1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Hello, everyone. We are live this morning. I'm very excited for today's guest. That is the wrong thing. Very excited for today's guest. 2 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:25,000 And I think I've said that every day this week. And so that's probably beginning to be like, okay, that's all she says. However, today's guest is someone who I've known has existed in the world and the ecosystem, but I've never had the chance to speak to. 3 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:33,000 And so it's just a serendipitous opportunity. So, Kankis, I'm so excited that you joined us this morning. How are you? 4 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:39,000 Doing fantastic. It's one more day until the release from school, right? 5 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:44,000 Oh, yeah. Mine was yesterday. So I know that all too well. 6 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:53,000 Yeah. All right. So we talked a little bit before the call, which is great to get to know you. Before we dive into all the good sort of techie things, 7 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:03,000 I asked you if there's anything that you're working on lately that's not techie and you pointed to your shirts. So for those both on live stream, they can see it says Minnesota Strike. Anyone on the podcast won't be able to see that. 8 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:05,000 But can you tell us what that is? 9 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:16,000 Yeah, Minnesota Strike is the professional women's and non-binary ultimate Frisbee team from Minnesota. We are, we've been around since 2016, I believe. 10 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:27,000 But I've been with the team. This is my second year as an assistant coach. We travel around the country, play other teams, and we've got tryouts coming up in about a week and a half. 11 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:38,000 So really looking forward to the season starting coming downhill. Yeah, you know, I've coached high school for a decade, but it's really great to pick it up and coach at the elite level. 12 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:45,000 That is so cool. Can I ask if you don't mind? Like, what is sort of your interest or intrigue in that? 13 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:48,000 Like, what do you feel like? How does that fulfill you? 14 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:55,000 Yeah, so coaching for me is the same as like how I manage, which like spoilers for anybody here who's ready to listen to the rest of this thing. 15 00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:07,000 But building, building teams, building cultures and then building careers in obviously in professional ultimate career is sort of in quotation marks because it's not like professional ultimate pays you enough to be a day job. 16 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:21,000 But building, building out our players from the either the practice squad or reserve squad into full participating members of the team, working with our players who are in one role but are seeking a different one. 17 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:29,000 And ultimately, we have the concept of handlers and cutters and O line and D line and players who want to transition between that being able to give them that feedback. 18 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:34,000 And then also making sure that it's a fulfilling season for the fans is really cool. 19 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:45,000 This was a, this is the only few of us I think a little different from managing engineers is I had a player, Tori Gray last year and they were asking about like a really risky throw that they have that's fun. 20 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:51,000 It's like a big arching, like it looks like a home run ball or like a ball in football. 21 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:58,000 And they kept asking me like, well, is it okay that I sent that there because like I could have taken the easy swing and I said, Tori, you're an entertainer. 22 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:12,000 If the crowd is going to go wild, even if it misses, that's what they paid to come see. And like, able to give players who are used to playing so tight and focusing on perfection, the permission to like go ball out. 23 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:21,000 That that's a cool different thing about the professional level that I've never had at high school or obviously there's no equivalent in, you know, in tech. 24 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:22,000 Sure. 25 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:27,000 Wow, that's really cool. Okay, so that was that was fun. You alluded into a little bit of what you do. 26 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,000 What's your job title in and sort of like company or industry right now? 27 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:38,000 Yeah, I'm an engineering manager at Kipsu. I also keep doing the interview thing where I'm opening or I'm answering every question with yeah and jumping so I apologize. 28 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:41,000 I'll try to quell that. 29 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:45,000 But I'm an engineering manager at a company called Kipsu here in the Twin Cities. 30 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:52,000 I oversee three teams. One is our new markets team trying to seize new areas, new verticals. 31 00:03:52,000 --> 00:04:07,000 One is our analytics team so our data and our connections largely with our enterprise enterprise clients and then also our accelerated engineering program which is junior devs brought in sort of finishing school so that they can get moved to full application 32 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:08,000 squads. 33 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:17,000 That is so cool. Wow, what an awesome opportunity. Okay, so Kipsu I'm saying that again for anyone who's listening has that really great program that's cool. 34 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:30,000 All right, well let's dive into the actual interview questions and I'm super excited for this interview because it's going to be a little different than others but honestly really not and I think there's going to be a lot of really great career insights and with the developer listeners that joined the show I think it's going to be great so 35 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:34,000 let's start in what's your official education. 36 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:48,000 So I have a bachelor's in archaeology and literature from Bulloit College and a master's in cultural inquiry from the University of Birmingham in the UK. Obviously then I went into some. 37 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:59,000 Oh my god. Okay, so not to derail too much but what did you want to like what was your original plan was sort of that degree and where you want to go professional academic I was on a professorial track. 38 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:10,000 And you know I graduated from Bulloit in 2007 and graduated from Birmingham in 2008. That's not special. Masters are only a year in the UK. 39 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:25,000 But that was the 2008 financial crisis and so getting funding for your PhD was really hard I often make the joke that the smartest thing I ever did was being too stupid to get funded from my PhD because 40 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:41,000 like I would have been an adjunct professor hell like now to this day I would have still been there like I am not a big enough mind where I would have moved to the world on research and gotten like truly elite job I would have been piecing together like so many of my friends in the in academia are doing 41 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:51,000 piecing together roles across multiple colleges, community colleges etc to just like make ends meet like that so again I'm very grateful that my dream didn't work out there. 42 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:57,000 Yeah, well that sounds stressful. Honestly, I do not envy them that way. 43 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:09,000 Yeah, I have this passion for educators like they're the basis of everything that we're capable of doing and it really just is such a bummer that they don't, in my opinion, receive the compensation and the benefits and the opportunities that they deserve. 44 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:11,000 Oh for sure. 45 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:30,000 All right, so I am excited to hear about what you do in your day to day role and I know you shared a little bit, you know, in your sort of introduction but like we talked about my normal question is just to ask kind of what do you build and what's the stack you build in whether you're a leader leader or not, you know we break that down, and you shared something really 46 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:46,000 really insightful so I would love to hear about your sort of day to day and how that leads into what your quote unquote building, which is still, you're still building amazing things which are also you know building really great teams and I think that's super important so I'd love to hear about that. 47 00:06:46,000 --> 00:07:01,000 Yeah, so keep see stack is PHP, knockout JS and coffee script although that's becoming react. And then we've got type script, Python for data stuff Kotlin for new microservices. 48 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:19,000 So we've got a widespread here and I interact with a lot of it. As far as hands on coding one of the very few, like, things I do where I'm hands to keyboard is, we've got a serverless CDK mono repo in type script type script on the back end type script on the front end type 49 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:34,000 structure, which is really fun. Like, and I know that we're trying to transition into the team question but that actually does transition to the team question. Yeah, one of the reasons that I really made sure that I kind of proved out that like look I can 50 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:49,000 still do this I don't have engineer in my title I always make the joke like I'm not an engineer when I'm in meetings I like wave stuff off, but proving out that like this is approachable I understand what your issues are here's how we create a developer experience as a way of creating culture on a team. 51 00:07:49,000 --> 00:08:04,000 I think that made all of the difference for especially this new markets living environments team that I mentioned, because there's extraordinarily high performing and their full stack, our analytics team is high performing but they're high performing in service, 52 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:20,000 our living environments team is is about application development. And that focus on developer experience I think earning the trust that like I understand what sucks about a long release process I understand what sucks about being subject to dev ops to and again, that 53 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:35,000 is not well but like dev ops as a team they're the first ones to tell you like dev ops is not a team it's a culture. Sure. Yep. But being being subject to other people's control of your ability to do your job is frustrating, and it's a necessary evil in a lot of places, 54 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:50,000 but showing a team that I'm willing to invest and take risks in order to knock that down give them that the tools for autonomy not like, well you get to make your choice in the refining you're like, of course you do. 55 00:08:50,000 --> 00:09:07,000 Being like, we put our money where our mouth is at kipzu and we allowed this team that has to go fast to go fast enough so long as they were meeting certain, you know, NFRs that the company has and and to me that's what started down the path of creating some of these 56 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:22,000 functioning teams here on top of that, what I do is I'm building careers and building culture so I'm helping my engineers find not only what's next but how do they make it so that it's inevitable when I talk to my boss that of course this person needs a promotion. 57 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:28,000 And we can go into any detail and any of the hundred things I just gave you because I like to screw up interviewers that way. 58 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:38,000 I love that and honestly bring it on because I think that these conversations always go in the direction where where the guest takes them and that's what's beautiful about them right is like everyone is unique and has different things they're doing. 59 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:45,000 So you shared with me sort of a three pronged approach and that you were kind of thrown around I'd love to hear more about that and I think so would the so the listeners. 60 00:09:45,000 --> 00:10:00,000 Yeah, so you know I think one thing that I tell anybody that I'm mentoring, whether they work for me or not is that the hardest transition in tech is going from no tech job to your first job like that is always the hardest transition, breaking in having any credibility. 61 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:18,000 It's like actually a little heartbreaking from an equity perspective that even just having a job title from a tech company on your resume turns it from a you know buyers market to a sellers market or everyone to think about it of like that that foot in the door makes all the difference. 62 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:20,000 And that's brutal. 63 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:22,000 So that's the hardest transition. 64 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:27,000 The second hardest transition is moving from senior engineer to a question mark. 65 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:30,000 Oh, yes, I agree with this. 66 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:45,000 Because, first of all, a lot of managers don't know how to develop high performers further in their career they know how to give them technical direction or like technical, you know, craft perfection which could be okay for like a principal engineer track. 67 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:48,000 But that's a lot of managers that's where they stop. 68 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:59,000 What I like to focus on is I think of those three prongs that you mentioned when I'm talking to blend and you know nothing's actually just three but like this is a good heuristic. 69 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:13,000 First is that management track that everybody thinks about but there's plenty of books you know will Larson has staff engineer which is a great, great book for folks who want to like leadership outside the technical track because I actually think or leadership outside the management track is what the title is. 70 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:26,000 But like, so that manager role great if you want to people manage and project manage and I actually have a direct to is very dear to me, and she was talking about like is this all there is to web dev. 71 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:38,000 And it like you've been in this industry for a year and a half what do you mean, and she's like well it's pushing data and displaying it and tweaking the data and then worrying about performance like what's what are the other things that we deal with. 72 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:43,000 Like that's, I mean, it's pretty broad strokes but yeah that's it. 73 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:46,000 Her face just got so drawn and she's like, I know I'm just going to get bored with that. 74 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:49,000 It's like great. That's actually good for me to hear. 75 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:58,000 Yeah, management lets you touch other parts of the business so you start doing different categories of problems. Some of them are annoying, but. 76 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:06,000 So if you need to jump from category to category and you think like business holistically management's a great track. 77 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:12,000 If you really love just people specifically it can be but there's some other stuff in the other two that I can go into. 78 00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:22,000 Because I think the second year wrong is architecture architecture and this could be staff engineer, but this is an or principal engineer but like I think of it as just like mega dev. 79 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:23,000 Got it. Yep. 80 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:39,000 So this is setting standards and examples for teams. This is setting technical direction knocking down those big boulders so teams can break them down and also facilitating growth on your teams from a technical perspective when you have a very non technical manager like me. 81 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:46,000 I rely on my my staff engineer Evan I always talk about him as like a startup architect, because that's what he does. 82 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:54,000 And he's the one who the team relies on for like technical direction and like, oh shit something's happening. 83 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:57,000 Call as in, you know that. 84 00:12:57,000 --> 00:12:58,000 Yep. 85 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:06,000 And so there's that architecture path, which can turn into leadership or can turn into technical direction but it keeps you close to the deliverable to the systems. 86 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:07,000 Yeah. 87 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:20,000 The last one that I talked about, and I don't know why I've been on like a kick about this the past few months but I think a lot of people transition into tech because of the earning potential that again I talked about equity earlier I think there's a lot of people who are trying to 88 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:26,000 cross a generational wealth gap that they have with people who look and sound like me and those people who don't have a lot of trouble with that. 89 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:38,000 A way to really maximize that income can be sales engineering solutions architecture, this idea that you can have a very technical role that is commissioned based and uses social skills as well. 90 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:45,000 In order to go well beyond just like I want to build apps and be subject to the product team or something. 91 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:52,000 This is a way of getting deep with customers having measurable, you know you succeeded because of a commission structure a quota. 92 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:58,000 And like, I hadn't realized there were engineers who would really be driven by that and they've never been exposed to it. 93 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:02,000 They've never learned that like I can have, if I do good enough, I get a bigger check. 94 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:19,000 And like, I am the last person to think that you need a like Ra Ra Kumbaya, everything, but there's a satisfaction for some people in, you know, like me, Google talks about meaning and impact in the Aristotle and the meaning and impact can be I can provide for my family. 95 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:35,000 In the like in the largest way possible, that then allows me to take risks later or from some people I've talked to allows my children to take the risks in their life, because I can be their background so I really just don't want people to ignore the sales engineering 96 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 and so that's my little rant. 97 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:53,000 I love it. And I loved it when we were sort of pre chatting but you shared and expanded even more. And I think what's really interesting and this is sort of a side thing for me is like, I very much have an engineering mind and I'm more in a business 98 00:14:53,000 --> 00:15:03,000 marketing go to market sort of strategic role now, but I'm constantly trying to problem solve. And this is this is a personal side thing but my husband and I were watching suits. 99 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:18,000 We had we didn't watch it when it first came out we like binged it later and so it was not that long ago. And I was like gosh some days I was like I kind of wish I would have been an attorney, because it's so black and white you won the case or you lost the case and I am a what is like a called a motivational 100 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:27,000 dimension of an achiever and so I do things to win. I want to reach that end result and I want to get everyone there and like make sure that that achievement is done and I was like gosh wow. 101 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:37,000 The attorney thing was so appealing but then when when you just explain solutions architecture, which to me also is very much like developer relations to without the commission and maybe some other sort of, you know, being more 102 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:50,000 community driven right that it's like wow actually there really is something in the developer sort of in technical space where you're like an attorney right you either like get that commission or you don't or you solve that problem or you don't 103 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:59,000 where I feel like as engineers like yes we get that achievement, as long as we've got our tickets appropriately built and we're considering looking at those things in that way. 104 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:12,000 But it's like you do one and you move on to the next one and you don't necessarily always get to sort of celebrate and really absorb the fact that like, oh hey, I won that case or I, you know, accomplish that thing so I love how you call that out. 105 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:29,000 Yeah, one of the things that I really have again like I get like language and memes in my head about this stuff, but I talk about alignment with teams all the time alignment and autonomy and alignment is very like every executive thinks that if I just in a meeting say the words 106 00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:45,000 enough that's alignment and like that can be but it's actually about aligning incentives and so for engineers it's can I you know for the like senior and below engineers, it's can I align interesting work. The next thing that you want to grow usually technically with if we 107 00:16:45,000 --> 00:17:04,000 succeed here you will get more of that great so that's one thing for management it's aligning the growth of teams. It's aligning like how does your team perform you get more either people teams scope of influence whatever, but then for that like solutions architect sales engineer, your 108 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:09,000 alignment is business objective is this much revenue got it. 109 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:24,000 I directly affect that. Yeah, right. It's crystal clear. It's very focused. Yeah. All right, interesting. So I have so much more than I like I really want to tap into but what is it and you did allude to this a little bit but I think it'd be it'd be nice to hear about this too 110 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:39,000 especially with the dynamic of your role and and how you're very much focused on the building that like high performing team which I think is you don't always find that right so when you're looking for a leader of a team it's you look for a variety of different things but I don't often see the mention of you 111 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:55,000 managing high performing teams, bringing in high performers and to me that's been sort of an essence of teams that I very much valued and appreciated is when I could like spot and identify that other fellow high performer and be able to really partner up and do great work so I would love to 112 00:17:55,000 --> 00:18:06,000 hear about sort of your day to day. And I think what are some of the maybe the challenges and other things that you work through as you go through your day to day as a manager both technically and non technically. 113 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:19,000 So I think one thing that is the most difficult vis a vis performance on a team is titling and where people came in because you can only really hire somebody based on the interview and references right like it's all. 114 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:34,000 I used this phrase earlier, but it's all heuristics. Yeah, it's what kind of will it be like to work with this person, but like I've got a high performer on one of my analytics teams, whose title looks lower I think maybe then everybody else I don't I don't know but like that the 115 00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:50,000 the titling is not commensurate with the value she's bringing to the company. And so it's about like part of what I have is like, how do I grow her in a way that is giving her the challenge issue wants and the, you know, exposure to new 116 00:18:50,000 --> 00:19:01,000 technologies and keep building her her resume so that I can make the better argument for promotion without feeling like how do I grow and give that opportunity without feeling like I'm exploited. 117 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:14,000 Right, like that's, that's one of the things that's a hard balance is like I want to give more responsibility, but like, can I reward it and so like making sure as I mentioned that I'm getting the the align the alignment on incentives. 118 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:32,000 So like, how do we do, you know, pay decisions, how do we do is are there bonus decisions that can be retitled or reorg whatever that kind of stuff is one of the first things that is difficult as an engineering manager is when somebody isn't a senior or staff level engineer, and you start seeing the 119 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:39,000 rocket ship engine start firing. Well, what do you how do you make sure that that rocket doesn't get pointed at a different company. 120 00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:51,000 And so like that that's the end again the way you do that is by being very transparent and working to understand what the levers that are getting pulled even if you don't have control of them. 121 00:19:51,000 --> 00:20:05,000 Sure. So what are the levers that get pulled for pay title, etc. And then exposing exposing the gap, because generally, I found that executives are, you know, I say executive, my boss and grand boss. 122 00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:22,000 Grand boss. Yeah, like, how do they view risk. And how do I make them understand that this gap is a risk in our ability to continue to deliver customers but like even just keep that engineer right like I don't usually don't have to 123 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:37,000 extract it that far. It's just like this person rules. We've got to miss. How do we align these incentives but keep it equitable so it's not just like the loudest good person gets them. Right. Anyway, and that's that is a very much about just understanding 124 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:49,000 what motivates the people above me, showing them how this treating this person right is going to get the next, you know, the next step for them on the things that they care about most. 125 00:20:49,000 --> 00:21:00,000 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but that's a hard thing to do like executive alignment and and having those coming in your face. For those in the podcast, he made a very, very distinct face of yeah, it sure is. 126 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:03,000 Do you have do you have tricks tips. 127 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:19,000 I mean, this is, it's easy because I'm a white dude in tech so like I tend to look on and sound a lot like the people I'm talking to so I get the trust is sort of like two steps, two steps easier for me. But yeah, like my tips and tricks are finding out in 128 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:34,000 conversation. What, like what is the thing that is causing my boss and my grand boss, heartburn. What like, if they're stressed, go have a fact finding mission. This is true even if you're talking to I'm your manager, talking to me about it if you notice I'm 129 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:48,000 stressed. Yeah, be curious about that because though I mean if it's life stuff like cool be a human and like be an ear. But like if it's work stuff because it usually will be like take note of if there are recurring times that that heartburn 130 00:21:48,000 --> 00:22:07,000 happens for them because aligning what you want this is very manipulative but it's also real aligning what you're trying to get out of your team or yourself, or for yourself with a solution to that heartburn is going to not only like 131 00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:27,000 endear you to them but it's going to show a contextual awareness that is a level beyond take ticket to ticket that is going to make you stand out. So to me, it is about tapping into sort of what are the hot hot points the hot zones and finding where you can align 132 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:33,000 something you want with solving that. Because if you don't, you're just sort of hoping for good will. 133 00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:51,000 I agree. I think that's that's actually really really I mean that's great advice. Honestly, like watching their stress levels I think that's really smart because there's there's always something to that right and I never thought about it like that. The way that I approach it is I whenever I'm I ensure that I have my you know one on 134 00:22:51,000 --> 00:23:04,000 one time that I can check in with those types of leaders and I always ask their ruthless priorities what are the things that they're good ruthlessly focused on, which is great but sometimes if you don't have that relationship with that leader they won't speak to the negative 135 00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:16,000 sides of it they'll just tell you where they're going and not necessarily tell you why they're stressed. And so I think maybe two pronged approach right of thinking about where where do they want to go, but also what is that heartburn and why is it there I think that's 136 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:22,000 well and so the way you can also kind of and this is to answer maybe answer a question you haven't asked yet. 137 00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:32,000 But and it's like how do you get a promotion but it this is actually relevant to how you can feel out where you can be most useful is I talk about succession planning with every member of my team. 138 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:48,000 That's amazing. Usually if they're more junior doesn't come up for almost a year but sure you need to start succession planning for yourself in order to make it an inevitability that you're going to be promoted not not out of like protect the organization hey I love my company, but I don't 139 00:23:48,000 --> 00:24:01,000 expect everyone to right like yeah, yes, I will go way above and beyond for kids because I believe in what we do but like I've also worked for like a financial institution that was making PDF forms that pushed out for that I didn't care that much about that one. 140 00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:14,000 But but like doing that succession planning for yourself. First of all, teaches you how to teach gives you all that mentorship stuff that everybody's like, I want to mentor people you make sure you're not the only one who knows how to do anything. 141 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:22,000 But if you're doing that succession planning and you can demonstrate that when you bring that information to your boss about as something you are actively doing. 142 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:33,000 At the very least you put into their head. This person is thinking about the future and also damn how am I succession planning. I just had that thought myself so absolutely. 143 00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:44,000 And that that can get you brought in behind the curtain I've got a guy Doug on my analytics team who effectively is always just like, how are you doing that what's that meeting about what like how do you make this decision. 144 00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:48,000 And it's really good for him to remind me that I need to get those skills down into my team. 145 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:52,000 Yes, yes, that's good to you. 146 00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:57,000 You know the other piece that sort of brings that up and maybe you have tips here too is, you know, succession planning. 147 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:07,000 To me sounds a lot like sort of taking hold of your personal, you know, career and just having that those goals and those aspirations and really working towards what you want to work towards. 148 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:11,000 Is that accurate. That's what I'm getting out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 149 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:27,000 So on top of that, it to me it seems like a bit in piece of that is like how can that play into the business right and so I think that's that's like the beautiful synergy of what you're sharing here is like that succession planning can align so much to these this is the type of work I want maybe the web dev that you talked about that's like, 150 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:34,000 Okay, is this it. Okay, well clearly that person needs more right like what how can you deliver that and then they can be self aware. 151 00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:42,000 And then like you said get more involved in the business so I think those two are just so beautiful together when you think about that succession planning and understanding the business. 152 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:56,000 It also is something that even non technical leaders so you think COOC, you know, even like CIO and some companies were like they kind of know tech stuff but like it's it's kind of like a wider ownership level, like talking about succession planning. 153 00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:00,000 Yeah, is something that shows that you know, like you're speaking their language. 154 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:17,000 Oh, yes, that's a problem in all spheres everywhere always forever I worked in emergency medicine for six years. And one of the biggest conversations that was coming up was like how are we succession planning for paramedic educators, because everybody is, and they, I am not speaking 155 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:33,000 like I was outside of school for the record this is literally what BMS talks about is we're all overweight, we all smoke and we all try to out drink each other. And so it's like, old people in their 60s and 70s, who have lived that life, teaching the next generation and not teaching 156 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:49,000 the next generation, they don't succession plan. And so it like there was a almost a crisis in the mid teens here 20 teens, talking about that about like, how, what happens when you know Jeffy at Invergrave Heights, retires, who teaches those classes. 157 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,000 Oh, wow. That's a huge gap in a problem. 158 00:26:52,000 --> 00:27:03,000 And it's true in business like CEOs have to think about like, can I retire? Well, my COO doesn't have the vision. Can I teach them vision? Do I get you know, and it goes all the way down the chain. Yep. 159 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:18,000 You know, I've got that staff engineer Evan. All right, well, he's looking to like how can I take multiple teams this team needs you. So until you get a couple of engineers to do what you do, and to understand what you're doing, you can't move to the next role. 160 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:28,000 Yep. But if it's if it's simple and they all do it already, it's going to be obviously our Evan's a lot of horsepower for a team that doesn't need all of it. Let's make sure we're using him across multiple. 161 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:34,000 Anyway, it's trying to trying to get those conversations, they really speak across domains. 162 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:46,000 Yeah. And there's a lot of self awareness in that right where like sometimes there's hard to be frank, sometimes it's hard to manage developers because they're very pained in their very their strong personalities are smart, right. 163 00:27:46,000 --> 00:28:06,000 But if you can allow them to sort of be self aware of their own sort of existence and the role that they play and how important that they are, while also aligning that to their succession plan right like yeah you might want to shift teams but you also wanted to serve this purpose and to lead these types of people and to show that level of leadership in your engineering role right 164 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:17,000 so it's like no this is beautiful you wanted this help this team and you've accomplished this ladder on your succession plan and then you know we can shift you over to your next challenge essentially so I really love this. 165 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,000 Do you have resources or blog posts or content or anything that you write. 166 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:28,000 I have a an often neglected blog but I have to do it milky wayfarers.com. 167 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:29,000 It's adorable. I love that. 168 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:43,000 Yeah, it's named after. It's a meme with the company that I got laid off from don't worry about it. But yeah, but I do write about experimental cult like cultures that experiment. 169 00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:55,000 And I've got a series of blogs that actually I need to finish up about how to consciously create team culture how to build a team like to a to a mission to an alignment. 170 00:28:55,000 --> 00:29:04,000 So that's yeah so that that's really all I've got I have the succession planning thing is just because I'm old and I've been a lot of industries that have had problems with it. 171 00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,000 But yeah I think it's it. 172 00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,000 Yeah tech has problems with it. 173 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:15,000 Again I just I think it's a universal problem that's why it speaks to the CEO here's you care about this you're lying dead it's like hold on. 174 00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,000 She knows what she knows what's up. 175 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,000 Yeah, that's that's the kind of thing you're always looking for. 176 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:27,000 Yeah, I agree. Well, I would encourage you I personally would love to see it but I would strongly encourage you to create something if you're open to it. 177 00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:35,000 If you have a template or even just a sort of framework or anything because I do really think that a lot of people can benefit from this concept and like I kind of made the side comment. 178 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:49,000 Tech does have this problem like we just have grown so quickly and the leadership and the HR infrastructure is just not good in in tech and I've been in other industries and you know some of us have been worked in in bigger corporate right I worked at General Mills in Minneapolis 179 00:29:49,000 --> 00:30:03,000 and I think that's like a completely tech but a non tech company and you get to see good HR and good you know succession planning and good career tracks and ladders that are crystal clear and make sense and they might have know you because they're corporate but at least you know how and where it go. 180 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:10,000 And so I think you know I'm ranting now and rambling but I think the world could use your succession planning insights as well. 181 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:14,000 Okay, well, I will do it again hopefully this is a start for some people. 182 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:24,000 Yeah, absolutely. Maybe there's a whole conversation we can start from all of this everyone can start submitting their own sort of it's like hopes and dreams right what are your devs hopes and dreams and how do you create that into a career plan. 183 00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:37,000 Okay, so I've got kind of one more major question that we can kind of just see where that takes us and we're at nearing time here but this is a question I love to ask for developers but also for people who are building tools and building products that developers might want to use. 184 00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:52,000 It's just insightful to understand where do devs go how do they think through this process so even though you're not necessarily writing a ton of code in your day to day you're still solving challenges and you're also helping people solve those challenges so when someone is on your team or when you're personally stuck or you're 185 00:30:52,000 --> 00:31:03,000 looking to expand and obtain new tools or resources or bring in a something that solves the challenge. What's sort of your hierarchy of steps and what do you where do you go and how do you go about that. 186 00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:13,000 The first thing I actually want to call it is I had to do this with one of my most junior devs like 21 years old two months not only like four months out of college two months out of their parents house kind of thing. 187 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:21,000 Yeah, right yeah you're just like learning to be an employee like to live in the world. 188 00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:39,000 But one of the things that he mentioned is he's like using chat GPT and clog for various things right like using LLMs and I think that that is great as you become more senior. I would urge and I do urge my more junior engineers to avoid relying too heavily on LLMs to start. 189 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:52,000 Not it's not because I think that they're going to poison the well or give you wrong and you can figure out if it's going to run or not like I'm not actually that worried about that. What I'm worried about is not understanding a categorical way of thinking through questions. 190 00:31:52,000 --> 00:32:07,000 Yes, sourcing the way you conceive of a problem. You are you are now subject to the model as opposed to using the model for yourself. So early in your career struggle bus get a literal physical rubber duck and talk to it in a room. 191 00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:22,000 I'm not kidding like that is the biggest piece of advice I have for young devs is you are not thinking about your code the way you think you are because you were hot shit in college or you've made some fun stuff. 192 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:33,000 But what you're doing is writing code for other people and not not just a machine usually most of us don't work and stuff we're writing though like most the millisecond better performance on a machine matters even a little bit. 193 00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:40,000 Like it's crud operations in a front end. It's again it's what my what Lisa asked is this it. Yeah. 194 00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:50,000 And so like learning how to talk yourself through your code from different perspectives. Okay if I'm talking to Genghis and my title on Slack is usually an actual stupid person. 195 00:32:50,000 --> 00:33:00,000 If you're talking to Genghis about your code how would you do this great now if you're talking to Evan the elite level staff engineer I have how you talk to him about this code and do it multiple times. 196 00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:15,000 Don't just walk through your code say it's doing this explain what what the function is doing explain where this method is explain why you're transforming data or why you don't have to cast a type in a dynamic language right explain those two stupid Genghis. 197 00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:20,000 And then explain it to Evan right and anyone in between. 198 00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:36,000 So like I know that this is not exactly what you were asking but I think you know this is great to not find external tools but to get better with the tool you already have and then once you once you kind of know how to do that and you have a good a good ability to see from multiple 199 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:37,000 lenses. 200 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:38,000 Now hell yes. 201 00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:42,000 I yell at one of my other like a 25 year old devil that I have not old or anything. 202 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:54,000 Why aren't you just more years at JPT. Why aren't you why aren't you asking an LLM when you got stuck here because like your team wasn't able to help you you did the fractal image thing couldn't find it now go now go check the tool. 203 00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:55,000 Yeah. 204 00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:56,000 Yep. 205 00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:09,000 That that to me is like the difference is like you need to master the question asking not prompt writing. It's not like it's a discrete tool but like the brain shift around how am I thinking of the problem and then use those tools. 206 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:17,000 I think that's the most important lesson people can take of like the current form of how you're going to build your career and skills as an engineer. 207 00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:29,000 I love that so much. There was a post the other day that someone had said what do you think. I don't remember the framing of the question but they essentially were asking what do you think is going to be who's going to get catapulted by the by cursor by bolt by 208 00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:40,000 AI by all these different sort of tools right and I actually really sat down and I thought about it and I was like junior devs are not going to get catapulted by it and they might think that they are and they might suddenly be able to build something but then as soon as that 209 00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:47,000 breaks are going to be like oh crap I don't actually know how I built this and so I don't know how to go troubleshoot it and fix it. Yes. Yes. 210 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:52,000 For those in the podcast very big arm gestures around yes absolutely. 211 00:34:52,000 --> 00:35:03,000 Obviously agree. So where I landed is I felt that it was actually going to accelerate middle level that that 25 year old that you said right because they've got the systems they've got the foundation. 212 00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:15,000 You know they haven't been utilizing it to get through that base they understand systems they can troubleshoot and solve problems but in the mid level you just haven't been able to solve the even bigger challenges but your rudimentary skills are there. 213 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:25,000 So I felt that was the case. I never actually went back to see what the other responses were but I'm curious like if you agree or if you think even maybe later maybe senior. I'm not sure but I'm I'm feeling mid level. 214 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:43,000 I definitely feel like seniors benefit from it seniors and stuff because they're past that point but yeah it is that mid level where it's like what weird seem syntactical sugar or there's a you know it's actually less of a thing these days I'm old enough that the idea that 215 00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:49,000 programming languages are effectively patching themselves as quickly as they do is wild to me. 216 00:35:49,000 --> 00:36:02,000 But like peculiarities of a specific part of like way Python to work. Well it's it's a bug but we've kind of used it as a feature or like we're leveraging it now that you know just like that happened all the time back in the day. 217 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:17,000 And like that still exists. It's just you know they tend to it tends to not be more conscious because we can so rapidly iterate. But like I do think that getting past the to the point of like the annoyances of a language and a solution are in your bones. 218 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:24,000 The way they are for that 14 years staff engineers is like oh shit OK we're working in this part of the code base hold on. 219 00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:36,000 I'm going to need to consider this queue or whatever you know I'm just making shit up but yeah so like that 25 year old. It's not that they don't have the potential skills to get there it's that like I would like to offload the trauma to chat GPT. 220 00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,000 Yes. Yes. Yes. That was my thought to. 221 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:43,000 And then everything else is still skills you have to develop in yourself. 222 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,000 Yes. Yep. I agree. 223 00:36:45,000 --> 00:37:01,000 Wow this has been so great. I am so bummed that we didn't get to hang out when I did live in Minneapolis. We very much think a lot alike. Amy spoke so so highly of you. And so I always was like whoever this gangist person is he is way up here and she did not. 224 00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,000 Actual stupid person. Actual stupid person. Don't don't let me pull the wool over your eyes. 225 00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:24,000 You are a very humble kind person who really likes to help people succeed honestly. That's really clear to me. And honestly like if I am Kipsu very lucky to have you but I'm sure that there are many people that would love to have someone like you on their team. 226 00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:44,000 You know people like you and like Mike was on the show a few days ago for anyone who wants a very similar interview with a really similar awesome human. I'm just so appreciative in the tech industry for people like you because not only are you you know building beautiful teams and changing and rippling the sort of toxic dynamics that 227 00:37:44,000 --> 00:38:02,000 we are missing in that executive and HR and some of that stuff that we just aren't doing so well but you are also really helping provide the diversity to technology. Both of you have you know made numerous comments passively and in pre shows around supporting others who are not like you and I think that that is just such a beautiful and important thing. 228 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:14,000 So anyways I'm going to stop ranting about how great you are always take it. Yeah. Where can people find you. Obviously you shared your blog if you want to share that again so folks can make sure that they find that if they didn't catch that commentary. 229 00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:23,000 If anywhere else if they can find you or any parting words you'd like to share. Yeah. I'm on. I mean LinkedIn is the easy one for like work my work my space. 230 00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:36,000 Milky Wayfarers dot com is the blog I'm on Twitter as I think Hawksfire. I'm Genghis I'm blue sky. There's not a lot of ganguses especially not a lot of white dudes named Genghis you'll find me. 231 00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:52,000 And my parting comment I think is just like be the be that succession planning even outside of your job in communities. I feel like I've the reason I'm on the show actually is Casey Allen who is definitely not my mentor but is a 232 00:38:52,000 --> 00:39:06,000 great member of this community. He does so thanklessly does so much work for folks and that's become something that I've tried to model I can't one fraction of anything Casey does but like I try to do that for other people and I think that that succession 233 00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:20,000 planning is important even in communities. Maybe even more so. Yeah. And so when you're in a position you know for those of you who aren't starting out in Dev right now those of you who are more senior think about like what helped you in the 234 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:32,000 community be it blogs, meetups whatever and try to make make it so it's easier for somebody else to have access to that now because that we are we are it right like there's nobody coming to do this for us. 235 00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:41,000 So yeah, that's my rant. I so deeply agree and I also want to echo the kind words about Casey. I met him one time. 236 00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:56,000 I met him. Beautiful opportunity was so lucky to you. And he has just continued to be really fruitful and for no reason there's he has no in my game there's no reason for him to care, but he just continues to care and obviously brought you to the show so amazing 237 00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:06,000 humans that we're talking about Casey Allen out of Minneapolis if anyone wants to find him. He's on most of the socials but I'd say LinkedIn is where he's the strongest. Just an amazing human being and strongly recommend that you go check him 238 00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:23,000 out. It's been so great. I'm so thankful for you. I hope that you have an amazing Christmas hopefully low stress. Oh for all of us over this next Christmas and dealing with family but also hopefully enjoying everything that is beautiful about the holidays and spending 239 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:39,000 a great day. You too. Thanks. Bye. Bye bye.