught up in my head all the time and then continually get surprised that it’s okay to ask even if I know I asked it already. It’s okay to ask and it’s better to ask than you know stumbling over what you think is an answer for six days when you could have gotten the answer you know within 30 minutes something like that. So yes, excellent.

Thank you for answering that. Okay. Maybe a little bit of a I don’t know, difficult, harder, deeper question here.

Stella, we’re going to start with you. Do you see any major decisions or challenges in your role or your team that they might face in the next six months? Yeah, I know I like talked a bit about this earlier, but we’re in the middle of consolidating three different content management systems into one, and it’s definitely a challenge.

We’re also working on a bit of a tight timeline. They want us completed by the end of the year with one brand onboarded which is going to be the HBO brand. So that’s like a big ask like we’re kind of like totally rethinking our system and pulling pieces from each of the three systems that works to kind of figure out how we can build the best of the best.

But even after we build, we then have to think about how are we going to be migrating all of these brands because now we’re not just going to be serving like the six that my team has served. We’re also going to be serving like Food Network, all of the legacy Warner Media brands. So it’s just like a lot going on at once and we’re kind of working a lot in parallel that I think normally would be done step by step.

So even just like the architecture diagramming, we’re kind of doing that like as we go, which is like not ideal for coding, but it is necessary in our case right now. So I think we’re just kind of having to work through all of this at the same time that we’re going through some team changes. Like we had we lost one of our contractors and one of our like head engineers on my team is on paternity leave.

So like while this is all going on, it’s just yeah, it’s a lot going on at once, but it is it is a fun challenge and it definitely is a a great opportunity for career growth. So hopefully within the next six months we’re we’re onboarded to our new CMS. Yeah, new challenges and have to be very adaptable with all those changes.

I wish you luck. I same question. Any major decisions or challenges you feel like your team might face over the next six months?

Yeah, like at least in regards to one feature we’re working on in collaboration with the the player team. We’re trying to create a new SDK that we’ll both be collaborating on for one of the features that we need to rework. And from what I’ve been hearing, it’s going to be tough.

I haven’t been too involved in these conversations yet, but from what I’ve been talking with my staff engineer and my manager, it’s going to be a rough one, but I think we’ll we’ll work on it together. That’s what collaboration is about. But that’s pretty much the big one.

Otherwise, we don’t have any like huge issues. At least I haven’t been told yet anyway, but that’s pretty much the big one right now that, SDK that we’re working on with the player team. Awesome.

And what’s SDK stand for? Oh, sorry. Software.

I’m blanking. Software. We can also come back to this.

Okay, cool. Yeah, development kit maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you, Jesse in the chat. Collaboration.

Michaela, same question. Anything your team might, you know, foresee in the next six months? Yeah, so Max is actually going to be launching in some countries that don’t even have HBO Max yet.

So everywhere that we’ve launched so far has already had HBO Max as kind of that framework. So the transition has been pretty smooth. And you know when we launched in Europe and we launched in Latin America like they already had that playbook from what they did in the US.

So now we’re going to be launching in places that don’t have any sort of framework for Max to stand on. Which means we’re going to be creating all new data pipelines so that we’re able to report on this in real time. Which is a little bit stressful because you can’t always ensure that the data that’s coming in is correct and accurate.

And when the data is not correct and accurate, then you have people sounding the fire alarms. So my team is definitely going to be working pretty hard to make sure that everything that we’re putting out is of good quality. So that should be interesting and that should be coming in the next few months as well.

So, we’ll see how that all goes, but hopefully it will be pretty smooth. I bet it’ll all be okay. And all the challenges you all of your teams will face, too.

I always like to think if I’m looking at something head-on and I’ve never done it before and it’s a challenge once you do complete it you look back and you’re like oh I can do that again like that’s what a job is of course getting things done but it’s always like getting more things on your tool belt so you can look back and then and be like oh I’ve done I did that in three weeks now I can do it in two weeks now I can do it in a week you know just getting all of those experiences so all of you will get over this and I’ll I’ll follow up with you all in six months to see how things are going hopefully sooner than six months all right excellent Stella back to Do you have any advice for these university students who are maybe looking for their next opportunity or internship? Yeah. I guess this isn’t necessarily career advice, but I would definitely say like confidence is such a big part of this.

And like the career and application process can be so like disheartening. And even once you get like an internship or an interview, it’s really easy to be like really nervous and be like, "Oh, this must been a fluke." Like I know for me, every time I got an interview, I was like, "There’s no way. I, you know, I don’t deserve this." like whatever.

So I think knowing that like if you’re chosen for an interview, any sort of call back, like a internship itself, like you were chosen for a reason, like you are talented, like somebody wants to take a chance on you. And so I think having that confidence and just being reassured that like at every step of the way, like you are meant to be where you are and like it didn’t just happen on accident. I think that’s a big one.

I would also recommend this is a little bit more career oriented. I would recommend having a project on your resume, especially if you have not had an internship previously. That’s something that I was missing going into my junior year.

Like I didn’t have previous internships because of COVID, like things got cancelled. It just didn’t work out. And at the same time, I didn’t really have a huge project to talk about in in interviews.

So like when they would ask me about like my previous experience, I only really had school projects to talk about, which can be good, but I know at my university, we didn’t have like one solid big project. And that is something I really wish I would have had because it makes interview questions and talking about your experience a lot easier. So I would recommend picking up a side project if you don’t have one like that.

Awesome. Lovely. IO, what about you?

Any advice for the new new, you know, intern class here? Yeah. Okay.

So, I say this all the time. Rejection is just a redirection. I got so like Stella was mentioning, I whenever I would get like an interview or like a hire, I’d be so like, "Oh my gosh, I hope I don’t mess this up though.

Oh gosh. Oh gosh." And then even and with the rejections at first it was really like a little bit painful but eventually you kind of just see it as like you know it didn’t work out but I just know like there’s something eventually something’s going to come you know eventually. So it it’s it’s like a good friend had told me like rejection is just redirection.

So I definitely have taken that to heart since then. And then going back to what SA said about like the project also definitely recommend for me I to be honest I I hate I I hated like doing at least when I was in college I hated doing I hated doing stuff outside of class but I was just like well it’ll be useful to talk about in interviews and also if it’s something that you’ll actually be using like for example I made like a Discord bot for like music or something and that was something that I I still actively use and it’s also really great to talk about in interviews because you can say like, "Oh yeah, you know, so I did this and it works and I learned a bunch of stuff doing it’s it’s very it’s very useful. It doesn’t have to be like a whole big project.

It could just be something small, but it’s just something that you’ve worked on like from front like front to back. It’s it’s very useful to use in your piece. So I love it.

And Michaela, any advice on your end, too? Yeah, definitely agree with everything that’s been said. But then also just not being afraid to apply for positions.

Like even if you don’t check all the boxes, it’s okay. Like as everyone’s been saying, you will be taught on the job. You’re not expected to know everything.

You’re expected to know the stuff that you put on your resume, but nobody else is expecting you to know anything past that. So, as long as you’re showing them that you can learn and that you’re somebody that they want to work with. And then also in the interviews, showing your personality a little bit.

I know that like interviewing with like big companies and like Warner Brothers, I was I felt paralyzed when I went into that interview and then I just I took it away. I was like, you know what, these are just people like if I just chat with them and show them that like I’m fun to work with, then maybe they’ll want to work with me. And it worked out.

So, just believe in yourself because you’re more than what’s on your resume. Like, they have scheduled an interview because they want to get to know you as a person. They already know what you’ve accomplished in your academic or professional career.

So, when you get into the interview room, focus on showing yourself as well. And then just going out of the way, if you feel like you’re not checking all the boxes in a job application, maybe go out of your way a little bit to learn about what else there is. So, then when you’re in the interview, you can be like, "Oh, I’ve actually been teaching myself SQL a little bit so that when I get to the job, I know at least a base of what we’re going to be working on." and if they see that you’re willing to learn, that will go a long way as well.

Yeah, I love it, too. And and from a recruiter standpoint as well, when we’re reviewing resumes, when we’re talking to candidates, yes, it’s about personality and figuring out if we can have like a good conversation. I’m a very non-technical person.

Don’t ask me to code. Don’t ask me to make, you know, super strategic decisions. But when I’m talking to you all too, it’s it’s saying, okay, you worked on a project, you did an internship experience, and it was technical to an extent.

How are you then explaining it to me? Someone who does not understand that very well. So I also kind of take those conversations of how much of it went over my head and I no longer understand and and then also in a sense how much can you I don’t like to say dumb down but I can’t think of another better word but you know kind of bring down so I can understand it as well.

When you get to the hiring manager, yes, go off, be technical, tell them everything in detail, but when it was me, how can you explain to kind of just a general, you know, person on the street what you do for for work or for that internship or project? Also, when we’re looking at résumés, and we can also go into questions later on, too, if anyone’s curious what we look for for résumés and for our our interns and going into full-time roles. Definitely have it in PDF format.

That’ll be really, you know, the best tip I have, too, so it’s easy for us to read. We look at your GPA. We look at the university you’re going to be graduating from, grad date of course, and then projects and experiences.

So whether that’s school projects, personal projects, internship experiences, clubs, orgs, things, you know, all of that nature, we take all into an account. So, if you’re, you know, involved in anything that you feel like would pertain to a PM role, a data role, a software role, get it on your resume because we’d love to see it. And then I always challenge my, interns to look at the resume and say, "Okay, I understand it.

Can my mom understand it?" you know, maybe some my mom’s an accountant. Can she understand, you know, a technical resume and kind of get the bits and pieces? So, that’s kind of my also little bits of advice if you’re looking for your next internship opportunity, too.

Okay, my last question before I want to open it up to the Q&A of the group of folks on this call. This is a really heavy-hitting question. And Stella, we’re going to start with you again.

What is your favorite piece of WBD content? I love this question. I think right now because it’s fall and Halloween, I’m gonna go with like the Halloween baking championship.

I love like all the Food Network seasonal shows. They’re just so fun to throw on. So I think that’s my answer right now.

I think it changes though because in the winter time it’s obviously, you know, like holiday baking championship. In the spring and summer it’s different. So yeah, you have cookie competition, you have cake competition, you have the carving competition, the big pumpkin everything.

Yes, I’m also watching that. IO, what is your favorite piece of WBD content? I would say my favorite like of all, well, not of all time, I should say, but my favorite this year was Cake and Cat for like the Adventure Time show cuz I was a big Adventure Time fan when I was younger, and I just had to watch like the newer the newer series for it, and I absolutely love it.

It was a shocker. It was a shocker, but I loved it. But yeah, that’s my favorite right now.

At least for this year. At least this year. Great.

And Michaela, I guess we’ll go in favorite this year or for right now. What is your favorite content? Yeah, I recently did a tour of the Warner Brothers lot in LA and I saw them filming Abbott Elementary and it has like regained my obsession.

So, I have been re-watching all of Abbott Elementary. That is so cool. And you remind me, I need to catch up on Abbott Elementary.

I think a new season’s coming out. It’s so good. And they just won a couple Emmys.

I always forget which top which show award show just came out. But yeah, they just won some things were nominated. That is so cool.

I need to get down to the lot. I think I’m on Stella with this one though. Really anything Food Network themed for the the season.

That’s usually like what I love to fall asleep to or like what I like to have on in the background is my always my go-to. And folks in the chat, if you want to share what your favorite piece of content is too, we’d love to get you involved. It doesn’t have to be WBD content, but it would be cool if it was.

And that about wraps it up for my guided Q&A, so I would love to open it to the chat. I did see one question I guess we can start off with. It was a little bit regarding résumés and applications.

If you didn’t put your your GPA on your resume, it’s okay. Usually, all applications have a spot for you to input your GPA as well, but if you’re able to update your resume going forward, I think it’s good to have it on there. With a caveat, I would say if you have anything below like a 2.7, 2.6, maybe don’t, just a little low, but if you have anywhere around 2, you know, seven and above, I’d say keep it on.

3.0 And above, that’d be, you know, my my shout there. Okay. I’m going to go to the actual Q&A section now.

So, if you do have any extra questions, please put them in the Q&A chat and then I see you’ve already done it. Upvote the ones that you would like us to to answer and we will we will start answering them. So, I’ll start from the top.

What entry- level new grad positions does Warner Bros. Discovery offer? And that is a great question.

I will also put in the chat for everybody our link for our job positions. I’ll put it in the regular chat here. Oh, I see someone loves Barbie.

Yes, Faith. Barbie is great. So Warner Bros.

Discovery for our entry- level positions are our general software data PM UXUI design product. For our internships specifically, we hire rising juniors and rising seniors. Sometimes you can be sophomores.

It just kind of depends what what your experience level looks like. And then for our new grad roles in the tech space in our streaming divisions, we’re only exclusively hiring from our internship cohorts as of right now, just based on our our headcount availability. So, we don’t actually post any full-time new graduate roles externally on the on our career site.

That doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a position or two outside of text, maybe CNN or maybe one of our other departments. But for for our like streaming, Max, Discovery, everything like that, our new grad roles, we do only hire externally. And then, oh Maya, are there any projects we can make to impress the hiring manager at Warner Bros.

Discovery? And also my my my wonderful my panel here too, feel free if you feel like there’d be a good answer for this question, too. My answer here really is what what projects are you passionate about?

I love, you know, I I don’t hire to my team specifically. I do the screening, but I love hearing about projects that you actually liked doing and that maybe this is silly, but like that you completed. I love to hear like, okay, you did the project, let me walk me through it, how it was, and how is it doing now?

I Michaela, any any things that you think would be impressive too to talk about in projects? No. I think you kind of hit it on the mark Steph cuz I think as long as you can at least passionately not well passionately but as long as you can explain the project that you completed and you actually finished it and it works and I think it’s I think that’s fine because I mean not everyone can do like a whole big thing. So I just as long as it’s something you’ve completed I think it’s okay.

Yeah. And I Oh, go ahead Stella. I was just going to say I like this is kind of tangential to this question, but I think hackathons are a great place to find projects like this because a lot of times they’ll have specific themes or prompts or you could go without any idea what you want to do and meet up with people that do have an idea.

So I think if you’re looking to get into a big project, a hackathon is a great place to start. Stunning. Beautiful.

Okay, we’ll go down to the next question. Do you accept F1 opt for full-time software engineering positions? We only accept students who are authorized to work in the United States or which those positions are located, which in these case is the United States.

Our programs do run in Canada, Stockholm, London, and India though. But for the US specifically, we do not sponsor or accept folks who are on visas. What does an internship at Warner Bros.

Look like? What is the tech stack like? I can explain a little bit about what it looks like and then maybe all of y’all can jump into of what the program looks like and then definitely the tech stack.

But the internship specifically is 11 weeks long from June to August. It is a tailored program. So what that means is we do tech talks, speaker series, career coaching events, networking events, social events.

I feel like I’m missing something. We do a lot. We do mentoring.

Mentoring. Thank you. That was like I know there’s one more.

We do mentoring. You get an aligned mentor both the internship and the new grad program. We try and find a balance of we know you’re working 35 to 40 hours a week in this internship but also doing anywhere from two to sometimes it feels like five hours of events each week.

So it is it is really a plethora of a lot of things that you can do during the internship program and you can pick and choose which which you know events and sessions you want to go in as well while also completing your your projects and you’re doing your full-time work. Because we do give all of our interns real work. We don’t have just intern work.

You’re not just getting coffee or making presentations. You’re actually contributing to to the actual company and the goals. And so maybe maybe I know at IO I know we hired you new grad time, but Stella Michaela maybe you guys can speak to that as well.

But I would love to hear also what tech stack you guys work on too. Yeah. So like Stephanie said, you kind of get a mix of working on like the actual projects as well as like the social aspect and the career development aspect, which I really appreciated.

For my specific internship, I actually did intern on the same team that I work on now. So I was still working in the CMS. And the tech that we use is mostly JavaScript, React.

There’s a little bit of Python for the back end, but it is mostly front-end JavaScript react development. And the specific project that I worked on I like basically created we have individual apps for each content type. So I created the app to manage courses and chapters which was launched by Magnolia.

So that was like a really big deal especially at the time it felt to me like wow like I really am doing real work like started from the ground up and I appreciated it because not only did it feel like a real responsibility on the team but it was also such a good way to get experience on the front end and the back end. So that was what my internship project looked like. Yeah.

My internship project was also very hands-on, very useful. I when I joined, we had just launched Max from HBO Max in the US. So I rebuilt one of the main dashboards that all of our stakeholders use for Max, like re making all of the same data logic that we had.

And then when I joined back a couple months ago, they’re like, "Yeah, this is still the main dashboard we use." So that was really cool to see that they’re not just giving you kind of fluff projects. They’re like actually giving you real stuff that’s going to benefit the company. Yeah, that’s our goal.

And then tech stacks and technologies, what are those look like in each of your your roles and teams? Yeah, so for the data side, the analytics side at least. It’s a lot.

We use a platform called Looker, which is like a data visualization tool like Tableau or PowerBI. And if you have experience with any of those, it’s very easy to pick up Looker. I didn’t have any Looker knowledge or visualization tool knowledge before joining this and they have completely taught me and then also SQL and like a little bit of Python here and there but it’s mostly just reviewing what’s already been written.

We’re not writing a lot of Python ourselves. Yeah, we mostly use JavaScript React or at least I mostly use JavaScript react. We also use things like AWS where where we host our app through Amplify.

So I do a lot of things through like Amplify and AWS Cloudatch and and like Lambda stuff there. So I definitely say AWS is a beast. But if if that’s something you’re into or something that you are curious about I think that that is pretty heavily used across the industry for software development.

So I would recommend looking into that. That we also use things like Postman to complete queries and stuff but most most of what I do on a day-to-day is JavaScript react and I what about you oh I’m sorry so right now my day-to-day just cotlin essentially rx cotlin yeah it’s just it’s really just cotlin like I I don’t really you I don’t really have to use any other any other languages? Thankfully, not thankfully.

But yeah, maybe sometimes Java again, but like not really, but mostly Colin. Steph, you’re muted. Thank you.

What skills or knowledge have you found most useful for your career growth? I maybe we start with you and then we’ll go to Michaela and Stella. What I found useful for my career growth.

Like the knowledge I found useful for my career growth. Yeah. Any skills or knowledge?

I was kind of surprised how much reading I would have to do now. I got a lot of a lot of like I I’ve had to definitely step step up my reading skills a lot more. Critically reading like all of like the technical approach documents LS things like that.

So that that’s one. Secondly, what else is there? It’s honestly like my number one is kind of just reading.

It was I was kind of honestly I was really surprised how much reading I have to do now. But yeah, that that but yeah, that’s that’s like like my biggest one. For me it’s been like a lot of my soft skills.

Honestly, I sit in a spot where I’m between the very very technical data engineers who are stuck in the pipelines all day and then also the b business side. So being able to explain what the business needs to the tech people and what the tech side is like trying to convey to the business people. So a lot of my communication a lot of networking within the company as well like trying to meet as many people as possible to understand what kind of data they want or what kind of data they own.

And then just like the skill of being able to learn like you just really have to be able to pick everything up. Like the technology we use is changing all the time. Like the platforms that we have are like always changing logic.

So just being like open-minded and ready to always be learning. Yeah. And then I think for me I currently have two mentors which I am so grateful for.

One of them is actually the mentor that I was assigned through the new grad program. I still meet with her and they’ve taught me so much. But I think like especially understanding the line between when you should be trying something on your own and sit down and focus like try to troubleshoot something versus like when you should be asking for help because I think that like you should be able to like be self-sufficient.

You should be able to like not always have to have everybody else tell you how to do things, but at some point you’re staring at something, you’re working on something and you just need a second set of eyes or you really just don’t know how to do it. And I think understanding both is really important because you need to be able to do both to be on a team together. Awesome.

Thank you all. Okay, Michaela, we have one question directed at you and then I have one question for all of us as well following that. But Michaela, as a data analyst, what types of data do machine learning teams typically request from you?

This person James, he’s working on a personal project and would love to know what kinds of data are most useful to machine learning teams. Interesting. I feel like our machine learning teams really use all the data we have.

They’re always the data science teams that I mostly work with are creating our predictive models for when we launch this in this country, how many subscribers will we get? So just having accurate data to be able to fill those machine learning models. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, garbage in, garbage out.

So, my team has the large responsibility of making sure that we’re not giving them garbage. But I don’t think it’s necessarily any data in particular. There’s always a different business need or someone from the higherups wanting something else to be predicted.

So, it changes dayto day. Wonderful. Okay.

Amazing. This might be the question we end on depending on how fast we answer it. But what has all of your experience been like as women in your roles?

I will start with you. Yeah, like I’ve had a pretty positive experience at least on my current team so far. I’ve definitely never had felt as if I was like being like looked down upon or anything like that.

Like my but to be honest, my team is mostly is mostly like mostly made of men, but I’ve never gotten the the feeling that you know, they they like they’re very like great colleagues to work with, very supportive. I really like them. So I I’ve had like very good experience so far.

At least I have Warner Brothers. I’ I haven’t had any issues, so I’m pretty good so far. And Stella, how about you?

Yeah, I would say similarly. I work on a team pretty much all men which can get a little discouraging. But as a whole, I think WBD is definitely trying to combat that.

I know like when I was an intern and even a new grad, like there were so many young women in STEM, which is really cool to see. And I also think even apart from like team dynamic, like personal dynamic has been something that I’ve had to work on. Like I have like I mentioned like two women mentors and a big thing that I work on them with is just like being able to hold my own in like a room full of men especially men who are more experienced than me who have been at the company longer than me who talk louder than me.

Like I have to be able to get my ideas across and not like shut myself down and not like stand in my own way. So that was something that I definitely worked on especially in preparation for promotion. Like something I focused on was like presentation skills and being able to run a meeting.

So I think doing some internal work has definitely been big for my career as a woman in STEM. And Michaela, how about you? Yeah, my data team is split pretty 50/50 guys and women, so that has been nice to have some other women on my team that I’ve been able to look up to.

Like Stella said, a lot of my intern class was also young professional women, which was really cool to be able to talk about like our experience as a woman in tech. Working with the finance team sometimes and not higher ups it does feel like there’s a lot of boys in the room and no girls and that can be stressful sometimes but so far everyone has been pretty you know mindful that their opinion is no more important than the opinion of the person next to them and I think Warner Brothers also does a good job of even if you’re not at the top level like your voice will still be heard whether like no matter your background they do a good job of like They brought you in for a reason. They want to hear what you have to say.

Yeah. Good. I’m glad all you had great responses.

You know, if if there’s anything that was ever an issue, I’d hope you’d bring it and raise it up. But, to speak on the internship side, too, yes. Like, for all of the cohorts we’ve brought in for the tech side specifically over the last four years, I think every single cohort has been over 50 or 60% identifying as female, if not more.

It’s a big place for us to bring in more not only gender diversity, but ethnic diversity into our programs in WBD because I think it helps with our I mean, there’s so many a plethora of reasons why it’s great, but just helps with our different experiences bringing in working on the same project for different people to be able to watch it. So it’ll always be something top of mind of our entire team and partnering with folks like CodePath and Grace Hopper and other events and and different organizations down to you know school organizations all the way up to these huge massive national pro programs as well. We have two minutes left, so I want to answer just one quick question I saw about the internship experience and the internships themselves.

But while I do that and and gals, if you feel like it, maybe you can put your LinkedIns in the chat so folks can connect with us. But I will also put in our early talent program where you can find all of our current open roles for our global tech and product games internships there in the summer. If you guys apply, please remember to have CodePath on your resume and also select CodePath as one of your partner organizations or how you heard about us.

There’s a question in there. But every job, every role starts with the application. So, please apply.

Applications are going to be closing in about 20 days. And then after that, we review applications. We then send you to Hireview, which is an online virtual interview that you record yourself answering behavioral questions.

Then we do a recruiter phone screen and we finish with final round interviews after that. They’re virtual two interviews backtoback 45 minutes each and they’re in of course the discipline that you’re applying for. So data PM software and they’ll be have questions that that encompass that discipline.

So please connect with us if there’s any questions. I know I’m so sorry we didn’t get to everything today but thank you all so much for being here. I hope you enjoy the rest of this engineering summit and that you got something out of this session.

I just had an absolute blast and thank you Michaela Stell and IO for chatting with everybody here and I hope to see a lot of connects on LinkedIn and a lot of applications to come through but enjoy the rest of the the summit everybody. Awesome. Awesome Stephanie every everybody thank you all so much.

We really really really appreciate it. For all the students please show them your appreciation your gratitude in the chat. Again this was an amazing session.

Stephanie, thank you for just being a partner, a thought partner for the last three years. Yeah, guys, we really work closely together. We probably talk once or twice a week.

But for the students also, if you all can, there should be a survey in the chat. If you all can fill that out, that will be amazing. Please be sure to drop by their company booths as well.

If you all want to say hi, follow them, follow them on LinkedIn, X Y and Z. But again, thank you all so much for coming and we will close this out with a quick message from our host Bobby D. Thank you.

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