TPM Stories: Cindy Huang from Tesla

Interviewed by Iris Yuan, October 2021

Meet Cindy Huang! Cindy is pursuing her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to Stanford, she worked at Tesla as a Process Engineer and Staff Technical Program Manager launching and scaling new products. Cindy earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Some of her hobbies include running (formerly a competitive runner), rock climbing, hiking/backpacking, snowboarding (anything in the great outdoors), acroyoga, unicycling, and indie music (formerly a radio show host and live event planner and blogger under the pen name Indy Cindie).

Q: How has your career transformed over the years and how did you move to a TPM role?

A: I started off as a Process Engineer at Tesla. As an engineer, I was working on a very specific part of the product. After a year, I realized I wanted to manage a broader level of our company’s product. I also enjoyed the project management aspects of my role as an engineer, so the transition into a Technical Program Manager (TPM) role was a natural fit.

Q: How would you characterize your TPM/ leadership style?

A: I would consider myself a very collaborative leader. Even if I don’t have the answers to everything, I know to be resourceful and connect others with the subject matter experts. I communicate very openly, whether it’s good or bad news. And I’m a very data-driven person, so I love to speak with numbers and let them speak for themselves. If ever faced with a tough decision, I always try to quantify as much as I can to justify the final decision.

Q: What is/was your favorite part of being a TPM?

A: My favorite part of being a TPM is getting to interact with many different teams and people. I enjoy the process of discovering how different teams operate and the challenge of figuring out how to blend it all seamlessly together.

Q: What do you think about career development as a TPM? In what ways have you grown as a TPM?

A: Career development as a TPM is a great way to explore various teams and determine if you want to specialize in a particular field. You get a lot of exposure to different roles and can dive as deep as you want to in any of them. As a TPM, I’ve grown my managerial skills and had direct reports in a few years. Resources that helped me grow as a TPM were the PMP certification courses, running large-scale programs, and my teammates.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced starting as a TPM?

A: The biggest challenge I faced starting as a TPM was initially gaining trust from various stakeholders. I embraced the challenge and loved being able to talk to engineers in the same language, but also was honest in admitting when I didn’t have the answers. My team and manager fostered a great environment to grow as a TPM, so the biggest challenges in growing were more at the company level. We scaled extremely quickly and sometimes had to deal with some growing pains of processes that weren’t in place in the early days of Tesla’s scrappy culture.

Q: What is the most memorable program / project that you have driven as a TPM?

A: Launching the Model 3. This was a make or break product for our company, so the stakes were definitely high. Before that launch, a lot of our systems and processes weren’t in place to handle the scale at which we were projected to build. The Model 3 was our chance to really build that out and I’m proud of a lot of the new processes and infrastructure that I was able to implement on my team that continues to be used for product launches today.

Q: Where do you think a TPM can add the most value?

A: A TPM can add the most value as a bridge between leadership and execution teams. Being able to communicate progress and risks to management is critical, as is focusing and empowering the team to execute on priorities defined by leadership. Knowing how to switch communication styles between the two is key.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who is considering becoming a TPM, or your former self?

A: Invest time in the people and build rapport. This will make working with the rest of your team much easier in the long run. Try to delegate as much as possible and outline acceptance criteria clearly to uphold the quality of your team’s output. And make sure to have fun and try not to put too much pressure on yourself!

TPMs — What’s your story? If you are interested in contributing or sharing your story, please reach out to Iris Yuan, Bhargavi Shankarananda, or Betty Luk!