Gökmen:
Hello everyone, we are here with Sana today.
Sana:
Hello.
Gökmen:
Hi. How are you?
Sana:
I'm good, thank you. How are you?
Gökmen:
Good, good. We are here to hear you today. Who is Sana? What's she doing? How did her path cross with weather intelligence? We'll be talking about topics like her experience with Buluttan, right?
Gökmen:
So let’s start with Sana. Who is Sana?
Sana:
Right. So I'm from Pakistan. I did my bachelor's in computer science from there. And then immediately after graduating, I moved here to do my master's from METU. My master's was in data informatics. It's basically a combination of data science, data engineering, so a bit of everything related to data. And then while I was doing my master's, I started working here in a Turkish company. It was a corporate company. I was working as a data engineer. And then while I was going through LinkedIn, I found Buluttan. I randomly emailed Güven, who is the CTO, and surprisingly, he replied back.
Gökmen:
Surprisingly?
Sana:
Usually, you don’t get e-mail replies from C-level people who have the company, right?
Sana:
So I had initially applied for a data science position. The data engineering position wasn’t open. You replied saying that I went through your CV. I thought that you’re a better fit for the data engineering team, and we want to interview you. And that’s how the process started.
Gökmen:
How was your general experience regarding the process rather than just applying it?
Sana:
The process was amazing. It was, it was surprisingly fast because, you know, I’ve worked in the industry before and generally, it takes like weeks on weeks on weeks. But I think from the initial screening interview up till the final HR interview, it took maybe two weeks, maybe like maximum 3. So that was amazing, and everybody was super nice. I was called into the office as well to meet everybody. And I think aside from the job itself, meeting the people, getting to know everybody made me really sure that I wanted to work.
Gökmen:
Here it's perfect to hear about. It's a mutual process. The more you contribute to the process, the more it goes faster. Maybe your experience till now- I mean, you are not the first but early commerce from abroad, let’s say English speakers for sure. So the data engineering team has had the English-speaking team for a long time. So, how is your experience in terms of you used to work for a Turkish company, so you some extent, you were already engaged with the culture with the way of working here etc.? But working for a startup, especially for an English speaker rather than a Turkish as well can be something challenging or can be something frightening at first. How was your experience once you started?
Sana:
My experience was I was not, not expecting because at my previous company as well, it was like an English-speaking role. I was not required to know any Turkish. But still, I felt like during some meetings, etc., there was a gap. I was not understanding everything in the meetings, of course, because they were in Turkish. So I was kind of coming in with a similar mindset that, oh, OK, it’ll be English, but maybe to some extent, right? But I was pleasantly surprised, especially the data engineering team as well. Everything was in English, all the meetings, every, all the even documentation and everything. So that was really, really nice for me and I really appreciate it.
Gökmen:
This is great because Buluttan is a company with global ambitions. You can’t go global without things like this, right?
Sana:
Absolutely, and a lot of companies claim that, but they lack on the execution part and I think Buluttan has excelled at the execution part.
Gökmen:
How do you see weather intelligence on this? Is this the first time you've come across Buluttan? It's a growing sector. I will be a paradigm shift in this area. Integration of more weather intelligence through artificial intelligence involves some computational power increase, some new methodological models. So there has been something very major, and that will be, we believe. How do you say it?
Sana:
So before joining Buluttan, I didn’t have any experience with weather intelligence before. So obviously, I view Buluttan as a data company which is focused on weather, so weather data. And thankfully, ever since I’ve been here, the onboarding process has been great. I haven’t felt like my lack of weather knowledge has hindered me in my processes at all. The modeling team has been especially great in explaining that they understand that people who don’t have a meteorology degree don’t necessarily understand everything. So they’ve been super accommodating about everything. And I’ve been amazed at how interesting the data that we’re working with is.
Sana:
To give you an example, to realize that a weather point, a weather forecast that we see, like for example, tomorrow it’s going to be 16°. That itself sounds very simplistic, but when you look at it, that point must have like so many dimensions. Like it has a latitude, it has a longitude, it has an altitude at which it was measured, it has a time at which it was measured if it’s a forecast, but if it’s an observation, then it has also the time at which it was measured and the time for which it is measured. So I mean, it keeps expanding the more you look into it, and that’s what’s so great about it.
Gökmen:
Aside from all jobs aside, how do you spend your time in Türkiye as a resident here now, and how do you get along with the culture? How do you spend your personal time? Let’s hear some personal stuff.
Sana:
So I really like reading. When I was younger, I used to read a lot of science fiction, but now I've gotten into like South Asian literature, sort of reading about the country where I was born, that the region, sort of reading stories from there. That's something I really enjoy. Other than that, I like painting. So I've been painting ever since COVID started.
Gökmen:
Oh really? I didn’t know that.
Sana:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s when I sort of picked it up as a hobby, you know, after being inside the house for so long. I use acrylics. Like I’m not very good at it. It’s a hobby for sure. But yeah, I paint landscapes using acrylics.
Gökmen:
That’s what we call it, hobbies. You don’t have to be perfect.
Sana:
True, true. That’s the good thing about them other than that I’ve been trying to focus on fitness, so going regularly to the gym, hiking, cycling, that’s something that I do in Türkiye since I live in Eskişehir, we go cycling around the city and stuff, so it’s really fun. I've really enjoyed my time in Türkiye so far. The food is amazing, the culture is amazing, and something that I really love is that it’s very close to my own culture, the language especially, a lot of people don’t know this, but my language, Urdu is very similar to Turkish. Even the name of the language itself, Urdu comes from the Turkish word or though, which means army (Ordu) since Urdu was born in the British regiments of that area. A lot of the words in Turkish are actually the same in so even when I was new here, when people would be speaking, it wouldn’t be very hard to pick up what they’re saying. So over time, I’ve gotten to learn the language a little bit more, but less so than I would have expected from myself. After 3 1/2 years here, I haven’t gotten the time to actually like register in any Turkish courses. So I think that’s where I’m lacking. But I’m able to speak with like grocery store people, taxi drivers, I’m able to get by basically, as far as the food is concerned, I love it. And after spending so many years here, like my spice tolerance has sort of decreased to the Turkish level. So that’s a bit of a problem when I go back home.
Gökmen:
Perfect, perfect. Some of them I’m hearing for the first time. So what would you like to say for the ones who are looking from outside to Buluttan or let’s say, wondering what’s going on, if I can apply or I’m not a meteorologist, Can I work for a meteorology company? What would you say at the end? We will close it with our phrase, ''Havanız Yerinde Olsun!''
Sana:
So, people who are looking to apply, I would recommend the exact same thing that I did, e-mail people that you see in the company. We’re very active on our social media. So just people just search for teams where you think that your knowledge will be applicable and reach out to them and send out very concise and precise messages about why you think you would be a good fit. We will definitely reach back out to you.
Gökmen:
We invite everyone who challenges themselves — whether it's in climate or any other field.
Sana:
Any aspect exactly.
Gökmen:
May your weather be nice, come join Buluttan!
Sana:
Havanız yerinde olsun!
Gökmen:
What does Sana mean by the way?
Sana:
It’s an Arabic name. It means the praise. It praises in terms of God. So the praise of God, OK.
Gökmen:
Thanks.
