Christian McCarrick    

This is simple leadership. Welcome.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Thank you to our sponsor policy room for helping make the internet a safer place by offering identity as a service and supporting this partner. We’re here to learn from New and seasoned technology leaders who all share a passion for improving the craft of technology management. Let’s take a deep dive into management and leadership challenges and best practices specific to Software Engineering and Technology teams. Do you want more engineering management leadership tactics and information? Subscribe at simple leadership.io to receive the latest updates from this podcast. Hi, I’m your host Christian McCarrick. This is the simple leadership podcast. Welcome back. Today’s guests are Tess hatch and Jasmine tested investor at Bessemer Venture Partners primarily focused on frontier tech, specifically commercial space drones and autonomous vehicles. She currently serves as a board member on numerous companies. Previously, she was a Mission Manager at SpaceX where she worked with the government on integrating its payloads with a falcon nine rocket She also worked at the of a startup using 3d printing and CNC machining to democratize access to manufacturing tests earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Stanford. She was passionate about space exploration and imagines a future where we will all travel the space, she hopes to make the trip or self soon, just make is a software engineering leader with over a decade of experience. She’s worked in larger organizations like Amazon and the Naval Research Laboratory, but most of her career has been in the wild world of startups. She’s currently Director of Engineering and zero, and was previously VP of product at call nine. On today’s show, we discuss a range of topics, including what investors wish managers knew more about, and being good ally, and sponsor. Good morning Tess. Good morning, Jess, how are you doing today? 

 

Jess Mink  

Great. Thanks. 

 

Tess Hatch  

Wonderful. 

 

Christian McCarrick  

Excellent. And, you know, I love being able to podcast on location. And today we are recording from the Bessemer Venture Partners office here in San Francisco. So it’s always awesome. And not only are we on location, but we’re with two awesome guests today. So thank you for joining. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. So Tess, let me start with you, as I do with all of my guests, just to give them a little bit of color about who I’m talking with today. Give me a little bit of your story.

 

Tess Hatch  

So my story actually starts way back in middle school. When Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut came and spoke and being so mesmerised and excited by her journey to space on the International Space Station, and wanting to be an astronaut ever since. So from that moment, I studied aerospace engineering undergrad, I got my masters in aeronautics and astronautics engineering. I had various experiences and internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I saw the landing of curiosity on Mars. So awesome, those seven minutes of terror where it had either landed successfully or not, but it took seven minutes for the signal to come back to Earth. The time delay you could hear the mission controls heartbeats and breathing. Well, they weren’t they were holding their breath. And when that first image of the rover’s reflection on the Martian surface, came back to Pasadena, JPL, I have never felt so much adrenaline. Then I spent some time as a Mission Manager at SpaceX integrating satellites with the Falcon nine rocket. And I’m super passionate and love everything about space and rockets and satellites. And I imagine a future where one travels to space with the frequency that we currently travel on an aircraft. And I will be that first person on either a commercial tourist or as a as an astronaut. However, now I’m a venture capitalist. So I usually get asked, how did you go from aerospace engineering to VC, and I focusing in and work on our deep tech roadmap here at Bessemer, which includes commercial space, drones, autonomous vehicles, all those fun science, science fictioneque industries. So my answer is, I’m still very much an aerospace engineer and spend my time researching and learning more about space and drones and autonomous things. But as an investor in the broader ecosystem, rather than an engineer at one of the companies

 

Christian McCarrick  

Sure, you get an interesting view at that point, because instead of being focused on one, you really get to see the breath of what’s happening in the field, the forefront. Which is an interesting point, even though you’re a VC, but part of being a VC is is not only investing, but really empowering and encouraging the industry, that you have such a passion for it.

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely, I think the most important part of my job is knowing the history of the industry. So what catalysts or momentum drivers have really fueled and got the industry to where it is today. All of the players currently working in the industry today. And then being able based off of the historical and current market, what’s next and make predictions about the next catalyst driver to therefore place investments in those companies. So I love the “What’s next”? And where do I think the future of space is going, and then making investments in those companies and working with those teams on space to point out.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Excellent, excellent. Thank you, Tess. Now moving over to Jess, just give me a little bit to our guests about, you know, caveat, a Jess also works at all zero and super happy. She’s part of our leadership team. And also you’re on the on the engineering side. So this is such an awesome sort of conversation to have. Jess—a little bit of your background.

 

Jess Mink  

Sure. So I ran into engineering. Initially, by accident, I was at a science and tech focused High School and I found it fascinating. I love taking the logical approach to real problems in the world, being able to solve them in a way that where they stay solved. I’ve kept that thread of wanting to make change in the world and using tech as a tool to make that change. And as I’ve gone through my career, I’ve realized the biggest leverage is actually working with the people who are building the tech instead of the tech itself. Because if you change the way that people approach problems, and the systems that they’re building, when they think about those problems, that has such an impact, the ripples go out so wide. So that’s what keeps me really engaged and passionate about Engineering Leadership, is the way we can solve problems for people, right? Less like what particular new tech things are coming out.

 

Christian McCarrick  

With that, how did you get into so you got into technology as accidental, which is one of the reasons as we were talking about before this, that, you know, I love asking people about how they got into where they are today, you know, Jess is a senior director, so a senior leader at Auth0, which is, you know, I have to be somewhat biased. You know an awesome, fast growing tech company today. And I do this too, because not everyone in tech, and especially not everyone tech leadership comes from the traditional background, right? And I do this because a lot of my listeners here are thinking, who do I have what it takes to become an engineering leader? Do I have what it takes to start my own company? Right? And, yes, I mean, you do, right? If you believe in yourself, and certainly there’s some things that let’s get the experience, but you don’t have to have the pedigree in order to be successful, right, some of the most successful people out there have not had that. So it’s important to show that to all my listeners, if that’s what you want to do, and your goals to be start your own company, get investment or become engineering leader, VP of engineering or whatnot, at some point the future, go ahead and do it. Right. For those of you who want to become a VP engineering, sometimes I say, I’m sorry, right? It’s kind of a tough thing. Sometimes I want to be going to a back to an icy, but it certainly is challenging role. And I’m so glad that I’m able to do that here at zero. Now Tess, you mentioned you’re talking about frontier tech to right now, define a little bit of that you talked about autonomous vehicles and whatnot, is that is that kind of frontier tech means like, what’s next? You mentioned version 2.0, is that what that means?

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely, I love to actually go back to something you said regarding anyone can be a manager, anyone can create a company and in regards to anyone can create a company. Absolutely. Anyone can find a problem that’s large enough that multiple other people are also facing and come up with the solution. Now from there, the superpower really comes down to hiring the people around you that can supplement and cultivate and grow your idea into a company and therefore fill in either weaknesses of yours or areas where you want to remove various hats and give to other people. So I totally resonate and agree with with that statement.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Yeah. And so let me let me riff on that for a second. So for my listeners out there, and a lot of people are in Engineering Leadership today or an engineer managers, but they do have a dream of starting a company. You mentioned one actionable point, which is I think it was don’t do it alone. Right?

 

Tess Hatch  

Team. It is all about the team. Absolutely.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And if you’re a tech person, right, what would that team look like? Like when you mentioned complimentary? Like, what do you see, as an investor, what are the things you look for, as that makes up that great team, or the points of that?

 

Tess Hatch  

The ideal co founding team is a technical person and a business person, when it just comes down to too. As the team grows really dependent on the industry. So frontier tech is going to be a very different composition than SAS or cloud or consumer enterprise. But ultimately, it comes down to deep expertise, and an understanding of that customer, that market you’re going after, who really understand the problem, really understand the people that are going to be paying for that solution, and then have the ability and skill set to come up with the best solution.

 

Jess Mink  

You don’t need to come from a traditional engineering background to be amazingly effective. I’ve worked with a lot of people who have theater degrees and have come through boot camps. And I’ve seen those engineers bring the skills from those backgrounds to the team and make the whole team much stronger and more productive than if everyone had gone to the same university and brought the same way of approaching problems.

 

Tess Hatch  

I agree when it comes to certain industries, focusing on frontier tech, so space or drones, or I do look for that PhD in autonomous systems or PhD in computer vision into a deep learning algorithm that can do simultaneous location and mapping and yada yada, yada, some acronyms in there.So diverse perspectives being brought in different backgrounds is fascinating to approach the problem. Early on, though, I really do look for very deep, specifically engineering understanding of the problem.

 

Jess Mink  

 That makes sense, I was thinking more of a lot of the SAS type companies I’ve worked for where the deep technical knowledge is there. And it’s about scaling the team and about building the organization to the next level, which often involves a lot of communication skills and emotional intelligence that was lacking in the early team.

 

Tess Hatch  

It’s so important to start from the beginning with culture and cultivating your culture. From those first two people, because every single edition. There’s sometimes a difference between what you want your culture to be and what your culture actually is. And starting with, I always encourage and push companies to define what that is have an offsite or a day where they write down various morals that they agree on, or things that they want their their company to emulate and continually check back in if they’re following that roadmap. 

 

Christian McCarrick  

So that leads to something that becomes very, very important. So early stage company, and the team, most people pull together tends to be their tribe read their circle. And when you talk about culture is so important to set it early. A lot of times that becomes a bit of a homogenous culture, how, as a engineering leader, Jess, and test as a sort of a venture capitalist? How do you guide or coach those early stage companies at what point to start thinking that, you know, what you’re thinking here is going to be a little bit more narrow, because you don’t have kind of a diverse experience or thought, what you want to do to maybe broaden the appeal not only the company, but also set an appropriate culture?

 

Jess Mink  

I push really hard to make sure, especially when you’re setting up your initial leadership structure, right, not necessarily the initial group of cofounders. But the next layer of leadership after that, to be very intentional there. And to think about going outside your inner circle, at least two friends of friends are thinking about who in your circle maybe comes from a different perspective. Because once you have your senior leadership slots filled up, it’s really hard to go back and make sure that that really important team has a wide range of perspectives. 

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely. Starting your company, the easiest thing is to call up all your friends from school or your circle that I probably pretty similar to you. So you need to make it a priority as the founder to first have the founding team have a diverse perspective, have your executive leadership, you have a diverse perspective, having your board have a diverse perspective, what I really love and double click on bringing to the boardroom is a diverse perspective, myself, being the only female in the room and most of the time is a powerful thing. And I really hope that that can trickle down.

 

Jess Mink  

And I think it’s really important to set those people up in up for success, right? Bringing in different voices isn’t enough, right? You also have to give space and listen to people and encourage that different voice, right? Because it’s really easy to accidentally shut down that difference and technically have a wide range of people at the table but only be hearing the majority thoughts.

 

Tess Hatch  

Jess, I resonate so much everyone talks about DNI diversity and inclusion, but I think they’re missing the third piece, which is belonging. So great, you have a diverse perspective, you’ve included this under represented or previously, I like to use the acronym hugs, historically underrepresented groups, so we can call them hugs, fun fact, a member of hugs. But then you need to set them up for success, you need to make them feel like they’re part of the team and support them. Absolutely.

 

Christian McCarrick  

As someone who advises companies and as on boards, is there anything explicitly now that you do in guiding some of these founding members to as they’re building out their executive team to bring this to the table?

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely. One, I talk to all of my CEOs that this is important, it should be a metric that they set and track just like they would their revenue or any other thing, and it’s just as important. Secondly, I personally think being on the Comp Committee is incredibly important regarding making sure that people at each level of whatever their background is, are being paid and are getting the same amount of equity. That’s incredibly important to retain these people. Fortunately, every situation where I have either advised or voice my opinion, actually, it was the entrepreneur voice, and you’re advising me on how important it is for them. So I’ve been delighted with how onboard and how actually everyone really recognizes that this is important. It’s a problem and having a game plan or a roadmap on how to solve it. That’s a lot more difficult. 

 

Christian McCarrick  

Yes, yeah. 

 

Jess Mink  

And one thing I’ve noticed is that if you do the work for inclusion, it often actually builds a better culture for everyone in the company and forces a higher level of organizational maturity, right. Like some of the basic things, I always like to bring in our career ladders and salary bands and explicit ways to get promotions, right, which helps everybody.

 

Tess Hatch  

What’s a career ladder?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, a career ladder is a description of what it means to do each of the levels of a job, so that people know what they need to do to get promoted. And I think they’re one of the most powerful cultural tools we have, because you can actually embed the company’s values, including inclusion in the ladder. So it’s like to be promoted to be a senior engineer, you have to be aware of how much airtime you take and to make sure everyone in the room is getting having their voice be heard, right, you can build that into the job description, which is so powerful.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And to second that, and to expand on that. And the one thing that’s also important from a career ladder standpoint, in engineering, traditionally, it hasn’t been the best path forward for engineers to go get promotions, it was single tracked. So if you are the best engineer, the only way for you to get more money, more stock or more accolades in a company was to be promoted to a manager, right. And a lot of times your best engineers might not make the best managers. So what’s been really popular now, on the engineering fronts is having the dual track career ladders, right? So you have the equivalent of, you know, a director level is the same as a, you know, a staff level sort of engineer at a company or principal level engineer company, depending upon what you do. So that their patient equal, the seniority in the company should have equal the leadership qualities of each should be equal, although one might not be, you know, managing, but they should sphere of influence and, you know, respect that, that matches, so we don’t lose a good engineering gain a bad manager, right? Which happens.

 

Tess Hatch  

It’s awesome, the ability to still vertically integrate, but as an individual contributor, and bring as much to the table as others who are managing people, it’s a different type of skill set, none are better than you guys are just different.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And it helps with retention, right? Because you don’t want to lose your best engineer, because you don’t have a manager position for them. And then, and then the kind of Peter Principle kicks in, you have people who just they’re just they, they get promoted to their excellence, but their excellence is technical, not management. And the other thing that we talked about a lot, which is I think, equally important is giving people the ability to go into, say, a management or leadership career track, and then have them be able to go back, right? And the ability to do that if you go back, it’s not like you failed as a manager, right? You’ve helped out for a year, right? Or someone went on leave for some reason, and you stepped up and you realize, “Hey, I learned a lot of good things doing that”. But now I want to go back to an IC, right? And as a manager, I love managing employees who’ve actually done both because they get it right, they tend to get the challenges more of having seen both sides, right? It gives them an empathy that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, I feel like one of the big differences between a junior engineer and a senior engineer is how much they understand the business and the context that they’re working in. So that they’re able to understand the problems and how that relates to different priorities, which having a stint in management is a good way to do that. But definitely not the only way if that’s not something that’s calling to you.

 

Christian McCarrick  

So one of the things test, as you advise companies, as you look into investing in them, are there any things that you feel it would be important for, you know, managers, or founders of companies to kind of know, walking into it, right? Is there anything that you see as a theme that people tend to, or it’s just all over the board? Like, I wish everyone had these three things, they knew these things before they started a company or as a board. These are the things that you think are important at early stage companies.

 

Tess Hatch  

For a founder that is pitching their company to any venture capitalist, there’s fundamentally four things that I look for. The first is the problem. How large is that problem usually measured as a total addressable market? The second is the solution. What is unique about what they’ve come up with that solves the problem? The third is, who cares about the problem? So the customers and how much are they going to pay for the solution. And the fourth is them the team, what’s unique about them, that they can one, or the best to solve the problem, and then to really understand the solution. And those customers. And that fourth one is, is by all means be most important, it’s the team, it’s really you venture out, start really investing in people at an early stage, even throughout the lifetime of the company, it’s if it’s the right person and team at the head of the company is going to steer the ship in the right direction and be able to build the organization necessary to solve that. So one, two, and three really come down to four, it’s a problem solution and customers is all dependent on that team and and how they articulate that how they think through things, etc.

 

Christian McCarrick  

So what what do you think now, once they’ve kind of maybe you’ve made the investment now? And what are the important things as they’re growing and scaling the business that you think it’s important that they should keep their eye on?

 

Tess Hatch  

Product market fit for an early company, is the most important thing.Who is your customer? and continually having those customer interviews talking to those people, some red flag? Or is is I’m going to build this because I know that’s what they’re going to want know, talk to them, ask them what they want, build exactly what they want. Is this detail, do you want it red or blue and ask I just think continually having the customer in the loop, knowing who that person or entity is and what they want, especially at an early stage and continually talking through that. Once you have product market fed, the other things will will fall into place.

 

Christian McCarrick  

I think that’s a great point. And especially if you get some technical founders, a lot of cases, we know what the customer wants, or I think I know best right? And really getting that product market fit is is so important. And not just I think to start, right, because I think the challenge as companies scale is to make sure right, maybe you’ve crossed that chasm, right? And you have that initial product market fit. But then what’s next, right and not falling into that the laurels of Well, this was our one product, and how do you evolve?

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely, you need to continually iterate. And there’s such thing as a product roadmap where you’re going to have a whole lot more in your future of their either versions of the product iterations that expansions, and continually knowing your market, knowing who you’re selling to and what else they want next. Absolutely.

 

Christian McCarrick  

So I think you know, Jess, I think this is important thing, too. When managing teams and engineers who sometimes get dis maybe distracted with the shiny, cool, technical thing, right, but as an engineering leader, how do you find is the best way to bring engineers and engineering leaders and other managers into that product? market fit conversation? Right? It’s a little bit of the why, right? How do you help them explain the why of what they’re building?

 

Unknown Speaker  

Yeah, I thread the way through everything. When I’m working with engineers. It’s one of the pillars of the career map, right, that we just talked about. It’s also something I talk about in one on ones and I coach people in. I ask engineers to go along on customer interviews and talk to customers, as well as customer facing people inside the company, like sales and support. Support is often a goldmine of information that’s ignored, as well as sales engineers. Right? Those are two huge sources of information. And then I also talked to the engineers a lot in terms of the problems I want them to solve and the impact I’m looking for, instead of the feature I want implemented. So once they’ve implemented it, I actually asked engineers to demo what they built. And as part of the demo, tell the story is that how this solves problems for people in the wider world. And then when we go back and collect those metrics, we can prove it was right or that we missed and then have another iteration at fixing it, or letting it go.

 

Unknown Speaker  

I mean, I think that’s another thing that a lot of engineers sometimes get very attached to things they’ve spent some time on, they tied into their personality and where they are. And I think it’s important to understand that if the product market fit is shifting, or the customer base is shifting or evolving, that it’s important to iterate quickly, right, but be able to also look to see, this is working, let’s focus more on this. This is really not working. It’s okay to let things go. Right. It’s okay to not chase that good money after bad,

 

Jess Mink  

You know, and that’s a good point, the majority of ideas that seem like they’re good are terrible.

 

Tess Hatch  

So how do you choose? You said customer success or sales, they have this abundance of information, because they’re talking to the customers and customers want everything under the sun and some. So how do you then determine which one is the one that you really should then have your engineers go and solve and then tell their story on how they…?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, so I often when I’m thinking about customer problems, don’t build exactly what the customer asked for, I often look for the problem under all the solutions that have been offered. Because often the user will suggest a bandaid to fix their immediate pain. And if you look at the whole scope of the suggestions, you can see that there is a fundamental missing feature or problem or a workflow that can be shifted. So that’s the first thing I’ll try and look for, is there a deeper solution? And obviously, if I have an idea of a deeper solution, I have to validate that that’s paper prototypes and like, does it work? Or am I just making things up? So the other part of it is, I’ll look at the addressable market you were talking about, right? Like what type of customers are asking for this? Is it a few really loud customers? And if it is, how strategic are they? Because maybe you still want to do it? Or is it like your silent majority is actually feeling this pain really deeply, but not being super loud. And people have picked up on it subtly through solving other bugs, right, and it’s come up inside conversations. So figuring out the percentage of customers and the impact of that customer segment,

 

Christian McCarrick  

And I want to pivot a little bit back to something you said Tess, and as we’re going through engineers, engineering leaders, CEOs of companies, I think there’s been a resurgence to, or at least a spotlight on the importance of good leadership in companies, right? Not just we’re going to throw a couple of engineers at it, we’re going to build something but the concept of building strong cultures, as you mentioned, and building strong teams and healthy teams is important. How often do you recommend to new CEOs and new exec teams to get executive coaching? and and you know, help to guide them through the softer side of the business goes

 

Tess Hatch  

All the time. Back to the question you asked earlier about, what are some of the important things that you sit down that first board meeting, you make sure you have product market fit on a company stage, but I highly encourage each of my CEOs to a few things. One, work with an executive coach. Two, be part of a CEO group. So being up there, it’s it’s a very difficult and lonely job. And you’d be surprised how many CEOs feel the exact same way. While you could be working on totally different companies in different industries, you can relate to one another. So being a part of a CEO group, and you can talk through various team dynamic challenges, or how do you price this or how to fire someone and these things with your peers is so incredibly important. So absolutely, I think those are the skills are hard, and working with a coach or other people that are going through that with you, you can gain so much.

 

Jess Mink  

And you really don’t need to wait till you’re at the CEO level to build that network of peers to right at the exact level, it’s super important, because you’re the only person in that job in your company, right? It’s also really lonely. And then you can start getting used to that at the manager or even senior ice level, because that’ll bring you different perspectives from different companies. And then you’ll have different insights to bring to your company, which will add value.

 

Tess Hatch  

Riffing off of that, you don’t have to be a CEO to have what I like to call a professional board of advisors. Every single person should have in their career, three to six people that you go to for various things. And I also think it’s important, I have a matrix where I list who those people are, and sometimes they change throughout your life. So I list who I have that I can think of, and their genders, their age, their marital status, their radars, to make sure that the people that I’m going to our first diverse themselves, and are helpful for different things. So I have on that some of my engineering professors from my graduate degree at Stanford, I have venture capitalists who are very high partners at their firm and are now retired. I have people from internships decades ago that have known me for a really long time. So this professional board of advisors you can have, wherever you are and whoever you are at your company. But it’s so important to have a group of people that you can go to for these either career or life decisions to chat with.

 

Jess Mink  

Absolutely. And one thing I found really useful when I’m thinking about roles I haven’t been in yet, is to go into the different slacks and online forums. And you can join them for roles you’re not in yet. And you can watch the chatter, the pure chatter of people who are in those roles and what types of problems they’re wrestling with, which lets you walk into that role, eventually much more prepared, because you know, what the common problems are and what the common solutions are, even if you’ve never done it before.

 

Christian McCarrick  

So some of the takeaways, I think, for this for, for the listeners here, having a coach, I think at all levels, whether it’s maybe not an executive CEO, but getting some coaching, some mentoring, super important, I think it’ll help in your career. What was the terminology again?

 

Tess Hatch  

Professional board of advisors.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Thanks, Tess. Yeah, I think that’s such an awesome thing. But sometimes technology, people tend to do too much ia focus on having that maybe in just technology. And although there are some very specifics to technology and technology leadership, running a company scaling teams, there’s so many similarities outside of technology, right? So for my listeners, really reach beyond your circle that you might have that might be very limited, to your point actually be very explicit about who I’m looking for. There’s a big gap here, I don’t have anyone from a large company, I don’t have anyone from this diverse background, and making sure that you’re very explicit about that. So I think those are really important things.

 

Tess Hatch  

Being explicit. These people know they are on my professional board of advisors, I explicitly asked them, there is nothing wrong with asking, Hey, will you be my mentor? Can I go to you when first? I’ve never heard someone say no, it’s nice. It’s flattering, it says, but sad. Secondly, I also offer how I can be helpful in return. It can be literally as small as remembering when their birthday is sending them a card. Or dog sitting their dog to “Hey, I can help you with providing deal sourcing for your company” when I was a student or “providing you updates with how the space industry is going”. But no explicitly asking, “Will you be my mentor?”.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And the peer groups are very important to as you grow, I think this is what happens when you come from an from an icy individual contributor engineering, that’s your first and you go into management, I think that’s your first taste of what’s a little lonelier, because now you’ve had some former peers, and maybe they distance them from you a little bit or you feel like you can’t talk to them about everything like they used to. And then as you go up, and even for as you go up the ladder, and as VP of engineering, who typically now reports into the CEO, a lot of times the CEO also isn’t technical, right? So you have that same concept. Well, it’s lonely, you have a peer group. But there are certain technology challenges that I think it’s also important for each level at that stage to have a sort of peer group that they can go to, to talk about, you know, I have one and it’s it’s the best thing. It’s also one of the reasons why I started this podcast, because I get to talk to people like joke, it’s my sort of therapy session where I get to also see that while I’m not the only one going through the struggles, and everyone seems to be going through this and it makes it takes that weight off your shoulder when you know you’re not the only one.

 

Jess Mink  

Being explicit about that peer group can let you get closer to people you admire, right? If you say, “I have a monthly breakfast, I would be really honored, if you would like to be a part of it, I think you could get a lot of value from here’s the other people in it”. So it’s a way to move an acquaintance that you met at a meetup closer into someone that you can really get advice from.

 

Tess Hatch  

You said, the peer group feels like a therapy session. And sometimes a therapist is really helpful in the mix as well. And I think that’s very undervalued. And sometimes I not spoken of in this industry or life. But I think that is so important.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Yeah, mental health is a huge thing that doesn’t get talked about enough. I think that’s a whole other episode. Right, which I’d love to have a conversation about. It’s kind of near and dear to my heart to without going too deep into it because of Auth0 is a predominantly remote company too. And there are other challenges that people face. And I’ve talked with with other leaders of other remote first companies, where being remote you there’s some challenges of being lonely and how you compensate for that. Love to chat about that another time too. One of the things I want to I want to talk about to as well is we mentioned it early in the beginning, diversity inclusive it right, what are as a VC, one of the things that you talked about was, it should be tracked as a metric. Okay, so clearly, how do you start tracking what you have currently, right? Because you can’t look to see what you have? Is it a problem? Is that not a problem? How do you work to improve unless you have some data? What are the important things metrics, you think you should track?

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely. Coming into a company, you can easily aggregate the data of the company’s current team. And once you level set where you’re at where you want to be. So first deciding 50/50 male/female, let’s use that example. And then setting a goal for achieving 50/50 male/female in a year in two years and three years. Of course, this is all dependent on the denominator, how many people you start with and how many people you want to grow to. Now once you set that goal, step two is achieving that. So people will apply to your jobs either listed on the website, or the recruiters that you’re reaching out to. And if you eliminate bias within the interview process. So if you’re having 50/50, male female applying to the position of in the first place, if you’re eliminating bias throughout the steps, you will ultimately achieve your goal. So an example of this is the violinist auditions, where they pulled a curtain and actually asked the male and female violinist to take off their shoes before walking across the stage before their audition where the judges cannot see who was actually playing. And before this situation, historically, males would always be the first or second seat when the study was performed, and they couldn’t hear the clicking of the females heels walking across the stage, it became a lot more equal. So setting the goal and then a limiting bias within the interview process or selecting who that person is, is the two steps that I would recommend. 

 

Jess Mink  

And I’ve noticed in engineering sourcing, you’re not going to get equal representation just from posting something on Stack Overflow or your company website. There’s gender differences and racial differences in how people look for jobs, right, there’s a lot more working through networks and making sure things are safe, if you’re a member of an underrepresented group, because you’re not necessarily able to take as many risks or the cost of taking the risks is higher. And I also wanted to talk about how bias in the interview process can be a lot more subtle than knowing who it is you’re interviewing. It can also be structural things like how much time it takes to do the interview, or what times of day you’re hoping people will be available. So there’s a lot of different factors to consider. 

 

Tess Hatch  

Tell me more about that the time of day of the interview?

 

Jess Mink  

Yes. So if you try and schedule something for when someone might have childcare duties, or if someone has another job, right? Like it’s a privilege to be able to quit your job, and then job search as your job versus having to Job Search while you’re in a job right, which will be more limiting. So structuring your interview process so people can be available when they’re when they are available, because you don’t know what the constraints on their life are.

 

Christian McCarrick  

you yesterday about sourcing. So what are the other ways that engineering managers and leaders can help to look for to increase the funnel of attracting some more underrepresented groups and a talent in that pool?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, this is one of the things where you get a virtuous cycle. Because the more people from underrepresented groups you have in your company, the more people will apply, because there is a big whisper net and people do a lot of back channel validation. If you’re trying to start that up, you’re going to have to put in way more effort. There’s a great website called hire more women in tech. And I really caution against focusing only on gender initially, because it’s so easy for DNI to be white women feminism, right, you really need to focus on many different underrepresented groups at once, initially. The website has some really great thoughts to counter that people might have in their head, as well as some really tactical things to try. There’s also different jobs boards that focus on different groups. Again, and if you can plug into different professional networks that are targeting different groups, that’s a way to get the job descriptions out there.

 

Tess Hatch  

There’s so many different types of diversity, there’s I like to use the analogy of an iceberg. Only 20% of an iceberg is actually above the surface. So things you can see. What gender you are, the color of your skin, how tall you are, etc. 80% of the iceberg, which is all diversity is maybe you were the first one in your family to go to college, maybe you were the first one your family to be born here. Your socioeconomic status, how you were raised, you nurture all of these other things are our diversity as well, which absolutely, you should, just like you said, a KPI or a metric to have 50/50 male/female, you should set these metrics for race, ethnicity, and other under the iceberg things that you can’t see as easily but classifies diversity.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And I think one of the things that’s important to look for as well is that you want to make sure that you have equitable distribution at the levels in your organization for members of underrepresented groups. Right. So having a high level, but they’re all the most junior, you know, you also want to make sure you put members of underrepresented groups and support them get growing into senior roles and organizations as well. Right. So how do you help make sure that you have that balance equal across all the levels of your team?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, absolutely. And obviously hiring senior people, they have more options. So you’re going to have to put more work in. And I think fundamentally, for people to succeed, once you’ve got them in the door, you need to have done the work, right? from basic things to making sure you have a good family leave policy to making sure you have gender neutral bathrooms, so much more complicated things like making sure everyone’s voice is actually heard, making sure credit is given, making sure you have good employee resource groups, so many little things right, actually taking micro aggressions seriously. And if you take that seriously, and you’re out there championing that, then when you have conversations with senior leaders, they’re going to know that like people talk, we’ve all heard stories about different companies, and especially a senior leader is really unlikely to join a company without having done due diligence from some of your current employees.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And I think I want to point something out to that, for engineering managers and leaders of companies that addressing the imbalance that we have today is not incumbent upon the members of the underrepresented groups that you have in an organization. Right? It is, just because you’ve hired someone, they don’t become the token champion for that, right. This is an effort that needs to be led by your entire organization, from the top down at every level and making it a priority.

 

Tess Hatch  

There is a definition called feeling tokenized, where you are now responsible for your entire fill in the blank, where you come from. And it’s absolutely so important to not have that responsibility lie in their shoulders, and then to shine on others, and help spread across that responsibility.

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, relatedly, that work, the work to actually make the workplace more inclusive, which creates better diversity, which creates better business outcomes is usually not recognized or rewarded, and companies. So it’s really important to set up structures that recognize that. And when you’re interviewing people ask them about that work, because it’s probably not on their resume. And it may have been incredibly impactful, really difficult work. That’ll give you a lot of insight into how they approach other problems as well.

 

Christian McCarrick  

And one of the things I’ve heard in the past two is the concept of sponsorship. Right. So how do you recommend and how as an engineering leader would you recommend maybe sponsoring someone that is a member of an underrepresented group that you would like to, you know, see growth throughout a company?

 

Jess Mink  

Yes, so first, I’m going to define sponsorship in case anyone listening doesn’t know what it is. Sponsorship is kind of like mentorship, and that you might be providing advice and you’re invested in someone’s career. The difference is, when you’re sponsoring someone, you’re putting your career and your credibility on the line to give them more opportunities. So giving them speaking slots, nominating them behind closed doors for that new manager position, right? All those little opportunities, you have to push someone’s career forward. And if you don’t think about it consciously, and you’re not explicit about who you sponsor, you’re most likely going to sponsor people who are like you. So it’s really important to think about sponsorship explicitly, and then explicitly choose people who aren’t the majority of the demographic of the team to sponsor.

 

Tess Hatch  

Thank you for defining that. I have not heard of this before. Although I feel very fortunate that I have personally been sponsored by many of my colleagues and partners here at Bessemer. By other people in the venture capital or space industry, where historically, it has been a very similar type of person speaking at Space conferences, and always being now invited and included to provide a different perspective. So I had not heard that before. super interesting. I love that and will now actively I, when you define and put it out there, it’s it’s a lot easier to say, Okay, I can absolutely do that and return the love.

 

Jess Mink  

That’s amazing. Because the more senior the people who are explicitly sponsoring, the larger the impact that’s going to be because those opportunities are so much rare.

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely, you can feel championed, but then you can also really push and feel sponsored.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Great. So and how do you is that something just that? How does that originate? Is it from the sponsee like asking for help? Or is it from maybe a more senior manager actively reaching out or combination of both?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, it can be instigated any way, but the senior person, it really has to believe in the other person. It’s not like a mentorship role where you’re like, yeah, sure, whatever, I’ll mentor you, because you asked, right, you’re putting your career on the line for the other person. So you have to legitimately believe in it. So fundamentally, this decision lies with the senior leader.

 

Tess Hatch  

So if I’m your employee, or you’re my manager, how do I convince you or get you to sponsor me?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, I mean, you hired me. 

 

Tess Hatch  

That’s a lot. Now, I want you to not only manage me, but I want you to now be responsible for my future trajectory.

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah. And I think this really segues neatly into managing up, right. So people talk a lot about managing down. And sometimes people talk about first team, which is the sideways. But managing up is super important, even before you’re in a manager role. And what managing up is, is setting expectations with your manager, asking for what you need, making it really clear where you’re trying to go and doing a reasonable amount of adding visibility to good work, you’ve done AKA bragging.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Which is huge. And at the talk I gave in June last year to lead Dev. It’s one of the things that I don’t think, well, some engineers are very good at bragging. But I think in general, and I had an issue with this myself early in my career, it was important for me to do the work. And that’s really that matter. I just did the work. People should know that. But know, people are busy, right? My manager might have lots of other reports, he has bosses he has to do with companies growing things on fire. And although they might know Yeah, Christians doing good job, but oh, wow, Christian was responsible for XY and Z that helped us do that. And I think also with members of some underrepresented groups, that they’re a little more hesitant to do that. So I think it’s very important to keep a journaling of the things that you do the impact that you had. And it’s okay to like to present that to your boss, right? It’s okay to present that. And to be a little little bit of the PR machine for yourself, right? I think that’s super important.

 

Tess Hatch  

The two things I’m hearing is one, humbly bragging, being able to articulate your accomplishments. But humbly so there’s, there’s a different way of saying I can run really fast, and I can run a mile and under seven minutes versus I run a mile under seven minutes. And the second one is explicitly stating what you want. I want to speak at that conference, I want to be promoted by the end of this year. And for hugs, historically underrepresented groups or minorities, it’s sometimes difficult to for them to verbalize both of these things. So having a medium and which they can write it down and share it is so incredibly important. 

 

Jess Mink  

And I think it’s important as leaders to solicit where people are going in their careers, and what they want to learn in the next month or two, because people may not be used to the idea that their manager can be useful.

 

Christian McCarrick  

That’s a whole nother podcast. Those tests of hypocrisy and everything else, right. The thing that as a manager, that’s it’s so great for me is if I go to my peers and say I want to promote this person. And the answer I get back is, of course, they’re not promoted already, right? So I think as as a manager, and you is your job, right? If they do a good job, and your managers do a good job of doing that internal PR and of letting people know, the impact they’re having, that when promotion time comes, it’s a no brainer, right? People are actually have people outside of the company of your team championing them for what they’re doing and their accolades that they should get.

 

Jess Mink  

Absolutely. And I think this plays in really clearly to why it’s important as a leader to make sure credit is fairly allocated when people because like, there’s a common theme where people will bring up an idea in a meeting, for example, and then someone else will reiterate it later. And the credit will go to them. So it’s really important as a leader to watch for that and shut it down immediately. Because the person standing in the company is really useful, right? It’s useful when you make a promotion case, and it’s useful for helping push their career forward. So it’s up to you to to make sure that that credit is being fairly allocated.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Well, great as a kind of a quick wrap up here. Some of the things I also ask after this really great conversation, I’m super glad we’re able to do this today. And I’ll ask each of you, and one because I’m just an avid reader, right, and I want to continue learning. That’s the other thing I try to tell the people on this podcast is always be learning, right? Because you’re never done. And no matter what it is you, you might learn how to be a better cook or something or in your career, but always learning I think opens up so many more possibilities for your life, but test for you. Anything that you you’ve recommended in the past something you’ve read recently, it could be a book, a podcast, a great blog post,

 

Tess Hatch  

I am a huge podcast fan. So my my favorite is the entrepreneurial thought leader series put on by Stanford, where they have all different types of backgrounds, from from entrepreneurs, to VCs, to executives to etc, and share their their story. And it’s not. We did some things. And now look, I’m a unicorn or a publicly traded company idea. It’s I was living in my car for that month, and couldn’t pay salary to my employees next week. And how I got through it. And it’s, I’m much more of a while I do love the books on here’s the 10 important things to be a good leader or how to negotiate. I learned a lot more from anecdotes. So whether it’s that podcast, whether it’s biographies or autobiographies from successful people, it’s very powerful.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Great. Yeah. Podcasts are awesome, especially for people commute and whatnot. It’s a good medium.

 

Tess Hatch  

Also, shameless plug, I write a comic called Adda ride, which is about a young female who travels to space with her robot assistant ons, and it’s about their adventures on and traveling to the International Space Station. So if you want to check out that, that comic, she has an Instagram and hopefully, eventually and a website. So encouraging young females who are interested in space exploration. 

 

Unknown Speaker  

Cool. Send me the link Tess. I’ll make sure I get on the show notes. I was gonna say the space notes. But you know, maybe that’s appropriate on the show notes. 

 

Tess Hatch  

You got it. 

 

Christian McCarrick  

Excellent. Jess?

 

Jess Mink  

yeah, the resources I keep coming back to again and again and again, especially when I’m working with newer managers. Some of them are the management books like Five Dysfunctions of a team. I don’t know if you knew but there’s a longer version and takes like an hour to read. It’s great. Just buy it. I also point everyone at Laura Hogan’s blog because she’s amazing anything she’s written about, if I read through what she wrote, I’m like, Yes, that just go do that. So those are two resources that I point people at a lot. I’m currently reading Dare to Lead. I’m finding it really challenging and evocative. So throw that one out there too.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Awesome. So I’ll make sure to put all these in the show notes. Simple leadership.io. For my guests, test, what’s the best way to if someone wants to reach out to you about, you know, going deeper on a part of the conversation we had today or just wants to reach out and chat?

 

Tess Hatch  

Absolutely. email me at space(at)bvp.com. Yes, that is my email. Clearly, I’m very passionate about space. So space at Bessemer Venture Partners bvp calm and I’d love to love to chat.

 

Christian McCarrick  

Excellent. Thank you Tess. Jess, for you?

 

Jess Mink  

Yeah, the best way to reach me is probably to tweet me at mink MINKJSJESS. Awesome.

 

Unknown Speaker  

Well, Jess, and Tess. I’ve had an awesome conversation this morning. Thank you very much for hosting at the Bessemer office test. And hopefully we can continue these conversations after this. Thank you very much.

 

Jess Mink  

Thank you, Christian. 

 

Tess Hatch  

Thanks.

 

Unknown Speaker  

Thank you for listening to this episode of the simpler leadership podcast hosted by me Christian McCarrick. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please subscribe. And don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes. Full show notes and additional information can be found on simple leadership.io. If you know someone who would be a great guest for the show, or you want to share your own experiences, please drop me a line. We’ll see you back next week for more technology leadership tips and advice as I interview more top software engineering leaders.