In an email returned to our new Geek of the Week, who happens to have a Ph.D. in linguistics and once helped construct spell-checkers at Microsoft, I informed her I’d be modifying her submission. After which, I misspelled her name.
But Taiwan Snyder, co-founder and CEO of Textio made it all the better by using 2016’s customary language in her response: a smiley face emoji.
Textio, a Seattle-primarily based startup that uses textual content analytics to assist businesses craft higher job listings or candidate emails, became based in 2014, and Snyder says, “That is the process that every one the other matters I’ve finished prepared me to have. Although I didn’t realize that until I’d gotten began.”
Snyder has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, wherein she centered on natural language processing and computational linguistics. After she graduated, she spent a yr writing before determining she wished a task.
“I started at Microsoft constructing such things as spell-checkers and language detection for builders, and software program hooked me,” Snyder said. “All advised I spent approximately 9 years at Microsoft and Amazon in a variety of product and engineering leadership roles, typically in natural language and search.”
Snyder has also carried out her fair proportion of writing. It targeted statistical herbal language processing at Textio, which remaining December raised $eight million from Emergence Capital, Bloomberg Beta others.
“I’ve written about the whole thing from gender bias in overall performance review language to why task listings in San Francisco contained more than twice as many makes use of the phrase ‘tremendous’ as the relaxation of the u. S. A .”
Past her fascination and expertise around language, Snyder says she’s additionally spent time alongside the way training women basketball, designing a preschool computer science curriculum, and hustling Scrabble for cash.
Examine more approximately this week’s Geek of the Week, Kieran Snyder:
What do you do, and why do you do it? “I’ve continually been a language nerd and a math nerd. My complete career has been approximately combining the two matters. Textio is very tons approximately combining those two matters.
At Textio, we are changing the way people write. What if you could realize how your document will carry out earlier than you ever posted it? What if you could repair it beforehand of time, before sending it out into the world?
Textio uses system intelligence and large records units to inform you of the way your dog will perform and a way to restorative it. Write your job posts so that the best and most various humans will apply. Craft emails, so you get the responses you want.
Our whole vision is ready to amplify your voice. Textio doesn’t write for you. It takes your own voice and allows you to emerge as the nice version of yourself. Whether within the schoolroom, inside the administrative center, or on the basketball courtroom, I’m a long-time teacher, and Textio’s imaginative and prescient right here could be very tons drawn from that.”
What’s the single maximum essential component humans ought to know approximately your field? “Eskimos don’t actually have two hundred phrases for snow.”
In which do you discover your inspiration? “My 6-yr-vintage daughter got here domestic some months in the past and announced that she’s going to begin a math organization while she grows up. Whatever I control to perform professionally, I experience like I’ve received once I listen to that.
I draw a ton of ideas from my daughters and how they see the arena: what they anticipate to do with their lives, how they relate to era, how their language develops.”
What’s the only piece of technology you couldn’t live without, and why? “Slack. It’s the command middle of our corporation. It hasn’t simply replaced email. It’s the manner we document insects, the way we monitor code check-ins, it’s even the vicinity we check the climate and read xkcd.”
What’s your workspace like, and why does it give you the results you want? “At home, I work on my pc at the couch maximum of the time, if I’m sincere! It is the opposite of our workspace at Textio, which is open and ruled by mild.”
