Digging into Product Data Analytics at Wolt with Vera

The product data analytics team at Wolt focuses on producing actionable insights from data and driving decisions in our teams. To make sure product data analysts have a real impact on the decision-making processes, each person is embedded into a product or business team and concentrates on one or two particular domains at a time.

Today we will talk to Vera to get to know more about product data analytics at Wolt.

Hi Vera, could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’ve been working as a product data analyst at Wolt for eight months. My work is fully-remote, and currently, I’m based in Tampere in Finland. While working full-time, I’m finalizing my Master's degree programme in Computational Big Data Analytics at the University of Tampere. Besides work, I like snowboarding, sailing, taking care of my plants, and I'm obsessed with cats.

How does it feel to work and study at the same time?

Going through studies and full-time work can be tough. Luckily, I’m already at the end of my Master’s degree — we don’t have any lectures anymore, so my only task is to finalize the thesis.

I still have meetings with my thesis supervisor, and occasionally I need to be off for an hour or two during my workdays. But that has never been an issue at Wolt, as everyone is empathetic and flexible. What’s more, in our team I’m not the only one working on the thesis — a couple of my peers write their theses too, and some teammates had a similar experience in the past.

That’s great! And what’s your role here at Wolt?

In short, my daily work is mostly about gathering and processing available data, checking if there are any data-related issues to be fixed, and turning the data into actionable insights for the teams. Besides, I’m always in the loop of teams’ plans and goals: checking assumptions about user behaviour using data, helping to design experiments, making sure we're collecting data required for decision making. I’m also in touch with the product leads, and together we figure out what product hypotheses we want to test and why, what data points are required to support our strategy and what metrics we need to track to better understand if we are going in the desired direction.

How did you hear about the product data analyst job at Wolt?

One day Janne, our VP of Analytics at Wolt, reached out to me via LinkedIn and caught my attention. We had a quick chat about the vacancy. I really liked the approach to the data analytics at Wolt — Janne told me much about the impact that data analysts have here at Wolt, their involvement in teams, as well as mentioned the freedom that people have over their work tasks. 💪

All in all, I realized that my point of view is indeed close to Wolt’s values and approaches. I share the opinion that a data analyst isn’t just a mediator between a database and the management, but more of an objective advisor who brings their own points of view to the table and affects decisions in the company.

What did the product data analyst hiring process look like?

First of all, we had a chat with Janne and he told me more about data analytics at Wolt. Then I received a take-home assignment. As a part of this assignment, I was asked to use provided data to create user segmentation for marketing purposes. Even though I was really busy, Janne encouraged me to take the challenge, and I decided to give it a try. I highly appreciated that the Wolt hiring team was always available for any questions I had.

After finishing the task, I was invited for a tech interview, where I e-met several data analysts and other team members, including the product lead. During the meeting, we discussed my solution, as well as covered a bunch of tech questions related to the position. I was a bit nervous at first, but the atmosphere was so welcoming and friendly, that after the call I thought I’d like to work at Wolt.

Then there were some more stages, but the recruitment wrapped up smoothly — I got an offer and decided to join Wolt. 💙

How does it feel to work remotely?

Our product data analytics team is spread around Europe. Some peers work remotely, while some prefer to work from our tech hubs in Helsinki and Berlin. In fact, we have a hybrid option in place. It allows all of us in product development to choose to work from home or remotely in Finland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia.

For me it was nice to have a fully remote option, as I wanted to stay in Tampere, and coming to the office in Helsinki wouldn’t be ideal. After years in this pandemic, it feels easier to focus while working from home, as well as it’s great to have more time for personal things, such as walks or exercising instead of wasting hours on commuting. However, sometimes the number on my pedometer makes me a bit sad — when you don’t have to visit the office, you really need to push yourself to go outside.🚶

My onboarding was remote too — it was my first online onboarding ever, and I was curious to see how my adaptation goes (spoiler — everything was smooth).

From day one I was encouraged to ask tons of questions and contact my teammates in case I face any difficulties. People were very responsive, which was helpful for my adaptation here. Additionally, both team leads and teammates really focus on building the team spirit — for example, we have informal chats during our daily meetings, try to spend time together online, arrange regular catchups, and attend internal company events, such as Product+ Week (a week when all the tech people arrive at our HQ in Helsinki to have workshops, training sessions, and team-building activities).

What have been some of your biggest learnings so far here?

For sure, I have many things to learn from my teammates and leads: aligning on tooling and working methods, developing product thinking and learning to see the big picture of the product, improving coding skills, and whatnot. As we are embedded in product or business teams, we all have a chance to learn from developers, data scientists, and product leads. For example, our developers tend to be product-obsessed, that’s why they bring many insights on how their work affects the product, customers, and other teams — it’s valuable to get different perspectives to improve my own work.

For me, learning is a long process that consists of small daily actions. Code reviews, constructive feedback, and getting to know new perspectives — all those small bricks help me to improve my skills and come up with ideas on how to make our service better. 👩‍🎓

What keeps you inspired?

During one of my onboarding events at Wolt, I heard: “Don’t treat yourself too seriously”. That quote drew my attention because I find this approach very balanced and healthy. That humble attitude inspired me. 🤗