After years working for companies such as Salesforce, Amazon, and Oracle, Cathy Polinsky (Twitter, LinkedIn) joined Stitch Fix in 2016 and now serves as the CTO.
Since her early days working on her first computer – an Apple 2C – Cathy has loved technology. It was the technical challenges at Stitch Fix that attracted her to the work. How could she help disrupt the world of online shopping? How could she make a technological flywheel that could feed the company and the customer equally and on a continuous basis? In a recent episode of IT Visionaries, Cathy talks to host Ian Faison about those questions. They also touch on how she helps bring humans and machines together, what it means to create a culture that allows employees to do good work and avoid burnout, and her philosophy on what it means to be a CTO today.
Here are some of Cathy’s key takeaways.
On the unique challenges of dealing with internal and external-facing projects:
At Stitch Fix, the two teams – internal-facing and external-facing – are merged together. The reason is that there are benefits to having the engineers collaborating, especially when you consider the breadth of the work being done. There are applications for their four-thousand stylists, applications that run the fulfillment centers around the U.S., and more internal IT applications that affect the supply side of the business. Having a team of engineers working together on all these projects leads to a certain alignment. Each application is unique and meets a need either for the internal team or the Stitch Fix customers.
“We’re not just building the applications that our customers see – or just a mobile app – we’re also building applications for our merchandising team, as well,” Cathy says. “So,we build a lot of custom technology for that.”
The future of E-commerce:
E-commerce has changed so much in the last decade, and Stitch Fix is trying to stay ahead of the curve in a number of ways. Whether it’s through mobile applications or AR and machine learning – there are no stones left unturned in the effort to bring customers and technology together to create the perfect experience.
“Bringing humans and machines together is what we feel is our secret sauce,” Cathy says.
Machine learning has been one of the biggest reasons Stitch Fix has been able to succeed. When customers get their clothes and try things on, they provide rich, detailed feedback. That wealth of data is then used to create a better experience for that specific client the next time, but it can also be aggregated to use for other clients as well. However, gathering all that data creates an expectation between the consumer and the company – one built on trust.
“If a customer tells us something about themselves, we must listen to it,” Cathy stresses. “We have to listen to every piece of data they are giving to us and make sure we get it right for them, so as to not create a mismatch where we’re not giving them what they want.”
Breaking the mold of a traditional CTO:
“I’m frequently told that I’m unlike any other CTO people have worked with,” Cathy says. “People seem to be surprised that I’m interested in other parts of the business. I’m constantly asking questions.”
Cathy says that being involved in the business as a whole is critical to her success as a CTO. By being inquisitive and keeping an open mind, Cathy feels enabled to make sure she is making the right technology investments that drive value to the business.
“The question we’re always asking is, ‘What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?’” she says. “I think my differentiator is coming in and being able to translate business problems into technologies and business opportunities.”
As the CTO, Cathy also feels responsible to lead, invest in, and mentor her team. People matter the most, she says, and investing in employees by making sure they have the best tools is one of her highest priorities. If employees have the tools needed to serve clients, the company will be successful. Listening to employees is one of the best ways to find out what they need, and Cathy emphasizes that actively listening is one of the responsibilities of any CTO. Every week, Cathy has an all-hands meeting with the entire organization, which includes an “Ask Me Anything.”
“It’s all about creating the space and giving people trust that their questions will be listened to, and that every question is wanted and acceptable,” she says.
To hear more from Cathy, listen to her full interview here.
