Employee Spotlight

Patrick Bogner

Data Science Team Lead

Tell us about yourself

Hey everyone. I am Patrick and I have been with Processand since April 2020. I joined as a Data Scientist, but I have since transitioned into spearheading the expansion of Processand to the US Market in Austin, Texas. In my spare time I like to noodle on my guitar and pretend I am some sort of John Mayer prodigy. I secretly dream of standing in front of a crowd of thousands and swooning them with my sultry and euphonious guitar playing. When I am not deluded by grandeur I like to hang out with friends in bars and restaurants, play the occasional video game, or stop by at the gym and make sure my keycard still works.

How does your typical day look like?

My typical day starts out with copious amounts of coffee. I have never been, nor will I ever be, a morning person, however, sometimes the early morning meeting gets me out of bed. I head into the office in the mornings and begin my work after being caffeinated. The rest of the day is spent in meetings interspersed with flurries of manic code-writing sessions that require a few more trips to the coffee machine. The working day is capped-off with a few rounds of Foosball and perhaps a cheeky beer.

Which Processand values are most important to you and why?

Openness is itself expressed best through the people that work here. I love that I can openly ask a question, regardless of how benign or trivial the question may be, and still get a ton of helpful and insightful responses from my colleagues. I never had to be afraid and think “What if everyone thinks that I am ridiculous for asking such a question”. Having that positive reinforcement really brings out the best in people and cultivates an environment in which people are able to achieve their best work.

People at Processand are empowered to make their own decisions and take responsibilities for their work. This comes with the benefit of being able to schedule your working hours according to your schedule, which leads to very flexible working hours. Coupled with the freedom to do work-from-home, makes Processand a very empowering place to work.

What challenges do you face as a Team Lead and how do you deal with them?

Organization is everything. Staying on top of what my team is up and where they are struggling is sometimes hard to determine. Being able to document our tasks in a structured and insightful way is vital for staying up to date on all internal, as well as external tasks that we have, so that we can deliver the highest quality of work to our clients.

What was your first code that you were truly proud of?

Oh, there are many. It comes in waves. There are pieces of code that I have written that I was incredibly happy with, just to go back one year later and be horrified and dejected that I even thought about something so ill-conceived. However, one moment comes to mind when I programmed a script that would copy objects from one application instance to another through an API. The problem was that copying these objects could take several minutes, so to optimize this I used multiprocessing to disperse the workload onto every available processing core on our server. To monitor the progress of every core, I implemented progress bars. The feeling I got when I ran this code for the first time and seeing all 16 progress bars independently increment along, is a high I have been chasing since. Pure Euphoria. I almost wanted to light a cigarette after it was done. I turned to my colleague and said “This is the best thing I have ever coded”. I went to sleep that day with a smile on my face.

How have your hobbies helped you at work?

Well quite simply, I have learned how to deal with not being that good at something when you first try it. Learning to play the guitar is a frustrating process, especially when you are just starting out. Your fingers hurt, nothing you are playing sounds like the songs you are trying to imitate, and every tutorial you read is using strange notation that you are completely unfamiliar with. It is hard for many to overcome these hurdles and stick with it, especially when it still sounds like you are banging a bag of cats against the wall. Learning to accept that you will not be the greatest immediately is important here. What is even more paramount is that you stick with it and keep practicing regardless of how much your fingers hurt, how awful your playing is, how much your college roommates are begging you to stop pretending to be John Mayer. Persistence is everything.

The same can be said for learning how to write code. I mean, just figuring out how to set up virtual environments in Linux put me to tears back in the day. Come to think of it, it still can.

Describe your team at Processand with a movie, music or celebrity quote.

Ocean’s Eleven. I play all the suave, cunning, and handsome characters and my team is everyone else. Nah, of course I am kidding. Perhaps The Italian Job where everyone in my team brings some unique skill to the table and I, Mark Wahlberg, take credit for everything that they do (I don’t really do that, but it sounds so much cooler this way).

Or maybe this is the movie National Treasure and we come together to steal the declaration of independence. I know this answer went off the rails a bit, but I would like to encourage everyone reading this to watch National Treasure if you haven’t yet. It is fantastic, fun for the whole family.

What makes working at Processand special for you?

My colleagues are some of the finest, dedicated, hard-working, hilarious, and beautiful people I have ever met. It brings me great joy to work alongside them, and I am lucky to be able to call all of them my friends. That and the Foosball. It gets quite intense.

Do you have any side projects?

Why yes! The Mining your Business Podcast is a show all about Process Mining, Data Science, and Advanced Analytics. Together with my partner in crime Jakub Dvořák, we set out to start talking about our Process Mining journey and all the things we have learned along the way. We have recorded and released over 40 episodes to date, and we have had the pleasure to interview some incredible people from the early juggernauts of Process Mining all the way to the new generation learning about this discipline at university. It has been a wild ride so far (As wild as a Business Process Podcast can really be) and I am proud of every episode we have done.

Why should someone join your team?

You will experience many interesting data science topics, as well as being at the cutting edge of Process Mining technology. We work with many clients and need to tackle many various types of issues, meaning you will be challenged as well as always experience something new. Like previously mentioned, we have a very welcoming and supportive work environment that will make any newcomer feel welcome. Also, I think I am pretty awesome, so that’s got to count for something, right? Right?!

Learn More About Process Mining.

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