Host:
[0:03] Good afternoon Joe welcome to the show.

Guest:
[0:06] Thanks for having me really looking forward to it.

Host:
[0:08] Absolutely it’s my pleasure,
so what are the things Joe I think a lot of my is my listeners tend to be pretty interested in is and everyone who comes on the show just give me a little bit of brief history of your backgrounds did you go traditional CS Rao did you come through another route highlights and then where you are now.

Guest:
[0:27] Sure so I had a a semi traditional educational background.
Have a degree in informatics which for your opinions may sound like computer science but here in the states there is a slight difference between informatics and computer science.
Informatics is the study of how people use information.
The multidisciplinary degree that involves some computer science it some business some psychology some ux it was barely knew when I started there at the University of Washington.

[1:04] And.
Someone unproven at the time took a chance and really paid off really gave me a great foundation for the concept of user focus and user Focus design.
Amazon’s really big on it cut their customer Obsession you hear this a lot with various terms but it all kind of comes back to empathy for your users and that was the Cornerstone of everything we learned.
Technologies will change over time but the need for being focused on the end result focused on that users is something that was it is was and is still super important cycle really lucky YouTube how to background like that.

Host:
[1:47] Yeah and I think that’s especially with the with the kind of modern concept of you know design-driven and everything else I think that that definitely makes lot of sense and is very important.

Guest:
[1:57] And still fast-forward speaking of Amazon that was my first job out of school I don’t looking back on it I can’t believe they hired me.
Didn’t even realize how little I knew aren’t ya how many unknown unknowns there were to use a Donald Rumsfeld quote.
So I was really fortunate that I was able to learn a lot on the job I worked in the personalization department at Amazon at a time where Amazon was breaking a lot of ground in.
Big Data personalization,
how to message and market a recommendations and similarities and stuff like that it was sort of like a little start-up inside Amazon.

Host:
[2:39] Sure that sounds interesting.

Guest:
[2:41] After that I did a few SAS Enterprise startups and then interesting Lee enough went back to Amazon,
in the form of a really small R&D skunkworks that was a completely owned by Amazon although we operated independently away from their headquarters no access to their internet,
we met with them quarterly to sort of,
get some some general course Corrections and ideas and we just sort of threw a bunch of stuff to the wall and saw what stuck on unfortunately,
someone inside Amazon decided that we would add more value as a proper employees of Amazon so we got shut down.
I decided not to go into Amazon since he’d already been there that’s that’s where all of us met from the Skunk Works,
and and ended up where I am now which is a small tub company called Energy savvy.
Wee wee makes up for that utilities use to run their Energy Efficiency programs and more generally to have a stronger and better connection with their customers.

[3:55] I’m currently director of client engineering that’s client as in our customers not client as in front end.
We we do some front-end stuff we do though we do the whole stack so I lead 3 Professional Services teams which is,
fairly different from the typical tech company job which is mostly product focused.
You can almost think of us as a little consultancy shop inside a product Focus startup.

[4:25] The way I like to describe it is that the product of teams are building Lego blocks reusable services and components and my teams are taking those Lego blocks,
understanding the requirements of each of our clients and then using the Lego blocks to build unique Lego structures.
And invariably building the Lego structures involves a Lego block that has never been seen before,
more practically speaking that’s some sort of custom data integration or some sort of custom functionality so to get these Lego structures right we build these custom Lego blocks as well.

Host:
[5:06] And so then it it sounds like not only do you manage on the engineering side but there’s a fair amount of client focusing and products actually background as well there.

Guest:
[5:18] Yes so getting back to this Foundation of user Focus me and the folks on our team are very user focused,
instead of a roadmap we have client deliverables where we’re negotiating with them on timeline satyr,
mutually beneficial and basically everything we do is understanding how,
the existing business workflow Works inside these Energy Efficiency departments and helping them take their workflow sometimes we were literally replacing like pencil and paper workflow helping bring them into the 21st century,
understanding how they get their business done and what their goals are and showing them how our software can help them meet their goals and,
stretch their Energy Efficiency dollar the farthest.

Host:
[6:05] Great.
Now that’s very interesting we need to talk to people who are not only dealing with this districtly technical but actually get that business and management and really being face-to-face with their customers I think a lot of.
Teams today in leadership that matters the teams don’t get to really interface too much with the customers and then such a think that the product suffer for the.

Guest:
[6:26] Yeah I totally agree having an empathy and truly understanding the people that are going to use your software what makes them tick what are their goals their dreams their desires,
all that stuff is so fundamental and you like you said without it the the end products going to suffer.

Host:
[6:43] A little bit. Your team kind of what do you manage actually engineer’s or do manager their managers what’s your structure there.

Guest:
[6:52] A little a little of both so that each of the three teams that are part of my org have a team lead,
and so a part of my role is coaching and growing leaders so that’s a metamanager type roll,
and I’m still very closely in touch with everyone on the team what she would probably call the technically there skip levels,
I still have one-on-ones of some very and Cadence with everyone in the entire org.
I think it’s really important to.
To be able to keep tabs on what’s going on and so I’ve 11 reports all together,
and so luckily I’m at a point where that still scales and I think between all my reports and peers and other key folks throughout the company I think I have about 20 recurring one-on-ones.
You know obviously not all of them are on on like the weekly Cadence I can have with a direct report but it’s a lot of one-on-ones.
And I love them all I wouldn’t trade them for anything it’s a huge part of my schedule but and costly a costly type of activity but it always pays off I’m always amazed,
at how useful one ones are.

Host:
[8:12] They are it sounds like your your schedule can be pretty packed with them I know my.
Some of my managers have experimented with different ways of doing one-on-one some of them spread them out during the week some of them more than masochistic ones tend to try to do 8 or 9 back-to-back ones and that can be a little challenging.

Guest:
[8:30] I wanted to try that I am more of a spread out throughout the,
type although there are periods let’s say like quarterly review time where the one-on-one sort of have them more prescriptive,
formula to them temporarily and sometimes for those I feel like it would just be a lot easier if I could stay in the mindset of like okay here’s your here’s your quarterly review here is it,
here’s what we’ve been talking about throughout the quarter now but here it it here it all is on paper like I think there be less contact switching for me mentally if I could just like bang those out over the course of a couple days straight.

Host:
[9:06] True I’ve been a context switching and getting the mental mentally wrapped around it is good but it does take a toll I was reading in a blog posting recently about you know one and ones and.
And how the hell you mentally really draining they are and how you have to sit at put forward that good face for cuz your first one in one of the day you might have your lead architect this is the article about you might have your lead architect.
Suddenly giving his notice and then immediately after that you have you know a q a person talking about you know some slight improvements to a bug tracking system and you know you sort of have to.
You started have to deal with that you know you kind of Sir to have to deal with.
That the context switching and you just emotional rollercoaster of one and you really want to run off and and and try to help this person the rest of the company that you might be quitting but.
You don’t want to make sure the person that’s what you might perceive is a less critical fire to them it might be important and you don’t want to.
You cancel their 101 and let them feel serve not as important.

Guest:
[10:04] Yeah for sure that’s an extreme example but I think that speaks to the need to as a leader to build a,
compartmentalize multiple different streams of thought that really stretch your brain and different directions all the same time and I would say that that’s something that I’m still working on.

Host:
[10:23] Yeah and how long have you been in a manager type position than a manager.

Guest:
[10:28] So this is my first official manager role and I’ve been here at the company for 4 years I started here as a team of one we had no Professional Services and so I started learning the tech.
Understanding what what it would look like to have the separate functional area where we had.
Dev team with a very strong dotted line over to a very different functional area in a we work really closely with a sister team called client engagement and.
The client engagement managers they were a lot of hats like account rap.
Customer service p.m. for these client ribbon projects and so that. Team was sort of.
Coming up to speed and and and growing maturity.
And they’ve always been sort of like 6 months ahead of me because I I join the company there was no Professional Services engineering so I’m sort of learning.
What are they done well what could they do better water of the dev teams dunwell Building Product and what’s the Delta between best practices for product of team and a Professional Services Dev Team all of that I.
You know I started from zero and how to figure it out and you know I always told people,
I’m just making this up as I go along and I still say that now now it sort of like a mantra or or or a joke more more more than a joke because it’s the only serious that you know is as the team of wolves.

[12:01] There’s always something new to learn and I don’t have all the answers I’m just making it up and we’re going to see if this works or not.

Host:
[12:09] And when you first started going to coming into that that manager type role did you have any resources did you have a mentor you know where did you look for help and guidance.

Guest:
[12:21] That’s a good question I’m trying to think back 2 to 4 years ago I’ve had some members over the time I always you know the saying when the student is ready the teacher will appear.
You know what it means to be ready,
has changed so much for me over my career as as I’ve tried different things and so you know at the time I didn’t even know what I was ready for I knew I was entering a management role that was going to be new for me.
And I I I had a mentor who was a friend and mentor and now he’s.
Friend we are mentorship surgeons naturally whelm down,
and he at the time was a CEO of a startup and so.
His he was approaching you know my questions from a much higher level as CEO and as opposed to the answers I would have been getting from a deadly door or a Deb manager,
but I think.
At the time I cut it in see that all I saw was like it’s asking these questions and I’m getting this advice from someone who had been there years before and now even has like,
10000 foot higher of you than the types of problems that I’m going through so it would sort of a unique Mentor pupil roll.

Host:
[13:39] Sure looking back on the last 4 years any mistakes that stand out from that transitioning into management that you know make you cringe now that you wish maybe you would have done something differently.

Guest:
[13:52] Oh yeah so many young and many of them fall under the cringe-worthy.
A lot of my early in the steaks kind of fell into a blanket category of I would call out wanting to be liked,
more like putting putting the desire to be liked over the desire to have a high-functioning team,
what you know I recognize as like a classic new manager mistake and I think I just fell right into that trap because it’s just my personality type.
I just think it’s really important to be in good standing of others and have a lot of social capital.
And so yeah I just fell right into that one there was in it there’s a very early example where the team was just forming and.
We weren’t hiring yet we were just I was sort of like picking off folks from existing Dove teams.
And I was physically in a different spot in the office and then many the other Dev teams I was sitting closer to the client engagement team.
That I talked about earlier and so a guy had joined my team from a different Dev team,
and he was very he had a very long tenure with the company he was very highly respected I was really looking forward to working with him because I knew he was going to really help me understand the tech,
he was like really deeply into the tack and he also had a really great.
Desk spot next to a really great window in a corner with like really good sight lines like no one can sneak up on him and startled him and randomize him.

[15:31] And I knew for the benefit that team like he needed to sit with there with his new teammates for the longest time I resisted bringing up like.
Hey it’s going to really benefit the team for you to move into this new spot knowing that he’s going to get a worst Desk position there just weren’t at the best desk spot in our cluster,
was worse than his spot so I knew it was going to be a downgrade for him and I put up that conversation for so long because I was just reading him saying that come on Joe,
you want me to move my desk just to be with the team.
And the reason I bring up that example is because whether it’s due to Wine to be like or you know whatever reason the one of the big,
mindset chefs data manager needs to do is to understand that there,
at the end of the day they’re beholden to the success of the team as a whole and from time to time that unfortunately may require,
like taking a hit on the successor of the happiness of one of the individuals on the team even if it’s for the betterment of the team as a whole and that’s a really tough I think the most extreme example that it’s fire in people.
That’s obviously the worst thing a manager ever will have to do and obviously,
it’s so much worse for the for the person on the other side of that conversation who’s being let go and they may have they certainly have financial obligations and they want to keep their dignity and tat.

[17:03] And I think that’s why one of the other classic manager mistakes that I’ve also done it is waiting too long to let folks go because.
It’s that conversation just so painful but but you know that it’s for the benefit of the team.

Host:
[17:17] And it’s something in some cases actually for the benefit of the individual.

Guest:
[17:21] Yeah they sure if it support fit absolutely.

Host:
[17:23] Yeah and it’ll going to just take them on the back to go to the moving a desk thing it’s interesting that you bring that up because.
Moving people’s desks and in some cases at various companies have been in even just doing a seat you know charts and moving it around or even moving offices and if you have ever been involved in an office move especially with start upset you’d be.
Just my first time I was shocked about how much people.
You know because we really fight for and care about where they sit and who they’re sitting in the way they’re facing it was I was like oval just.
Organized to live by teams and it turned out to be probably the most political stressful you know contentious part of the office move was actually the seating charts.

Guest:
[18:08] Yes I found the same thing and the only thing I can think of is that like where you’re sitting and where your desk is is very low on Maslow’s hierarchy.
It’s just like very deep and our lizard brains about,
yeah you’re getting enough sunlight not being snuck up on like all that stuff is like very deep-seated in our reptile brains and so it just brings out that like fight or flight when it’s time to move desks.

Host:
[18:33] That’s very so any listen is out there any the managers who haven’t gone through this make sure you give it the appropriate thought that it needs if you ever going to do a massive seating chart change because it will turn on big bite you in the ass.

Guest:
[18:48] Yes for sure.

Host:
[18:49] So you know the one thing John the reason that I actually you know found you was.
You’ve put out I don’t even know what to call it really but this disturb fantastic,
resource for a new management and and manager and links to articles and blogs and and videos and books,
where is the Genesis of this how did you come about this and how did the begin.

Guest:
[19:17] So that also came about transitioning to this management role here at energy savvy.
I’m at least I knew enough at this point in my career to know again to use that runs fall quote there a lot of known unknowns I was going to have to,
stretch myself and learn a whole bunch of stuff and so I just did what I always do when there is a.
An event like that I just like got on the internet and started reading stuff and.
I have a terrible memory,
my mind is like a sieve and so whenever I read something I take notes on it and if it’s a book that it’s easier because you can highlight it blog articles are a little harder essentially what I did was open up a Google doc.
I started posting in URLs and then underneath EGR out I would pay I would type of few notes or maybe even like directly copy paste if you quotes does summarizing the article.
The goal for me like the user story of this product so to speak was that if I ever thought to myself like oh this situation I’m in,
I remember reading an article about this where someone who have been here before had a lot of mine had something interesting,
to share I would be able to quickly bring it up and recall what it was that I had learned and forgotten,
over and over the months and now years so really what it was was that exercise of sort of like a distributed asynchronous mentorship with anybody I wanted to on the entire internet.

Host:
[20:54] That’s it that’s a great way to put that and then how did it evolve into something that you were willing to share did you start with your own team and then go beyond their how did how did you get this out in the public.

Guest:
[21:05] Yeah so I started sharing it internally always with a few caveats and an apology of how orally organized it is,
there are areas that are like internally contradictory because I drank one article that says one thing and then are another article that says the exact opposite thing.
And you know no one’s right or wrong their age may be right around and in different contacts,
so I started like tongue-in-cheek jokingly referring to it as the management and Leadership Bible,
I try to refrain from that I realize I could be offensive to some folks.
So that’s certainly not be the official term for it it also implies some like capital T truthiness that I feel like would prevent folks from from reading and taking everything they read with the greenest salt.
But anyway so I started sharing it internally I would always you don’t give apologies and caveats.
I Know It with any growing startup a lot of people are coming into leadership and management roles and,
I don’t know if you’ve experienced this but there’s there’s always generally just the lack of formalized,
training and education for those folks and so this was just sort of like a low-impact informal way to,
fill in that Gap and then one day I just decided.
It got to the dog got too long and unwieldy and even I was having trouble finding the content that I wanted to so I.

[22:38] I did serve like a rip off the Band-Aid approach I just like went head to town for about 2 days I would say and I categorized everything,
into about 10 categories,
and I broke it up into 10 Google Docs I all linked off the main one the main ones are turn into a table of contents in it FAQ.
And I see another side while I was out at the bar for me for this sort of like refactor was going to be get it too,
get into a state where I wouldn’t be embarrassed releasing it to the public,
I realized I broke MVP rule number one which is if you’re not embarrassed by V1 then you spent too long on it so maybe I should have spent one day heading down instead of 2 but anyway.
And then I showed a new version around internally I link to it on my Twitter kind of let it simmer for a little while.
And I subscribe to a mailing list called software lead weekly.

Host:
[23:40] Oh yeah it’s it’s a good list by the way yeah.

Guest:
[23:42] Yeah anyone listening if you’re not already on that like the name implies it’s a weekly email that just is a collection of links.
Langston summaries I actually maybe where I got the inspiration for the form out of of my last which is essentially links and summaries so I sent it to the maintainer of that list and just say hey,
I won’t have any hard feelings if this is too crazy and big for you but if you think your readers would,
get some use out of this and some value here you go do with it what you want.
He posted it on a future software lead weekly.
God episode and then interesting Lee enough another reader software lead weekly took it up,
and she she messaged me and said like it would be great if more people could.

[24:42] Contribute to that sing as a Google doc at sort of hard.

[24:47] And so she said hey like let’s make it a get let’s make it a get Hub repo.
And I said like I don’t really have time to.
Till I creep Factor this into markdown but like go ahead like all all help sort of as like a,
individual contributor on this but I can’t take lead on it and so Lori Apple,
who we just connected to Via this does resource like she totally ran with it it’s on GitHub now it’s,
better than it would have been if I just stayed in my hands I think it started one of those examples of like,
letting something go and like it like it’s sort of related to delegating like obviously I didn’t delegate anything to her like she she took this on her own but it’s Ruben alaga stew delegating where if you hold on to something,
it’s only going to be as good as you yourself can make it and.

[25:47] You release it out to your team or two others in this case then the sky’s the limit.

Host:
[25:54] Yeah and I just started looking at GitHub and I mean it’s a phenomenal resource Surfer a listeners out there.
I will definitely include the GitHub and the original Doc in the show notes so you can and I actually recommend you to check it out what is the ghetto repo name.
Joe.

Guest:
[26:14] It’s called awesome leading and managing and it’s – separated.

Host:
[26:18] Okay great so you can search for that on get Hub I’ll also put the links in for the show notes but that is been such a tremendous and I kind of go through it I have it.
Yeah it’s kind of funny actually have it up.
On one of my tabs on and on Chrome I’m also a tab addict I must have you know I think I have 50 tabs up on Chrome and I have another like 75 at Safari but.
It sort of it’s my mental you know file thing and I actually look through the room smile and I send some of those articles to some of my.
My managers and directors to because I think some of them are very interesting or I’ll musing it probably how you did it.
So am I come to me with some question I have something and if I can’t answer I’ll sort of use your document little bit as it as a way to.
Start a conversation or some of mine if I don’t article about it and I’ll send off and say Hey you know read this and and you know.
Let me know if you get anything out of that right so it’s been helpful to me it’s been helping my Dev team I completely appreciate the effort you put into this and all the community now that should have taken us over and.
Conoco start crowdsourcing this this leadership document that that you started so thank you very much for that.

Guest:
[27:26] You’re very welcome my pleasure it’s been really great I’ve learned a lot and I yeah I think every minute spent on it has been time well spent.

Host:
[27:35] No obviously spend a lot of time putting that together.
Right so what what have you learned over the four years of you put this thing together about sort of the resources available to new and existing engineering managers have you noticed any Trends or anything.

Guest:
[27:52] That’s a good question there’s certainly more resources out there than there were in the past.
Certainly a trend is conferences like the lead of the mailing list I talked about earlier software lead weekly I’m sure there’s others like it there I was I was in a slack Channel at one point that was just about,
a tech leadership I wish I could plug the name cuz it was really amazing but I.

Host:
[28:16] Think that I think it’s the Rand.

Guest:
[28:19] Yeah that’s right it’s from Rands in Repose absolutely right I just I found it was getting too distracting so I,
I kind of turn from contributing to lurking and then lurking to just sort of not having it open anymore,
but for folks who are early on in a transition from Individual contributor to leader a manager or making a transition maybe from.
Manager The Meta manager anytime where you’re at a point where you just need a little more height touch guidance from from the community I would really recommend that ran some leadership slack Channel.

Host:
[28:58] Yep and I second that absolutely and I also second of fact that I can get to be distracting she just trying to get mad and you’re like you know like you know you know link surfing on Google.

Guest:
[29:09] Yeah let me know there’s so many people on it which is so great and then the only downside of that is that the volume gets really high but you know I wouldn’t I wouldn’t trade that it’s not like a secret club or anything like the more the merrier on stuff like that.

Host:
[29:22] Absolutely it again has there been a one sort of or two common.
Things I’ve seen in putting together this list like that.
People seem to be the most writing about the most or you know having the most struggles with as a new manager like anything that you know if you would cluster the types of Articles and do one two categories in Urdu any stand.

Guest:
[29:45] Yeah that’ll be hard to do let me think for a sec I think one thing is about one major theme is the mindset shift.
That needs to occur,
from being an individual contributor to being a leader or manager and the Articles themselves are quite varied about this but that’s a theme that comes up,
for instance speaking of rounds he has a great article one of my favorite just called one thing.

[30:14] And it’s ostensibly about a productivity management system and like snooze like next but but bear with me here over the course of one article,
it covers like pretty much every Hot Topic,
attack leadership how to prioritize how to delegate how to set goals how to do software estimation that near the age-old question should managers code he manages to tile this up,
in a nice package and then and then ends with this very simple very lightweight protiviti management system that I still use to this day it’s just called one thing,
and as the name implies it’s very simple but throughout all these threads that he’s under weaving the idea is that.
Now that the cliche quote what got you here won’t get you there it’s probably cliche because it’s true and you hear it so often that.
The great agrey technologist a great software developer isn’t necessarily going to be a great manager and,
the reason for that is the skills while there are a lot all there’s a lot of overlap especially like being deep into technology.
It’s not as it’s not guarantee that a great technologist is going to be,
a great leader and it’s because of that mindset shift of thinking about a bigger picture having a longer time Horizon before you can,
evaluate whether your current course is succeeding or failing.

[31:49] Having deeper relationships with the people around you really empathizing with them and,
understanding what makes them tick whether they’re your users or are your co-workers or your direct reports so that it’s probably the biggest theme is that mindset shift and I think earlier want to talk about my mistakes know those kind of all stemmed,
from various failures to like fully do that mindset shift obviously it’s not like a light switch no new,
the new manager is going to get it all right away,
and so does bumps in the road we’re sort of them that the various switches of that mindset shift not yet being switched.

Host:
[32:30] Yeah.
So you know that kind of Segways into one of the questions that I was going to ask is so you mentioned this this one article titled the one thing I’ll try to put a link to that to in the sooner but also.
You know I was going to ask what are the top three or the few that stand out for you so that’s obviously clearly one of them in there any other articles.
That are is concise in his broad-reaching or you think are is important in one area and other of leadership that if you would have said hey if your new manager or leader read these three articles to get started.

Guest:
[33:03] LOL that’s another hard one I don’t know if I can limit it that’s great but I’ll give you a few stuff. Me if I if I brought all off too many.
Once called average manager versus great manager it’s by Julie so I’m probably not going to pronounce her last name right back,
she has an amazing medium blog about her journey from Individual contributor to leader and the reason why I usually recommend this one first is it it’s all sketches it’s all visual.
I think humans learned very well with visuals it’s also they’re all so funny and also so humor is also a great way to get a point across and essentially it gives you the visual version of.
The very famous good p.m. bad p.m. article written by Ben Horowitz,
many years ago that I think is still relevant despite what he says about it so it’s a visual version of that but for tech leads.
So that’s a great one.

[34:10] Another another one I think I get soft overlooked is a New York Times article about Google’s Aristotle project.
And this one was super important for me at the time does it open my eyes to the concept of psychological safety,
which is so important for having a high-functioning team and so I think this article is pretty much of the seminal article on psychological safety.

[34:38] For folks who don’t I haven’t heard that term before psychological safety is the feeling that people have when they can come to work and they don’t have to like put on a mask or Stardust,
feel like if they suggest something they’re going to get shot down or have like a ad hominem attack against them personally,
and you know once all that stuff out of the way you know that the idea start flowing the collaboration improves and then the execution of the team,
improves and you really get the best out of everybody when they’re not a constantly expanding that mental energy of young censoring themselves and,
being a different person than they really are because they don’t know what whatever one else is going to think on their stepping on eggshells like all of that is very mentally and emotionally draining and no one can do their best work if they’re like subconsciously in that mode.

[35:32] Radical Candor is another good one I know there’s a book now but I haven’t read it yet I know this came up in a prior podcast so of yours so I won’t go too deep into it.

[35:46] When another one that’s a really good intro one is called a manager’s FAQ by Henry Ward is the CEO of you shares,
the reason I love this one is,
if you’re the type who just wants to know how to be a good manager and you don’t need to spend hours understanding why his recommendations are good you can literally fit into one screenshot.
Pretty much everything you need to do to be a good manager.
And the answers I don’t know I don’t know Henry personally but I would love to meet him after reading this he seems like a great CEO very humble.
Would like a guy who is Alexa long learner you know he says how do I decide what to delegate delegate the work you want to do.
This is the one sentence answer.

[36:37] How do I fire Somebody by apologizing for our failures I mean Islands amazing imagine sitting down having the most difficult conversation to manager ever has and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is actually an apology.
I think that’s such an amazing mindset to have about leadership and all of the all of that fits in one screenshot.

Host:
[36:57] Well I know I haven’t actually.
Seen that one yet Sama to look at one right up after this sand and you know maybe print it out and send it out to my team too so that’s it that’s a great one and and I think that’s one of the reasons why and I do this podcast not only.
To help new managers and an existing managers but you know it also help myself grow as well and I think there’s things I learned everyday and back. Whole concept of Life lifelong learning and continual Improvement.
That’s why I’m doing this that’s why.
The audience you don’t gets out of this and it’s well I think the people who are listening of the ones you’re probably share a similar mindset there listening because they actually want to try to improve and you know definitely.
Definitely appreciate that these little tidbits and everything else is there any any last year in a specific items Joe that that you want to call out.

Guest:
[37:46] There’s another one by Rance I don’t want to get too focused on his work there’s one called the new manager death spiral that one.
Came at a good time for me again back to talking about the mindset shift.
I think the subtitle of the article is management isn’t a promotion I might be making that up maybe that was just might take away.
But what if the part the death spiral part is a walk-through at a hypothetical but very reasonable and realistic chain of events that occur in a new manager.
Who thinks that this new management position is your promotion and you know now they’ve got us young strut around the office telling people what to do and how quickly,
the entire thing falls apart and now their team hates them and they’re not getting anything done and at the end so it’s not all doom and gloom sort of presents and alternative story of,
of how that’s how that could have gone much better.

Host:
[38:48] Absolutely well I think you know the whole in a Randon.
And his articles and blogs and and the the slack Channel you know that that that he moderates I think,
he is definitely I would say you know part of the fault leader for software engineering leadership and management I think there is there’s a few individuals that come to mind that that are really just have been out there for a long time and and promoting this and he’s certainly you know one of them.

Guest:
[39:15] Yeah for sure he’s given so much to the community.
I would put Camille for an air in that list as well I’m in the middle of her book that just came out I mean already recommend it not having finished yet I think you mentioned her dad ladders episodes ago.
Bombay yoga she’s another person who was just given so much to the community.

Host:
[39:36] Absolutely absolutely yeah that is that’s definitely another unless I have the book I haven’t I haven’t read it yet myself but it’s definitely I bought it and I would have to find the time.

Guest:
[39:46] Yeah the amazing thing about it is each chapter is broken up into different areas of the orc starting with as an individual contributor,
what can you expect of your manager so as a manager I read that and I say oh well like,
this is how I need to roll if I’m going to be doing my job and this is what my reports are going to be expecting from me and then it’s it sort of goes well quote-unquote like up the org chart to manage area metamanager,
director,
CTO and it covers the Delta between all of those and I think I mention like what got you here won’t get you there that’s her like the running theme is like you know check your ego at the door because you’re about to transition to something that you have no idea,
what you’re about to do and so let me hear it let me like to give you a little blueprint and guide you through it.

Host:
[40:33] Yeah exactly I don’t see people like oh your VP of engineering I want to be that one day I’m like I’m sorry.

[40:40] It’s great I mean I said a little bit but you’re right it’s you really have no idea what you’re getting into every step of that sort of.
You know manager career path in South for engineering and it’s all fulfilling and it’s great I wonder if Joe is anything else.
You know it’s certainly it certainly not easy.

Guest:
[41:01] Yeah for sure it’s fun but not easy.

Host:
[41:04] Yeah so what is the what’s the best way for people to reach you anyone in the audience I’ll put some stuff in the show notes but to call it out now what would be the best way for people to get ahold of you and your writings and everything if they wanted to get in contact with you.

Guest:
[41:18] Twitter at Boston Steamer.

Host:
[41:21] Which is another thing I saw that you’re from Seattle so give me just the last couple minutes here a little bit of the Genesis of your Twitter handle.

Guest:
[41:28] I love the east coast and I love boats.

Host:
[41:33] Okay well I have to talk to you offline cuz I’m huge set of Sailor attic to myself and I I grew up in these go so that I don’t want to bore everyone in the listeners with that but we can we can certainly chat about that off life.

Guest:
[41:45] Maybe we can start a new podcast it’s just for the intersection of people who love the east coast and.

Host:
[41:50] Yeah it actually might have a bigger audience but it’ll definitely be fun well again.
We’ve been listening as a guest today Joe Goldberg I want to thank you very much for taking the time I know everyone’s time is busy appreciate your coming on had a great time, conversation with you episode.
Again thank you very much.

Guest:
[42:13] You’re very welcome Christian this was really fun.

Host:
[42:15] Great have a great day.

Guest:
[42:17] Thanks you too.