‘I Love My Job’: Exciting AI Work, 4 Unique Benefits, a ‘Refreshingly Different’ Culture, and More!

Welcome to I Love My Job, the series where we hear from women who really love their jobs. In this edition, we sat down with Shirsha Ray Chaudhuri, the director of Engineering for the Thomson Reuters Labs  — an organization she says is full of collaboration, innovation, and a rich legacy.

When discussing the culture at Thomson Reuters, Shirsha emphasizes how special it is. “I haven't quite encountered something like this before,” she said. “What's so refreshingly different here is the absolute lack of a hierarchical ecosystem.… I believe people are a lot more approachable here at Thomson Reuters and more open to discussions and sharing.” And this openness spans the entire company, enabling the plethora of subject matter experts) at Thomson Reuters to learn from one another and innovate.

And, for Shirshai, this culture is critical. In her role in Thomson Reuters Labs, she shares that her team is working on many innovative AI features for their products, tools, and internal platforms. “We try to supercharge them and make them really efficient for all users,” Shirshai told us. This work involves “continuously adopting new technology and trying to understand how things work and how we might leverage it for our ecosystem.” Thanks to Thomson Reuters open culture as well as her passion and experience in the AI field, Shirsha is able to excel in this role!

In the video below, Shirsha shares more about why she loves working at Thomson Reuters. We also provide lightly edited highlights from the video discussion in the following article.

In case you have trouble watching this video, please click here to watch it on YouTube.

Tell us about a project you’re working on that you find exciting.

Close to the end of last year, we ended up deploying a solution for our legacy editorial platforms, which seemed to bring down our editorial workflows by almost 30%. This was AI-driven efficiency, and I couldn't believe the transformation that we were actually able to achieve with AI as part of that project. I was also able to realize the secret sauce that we have in regards to our rich content. 

And, more than the content, it’s the subject matter experts who help us create interesting metadata that helps us make our content really intelligent and useful for our customers. Thomson Reuters has, after all, been selling products with AI for 30+ years. It was really interesting that I could learn so much and work with stalwarts in the space while also carving my own niche and making a difference in this ecosystem with this AI-driven efficiency project.

Recently, we've also been leveraging a lot of open source and vendor-provided large language models. We've been trying to see how these might revolutionize white collar jobs. So, we've put together a sort of in-house playground for the different teams that we have, so they can, in a very safe and secure manner, play with large language models and with AI to see what is possible… It’s been the second attempt at magic that I’ve had at Thomson Reuters.

How does Thomson Reuters support you?

Thomson Reuters has many policies and benefits that cater to different backgrounds, different regions, and people at different stages of their life. I personally benefit from four really interesting ones:

1. How flexible my job is in regards to timing. It lets me weave together me-time, time to learn, time to bond with the community, and my regular personal time with my work schedule.

2. Our Flex My Way program, which includes caregiver leave, parental leave, and work-from-anywhere policy amongst others. I know of a lot of teammates and colleagues who've leveraged work-from-anywhere to overcome personal hurdles or gain extra time with family.

3. Our business resource groups, which are all about creating a community of people. I'm personally part of the Women at Thomson Reuters business resource group here in Bangalore.

   • Business resource group networking also includes the opportunity to learn and collaborate with folks from different teams who come together.. It's another community that I love being a part of.

4. We've also prioritized career growth and development. This year, we have introduced enterprise wide learning days which are happening quarterly. I've found these Learning Days very useful.

What advice do you have for other women looking to work at Thomson Reuters?

Thomson Reuters has a purpose, and I strongly believe that the work my team and I do actually helps make the world a better place to live. We're improving access to justice; we’re helping professionals get more efficient with their work.

So, come join us, and let's make this world a better place with our products, our ideas, and all the new technology around us.

Fairygodboss is proud to work with Thomson Reuters. Find a job there today!

Check out other posts in the ‘I Love My Job’ series:

• 'I Love My Job’: Excelling Due to a ‘Collaborative, Customer-Centric and Forward-Looking’ Culture

• ‘I Love My Job’: Electrifying Work, Positive Energy, Collaborative People, & ‘Endless’ Opportunities

• ‘I Love My Job’: I’m at a Company That Will Love & Support You No Matter What

• ‘I Love My Job’: I’m Helping to Make the World a Better Home as a Sustainability Manager

• ‘I Love My Job’: How One Manager Remembered to ‘Keep Pushing Toward Your Dreams