Spotlight: William Hill, Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
William is a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where he worked with a distributed, international team on a R&D 100 award winning open source project for publishing and analyzing climate data. Before this position, he worked as a software engineer, developing applications on Grails, Java, and HTML.
What is your favorite part about working in tech?
My favorite part of working in tech is taking an idea and creating something that can be shared all over the world in a matter of minutes. I get to work at the intersection of science, engineering, and creative arts to create cool products.
What is your typical work day like?
My typical workday involves a lot of coding. If I’m not coding, I’m reading documentation or blog posts about coding. If I’m not reading about coding, I’m in a meeting discussing coding. Basically, I write a lot of code.
What is important for you in a company culture?
It is challenging being a black man in tech, so company culture is very important to me. So much so that I created a list called the Will Test to evaluate a company’s culture from the perspective of an engineer from underrepresented groups.
How did you get into engineering leadership?
I taught at the Hackbright Academy as a Senior Adjunct Instructor for 2.5 years and that experience helped improve my communication skills. I was then put into a leadership position at my day job after I demonstrated those communication skills to effectively communicate with other team members at various experience levels.
What do you think is a key ingredient to being a successful engineering leader?
I think being a great communicator is a huge part of being a successful leader. But I think empathy is just as important. Being able to relate to others and their viewpoints help create a welcoming environment for the entire team.
What has been your favorite project that you worked on at your company?
My favorite project thus far has been a web app that includes a novel data visualization that was created for climate science researchers
Photo by Charlotte Christien
How do you make sure you’re always in the know for the latest technologies?
I like to attend conferences as a way to learn about the newest technologies and trends. Twitter is another way that I stay informed about upcoming tech.
What technical projects are you and your team currently working on?
I am currently working on several different projects as lead developer. Two of them involve visualizing climate data and another is a collaboration tool for a distributed team.
What is one of your favorite resources for technical development?
I’m a big fan of using YouTube as a learning tool. I usually put the videos on 1.5x speed to move through them a little faster. I also like reading on several blogs hosted on Medium such as Towards Data Science and Nightingale
What is the best career/personal advice you’ve ever received?
“Do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it. Be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there”. My father told me that countless times growing up. It’s beautiful in its simplicity.
What is your leadership style?
I try to lead by empowering others. That means empowering them to ask questions, make mistakes, and be heard.
What’s your favorite book/food/podcast?
My favorite podcast is the Bodega Boys. It’s 90 minutes of pure hilarity every week. My favorite book that I’ve read recently is “Basketball And Other Things” by Shea Serrano. I’m a big basketball fan and Serrano combines basketball fandom with humor like no other. My favorite food is Shrimp and Grits. I used to order it every time I saw it on a restaurant’s menu until I finally started cooking my own version of it.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I see myself as being a staff engineer or leading my own company.
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