IT Architecture Strategy: Empathy and Value in Business Partnerships with Andrew Sopko, Head of IT at Twitter

Andrew Sopko on Art, Process, and Why IT at Twitter Is Really a Customer Experience Discipline

Andrew Sopko, Head of IT, Twitter | Interviewed by Luke Alie of Atolio

Andrew Sopko spent his early career as an artist, starting with ceramics and moving through printmaking and painting before making an accidental pivot into IT. He brings the same appreciation for process-driven creation to technology that he brought to the studio. In this conversation he talks about how Twitter's culture of transparency shapes what IT can accomplish, how he thinks about employee experience from the thirty-thousand-foot level down to the click, and why the most important thing is separating what a customer asks for from what they actually need.

From Ceramics to Code: How an Artist Ended Up in IT

Luke Alie (LA):  Tell me about your background in art and how you got into IT.

Andrew Sopko (AS):  I began in ceramics. What drew me to it was the process: the specific steps you have to go through, the relationship between the original intention and the outcome. The further you separate yourself from the work through process, the more you stretch the bounds of what the outcome might be. I loved incorporating the unknown through the extreme intentionality of a very specific procedure.

When I moved to printmaking, the same principle held. In painting too. A lot of my work was figurative but abstract, and it was always about that push and pull between original intent and result. I never planned to be in IT. I started working in it only because I was broke and trying to stay afloat while pursuing my MFA. One of those programs didn't accept me, and the next thing I knew I was fixing computers. And I noticed a similarity: there is a creative aspect to IT work, from desktop support to thinking about system architecture to building applications. That's what kept me going. I had found a place where process and discovery lived together the same way they did in the studio.

IT as Customer Experience at Twitter: The Thirty-Thousand-Foot View Down to the Click

LA:  How has the perception of IT's role in employee experience changed at Twitter over your time there?

AS:  Twitter's internal culture is genuinely a positive place to operate within. There's a strong focus on transparency, collaboration, and openness of dialog across the board, not just within IT. That foundation matters, because it means we can have honest conversations about value.

We think about employee experience in layers. At the thirty-thousand-foot level we say things like customer focus and creating value. At the next level we ask: what are the specific workflows we're trying to improve? What is the new hire experience? What is the help desk experience? What happens when someone enters a meeting or moves between connected tools? And then we get down to the nitty gritty: if I click this button, what happens next? Is it obvious? Is it clear? We do hands-on reviews at that level and ask hard questions even late in a project, because that individual interaction is where perception of IT is actually formed.

The honest truth is that most people notice when something goes wrong, not when it goes right. We take solace in positive experiences if we are not hearing too much about them. That comes back to the type of personality that can succeed in IT: someone who's comfortable not always getting the credit, who is focused on the quality of work and on outcomes, not on acclaim.

Partners, Not Providers: Redefining the IT Relationship with Internal Customers

LA:  How do you navigate what internal customers ask for versus what they actually need?

AS:  The first step is separating the proposed solution from the actual problem. Our internal customers today are more technically sophisticated than ever. They see the same vendor marketing we do. So they often come to us saying: I want you to implement this specific solution. Our job is to step back and say: that sounds great. Before we go further, can we talk about what problem we're trying to solve?

Building that trust requires empathy. You validate the problem, not just the proposed solution. You don't say that won't scale. You say: totally, I understand what you're going through. Let's figure this out together. And you involve the business partner as a real collaborator. We want each of our business partners to have their own technical capacity. Maybe not classic engineering teams, but people who can go the last 20 percent where IT leaves off, deeply connected to the specific business problem. We build to the 80 percent. They have the flexibility to go beyond that without waiting on us.

There is something very important about hiring for this mindset. An engineering manager on my team once said to a candidate who noticed everyone they'd spoken to was collaborative: we don't hire assholes here. That is the culture we've built, and it starts with empathy. If you're not approaching internal customers as humans trying to solve real problems, you will not build the kind of relationships that make IT genuinely valuable.

LA:  Andrew, thank you so much for coming on.

AS:  Happy to. Thank you.