Eric J Ma's Website

The problem with lean times

When the economy tightens, formal development opportunities are usually the first things to go. Co-ops get paused, training budgets shrink, and headcount freezes make it harder to bring in fresh talent. But the need to develop mentorship, coaching, and leadership skills doesn't disappear just because the budget did.

So the question becomes: how do you get creative? How do you find opportunities to grow as a mentor and leader without requiring the company to spend additional money?

You already have something to offer

The answer is closer than you think. Even when budgets are frozen, you still have three things worth sharing: your judgment, your skills, and your network.

Your judgment is what experience actually gives you: not just knowing things, but knowing which approach to take, which tradeoffs matter, and when to push versus when to hold back. Your skills are the technical foundation that lets you coach and mentor beyond your own team, helping others onboard to the tools and practices you work with. And your network is the set of connections you can activate to create opportunities for others, whether that means knowing the right organizer, connecting a speaker to an audience, or simply inviting people into the same room.

The people who want to learn from you are already in your neighborhood. If you are doing an excellent job, you will find individuals who are eager to understand how you achieve your results. That is where your opportunity lies.

Five strategies that have worked for me

I want to share some concrete strategies that have worked at the two companies I have been with, Novartis and Moderna. Some of these I have actively advocated for. My intent is not to boast but to provide pragmatic suggestions based on my own experiences.

Coach others one-on-one

Coaching others is a great way to build your reputation within the organization. When you teach someone how to accomplish a task effectively, you become valuable to them. More importantly, you demonstrate your value to a broader audience. Within an organization, you want a group of people who find your skills genuinely worthwhile.

Present at internal guilds and "birds of a feather" events

At Moderna, we have guilds. At Novartis, the data science guild and the Computational Research Community (CRC) both served as outlets for talks and annual gatherings. The key is to be in a position where you can give a talk about something valuable to others, and they would willingly spend an hour listening to you. If that happens, you have created another mentorship opportunity for yourself.

Organize communities of practice

I have seen this happen when someone builds a tool that others use and then creates a community around that tool. It can be as simple as a Microsoft Teams group chat. You don't need anything more sophisticated than that. Just gather people who use the tool and facilitate discussions. Being a leader in that group chat is a real way to hone your leadership skills across the organization. My colleague Albert Lam built a significant portion of the internally-facing LLM tooling, and put together communities of practice around that precisely in the form of MS Teams group chats.

Another example is the community of practice around documentation - primarily expressed as the internal docathons that we run. My teammate Jackie Valeri, as well as two other colleagues Simreen Kaur and Saakshi Shamanth Donthi help coordinate and organize the logistics while also being point contacts for other folks participating in the docathon.

Host informal coffee hours

My teammate, Michelle Faits, took the initiative to host coffee hours within the company. These serve as informal outlets for people to present their work, and they are great because they are relaxed and authentic. As her manager, I try to find speakers to contribute and support her efforts. Kudos to her for initiating this.

Host or support external meetups

We also host the PyData Boston/Cambridge monthly meetup at Moderna. Not every month is held at our location, but since I know the organizer Ben Batorsky, back in 2025, I offered my time to book a room; we simply provide the space. More recently, my teammate Jackie Valeri has taken the lead in this. By taking charge and inviting others to network, we create opportunities for people to grow in their careers without any budget requirement.

Advice for managers

If you are a manager, recognize that there will be projects and efforts that need leadership beyond individual contributions. Helping others improve their skills and providing them with opportunities to lead is part of the job, especially when formal avenues are limited.

Make sure you are aware of these kinds of initiatives among your reports, and ensure they don't conflict with core responsibilities. When someone can demonstrate that they manage these additional activities while maintaining their primary work, that forms a strong case for their expanded capabilities.

The core principles

Mentoring is about sharing your judgment, providing opportunities for others to share theirs, facilitating networking, and helping others grow. If we limit our understanding of growth and development to a narrow definition (only formal programs, only budgeted activities, only additional formal assignments), we constrain our imagination as managers.

Don't be confined to a singular vision of what it means to be a good leader or manager. Embrace the diverse talents and varying stages of abilities within your team. Encourage your team members to step outside their comfort zones and provide them with opportunities to grow.

You do not need an internal university to foster a learning culture. You environment is the university to learn and grow. We have more autonomy and agency than we might realize!