Jane Carlen
Data Science Senior Manager
Jane leads efforts to use data to better understand and serve the needs of readers, from studying engagement patterns to customizing content recommendations.
“Everyone here, regardless of rank, is leading some project.”
- What attracted you to work at your company? How did you know it would be a good fit?
- The company mission and opportunity to make a real impact were the top reasons I came to the Los Angeles Times. My experiences working in government, non-profit, and academic settings showed me how important trustworthy journalism is, and I have always wanted my work to have an immediate and positive impact. I also liked that I would be joining a small team where I could work in a range of technical areas—for example, natural language processing one month and survival analysis the next.
- What are you responsible for in your current role?
- I lead our data science team, which means guiding modeling and experimentation projects. This covers a very wide range of applications, from understanding how readers engage with our journalism across different platforms to improving workflows within our internal publishing tools, and quantifying how product and UX changes impact the user experience. I also collaborate often with our product, editorial, and data engineering teams to identify areas where data science can be most valuable.
- What are you working on right now that excites or inspires you?
- I am excited about the data driven culture we are building here, which is guided by expanding experimentation. Our entire data team has been building experimentation infrastructure from scratch. This has been a huge learning opportunity for me, and has already shown a large return on investment in terms of helping us guide product decisions. I am also very excited by our work to help readers discover more of the content that they love and want to come back for. We publish a lot every day, so getting readers the content that most interests them at the right time is a huge challenge. When we succeed it's very real—we help people better understand the world around them!
- What do you value most about your company’s or team’s culture? What sets it apart from other places you’ve worked?
- We are a very pragmatic team—there's no “busy work” or dead-end projects. I always feel that what I am doing is meaningful, which hasn’t been the case at other places I've worked.
- What’s one thing you would want a candidate to know about what it’s like to work at your company?
- Everyone here, regardless of rank, is leading some project. The people who do best are those who take initiative, build relationships with stakeholders, learn about new tools in their domain, and identify opportunities.
- How does working at this company allow you to have a work-life balance?
- My team is fully remote, and has been since before the pandemic, which allows for flexibility in scheduling. That's very important to me since I have a toddler. I also like that we have unlimited vacation time. If something comes up I don't have to worry about whether or not I have any time off left. Additionally, we’re encouraged to take breaks when we need them throughout the workday.
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