Speaker 1: Lauren, what's going on?
Speaker 2: You know, that's always a challenging question, right to answer,
Speaker 2: So maybe offlip it around. What's going on with you?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we're just it's early October in the
Speaker 1: northwest US, So I'm getting ready for my first winter
Speaker 1: in fifteen years, because I've been living down in Arizona
Speaker 1: for fifteen years, and so now I'm like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: there's this winter stuff I gotta do, and I'm trying.
Speaker 2: To figure it out.
Speaker 1: Hopefully before you know, it becomes a limiting factor in
Speaker 1: my personal life choices.
Speaker 2: It's a whole set of lifestyle that you need to
Speaker 2: be able to adapt to it. Like, it's not just
Speaker 2: you have like one set of clothes that you can wear.
Speaker 1: All the time.
Speaker 2: You then need like fall clothes and spring clothes and
Speaker 2: winter clothes. Actually four sets of like your life that
Speaker 2: men adapt prepared. But actually, yesterday it was so warm
Speaker 2: here that I regretted not wearing shorts. Yes, you know,
Speaker 2: that's October seventh in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems a bit unusual.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean it was got really
Speaker 2: cold here already, but it was sort of this anomaly day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the different clothes for each season.
Speaker 1: Just the other day, my wife commented, She's like, I
Speaker 1: never ever thought I would see you own so much flannel.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, is that a good thing or
Speaker 1: a bad thing?
Speaker 2: I mean, is it like red plaid like with blue lines,
Speaker 2: lumberjack flannel.
Speaker 1: Or oh, you know it with the bib overalls underneath.
Speaker 1: I'm all in, man, I'm all in.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got to pick your lifestyle here, and
Speaker 2: you know, maybe that's I sort of want to have
Speaker 2: us try something a little bit different for today's podcast.
Speaker 2: So I was I took longer than I probably should
Speaker 2: have looking at your LinkedIn profile recently, and I did
Speaker 2: notice that you've actually had quite a long career.
Speaker 1: It has been this year. It has been thirty years
Speaker 1: that I've been in the tech industry.
Speaker 2: I feel like if we had some sound effects, those
Speaker 2: would be going off right.
Speaker 1: Now, right, because that's I don't know if many people
Speaker 1: who have been at it this long. I think it's
Speaker 1: a small group of people.
Speaker 2: And that's to say that everyone should retire before they
Speaker 2: get to thirty years of experience.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. I think I think there's a proven
Speaker 1: path to doing this, but a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, and so that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today. You know. I think
Speaker 1: first thing, because this conversation actually came up with someone
Speaker 1: I was talking with the other day. They're getting started
Speaker 1: in their tech career, and they said, I just want
Speaker 1: somebody to be honest with me, like what is it
Speaker 1: really like? And I said, not going to bullshit you.
Speaker 1: It's fucking hard. Like put aside, there's like great moments
Speaker 1: that keep you going. But it is hard work. But
Speaker 1: we have to like qualify hard work. Yes, it's hard work,
Speaker 1: but so is you know, laying asphalt on the highway
Speaker 1: in the desert in the middle of summer. Those are
Speaker 1: both hard work. They're just different types of hard work.
Speaker 1: So you kind of have to keep that in perspective.
Speaker 1: I think during the hard years over a thirty year career.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't think I would bring this up, actually,
Speaker 2: but I thought it was sort of a joke initially
Speaker 2: when I had started that people burn out at working
Speaker 2: knowledge work, which is fundamentally what we're doing. As you mentioned,
Speaker 2: it's somehow similar but still very different than the physical
Speaker 2: work you would put in to perform some sort of
Speaker 2: manual labor. It's yeah, for sure, is not a joke.
Speaker 2: And I used to think, oh, yeah, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: used to doing hard work at the high school, university level,
Speaker 2: whatever I invested my time in. It's not easy. I
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time studying, preparing for tests, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And I always like, I don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 2: So I decided not to go to graduate school and
Speaker 2: try to actually start working. And yeah, I'm with you
Speaker 2: that I think just calling it hard work doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: really clarify what you have to really put in to
Speaker 2: make even a short career.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And I think that highlights So I've
Speaker 1: picked out like four common paths for tech careers, and
Speaker 1: so highlight those real quick. The first one is you
Speaker 1: start your tech career, you do it for few years,
Speaker 1: and then you kind of acknowledge it that point the
Speaker 1: level of effort that it's required to keep going at this,
Speaker 1: and so you move to something like a pre sales
Speaker 1: engineering or a solutions engineer type role where it's still technical,
Speaker 1: but you just kind of you know, you're familiar with
Speaker 1: the concepts and you have the fundamentals, but you're not
Speaker 1: required to you know, learn the you know, all the
Speaker 1: different subcommands of operating a Kubernetes cluster and use those
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. Right, So it's technical, but it's
Speaker 1: less technical.
Speaker 2: Inspect I mean, it's sort of like the one where
Speaker 2: you take the skills that you've learned over the beginning
Speaker 2: part of your career from a theoretical standpoint or you know,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out your way, and you're actually putting
Speaker 2: them into practice by focusing on that part of the
Speaker 2: delivery and less on learning new things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Like you those fundamentals, like you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you know basic things, well maybe basics not
Speaker 1: the right word, but do you know things like you know,
Speaker 1: don't expose your database server with a public IP address.
Speaker 1: And so you use those lessons to help other people
Speaker 1: engineer good solutions, but you're not actually responsible for getting
Speaker 1: your hands on the keyboard and implementing them.
Speaker 2: You have some tricks in your tool bag and mantras
Speaker 2: that you can repeat at maybe the right moment, and
Speaker 2: you're now someone that can actually share that advice after
Speaker 2: you know, I think like maybe even a.
Speaker 1: Five year mark for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's one. Yeah, the next one that I
Speaker 1: commonly see is people moving from a technical role into
Speaker 1: a management role. And I think this one we just
Speaker 1: see it in other industries, you know, like if you
Speaker 1: start out as a bank teller, then you become like
Speaker 1: the manager of the local bank branch, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you work your way up through a career in management,
Speaker 1: and that's like the defined career path for every other industry,
Speaker 1: and so people just naturally apply to ours. The one
Speaker 1: of the things that I learned from that, though, is
Speaker 1: that being a manager is a completely different career path.
Speaker 1: It has very little to do with your technical skills,
Speaker 1: because to be a good manager, you need people's skills.
Speaker 1: You need to understand what motivates your people and when
Speaker 1: they're struggling, and how to get them to turn it around,
Speaker 1: and how to communicate with them. You know, not some
Speaker 1: people respond to written communication, some respond to verbal communication,
Speaker 1: and you have to dissect and figure that out for
Speaker 1: each one of your employees, remember it for that employee,
Speaker 1: and then frame your conversations with them using that.
Speaker 2: I feel like that bears repeating realistically, because it's sort
Speaker 2: of the area where I feel like in my career
Speaker 2: people kept on saying, oh, you need to have soft
Speaker 2: skills to make this happen and not really explain it
Speaker 2: in a way that resonated with an engineer or engineers
Speaker 2: I feel like aren't really explained to what that difference
Speaker 2: in role is. And I think you know you've done
Speaker 2: a good job hashing over that. It is quite the
Speaker 2: challenge and it for sure is nowhere close to the same.
Speaker 2: I think for me, the language that I have jumped
Speaker 2: on in the past that has been helpful is you
Speaker 2: have more resources at your control to help deliver something
Speaker 2: of much greater scale, Like you're not going to build
Speaker 2: a skyscraper by yourself. You know you can hire as
Speaker 2: many people as you want to help you do that.
Speaker 2: What exactly do you do to make that happen? And
Speaker 2: in knowledge work, I feel like it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: wrap your head around what extra people will help with
Speaker 2: It was a I'm sure it's happened to It's happened
Speaker 2: to me, I'm sure it's happened to you. In your career,
Speaker 2: you can ever get asked like, hey, will like, we're
Speaker 2: not going at this as fast, says we want to like,
Speaker 2: could you use some extra people?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? Like And for me, most of the time,
Speaker 1: the answer is no, because then I've got to stop
Speaker 1: progress on it to get them into a productive state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and also like splitting the work and
Speaker 2: just breaking out like you know I have in my
Speaker 2: head it's organized in some way, and so moving into
Speaker 2: the management position is all about doing that, you know,
Speaker 2: like no hands on really, like how do I organize
Speaker 2: people to automatically achieve what I want? Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 2: got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that helped me make that
Speaker 1: concrete in my head because I think the word soft
Speaker 1: skills is the wrong word. I think that's misleading in it.
Speaker 1: But for about five years I was a CrossFit coach
Speaker 1: out outside of outside of work, and to me, that
Speaker 1: taught me more about communication than anything I've ever done
Speaker 1: in my life, because, yeah, you're in this scenario where
Speaker 1: you have people of varying skills trying to complete strenuous
Speaker 1: work for their own personal benefits. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: if they do it wrong, they could injure themselves and
Speaker 1: that's the worst case scenario. But then you add in
Speaker 1: peer pressure on top of that because they may be
Speaker 1: standing next to someone doing the exact same movement with
Speaker 1: twice as much weight. So now they're feeling less confident
Speaker 1: because of that. And then let's up the pressure one
Speaker 1: more time and let's put a running clock on there.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to judge you based on the
Speaker 1: time it takes you to complete this work. And so
Speaker 1: as a coach, you're looking out across this group of
Speaker 1: people and you see someone making a mistake. So you've
Speaker 1: got to make it across the gym to this person.
Speaker 1: You've got to break their mental thought process because they're
Speaker 1: just focused on that clock. You've got to interrupt that cycle,
Speaker 1: get their attention, and then figure out how to communicate
Speaker 1: to them enough so that they don't injure themselves. So
Speaker 1: you're like, does this person respond to verbal cues? Do
Speaker 1: they respond to show and tell? Do they respond to
Speaker 1: feel where I can like touch the middle of their
Speaker 1: back and say don't don't bend this. If they do
Speaker 1: respond to feel and it's a person of the opposite sex,
Speaker 1: are they going to assume that I'm trying to hit
Speaker 1: on them and take it the wrong way? And You've
Speaker 1: got to process all of this stuff in a matter
Speaker 1: of seconds to prevent them from getting injured. And to me,
Speaker 1: that taught me a lot about soft skills and how
Speaker 1: to communicate, and I think those directly translate into a
Speaker 1: management career path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I totally get that. I keep hearing that
Speaker 2: someone has an example that's somehow sport related. I know,
Speaker 2: a cross fit. I feel like is in a weird
Speaker 2: area here, right, it's not definitely, I mean it is
Speaker 2: sort of for you. I mean you're thinking of as
Speaker 2: a coach, like this is my group, this is my team.
Speaker 2: I need to get them to the finish line and
Speaker 2: helping them however that happens. And I was just starting
Speaker 2: to like develop these nightmare scenario where there's like a
Speaker 2: clock ticking down as a software developer and someone's wanting
Speaker 2: me to come and pat me on the back and say, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, do this a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: But the team thing keeps coming up for me a
Speaker 2: lot like I feel like I didn't. I wasn't exposed
Speaker 2: to sports teams enough as a in a leadership capacity
Speaker 2: or understanding how to work with leaders in that. You know,
Speaker 2: it's still very especially where I came from my you know,
Speaker 2: my culture American initially, and so it definitely task oriented,
Speaker 2: you know, head down, focus on whatever the thing is
Speaker 2: that you need to do it relevant to the sport,
Speaker 2: even if there are other players that are on your
Speaker 2: team that are happening at the same moment. But over
Speaker 2: my career, having focused on that a lot, I definitely
Speaker 2: got a better understanding of what it means to make
Speaker 2: a team and to lead that team in knowledge based work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, sure I can relate to that. I
Speaker 1: grew up in Texas in the seventies and eighties, so
Speaker 1: you either played football, basketball, or baseball, preferably all three,
Speaker 1: and I was one of those and still am one
Speaker 1: of those uncoordinated people where if you want pure hilarity,
Speaker 1: just throw me a ball and expect me to catch it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, right now, I'm over it now. I just
Speaker 1: like own it now, Like, yeah, that's never gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we got the management position future, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: change your role long term, right right, And.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to acknowledgement, acknowledge that you are
Speaker 1: specifically changing your expertise.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because there actually has been this mancho like
Speaker 2: don't put engineers in like, don't force engineers into management position,
Speaker 2: And that's like one side of the spectrum and there's
Speaker 2: side of the spectrum is oh, yes, management positions come
Speaker 2: after uh, you know, being an individual contributor. So right,
Speaker 2: I hope there's like some sort of magic middle ground
Speaker 2: here where like there is some portion of the population
Speaker 2: who this is this is probably the path that you
Speaker 2: belong on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think the other common path that
Speaker 1: I've seen, and I think the motivating factor behind all
Speaker 1: of these is like you mentioned earlier, you know, the
Speaker 1: continuous education thing. You know, tech is continuously changing, You're
Speaker 1: always behind. And so the third one that I've seen
Speaker 1: people pursue is just finding a nice comfy hole to
Speaker 1: hide in. So you get your job and then you
Speaker 1: figure out how this legacy component works and you just
Speaker 1: become the expert in that, and now you're kind of
Speaker 1: like indispensable because no one else wants to touch this thing,
Speaker 1: but it's critical to the business operations, and so you
Speaker 1: can just kind of carve out your defined work and
Speaker 1: you're just going to ride that out to retirement. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying and I'm not like saying that is
Speaker 1: a bad thing at all. This is a valid option.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, do you think there's like some secret
Speaker 2: that actually making that career happen like something that you
Speaker 2: should go and do to if that, if that feels
Speaker 2: more comfortable to you, because I mean, I know there's
Speaker 2: people out there that are like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be a manager and I don't want to go into
Speaker 2: sales or even working with other teams and having to
Speaker 2: communicate across them as a.
Speaker 1: Challenge for me. Yeah, for sure, learn coboll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, hands on, hard technical work is not
Speaker 2: the norm, even like in my career, I have very
Speaker 2: rarely seen those people. I mean, I think it's less
Speaker 2: and less the case over time, with new strategies having
Speaker 2: been discovered and then replicated across companies and then turned
Speaker 2: into tools that can be utilized the complicated subsystem person
Speaker 2: who's that foremost expert in that thing. Number of roles
Speaker 2: I feel like has been decreasing over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, for sure. And I think that highlights
Speaker 1: the common denominator to all three of those strategies that
Speaker 1: causes people frustration in their career because all three of
Speaker 1: them force you out of that continuous education mode and
Speaker 1: more than likely at some point that job is going
Speaker 1: to end. So now you're re entering the workforce, but
Speaker 1: you've let your technical skills lapse, and so now you're
Speaker 1: not interviewing at the level that you previously had because
Speaker 1: you don't have up to date tech skills.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean those three are either I changed my role,
Speaker 2: I did something with my skills. I'm not focusing on
Speaker 2: learning over and over again. So there must be other
Speaker 2: career paths out there that don't focus on switching out
Speaker 2: but maybe focus on learning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is kind of the path that I've taken
Speaker 1: over the last thirty years, just kind of having the mantra.
Speaker 1: And it hasn't been this mind from the beginning. It's
Speaker 1: evolved over time, but it's just waking up and when
Speaker 1: I get out of bed in the morning acknowledging I'm
Speaker 1: the dumbest fucker in tech right now because since I
Speaker 1: quit work yesterday afternoon and got up this morning, technology
Speaker 1: has progressed, but here I was sleeping in bed. So
Speaker 1: now my job for today is to deliver value from
Speaker 1: my employer, do the thing that they're paying me to do,
Speaker 1: and level up my skills so that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be valuable to them tomorrow. And the focus is not
Speaker 1: so much on the employer of oh I've got to
Speaker 1: be a good employee so that they put a gold
Speaker 1: star on my forehead or whatever. The goal to all
Speaker 1: of this is, I've got to provide for my family.
Speaker 1: You know. My job is to make sure that everyone
Speaker 1: in my family has a roof over the head, food
Speaker 1: on the table, and money to meet their needs. And
Speaker 1: this is the path that I've chosen to do that.
Speaker 1: And so continuous education is just one of two primary
Speaker 1: tools I use to do that. The first tool is
Speaker 1: active employment employment, and then the second tool is a
Speaker 1: continuous education so that I can have active employment tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So there was a previous episode where I grilled you
Speaker 2: on mastermind groups and people who can sort of challenge
Speaker 2: you on as I quote your bullshit. I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, that's a source of learning at least feedback
Speaker 2: from the outside. But like, how have you managed to
Speaker 2: actually hold in new information and kept growing over the
Speaker 2: last thirty years. Was it like a conscious effort of like,
Speaker 2: I need to learn something this week, this is the
Speaker 2: thing I'm learning. Was it you were involved in some
Speaker 2: companies that maybe made it easier like any Was there
Speaker 2: a concerted effort? Was it just who you are as
Speaker 2: a person?
Speaker 1: Probably a combination of all those I think one of
Speaker 1: the driving factors has has been most of my career
Speaker 1: has been building early stage tech startups, you know, and
Speaker 1: so all the early stage tech startups, you're not limited
Speaker 1: by previous technical decisions, and so software engineers tend to
Speaker 1: be aware of like, oh, hey, there's this new thing
Speaker 1: called Heroku or this new thing called Versell, and so
Speaker 1: then they use that and I'm like, ah, damn, all right,
Speaker 1: I got to learn that. And then you start to
Speaker 1: if the company is successful, you start to hit the
Speaker 1: limits of that. So now it's like, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to get off of this. What are they doing?
Speaker 1: Why is that the limiting factor? And what can I
Speaker 1: build that will work better than that which leads you
Speaker 1: into you know, cloud computing or Kubernetes or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like just taking a step
Speaker 1: back to read the lands gate and figure out where
Speaker 1: we're going and what was going to be the limiting
Speaker 1: factor in that path. You know.
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting perspective because I feel like I
Speaker 2: started my career on the opposite side, and when I
Speaker 2: was working at one of these companies, the thought I
Speaker 2: kept having to myself is I feel like I'm learning
Speaker 2: dead frameworks, like things that are not going to afford
Speaker 2: my career in any way. And it wasn't like, let
Speaker 2: me force this company to introduce something that they definitely
Speaker 2: don't need, like Kubernetes, in order to put it on
Speaker 2: my resume. It was let me find other companies that
Speaker 2: are doing something in a field that I care about
Speaker 2: that I could push forward. And so like switching your
Speaker 2: career every couple of years, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 2: has been this recent mantra of how people get promoted.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the reason why, I feel
Speaker 2: like the continuous learning is a good justification of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that, And I would have
Speaker 1: to say I probably have followed that almost subconsciously. You know,
Speaker 1: in thirty years, I've never been with the same employer
Speaker 1: for more than three years.
Speaker 2: You know, this is going to be like recorded, and
Speaker 2: then people may hear that and how many years are
Speaker 2: you coming up on your current.
Speaker 1: Joone will I've got eleven months to go there.
Speaker 2: I think there's a wisdom there that. And I ask
Speaker 2: people like, how long like you plan on working at
Speaker 2: this company until you retire? And the answer is almost
Speaker 2: always no, And I'm like, okay, great, and right now
Speaker 2: you're like the way you're acting or the path that
Speaker 2: you're taking or what you're focusing on is aligned with
Speaker 2: I'm going to work there forever. So like how many
Speaker 2: years out you know, you start playing this game of
Speaker 2: like where is your career going? When is that point
Speaker 2: in which you know which you think you will no
Speaker 2: longer work at that company? And I'm not asking you to,
Speaker 2: you know, answer this for that point, but I think
Speaker 2: the interesting thing is you mentioned you focus in the
Speaker 2: startup world where there is a rapid turnover or introduction
Speaker 2: of new tools, and things change when you get to
Speaker 2: the scale phase and be like, Okay, our product now works,
Speaker 2: we need to make some significant changes there or the
Speaker 2: tools we're using run out. Have you ever heard of
Speaker 2: the cont the pioneer, settler and town planner. No, So
Speaker 2: it's sort of this mentality that someone takes on and
Speaker 2: not that you are only one of these. There is
Speaker 2: this idea of you're doing some green field work, you
Speaker 2: are a pioneer in the wild West in a previously
Speaker 2: mapped out region of technology or whatever you're doing, and
Speaker 2: then there's this stage in the middle, which is the settler.
Speaker 2: You can imagine there are some things that are built,
Speaker 2: you're coming in and making some changes there to improve it,
Speaker 2: and then there's a town planner, which is like over
Speaker 2: optimization of everything we have to in order to scale
Speaker 2: to millions of users or millions of requests per second, etc.
Speaker 2: I can imagine that the pioneer is sort of stuck
Speaker 2: on the learn new tools, but not necessarily learn new
Speaker 2: things for your own benefit. And obviously the optimizer is
Speaker 2: working in very fixed framework. So it does sound like
Speaker 2: maybe you fall into the middle of this where you're
Speaker 2: coming in, you have some experiences and you're really helping
Speaker 2: out the organizations, but you're pulling out all that information
Speaker 2: and knowledge that you can and being as effective as
Speaker 2: you as you are would be in that role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I think that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason why the three year mark has worked out so
Speaker 1: well for me, because in the life cycle of a startup,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a that's kind of like a three
Speaker 1: year max thing, you know. And that's funny because I
Speaker 1: actually gave a talk several years ago at DevOps Europe
Speaker 1: that talked about this life cycle that sounds very similar
Speaker 1: to what you're describing, but I used it as like building.
Speaker 1: I actually use the analogy of the Right Brothers in
Speaker 1: aviation industry on it. But like a startup, you know,
Speaker 1: you have your first phase of the startup where you
Speaker 1: have this idea, and so your job there is to
Speaker 1: launch that idea as fast as possible, because there's always
Speaker 1: a difference between the product that you built and the
Speaker 1: product that your customers wanted, and so your job in
Speaker 1: phase one is to launch something so you can figure
Speaker 1: out what that gap is and then close that gap.
Speaker 1: And then now that you're building the product that your
Speaker 1: customers want, phase two is actually building a factory that
Speaker 1: their job is to create that product. So you're building
Speaker 1: assembly lines, you know, and putting in teams and figuring
Speaker 1: out how to make this thing scalable and redundant and profitable.
Speaker 1: And then once you figure that out, you move into
Speaker 1: phase three, where you have you just operate the factory,
Speaker 1: you know, you just operate the money making machine until
Speaker 1: the end of the company. And each of those phases
Speaker 1: requires a completely different type of person, and someone who's
Speaker 1: really good at phase one is probably going to struggle
Speaker 1: in phases two and three and vice versa and all
Speaker 1: those things. So I think at that point, you kind
Speaker 1: of put yourself in a position where you're there to
Speaker 1: achieve a certain thing, and then once that's achieved, you
Speaker 1: have to go for two reasons, one because you're not
Speaker 1: good at what comes next, and two, if you are
Speaker 1: good at that, you probably enjoy doing it and wouldn't
Speaker 1: enjoy doing the subsequent phase.
Speaker 2: What I heard was I have some great wisdom and
Speaker 2: a talk that I prepared, and now I want to
Speaker 2: go and watch that. You've got like a website where
Speaker 2: you've got your talks listed or something.
Speaker 1: No, I probably should, but I can find I can
Speaker 1: find a link to that talk because I thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean it sounds pretty spot on because I
Speaker 2: feel like a self identification here, Like I see a pattern, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I care about learning, I care about learning
Speaker 2: new things, and also who am I? You know, what
Speaker 2: kind of person am I? What kind of career do
Speaker 2: I want to have? And so now I got to
Speaker 2: ask you, did you ever think that you'd have such
Speaker 2: a long career? Was it something that you had planned
Speaker 2: for in some way?
Speaker 1: No, definitely was not planned. Definitely wasn't planned. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really really important to highlight for people who
Speaker 1: are just starting their careers. You don't have to have
Speaker 1: the next thirty years mapped. You probably shouldn't have the
Speaker 1: next thirty years map because you're going to learn things
Speaker 1: in the first five years of your career that will
Speaker 1: influence how you want those remaining years to go. So
Speaker 1: you don't have to know everything. You just have to
Speaker 1: keep moving forward.
Speaker 2: When you started, what was the picture like for you?
Speaker 2: Did you have some sort of foggy vision of what
Speaker 2: sort of work you would be doing even in five
Speaker 2: years or longer term.
Speaker 1: No, not a clue. Like my first my first job
Speaker 1: in technology computing technology. Prior to that, I installed in
Speaker 1: program telephone systems, but I had a hobbyist interest in computers,
Speaker 1: so I set up the novel network for the company
Speaker 1: I worked for. And for those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: Novelle was a computer server networking platform in the early
Speaker 1: nineties that was ultimately beat out by Microsoft. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I started installing that, and then there was sort of
Speaker 1: a natural progression there. You know, we were installing the
Speaker 1: telephone cables and the desktop computing became popular, so we
Speaker 1: started installing networking cables, and then the customers were like, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you put in the networking cables, can you install the
Speaker 1: routers and switches and like, oh sure, well actually our
Speaker 1: sales guy said sure, and we're like damn, okay, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll go figure that out. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: then they would bring in the computer guys and the
Speaker 1: conservers wouldn't work, and they would instantly blame the network.
Speaker 1: And so I had to learn enough about how servers
Speaker 1: worked so that I could prove that it wasn't the
Speaker 1: network issue at all. Funny how some stories never changed, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: What you're doing today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, official description pretty much. Yeah, just the just the
Speaker 1: actual commands I run is different. Yeah. And then we
Speaker 1: had a company that they had a Microsoft SEQL database
Speaker 1: server and they couldn't figure out how to work at
Speaker 1: The people that were supposed to be working on it
Speaker 1: for more unresponsive, And so I just happened to be
Speaker 1: there working on the computer network one day and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you take a look at it? Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can take a look at it. And this was back
Speaker 1: whenever they shipped physical manuals with the software. So I
Speaker 1: took the Microsoft Sequel Server six point five book home
Speaker 1: with me that weekend and read it to cover to
Speaker 1: cover and then finallyigured out their problem and then they
Speaker 1: offered me a full time job as a database administrator
Speaker 1: and things have just gone on from there. So no,
Speaker 1: this was not planned by any mean, this was like
Speaker 1: the Forest Gump path to career growth.
Speaker 2: I mean I saw some fear there. Like if I
Speaker 2: had ever been in a similar certain circumstance like having
Speaker 2: opened the DBA book, I feel like I would have
Speaker 2: closed it very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I was probably preconditioned to that because
Speaker 1: my original job out of high school was as a
Speaker 1: nuclear engineer in the Navy, and so it's very much
Speaker 1: lots of books to read and very high stakes for penalties,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's a nuclear power plan, you know,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of kind of finicky and so but
Speaker 1: after doing that, like my risk tolerance was pretty high,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, hey, I'm not going to kill
Speaker 1: every living creature into twenty five mile radius. Cool, we're golden, yeah, crazy, right,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: It just just release the software, I mean whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, just release it. No one's gonna die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, one actually may find out, and you're not
Speaker 2: planning on saying there very long anyway. So I mean
Speaker 2: there is, for sure this problem in tech where people
Speaker 2: are often more rewarded but for switching companies, Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: And so you work on a project, it's challenging, you
Speaker 2: don't it doesn't go well, it gets completed, you learn something,
Speaker 2: then you leave and you're celebrated for that work. You
Speaker 2: can talk about it, what you did, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: and new place loves it. And then ten years later,
Speaker 2: whatever you built like causes the first company to crash
Speaker 2: and burn, right, and like, there's no one to be
Speaker 2: held accountable for that. And I mean, for sure the
Speaker 2: engineer should not be the one held accountable for that.
Speaker 2: If one person could be responsible for taking down the company,
Speaker 2: there's a problem with the process. I hope it turned
Speaker 2: into some sort of insurance policy that engineers have to
Speaker 2: take out in order for them to start working.
Speaker 1: I know the attorneys have the SoundBite, that's all they needed.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like Shavalla up, I am not
Speaker 2: an expert, right, I have no idea what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Please do not take my words at eddy official capacity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to pin one of the drug commercial
Speaker 1: disclaimers at the end of this episode, where the guy's
Speaker 1: reading it like auctioneer speed. About all the legal disclaimers
Speaker 1: about this episode.
Speaker 2: I mean, I will say, if someone wants to pull
Speaker 2: me into a court case as a subject matter expert,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to repeat those things. But you can find
Speaker 2: my fees on my web page for for sure.
Speaker 1: No, but that is a that is a good point,
Speaker 1: an important point. An important point to acknowledge is that
Speaker 1: switching jobs is your best path forward to increasing your
Speaker 1: south with the caveat if you don't want to burn
Speaker 1: any bridges along the way, which is pretty easy to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, just be just be like a stand up person,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's fairly low bar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say that you may be it may
Speaker 2: be challenging to get invested in whatever architecture or platform
Speaker 2: you're building enough to understand or deal with challenging problems.
Speaker 2: If you keep switching too soon, like, you may be
Speaker 2: eliminating some of the most challenging pieces of technology that
Speaker 2: you would be able to invest in or learn about
Speaker 2: because it requires understanding so many different moving pieces at
Speaker 2: a company. So I think it's something to keep be
Speaker 2: aware of, and honestly, I tend to think of it
Speaker 2: as it's a negotiation tool that you can use if
Speaker 2: you're struggling in your current job to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I think I should change something while I'm still working there,
Speaker 2: rather than believing I have to leave to have everything
Speaker 2: be different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I think when we had Kelsey
Speaker 1: high Tower on the show a couple months ago, he
Speaker 1: did a really great job of highlighting that you know
Speaker 1: that your first few years of your career should be
Speaker 1: broad and touch many things, but then at some point
Speaker 1: you find something that you're really going to focus in on,
Speaker 1: and so at that point you go deep into that vertical.
Speaker 2: Here's a maybe a spicy take. If you never get
Speaker 2: fired in the first five years of your.
Speaker 1: Career, if you never get fired for the right reasons,
Speaker 1: I think that's important to call it laid off.
Speaker 2: And fired for the wrong reasons. And there's not a
Speaker 2: lot that you can do about that, unfortunately. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, if you get fired for bearing
Speaker 1: your ass to the HR person, that's that's probably not
Speaker 1: what we're referencing here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm talking about like accountability in your job
Speaker 2: and your official job responsibility and role. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 2: because you know, we don't know everything, and I feel
Speaker 2: like pushing that and disagreeing with other people as natural.
Speaker 2: And I think that some people, some companies see disagreement
Speaker 2: as not a positive and that everyone should be happy
Speaker 2: and work together all the time. And I feel like
Speaker 2: disagreement actually does breed some interesting conclusions, interesting technology, good
Speaker 2: decisions to come out of that. So just being agreeable
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily the path forward for learning new things in
Speaker 2: your career. Don't be scared to be the odd black
Speaker 2: sheep out.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, absolutely, because either either you're right or
Speaker 1: you learn something, So there's really no downside to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You started as with the cable
Speaker 2: lines and got to DBA and now you've to I
Speaker 2: don't actually know what your official role is now. I
Speaker 2: saw it to a like T DevOps lead. I imagine
Speaker 2: you're responsible for more things than you're comfortable with, but
Speaker 2: maybe you could just give me a good summary of what.
Speaker 1: That looks like. Yeah. From my perspective, I'm responsible for
Speaker 1: building the infrastructure that allows the software engineers at our
Speaker 1: company to ship their code reliably and safely, with fault
Speaker 1: tolerance and scalability, even when they don't know what those
Speaker 1: things mean. And that's kind of how I view it, which,
Speaker 1: you know, it's still vague in itself, but technically it means,
Speaker 1: you know, building out infrastructure in AWS or GCP or
Speaker 1: something like that and using CICD so that they can
Speaker 1: focus on the things that they do well and produce
Speaker 1: a product that I know will run well.
Speaker 2: Are you like on some sort of autonomous team that
Speaker 2: focuses on this area. Is there like a team lead
Speaker 2: of that team?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the team lead of the team.
Speaker 2: So there's like people that sudo report to you that
Speaker 2: you're responsible for their future careers there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a bit of a transition for me,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's less hands on the keyboard, more
Speaker 1: focused on, you know, some of those softer skills that
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2: And like as having had the thirty year career, like
Speaker 2: helpful for giving wisdom to your fellow team members, I hope.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, because you know, sometimes in this
Speaker 2: position and I worry, like, are my experience is even relevant?
Speaker 2: One of the ones I really struggle with is I've
Speaker 2: experienced this problem and it was a failure in some
Speaker 2: regard and I learned from it. Yeah, And like should
Speaker 2: I help someone else through that same experience, or give
Speaker 2: them advice so that they can avoid it and never
Speaker 2: feel the repercussions of their action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think a key component to that
Speaker 1: is being aware of the back in my day syndrome,
Speaker 1: you know, because as you get older, you it's got
Speaker 1: to be genetic or something, because you'll find yourself standing
Speaker 1: on the front porch yelling at the kids about back
Speaker 1: in my day, you know, and it's just not relevant.
Speaker 1: So I think one of the key aspects to that
Speaker 1: is to make sure that your own skills are relevant
Speaker 1: with today's current technology, and then guide your use of
Speaker 1: that based on things that you've learned in the past.
Speaker 1: So you have to have like a foot in both camps.
Speaker 1: You've got to have a foot in the past and
Speaker 1: a foot in the future to have a somewhat relevant perspective.
Speaker 2: I like that you you jumped into the puddle here
Speaker 2: we'll say quicksand mud pig about the future, because I'm
Speaker 2: going to ask you there's been a lot of flux
Speaker 2: I feel like in the technology industry today, especially in
Speaker 2: the last year. I don't want to say that the
Speaker 2: layoffs have anything to do with it, or that AI
Speaker 2: specifically related to it in general, or whether or not
Speaker 2: that will change, Like, are you ignoring this It's like
Speaker 2: you've seen this happen so many times in your career,
Speaker 2: it's just another time. Or is it like a fundamental
Speaker 2: change here that people need to be aware of that
Speaker 2: could affect how their careers are evolving And maybe the
Speaker 2: second fall up here is like or you're just hoping
Speaker 2: that you'll retire before you have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: No, I'm currently treating it as just one of many
Speaker 1: cycles I've seen in the past, and for me, the
Speaker 1: key to navigating these cycles is to not pan your
Speaker 1: identity to a specific thing, like you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: not identified as the expert in Kubernetes because no business
Speaker 1: cares about Kubernetes. What the care about is solve their problems.
Speaker 1: And to give you a specific example from my startup history,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll start working with a startup and they've
Speaker 1: got ten thousand monthly active users on their app. I'm
Speaker 1: not there to talk to them about how you can
Speaker 1: use kurinetes or you know, Docker container based images or
Speaker 1: monitoring your slas and your response times. I'm there to
Speaker 1: talk to them about how do I get you from
Speaker 1: ten thousand monthly active users to one hundred thousand monthly
Speaker 1: active users, because then they can do the math and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: at ten dollars a user, if they can increase that,
Speaker 1: that generates this much additional revenue. And so now you're
Speaker 1: solving a specific problem that they do care about, and
Speaker 1: they don't really care about the technology you used to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: There's something very special about that advice. So you're not
Speaker 2: just the DevOps lead pulling on. You also advise startups,
Speaker 2: and as you mentioned, they care about getting to market
Speaker 2: and increasing their revenue, validating their idea, but then also
Speaker 2: scaling up. And so you're basically saying it like, I
Speaker 2: know technology, And the right answer in any of those
Speaker 2: conversations is not like use use this technology, like use
Speaker 2: this thing. It's understanding where they're at and saying this
Speaker 2: is the thing that you need to change to make
Speaker 2: that happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Like if you hire a carpenter, the
Speaker 1: carpenter doesn't show up saying hey you got to hire me,
Speaker 1: I have a sixteen ounce clawhammer. You're like, I don't
Speaker 1: give a shit. I'm trying to build a house. And
Speaker 1: so they're going to talk to you about building a house.
Speaker 1: They may in fact have a sixteen ounce claw hammer,
Speaker 1: but that's just a tool that they use, and I
Speaker 1: try to apply the same thing. You know, I may
Speaker 1: have Kubernety skills or DBA skills, but that's just a
Speaker 1: tool that I use to solve the problem that your
Speaker 1: business has.
Speaker 2: No that really resonates with me. Actually, I remember seeing
Speaker 2: pretty good conference talk video about selling toilets at departments,
Speaker 2: you know, home DEEPO or Lows whatever, And you go
Speaker 2: in there, like I need a toilet from my house
Speaker 2: and there's like twenty toilets that are sitting there. It's
Speaker 2: like which one do I buy?
Speaker 1: And you got to test them?
Speaker 2: Sorry, I feel like I'm unfamiliar with this concept. You
Speaker 2: you test them in the store?
Speaker 1: Well, why else would they have them sitting out? I
Speaker 1: mean a little privacy curtain would be nice, but hey, whatever.
Speaker 2: They seem worse. Apparently that's that's not for everyone. It
Speaker 2: takes a special kind of skill to be able to
Speaker 2: pull that off. So the point the point is is
Speaker 2: like you don't you're not the foremost expert in whatever
Speaker 2: those things are. You have some problem and how the
Speaker 2: toilet works isn't necessarily your what you care about or
Speaker 2: you know, as the carpenter that you're hiring, like what
Speaker 2: the code is for how thick you're two bike? Well
Speaker 2: your walls need to be or the support beams, how
Speaker 2: the electrical wiring needs to be done? You don't really
Speaker 2: care about, right, Yeah, And so I think that's a
Speaker 2: good analogy there that the person the expert in that
Speaker 2: is there to ask.
Speaker 1: You the things that you do know about and guide
Speaker 1: you to the right solution. You know, like how much
Speaker 1: room do you have? Oh, you've only got sixteen inches
Speaker 1: with so the twenty four inch model gets ruled out immediately,
Speaker 1: you know. So focus on the parts of the problem
Speaker 1: that they do understand and then use your expertise of
Speaker 1: the product to help them make the right selection.
Speaker 2: So I feel like what we're talking about is becoming
Speaker 2: that expert over time by focusing on learning and so
Speaker 2: irrelevant of how the market shifts or what new tools
Speaker 2: are available, it could be just figuring out how do
Speaker 2: I apply that to what I already know. It's not
Speaker 2: like a different field. It's not something you have to
Speaker 2: switch like I'm going to change my role now, but
Speaker 2: how do I use these things to help me deliver
Speaker 2: more more effectively or is there something I can learn
Speaker 2: about that? But you do a lot of things at
Speaker 2: the same time. It's like, you know, you do the advising,
Speaker 2: your podcast post. How do you find time for all
Speaker 2: of that?
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time, and I think that's
Speaker 1: something that has to be accounted for, you know, like
Speaker 1: a tech a career, a long thirty year career in
Speaker 1: tech is not a forty hour a week commitment, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's forty usually forty plus hours at the job
Speaker 1: that pays your salary. But then you have to dedicate
Speaker 1: time above and beyond that to update your skill set
Speaker 1: so that you're relevant for tomorrow. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the big the big misunderstood lessons from college
Speaker 1: is it's not about the education as much as it
Speaker 1: is about building good learning habits that you can use
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Okay, I only have bad learning habits, so lay one
Speaker 2: on me here.
Speaker 1: I probably do too. I just put in the time
Speaker 1: to compensate for that. You know, like whenever I was
Speaker 1: in nuclear engineering school, you spent forty hours a week
Speaker 1: in class, and then you spent another thirty to forty
Speaker 1: hours a week after class studying, and so I just
Speaker 1: built those you know, bulldog skills where you just keep
Speaker 1: chewing and chewing and chewing without regard for anything else,
Speaker 1: and it's cost stuff along the way. You know, like
Speaker 1: I used to love playing I still probably love playing
Speaker 1: computer games, but I don't know because I don't do
Speaker 1: that a lot anymore. Same thing with you know, like
Speaker 1: playing guitar. It's just not something I have time for
Speaker 1: very frequently, and so there are trade offs. But according
Speaker 1: to my life goals, which is to build a life
Speaker 1: where I've provided for my family the best that I
Speaker 1: could and help set them up for success, it was
Speaker 1: a fair trade off. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good thing to keep coming back
Speaker 2: to because it's your personal identity is not like where
Speaker 2: you're working or the tool that you're working with. You
Speaker 2: have some other life goal that you're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: and not getting too attached to your current situation is
Speaker 2: the only way that you can move forward. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was no even in the four examples of the
Speaker 2: different progression paths you can have as an engineer, being
Speaker 2: the foremost expert requires a very specific niche and there's
Speaker 2: just not that many of them, all of them require
Speaker 2: fundamentally changing something as time goes on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one good way to keep this in
Speaker 1: perspective is you're going to card in a career in tech,
Speaker 1: but it comes with rewards, and those rewards I think
Speaker 1: are the the way that you finance your true goals
Speaker 1: in life, because when you die, you're gonna meet your
Speaker 1: creator and they're going to say, hey, we gave you
Speaker 1: the most state of the art vehicle in the known universe,
Speaker 1: we gave you a human body, what did you do
Speaker 1: with it? And saying I was a team lead for Microsoft,
Speaker 1: I think is probably not going to cut it as
Speaker 1: the answer.
Speaker 2: I think it's self reflection, so you know, you have
Speaker 2: to decide for yourself that if that cuts it or not.
Speaker 2: I think you know at the point that we're our
Speaker 2: own judges there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least I like to.
Speaker 2: Believe that, because otherwise I think I'm going to be
Speaker 2: in trouble because your your version of how you studied
Speaker 2: for nuclear engineering is not how I approach my university time.
Speaker 2: I had a very different approach there, So that we're.
Speaker 1: Not I can take a guess.
Speaker 2: I mean it was still you know, with as much struggle.
Speaker 2: You know, I used to think that getting burned out
Speaker 2: in the job was some sort of joke. And I'll
Speaker 2: be the first one to admit this, that it was
Speaker 2: not something that I thought actually would happen. And then
Speaker 2: it happens to you, and you struggle with it a
Speaker 2: lot because of whatever you were doing, the strategy you had,
Speaker 2: and it really has this psychological and physiological impact on
Speaker 2: how you deal with things. And so really being mindful
Speaker 2: of that that there is it is hard work, for sure.
Speaker 2: There is no like this is an easy job. You
Speaker 2: mentioned rewards. And I feel like I was asking very
Speaker 2: many times in my in my pre career and career,
Speaker 2: are you going to make a lot of money? And
Speaker 2: I always thought, yeah, probab to make some money, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's probably not as much as like a lawyer or
Speaker 2: a doctor or whatever else I came to mind with.
Speaker 2: But after working in tech for not as long as
Speaker 2: you will, I have actually the belief that you can
Speaker 2: make quite a lot of money in this industry. I
Speaker 2: feel like I've seen some people say they have total
Speaker 2: compensation is over a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's not the norm, no, Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 2: out there, for sure, and so I like your framing
Speaker 2: that it's not just easily achievable. If you want to
Speaker 2: get to the next level and change really your compensation,
Speaker 2: it requires putting in a lot more effort, and maybe
Speaker 2: the company you're working for can support you. Hopefully you
Speaker 2: don't have to put in a lot of more hours
Speaker 2: to make that happen. But your hobby, if you're a
Speaker 2: person that likes to learn, seems like you know you
Speaker 2: really well fit for that, right you know, I can
Speaker 2: learn what I care about outside of the job and
Speaker 2: focus on that and then bring that back and use
Speaker 2: that in my career.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And I think that's important is to
Speaker 1: have a reason to learn, you know, because like saying,
Speaker 1: oh I have to learn this for this particular paycheck
Speaker 1: is going to lead to burnout, guaranteed. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got to tie it back to some other reason in
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things I
Speaker 2: often struggle with giving good advice over is when early
Speaker 2: career engineers come to me and say, Hey, what should
Speaker 2: I learn? And I'm just like, there are too many things,
Speaker 2: too possibly that you could be learning, Like which one
Speaker 2: do you care the most about. Which one is well
Speaker 2: aligned with who you want to be or who you
Speaker 2: are or how you think about problems. That's the thing
Speaker 2: that you should go after. Don't ask me should I
Speaker 2: learn AWS or GCP or I mean, I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you to learn AWS, but that's sort of a
Speaker 2: different a different bucket. Realistically, it may not help you
Speaker 2: get a job, right, You know, what I think is
Speaker 2: important isn't necessarily what is important for you. So really
Speaker 2: focusing on what you actually cared about, you cared about learning,
Speaker 2: You took what you were currently doing and said, you know,
Speaker 2: it was always a yes. It sounds like, you know,
Speaker 2: oh we're doing this thing, can we do this other
Speaker 2: thing as well? Yeah? Sure, why not? Let's jump into that.
Speaker 1: Uh that's scary, not really, what's the worst it could happen?
Speaker 2: No one, no one, No one's dying, right for sure?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the ways I like to guide people when
Speaker 1: that question comes up is just tell them go get
Speaker 1: a junk PC, build a web server, put it online,
Speaker 1: build a website and make it public, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you're just going to take them. You're going to
Speaker 1: take them all the way through the entire software delivery
Speaker 1: life cycle end to end and tell them at some
Speaker 1: point in there, you're going to enjoy part of that
Speaker 1: process and you're going to hate other parts of that process.
Speaker 1: Focus on the parts that you enjoyed.
Speaker 2: There is actually, if people are looking for something specific,
Speaker 2: there's some documentation out there around what's called the Cloud
Speaker 2: Resume Challenge. It's basically a will described It helps guide
Speaker 2: you through the different technologies that you can potentially be
Speaker 2: using and say, here, solve this problem. Then solve this problem.
Speaker 2: Then solve this problem very specifically, and through that you
Speaker 2: can take like take lots of time understanding what you're
Speaker 2: actually doing and why. Like, it's not about getting through
Speaker 2: it as soon as possible, No one's no one's going
Speaker 2: to be reviewing your work. But it is a great
Speaker 2: thing because the outcome is a hey, look, I built
Speaker 2: all these things to automatically update my resume, and it's
Speaker 2: on a public website. And you can even show that
Speaker 2: as a project that had some value. Whereas someone who
Speaker 2: tells me, oh, yeah, I build like a recommendation engine
Speaker 2: that shows like movies or whatever on a web page,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be like, why why did you build?
Speaker 2: My first question in an interview, like, tell me about
Speaker 2: something you really enjoyed doing and then why you did it.
Speaker 2: And the answer can't be oh, I just needed to
Speaker 2: do something right. I want to understand your thought process
Speaker 2: on understanding business value or driving forward. I had a
Speaker 2: problem I need to solve, and here's the solution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, I think that's it right there. You had
Speaker 1: a problem to solve. You know, why was that a problem?
Speaker 1: Why was this the solution that you chose? Because that's
Speaker 1: what all businesses are doing, is they're trying to solve problems.
Speaker 2: I think there's another thing here, and it's the nuances involved.
Speaker 2: Like if it's a concrete thing that actually happened to
Speaker 2: you and there was a lot of discussions behind it,
Speaker 2: those are interesting conversations. Those are interesting stories how you
Speaker 2: were engaged in that, what you learned about doing that.
Speaker 2: And if it's sort of a made up hypothetical problem,
Speaker 2: then you don't really understand the trade offs. There aren't
Speaker 2: any trade offs to make. It's whatever you want at
Speaker 2: every bend. You can't really say, well, we had one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand users, so we had to do things this way,
Speaker 2: or we only had ten users and so we could
Speaker 2: do things differently, if you just have a made up
Speaker 2: number of users in your head, I have no idea
Speaker 2: how resilient and reliable the project that you did had.
Speaker 1: To be, yeah, for sure. And another thing you can
Speaker 1: do is if you don't have a problem that seems
Speaker 1: particularly interesting to you, is talk to people that you know.
Speaker 1: A specific example is a buddy of mine just recently
Speaker 1: has been taking Mui Thai lessons. But the software that
Speaker 1: the company uses for like building membership and tracking classes
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff was just really frustrating
Speaker 1: for him to use. So he went to the owner
Speaker 1: and said, hey, can I just build you a platform
Speaker 1: that's specific to the classes you teach, because like he
Speaker 1: was using some generic gym membership websites SaaS that was,
Speaker 1: you know, for anything from like Planet Fitness to you know,
Speaker 1: your local CrossFit thing, and so it wasn't really working
Speaker 1: for their specific needs. So he's currently working on building
Speaker 1: one specific to w we Tai gyms.
Speaker 2: He really took that opportunity that he found and did
Speaker 2: something with it. I think being open outside of your
Speaker 2: nine to five or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: In the remote world or hybrid world, the hours during
Speaker 2: the day aren't fixed. You know, whatever you're doing in
Speaker 2: those in the downtime, I think are great opportunities to
Speaker 2: invest more in. They're the things that maybe you already.
Speaker 1: Care about, yeah for sure. Yeah, And so it's multifaceted
Speaker 1: win for him. You know, he gets a better experience
Speaker 1: as a customer of this gym, but he's also getting
Speaker 1: more skills at solving problems for a business and at
Speaker 1: the same time working on advancing or keeping his own
Speaker 1: technical skills up to date as well, all from the
Speaker 1: same project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot there go on, Like you can
Speaker 2: keep investing in that more and more, and you can
Speaker 2: turn it into a business and sell it to the
Speaker 2: next next gym and the next.
Speaker 1: Jim in the next gym, right for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So since you've got up there in years now, are
Speaker 2: you starting to think about like, I'm going to retire
Speaker 2: at some point or is this like I'm going to
Speaker 2: be doing this till like I'm going to be on
Speaker 2: the podcast host until the day I die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's been coming up more and more frequently
Speaker 1: in my thought process recently. I might I might be
Speaker 1: close to the end of my career.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, anything that's weighing to help make that decision, Like,
Speaker 2: was it a direction, like you you like what you've achieved,
Speaker 2: You're getting out early. Is it a you know, you
Speaker 2: said you had a main goal in your in your
Speaker 2: why you're working, and if you don't need the money,
Speaker 2: then you won't necessarily do that. Is it about I
Speaker 2: want to play games more?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know you said get back to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely not I want to play games more
Speaker 1: because I am about gosh what it's been seven, eight,
Speaker 1: maybe years ago. I hit this point where I just
Speaker 1: I don't need to work for the money anymore, and
Speaker 1: so I kind of retired at that point. And after
Speaker 1: about thirty days, my wife was like, look, we got
Speaker 1: to talk. You can get a job, you can go
Speaker 1: away forever, you can get a mistress. I don't care
Speaker 1: what you do, but you cannot sit around the house anymore.
Speaker 1: And she had a valid point, because I just I'm
Speaker 1: not the type of person who can have nothing to do. Like,
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for me would be retire and the
Speaker 1: only thing I have to look forward to would be
Speaker 1: like a daily round of golf. So I think it'll
Speaker 1: probably change for me in the near future, but I
Speaker 1: just don't know what that is going to look like.
Speaker 2: So, I know that you've said a lot of things here,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of secret nuggets of wisdom that have
Speaker 2: been added, and.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean, anyone that's been doing something as
Speaker 2: long as you have collects those and picking your brain
Speaker 2: is always always a good time.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, there's some Yeah, hopefully. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of my goals, you know, because I mentioned my original
Speaker 1: goal starting this three decades ago was to provide from
Speaker 1: my family. And I've done well at that. I mean,
Speaker 1: given where I started, I've done really really well at that.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like, well, what's what's the next goal?
Speaker 1: And I think part of that is, hey, I did
Speaker 1: okay at this for three decades. What can I share
Speaker 1: and how can I share it with people who or
Speaker 1: earlier in their journey, Like what can I do or
Speaker 1: say to help them build on top of the mistakes
Speaker 1: that I made so that they don't have to repeat
Speaker 1: those mistakes.
Speaker 2: I hear a book coming, maybe.
Speaker 1: I don't know, get a make it a New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller, because seemingly every book.
Speaker 2: Is it's just a statistically significant like you write a
Speaker 2: book and then the only way you know about the
Speaker 2: book is that if it's a New York Times bestseller,
Speaker 2: all the other books like you never even hear about.
Speaker 2: So there are no books that are not New York
Speaker 2: Times bestseller. They secretly get deleted from the internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, how demoralizing is that for an author like God,
Speaker 1: I can't even write a best selling book according to
Speaker 1: New York Times.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you know that's something really interested in.
Speaker 2: You can ask the actors and directors that make video
Speaker 2: content that shows up on streaming platforms, because the stream
Speaker 2: platforms remove everything from there that don't do well. And
Speaker 2: so I can imagine as a content creator getting your
Speaker 2: stuff just terminated like that is that's a special kind
Speaker 2: of new foul with the current world order, right, no doubt. Well,
Speaker 2: then maybe we should move over to pics.
Speaker 1: Let's do some pics. You're starting at me to start,
Speaker 1: I feel like you interviewed me this time, so I
Speaker 1: feel like I should go first.
Speaker 2: You should definitely go first, all right.
Speaker 1: I have been reading The Way of the Superior Man
Speaker 1: by David Dta Data. I think it's data DEI d A.
Speaker 1: It's a cool book. It's probably going to be controversial
Speaker 1: for most or for some people. But even if it is,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth a read because it does a
Speaker 1: really good job of like highlighting some of the things
Speaker 1: we talked about here today, like what's your goal in
Speaker 1: life and what's your role in achieving that goal? And
Speaker 1: I think one of the common themes through it is
Speaker 1: whenever you have challenges in the relationships of your life,
Speaker 1: it's your fault. It's not anyone else's fault. It's either
Speaker 1: your fault because you screwed up, or your fault because
Speaker 1: you didn't set expectations correctly, or your fault because you
Speaker 1: didn't guide the scenario at the right time. But it's
Speaker 1: really good at reflecting on that and removing blaming from
Speaker 1: your vocabulary, Like instead of blaming someone else, you're like, huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my fault. I should have done this instead, and
Speaker 1: we would have never been in that situation.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I see this both being more healthy
Speaker 2: and also potentially less healthy, depending on how you you know,
Speaker 2: approach the situation. I mean, there's a lot to be
Speaker 2: said up not like playing the victim right that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you could have impacted that, Like if you don't get promoted,
Speaker 2: you know, you could have done more to make that happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know, Like one thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind as you read it is, if you've ever
Speaker 1: read Victor Frankel's Search for Meaning? Is that the right title?
Speaker 1: He was He was a Jewish doctor who was sent
Speaker 1: to a Nazi concentration camp in World War Two, and
Speaker 1: then later he wrote this book about the positive aspects
Speaker 1: of that, not that there were positive aspects of that,
Speaker 1: but the fact that he's like, you know, we're in
Speaker 1: this brutal nightmares situation seemingly out of our control, but
Speaker 1: you know what I can control. I can control my thoughts.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, So if you haven't read Victor frankel
Speaker 1: Search for Meaning, I think is the title. That's a great, great,
Speaker 1: great book, like must read for every person on the
Speaker 1: planet type book.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he's got maybe there's two.
Speaker 1: Picks there, maybe, yeah, two picks.
Speaker 2: So mine's also a book. Because I'm laying but I am,
Speaker 2: I will. I will share this that I've almost run
Speaker 2: out of books that I feel like I'm okay recommending
Speaker 2: for people to read, so very soon I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to u over to a completely different genre content.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what that's going to be. Yeah. My
Speaker 2: book pick is one it's called One Up on Wall
Speaker 2: Street by Peter Lynch, and it's an old book. I
Speaker 2: think it's like nineteen sixty two or something like that,
Speaker 2: and it has nothing to do with software engineering or
Speaker 2: knowledge work. It has to do about how to invest
Speaker 2: in the market to get better returns. And you should
Speaker 2: not take the advice in the book as far as
Speaker 2: investing in the market, because it's so old that everyone's
Speaker 2: already done this, everyone's already found and knows how to
Speaker 2: apply it effectively. But the advice is value based investments.
Speaker 2: That's understanding what the core value is with something that
Speaker 2: you would invest in, how much value you would get
Speaker 2: out of it, and what the return could be. So
Speaker 2: not speculating on what would happen. And I find that
Speaker 2: I get a lot of inspiration on how I can
Speaker 2: change my mindset when I'm learning things from nonfiction or
Speaker 2: even sometimes fiction outside of the tech industry, outside of leadership.
Speaker 2: And so I found a lot in this because it
Speaker 2: made me realize, Okay, you know what am I doing?
Speaker 2: What do I want to invest in in myself that
Speaker 2: can give me returns? You know, what do I care
Speaker 2: about fundamentally as a person or what am I good
Speaker 2: at and then leading into that more and so I
Speaker 2: think it's a great book. It's also was super.
Speaker 1: Helpful for me right on, and I'm going to highlight
Speaker 1: something you said, like talking about books like there is
Speaker 1: the I mean, we're both old enough, you know, where
Speaker 1: there was the stigma of people who read. You know,
Speaker 1: the high school football team was going to come running
Speaker 1: around nerd and beat your ass. But there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with reading, Like it's probably the most important thing you
Speaker 1: can do with your life. Because every problem you will
Speaker 1: ever face in your life, We've got books going back
Speaker 1: thousands of years someone somewhere has written about a very
Speaker 1: similar problem and how they solved it.
Speaker 2: If we're going to go there that I'll share my
Speaker 2: wisdom here. I always hated reading books. I thought it
Speaker 2: was the worst. And that was because the books that
Speaker 2: you've access to or are forced to read, at least
Speaker 2: from my perspective, were not good books. So you know
Speaker 2: what you pick up in through your academic career. I
Speaker 2: didn't like it all, and so it gave me the
Speaker 2: view that all books were bad. But as Weill said,
Speaker 2: there's definitely inspiration that can come from things that you
Speaker 2: didn't know were out there. So if you do have
Speaker 2: that mindset, you know, try doing something you don't like
Speaker 2: at least ten percent of the time and maybe you'll
Speaker 2: maybe it'll change your mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And if you're struggling with where to start,
Speaker 1: I think starting with older books is better because the
Speaker 1: barrier to publishing was much higher ten years ago. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: anyone with a PDF can release a book, and so
Speaker 1: the barrier to entry leads to potentially lower quality books.
Speaker 1: But if you go back, you know, like two thousand's
Speaker 1: and before, the barrier to getting a book published was
Speaker 1: pretty tough, and so the quality I think tends to
Speaker 1: reflect that. No.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really good point. There's just because
Speaker 2: there's a book published doesn't mean it's good. Like, you
Speaker 2: can disagree with the book. It can be bad. You
Speaker 2: can you know, not something that you want to read,
Speaker 2: and it's okay to get rid of that and put
Speaker 2: it down. But not all books are the same, I
Speaker 2: guess as the wisdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure for sure. All right, therapy session over.
Speaker 2: For just one hour there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll just uh, we'll just get a transcript of
Speaker 1: this submitted to my insurance company and bill it as
Speaker 1: a therapy session. You're getting paid for this episode, Warren, Well,
Speaker 1: I only do.
Speaker 2: Things for free or for my my actual rate, so
Speaker 2: this probably wouldn't cover it.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna have it fair enough.
Speaker 2: But if you want, you want the actual invoice claim,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to send that over to you.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, tax deduction, all right. Thank you for
Speaker 1: this episode. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate your time and
Speaker 1: your questions. Thank you to everyone listening for listening, and
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts, comments, ideas, further questions, you know
Speaker 1: how to find me