Why I Returned Home To Zeals
“Good morning, Kensuke,” his message read. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
I smiled, knowing that Luca, who was at once my mentor and coworker, was concerned about my health, but was also checking to see if I had logged on. He always started his day three hours ahead of everybody else, at hours when we’d still be sleeping.
“No Luca,” I said. “But I had a cup of coffee and that’ll keep me going until lunch.” “Good,” he replied. “Let’s get on a call and talk about this project, I need your input.”
Self Intro
Hi, I’m Kensuke from the Research & Development (R&D) team at ZEALS. I was born in Hong Kong, raised in Japan and China, and studied in the United States of America. I speak Japanese and English fluently, and conversational Chinese. My position on the R&D team is data analytics, ranging from business intelligence (BI) consolidation to hypothesis testing for ameliorating the chatbot experience.
What is this blog about?
Given that I’ve worked in both startups and large corporations, I wanted to share my experiences of working in both and how my journey eventually led me back to ZEALS.
Why did I join ZEALS as a university student?
I started working as a full-time employee for ZEALS in December 2021, so it’s only been two months since I’ve joined. However, my career at ZEALS dates back to November 2019. Please allow me to give you a bit of my background to introduce you, “an encounter with ZEALS”.
From my sophomore to junior year of college, I participated in an exchange program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). At UCSD, I majored in Business Economics because I was already majoring in Economics at my home university and I was interested in business, so I combined it. Among the myriad of boring classes like macroeconomics or econometrics, I found one class called “Business Analytics,” which felt like an oasis in the desert. This class was fascinating in the sense that it taught me how I can use statistics or data analysis knowledge to expand businesses.
Unlike the boring econometrics class that only used the combination of raw numbers, the business analytics professor used data that mimicked real business data, which gave us hands-on experience and practical knowledge. After taking this class, I knew what I wanted to be. A data analyst who could not only solve a business issue but also find a new business opportunity using the power of data.
As I deepened my knowledge of data analytics through other classes, including online courses such as Udemy, I became interested in artificial intelligence. It led me to find an internship in this field after returning to Japan. As soon as I came back, I began scrolling through job boards and found ZEALS, which was recruiting interns who were interested and had experience as machine learning engineers. More importantly, they were looking for a person who had the ‘will’ and drive to revolutionize Japan. I immediately sent a resume to the recruiter. That’s when my future began.
Experience as an intern at ZEALS
When I started working for ZEALS, I started as a communication designer in the business team. I didn’t have much experience as a data analyst, and the team wanted me to become a subject matter expert in the chat-commerce field. During my interview, the team encouraged me to become an SME for the chat-commerce industry to cement my future as a data analyst.
In February 2020, after three months of working as a communication designer, I joined the Machine Learning team, which was my initial goal when entering ZEALS. There, I added a new evaluator to our conversion prediction model and enhanced our conversion rate by understanding the user actions. As the team had said, the experiences and knowledge I acquired in the communication design team truly enhanced my analysis of user behavior, even if I started with zero experience.
10 months later, I joined the data analytics team as a founding member. The goal for this team was to solidify Business Intelligence for the company so that all ZEALS members could track their progress and proceed with their work smoothly. I truly enjoyed starting a project from the ground up with reassuring data analysts, which enabled me to improve my project management and team working skills. I stayed with this team for four months, until March 2021, when I left ZEALS.
Conversion: An action that’s counted when someone interacts with your ad (for example, clicks a text ad or views a video ad) and then takes an action that you’ve defined as valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or a call to your business from a mobile phone.
Why did I quit ZEALS to be a part of the new company?
I decided to end my contract with ZEALS in March 2021 because I was offered to work for another company as a finance data analyst. The company was in the financial industry, and its mission was to use information and technology to bring transparency in economic transactions, which seemed exciting to me. I was curious about bigger corporations since I had no experience working in them. I wanted to know how I would’ve felt being a tiny part of a large organization. I’d been on the fence for four months, but I decided to leave ZEALS and start my new journey.
Experience in the new company
My daily tasks in the new company were to ingest and analyze financial data and handle workflow processes to solve clients’ problems. My team had to work across industries and asset classes, leveraging a wide range of technical expertise to surface the most relevant information for the customers. The team consisted of 12 international employees and each had a completely different background that made me truly enjoy working in diversity.
What is also noteworthy is that I was able to learn a wide range of financial knowledge through a well-developed onboarding training program, which enabled me to quickly start my tasks required for the team. I was able to establish a good work-life balance because the work was always completed within the designated work hours.
However, within the short span of 7 months, I quit the company and decided to re-join ZEALS.
Why I decided to return to ZEALS
At the end of September, five months after I joined the financial company, I was feeling unsatisfied with the new environment. In the new company, it was difficult for the younger members to take ownership of bigger projects, as the organization and workflow were fixed and highly rooted in tradition.
Moreover, project progress was extremely slow. For instance, a proposal of simple workflow update would require several approval processes, since the decision may influence a large number of employees.
At ZEALS, even young members can get involved in bigger projects. The daily tasks are fast-paced and you can expect rapid growth in a short time. Below I detail our company’s work environment, which aligns deeply with my core values.
Vision matters a lot.
ZEALS places great importance on employees to share one company vision — use technology’s power to solve the world’s societal problems. The more passionate you are toward this vision, the more opportunities you would have in our company.
In ZEALS, the seniority system has been eliminated, allowing younger members to play an active role as long as they are motivated. The team members I met at Zeals greatly symbolize our culture.
Do you wanna work like it’s 2022?
Each team in the engineering department at ZEALS has a different way of working. They explore the most effective way to work for their team through repeated trial and error.
For example, the ZEALS R&D team is experimenting with Google’s 20% rule, which allows employees to spend 20% of their work time on a research topic of their choice. Also, due to the influence of COVID-19, full remote work has been adopted by the engineering team. In addition, the company has adopted a flextime system, which allows engineers to have a highly flexible work schedule — how we should work in 2022!
You can enjoy the uncertainty.
At ZEALS, the majority of our projects are in uncharted territory. There are no clear answers, and projects proceed according to decisions made by the players, not our bosses (which also enables the project to go smoothly and quickly). I consider one of the appealing aspects of working at ZEALS as the opportunity to be involved in a project with uncertainty, where you have the creative freedom to create something entirely from nothing.
For these reasons, I chose to re-join ZEALS.
So, how’s ZEALS now?
Two months have passed since I came back to ZEALS and I would like to share a change that ZEALS went under in 2021.
Company size
First of all, from the beginning of 2021 to now, 151 members have joined ZEALS. As the company grew in size, the company relocated its office to Meguro, Tokyo.
Diversity
In the engineering team, there are employees from roughly 30 different countries, and 77% of the members are from abroad. Foreign members contribute greatly to ZEALS because they’re given leadership positions, something unfortunately not seen at many large traditional Japanese companies. Most of our engineering team’s Product Owners (PO) and Project Managers (PM) are non-Japanese members.
In addition, a large number of professionals from various industries share ZEALS’ vision and support our work from different fields. They are the leaders in their respective industries, bringing a wealth of experience and knowledge to ZEALS.
Bigger Scope
ZEALS is currently trying for an IPO. In December 2021, ZEALS was set to become a public stock, but it was postponed due to Tokyo Stock Exchange’s market factors.
However, there is no doubt that ZEALS is close to achieving an IPO. Moreover, ZEALS is also trying to bring about a digital transformation in customer service through the “Omotenashi Revolution.” We believe conversational commerce will become a standard in our lives, found on every channel and within any occasion — from messaging apps and even physical stores.
With ZEALS’ unparalleled teamwork, drive to achieve the unimaginable and competitive creative edge, I do not doubt that we’ll achieve our vision.
