Leading leaders who lead engineers (remastered) (Interview)

22:36Like it kind of requires a bit of salespersonship to sort of say, this is our mission, you know, whether you like it or not, maybe they don't deliver it that way. Maybe it's more like this is our mission because, and this is why I believe in the mission. And so that seems to be more leadership. That's maybe that's how I would break it down. It seems more like inspire versus tasks and do, you know, organization. What'd you say? Oh, I said inspire versus require just because it rhymed. Sorry. So that was actually what I was going to say, but I thought it was a little too cliche. I'm here for you.

23:10Mind melt. So actually I've met a lot of managers and worked with a lot of managers that do that. And that's actually a part of their job. They can't get everybody to row in the same direction unless they do that too. And leaders often have a lot of tactical responsibilities. So I actually more think of it as a spectrum between being empowering and being directive. And a leader and a manager can end up anywhere on the spectrum. And we all have a default on that spectrum. So my default is actually on the empowerment end. My default, in the absence of context, I will ask everybody a million open coaching questions.

23:41Which, Jared, I know you want to talk about coaching. Yeah. But that doesn't always work, right? Sometimes you need to be directive. Sometimes you need to mandate a desk move. Sometimes you need to tell someone what their job is. Sometimes you need to give feedback that's not coaching. But instead, it's like, I need you to do this thing right now. That's directive. Again, some people default to the directive end of the spectrum. They're like, okay, here's what I need. Here's how it's going to happen. Here's how we're moving forward. But they don't leave lots of room for empowerment. They don't ask lots of questions.

24:06They don't find sponsorship opportunities. They don't ask people how they want to grow. So again, based on the circumstance, based on situation, we all have a default, but that default won't be useful to us in all circumstances. Strong leaders and strong managers need to know when to switch up their approach based on the given circumstances. So I would argue that managers and leaders both have to do these things and just company specific responsibilities really just change. I like that you call it a spectrum, honestly, because I almost feel like you can take a test and see where you land on that.

24:34Or maybe you can even evaluate the thing you're doing currently and like, which direction is this? I have that. Is it sort of center in the spectrum? Yeah. In one of my workshops, we go through that. I give a bunch of example scenarios. Well, I directly have people draw the spectrum and like mark on the line where they would end up based on the scenario. Like you found out that one of your direct reports is being mean to your other teammates in meetings. Do you respond with empowerment or direction? A senior leader is talking over you, interrupting you. Empowerment or direction? One of your direct reports comes to you with a job offer, competing job offer at two times their current salary.

25:06Do you default to empowering or being directive? Again, like it's really interesting to see. And then in the workshop, I have everybody hold up their lines. We can see kind of where people landed. At the same time. Yeah. So if people are really close together and where they landed, some people are all over the place. And again, I think it's just a way to say, we have to adapt based on the circumstance. That sounds fun. That's interesting. We have fun. Well, I think it's kind of theory, right? To some degree, where do you land? So it's like you have to understand the mechanics behind things and the frameworks behind things to maybe even determine that.

25:38And I guess you could somewhat guess too, if you weren't really skilled in the theory and the details behind things. But it really does give you an idea of like, okay this is where i'm defaulting to as you've said a few times maybe that's not a good place to default to but it's okay it's the truth and we can all sort of grow from the truth currently don't lie to yourself basically right you know if you're defaulting here and it's like and you're erring on the side of like well that's not actually you know optimistic or you know that's not a good way to be then you gotta change but you at least know where you're at yes you gotta be honest about and also be honest about where that default is most successful what are the circumstances what's the environment in which your default way of operating works best.

26:19That way you can start to think about, okay, now when are the times when I might need to switch it up? And how can I experiment with that to know when it's time for me to switch it up? How can I know when to do that really effectively too?

26:43Well, friends, I'm here with a brand new friend of mine, Kyle Galbraith. co-founder and CEO of depot.dev. Your builds don't have to be slow, you know that, right? Build faster, waste less time, accelerate Docker image builds, GitHub action builds, and so much more. So Kyle, we're in the hallway at our favorite tech conference, and we're talking. How do you describe Depot to me? And Depot is a build acceleration platform. The reason we went and built it is because we got so fed up and annoyed with slow builds for Docker image builds, GitHub action runners. And so we're relentlessly focused on accelerating builds.

27:17Today, we can make a container image build up to 40 times faster. We can make a GitHub Action Runner up to 10 times faster. We just rolled out Depot Cache. We essentially bring all of the cache architecture that backs both GitHub Actions and our container image build product. And we open it up to other build tools like Bazel and Turbo Repo, SC Cache, Radel, things like that. So now we're starting to accelerate more generic types of builds and make those three to five times faster as well. And so in simple terms, the way you can think about Depot is it's a build acceleration platform to save you hundreds of hours of build time per week.

27:54No matter whether that's build time that happens locally, that's build time that happens in a CI environment. We fundamentally believe that the future we want to build is a future where builds are effectively near instant, no matter what the build is. We want to get there by effectively rethinking what a build is and turn this paradigm on its head and say, hey, a build can actually be fast and consistently fast all the time. If we build out the compute and the services around that build to actually make it fast and prioritize performance as a top level entity rather than an afterthought. Yes. Okay, friends.

28:32Save your time, get faster builds with Depot, Docker builds, faster GitHub Action Runners, and distributed remote caching for Bazel, Go, Gradle, Turbo Repo, and more. Depot is on a mission to give you back your dev time and help you get faster build times with a one-line code change. Learn more at Depot.dev. Get started with a seven-day free trial. No credit card required. Again, Depot.dev.

29:02so laura we mentioned your excerpt from your book resilient management on a list apart i love that and that's kind of where i saw this framework i guess full disclosure i haven't read your book in completion i have listened to some of it so to give myself a little pat on the back but you laid out this framework doing her favor i listened to a little bit of it i listened to a little bit of it i want to listen to all of it actually i think i'd rather listen to it than read it now that I've heard it because you got a great voice. I think you speak very well through it. And I'm actually much more of an audible listener than a reader.

29:35I do like to read. I said this yesterday on, I think, some outro of JS Part or something like that. But I do read, but I prefer to listen. So with that aside, you mentioned how leaders, managers, they end up wearing these different hats, four different hats distinctly. Mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback. Kind of go into the details of kind of what each of those mean and we can sort of go from there. Absolutely. So mentorship is all about sharing your perspective, sharing your advice, sharing what you've seen work and not work, suggesting pitfalls that this person, you know, can avoid.

30:09It's all about sharing your own knowledge and handing it over to this person. So mentoring is really useful when someone's blocked and just needs a little bit help getting unblocked. And it's also really useful for when someone's being onboarded to a new role, new company, whatever. Those are really the only two use cases where mentoring is useful and powerful. The other three skills of coaching, sponsoring, and feedback are the ones that I try to emphasize that anybody who's supporting other people should really focus on and hone their skills in. So coaching is all about asking lots of open questions and helping this person reflect, connect their own dots, develop their own brain wrinkles.

30:45So it has nothing to do with your own knowledge, which is very hard for many of us that have been taught that our knowledge is the value that we provide. So open coaching questions, championing someone, reflecting back what you're hearing them say, these are all tools that we can use to help someone kind of sit back and say, all right, am I actually looking at this from all different directions? Have I truly identified the problem statement in hand that's the real one I want to tackle? What's hard about this? What's surprising about this? Sitting in that messy space unlocks so much more than we could have ever unearthed before.

31:17And that's where the power comes in is the ability to kind of look at something from all different angles, not just the rote surface level ones and figure out what we need to do specifically to move forward. Sponsorship is, you know, feeling on the hook to get someone to the next level by putting their name in the ring, giving them visible opportunities to do valuable work, you know, again, connected to business goals, ideally. And then feedback, we all know feedback. Feedback is giving someone to steer, you know, as specific and as actionable as possible to how they could do something even better or why what they're doing right now is really working.

31:52I could go on all day about those last three skills and why they're powerful and how to do them. You know, as you were saying that though, about coaching, I kind of thought since I've got some experience with therapy and working with psychologists and co-hosting a podcast with a psychologist, they seem to really camp out in coaching. Yeah. Because the, the thing I sort of grew up most from a therapist and somebody receiving therapy is they want to help them find the path by asking questions and let that person determine what's the right move. Because it's not about them telling the patient what the right move is or the determination or whatever it might be.

32:29It's about helping them discover where they need to go. Because let's face it, if you come to your own choices, you have so much more power. When you're an advocate in your own choice, rather than given the choice, it's not really a choice. So you can feel far more comfortable in that next step or steps because you came to that conclusion yourself. Absolutely. And you're unique, your journey forward. You know, you might be pulling on information from other people to kind of help you shape that journey forward, but it's going to be unique to you. No one else can give you the answers that you need.

32:59So that's why I personally find coaching really valuable is everybody is so unique. I can't assume that my experience is going a map to theirs or my solution could be useful to them. What's way more powerful that I can provide these days are open coaching questions. And open coaching questions, they're not closed. They can't be answered in yes or no or a number. And they're not leading. Like, what if you tried? That's mentorship. That's advice, right? That's giving a solution. So in coaching mode, which is really, really hard to stay in, in coaching mode, you're asking genuinely curious, open, broad questions.

33:34and I find that the best ones start with the word what. Like what's important about this? What's hard about this? My number one favorite open question to use is what are you optimizing for? Because in any different situation, everyone's optimizing for something different, right? But we never think about it. Like whenever I ask someone, let's say we're talking about a conflict that they're having and they can't figure out how to move forward. I'm like, all right, so in this situation, with this relationship, what is it that you're optimizing for? Usually they'll sit back in their chair and be like, huh and that's what i'm looking for as a coach i want that moment of like actual true and true like i'm stumped for a second i need to actually sit down and process this that's where the magic of coaching happens yeah i laugh because this is adam's favorite statement isn't it what are you yeah i mean i think you know you you have to know where you're going right you can't take the steps forward with any assurance if you don't know where you're trying to go otherwise you're just sort of haphazardly moving along your path and you think you know where you're trying to go but if you haven't really like considered what am i optimizing for what am i really trying to do in this situation your list becomes so much more concise you can go from eight to four really easily or maybe eight to one because you're like these things are not important so they don't matter at least today and i think a lot of that comes from me reading oh gosh what is that book called what is it called man it's called essentialism oh yeah essentialism you know i think a lot of that book is really about the, you know, getting rid of the, the trivial many and the vital few, like you have to whittle down to the things that really matter and you can't get to the vital few unless you get away with the trivial many.

35:10And you can't do that unless you know what you're optimizing for. Yeah. I couldn't agree. What's essential? Well, and you know, when I'm working with coaching clients and I asked them the, what are you optimizing for a question? And they gave me two answers. I forced them to turn it into an even over statement. Like I'm optimizing for speed even over quality prioritize you're right you gotta get down to just one yeah you can time box it like you said like in this season i am optimizing for blah because you know it's gonna change and that's cool another question that you have on your list which i ask guests all the time on the show which i really like is what does success look like that's a hard question to answer i think we get most people kind of stop and have to think for a minute and that's really what you're trying to get them to do right as a coach is to think for yourself and then go along for that ride.

35:59Totally. And we, we spend so much time talking about potential failures. It's hard to remember. We need to also think about what success looks like too. One of my favorite questions also on that list that I stole from Paloma Medina, who I mentioned earlier is what is the worst possible outcome? And then what's the most likely outcome? Yeah. Because we tend to focus on what the worst thing could happen, right? Which is the first part of the question. Because it's worth knowing. It's worth thinking about that. But then also putting that in context of like, now how likely is it that that one happens, right?

36:33And usually it's like, the reason it's the worst is it's literally the outlier of the statistical things that could happen. Doesn't mean don't think about it, but let's not give it so much weight in our minds, right? What's more likely to happen? Precisely. Yeah, we can honor it. We can honor it by naming it. and then we can focus on the more likely outcome. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So as I read through your different terms here, I guess the coaching was the one that tripped me up. I think, I don't want to get too much into like a semantic discussion about words, but coaching, I just bring a lot of context to coaching, mostly in my life of sports, where I've been a coach and I've also been an athlete on a team.

37:14And it seems like what I think of coaching is prior to reading this, really actually what a coach does on a sporting team is actually all these things, you know, because they are instructive. They are giving you what you ought to do, but then they're also asking you questions and helping you grow. And they're also putting you in the captain spot or, hey, you're pitching today. They're sponsoring people. So I think I just, when I saw coaching, I was like, is this really what coaching is? But I wonder if that's just like the difference between business or maybe like adult to adult coaching versus like sports.

37:44And maybe there There just aren't lines that we can draw between the two. Totally. Yeah. I think that that's one of the challenges, right? Is that the term coach in specific context absolutely means a blend of all those three things. Yeah. Like in sports. I think I might even call that out in the book specifically. Like if you have any sports background at all, you might think of coach as probably actually more of a mentor. Most people who I talk to when they think about coaching or being coached, you know, on a sports team, they talk about mentorship, but you're right. It's not just mentorship.

38:11It's not just giving advice. A lot of feedback. Right. Exactly. A lot of feedback. Absolutely. And as you said, sponsorship too, right? So totally, when it comes to like the term coaching, I think it's distinct from the role. And you're right. The role in a business context is like a leadership coach or a life coach, right? That's a particular kind of role that's distinct from, let's say, a sports coach. Yeah. 100%. So dive more into delivering feedback, because I think this is something that we all do and we all don't always do well. You mentioned actionable. Specific. Specific. Is there any other heuristics of like, here's how to give good feedback versus, you know, not so good?

38:50I mean, I could give an additional whole episode just about feedback. Originally, the chapter in the book had a whole different separate feedback chapter. And then I started to realize it actually relates to mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring because we can do those three things of mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring when we're giving feedback too. So when I think about good feedback, a lot of the way that I think about it is derives from SBI, situation, behavior, impact, that framework. where situation, we got to be able to talk about the facts. What's my observation of the behavior I'm giving feedback on?

39:18Just the facts means not my assumptions, not my judgments. You know, I'm trying to make sure I'm keeping my own opinions at first part of the feedback. Because what we want to avoid is someone receiving the feedback, getting amygdala hijacked. So we want to avoid their fight or flight response kicking in. And you all know, Same is true for me. If I'm getting feedback, or if I even smell feedback is coming, my whole body freezes up, right? My amygdala, the part of my brain that's responsible for trying to keep me safe, be on the lookout for threats. It senses a threat that's headed our way. A lot of how I think about feedback has to do with trying to keep that amygdala chilled out and keep our prefrontal cortex, the rational, logical, practical part of our brain online.

40:01So just the facts means let's make sure that this person's amygdala is like, yeah, that's true. That's all happening. What you just described is real, and I can attest that that is a real thing. So start with the observation. Next, though, we can talk about the impact that this person's behavior has had. Traditionally, we've been taught to frame the impact of the behavior based on what we as the feedback giver care about. So let's say someone's writing really terse emails to me. I'm mad that all the time they write like four to five words. It's a waste of my time. I always have to respond and get more information.

40:35I feel like they're mad at me all the time. Those are all my perspectives on why I want to give the feedback. I challenge everybody who's giving feedback to instead of saying why you think that this feedback is important for the person to listen to, why do they care about it? What do they already care about and how does this feedback relate to that thing? Like in the example of the person writing really terse emails, they probably care about getting this project done on time. So I might say, hey, listen, when you send me emails at this length, I need to respond and ask for more information, which adds time to the process, which means that the thing you want to have done takes three times longer than it normally would.

41:11So you see what I'm doing? I'm distinguishing between why I want to give the feedback to five boys. It's really hard to put ourselves in their shoes. But again, we want to keep their amygdala chilled out and their PSC online. So by describing it in terms that they care about, it's really, really useful. And then the final thing I like to do is close with an open coaching question. So again, we've been taught to make a requests. Like, therefore, could you please send longer emails? But if you have hit the nail on the head with the facts, like they're on board, and you've also hit the nail on the head with what they care about, they're already thinking about what they want to do next.

41:42You don't need to tell them. That's mentorship mode, right? It's just saying, therefore, could you please? And usually you won't come up with as good of an idea as they will. So instead of making this a one-way feedback dump, ask an open question, which turns it into a two-way dialogue where you're brainstorming together about what we could do going forward, what this person needs. Again, what are you optimizing for? When you write emails, what are you optimizing for? Steal any of the open coaching questions and see what that does for your feedback conversations. And hopefully you are lowering the chances of an amygdala hijack of a fight or flight response happening in that feedback conversation.

42:15Yeah. That could be like the bomb going off, right? Like, oh, come on now. And next thing you know, you're fighting, there's a conflict instead of a resolution, which you really want the resolution yeah they've shut down there's no more communication there's no more connection yeah exactly i like that that you you lead with what you assume though what they're optimizing for like you you're assuming because of certain observations the length of the email their characteristics you know their behavior in meetings whatever that they care about time and so you know you're you're sort of capping on that and saying if you really care about time you know here's how we can here's the challenge less of it together here's how it impacts you and me you're finding common ground as well absolutely and you might get it wrong right you might get the impact part wrong you may totally mistake what they actually care about in which case you're gonna have to try again but only after you do some more digging and you could do this work this pre-work up front you can spend time asking questions about what they're optimizing for or what's most on their mind what are they focused on the most right now or what's worrying them what's motivating them, any of those kinds of questions can help you get the data that you need before you give the feedback.

43:22And sometimes I like to actually open feedback with the impact that they care about first. Like, hey, I know you care. We've talked so much about this. I know it's really important that we ship this by Tuesday. So I've got some feedback I'd like to give to make sure we can ship this by Tuesday. So you can see how by kicking it off with what they care about, their brains are like, oh, huh, I still hear the word feedback. I might get a little bit tense. like I you know me you hear me you see me like maybe I'll be open to hearing his feedback because it seems like we maybe care about the same thing and you're also kind of identifying the reward which is kind of leading into the habit loop even totally you know because the habit is the email and the habit is the length or lack of length of the email you know and so the reward really is like okay I get back to work but maybe you ship the reward to say okay well you get back to work but we delay shipping because X, you know?

44:11And so you're sort of like identifying their reward or I suppose the team's reward. There's a lot of psychology really in this process. Like, I mean, that's the thing I'm learning more and more, especially as we look at like your chapter titles, you know, setting clear expectations, communicating effectively, and then building resiliency. That's a lot of things that happens, you know, in from a psychologist to a, you know, a patient in therapy. It's very much a lot of this. When did you begin to study the brain? I suppose to know the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, you must have done some digging into research and which books did you read?

44:42How did you get curious? Where'd you dig? I can tie all this again back to that same person, Polma Medina at Etsy, who has done a lot of research on organizational psychology, but also just the neuroscience behind why humans behave the way that they do. Since she's worked at Etsy, she's done a number of incredible things, including starting a shop about productivity tools for our brains and the neuroscience behind productivity at work, psychological safety, all of these things. She's just incredible. So a lot of what I initially learned was from her. And honestly, like you all know, engineers, we just get so hooked on the data and the science behind things.

45:18It's easy. It's an easy way in to get people to start to think about, okay, what are all the ways that we humans are behaving the way that we are? One of the things that she taught me very early on was this framework, this acronym she calls BICEPs. And BICEP stands for the six core needs that humans have at work. And again, this is all like neuroscience, but also anthropology and a lot of social sciences trying to study why do humans behave the way that they do and what do we need? What do our amygdalas try to secure and ensure for us to keep us safe at work? And it's things like a sense of belonging, a sense of community.

45:50If we feel othered or left behind, our amygdala considers that a threat. A sense of improvement and progress, a sense of choice, fairness, profitability. All of these things in the biceps core needs list, it's all neuroscience-backed. Thanks to Paloma, I have learned so much more about all of the surprising ways that humans behave and deal with each other at work. How about any particular books that you've read recently? I can mention for me, Atomic Habits has been like so on my prefrontal cortex, I'm thinking about a lot. I'm always thinking about like habits and habit loops and just how the 1 % improvement can change things.

46:29I'm curious what you're reading. Go to is always Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. It's all about how do I influence change in any context when I don't have power or authority or control over the situation itself. They include a bunch of studies, a bunch of anecdotes, real case studies about how you all must be familiar with the Don't Mess With Texas slogan and where that came from. Yeah, I know the slogan. I live there. Yeah. Yeah. Don't mess with Texas. Do you know where it came from? No. No. I also didn't know. I learned it from Switch. I'm going to butcher this story.

47:02So apologies to everybody involved. Go read the book to get the real story. But at the end of the day, there was too much littering. There was a bunch of littering happening in Texas. And so the government tried to brainstorm, okay, how do we get littering to decrease? And they made this ad with this cowboy picking up litter off the road and putting it in a trash bin and saying, don't mess with Texas. And that's where it was born out of. And you know what? Littering decreased significantly after this ad campaign kicked off. So again, this is, it's all influence, right? It's all a lot of psychology that you mentioned.

47:33It's a lot of the, you know, neuroscience backed stuff. It's fascinating. How do we influence change to happen? Positive influence when we don't have completely control of the situation. Yeah. Well, I think that may have worked. I'm going to assume a lot because I haven't read the book because Texas seems to be very prideful about their land, you know, the size of things, you know, everything's bigger in Texas, you know, things like that. And I think that probably, you know, and a cowboy is like a significant model for a lot of people in the space. The cowboy hat, we have the rodeo here every single year.

48:08It's massive. I'm not from Texas originally, so I can't claim these things as native for me. I came here as quick as I could, which is a common phrase to a transplant to Texas. But, you know, I'm from the Northeast. But long story short, you know, I didn't grow up with cowboys. I didn't grow up with things I see here in Texas all the time. But I can see that's probably why it worked well, because they took this common model and the pride of the land and the respect for the space and the desire for it to be the best it can be and attach that to something that really matters, which is stop littering.

48:39Right. Yeah. And that comes back to the BICEPs core needs list. The B stands for belonging. Like we are a part of a community. Right. We identify with this role model. We, you know, we we want to support each other as a community of Texas. And significance is the S. So in the hierarchy, like we have a lot of pride in our land, in our state, you know? So like, again, those two core needs, again, the book goes into this in so much detail, but those two core needs, again, that our amygdala is working really hard to secure and to ensure for us, they're present and it's a huge way to get people to listen, to get people to care, to have people to be motivated, you know, to do something.

49:28Well, friends, I'm here with a good friend of mine, David Hsu, the founder and CEO of Retool. So, David, I know so many developers who use Retool to solve problems, but I'm curious. Help me to understand the specific user, the particular developer who is just loving Retool. Who's your ideal user? Yeah, so for us, the ideal user of Retool is someone whose goal, first and foremost, is to either deliver value to the business or to be effective. Where we candidly have a little bit less success is with people that are extremely opinionated about their tools. If, for example, you're like, hey, I need to go use WebAssembly, and if I'm not using WebAssembly, I'm quitting my job, you're probably not the best Retool user, honestly.

50:14However, if you're like, hey, I see problems in the business and I want to have an impact and I want to solve those problems, Retool is right up your alley. And the reason for that is Retool allows you to have an impact so quickly. You could go from an idea, you could go from a meeting like, hey, you know, this is an app that we need to literally having the app built in 30 minutes, which is super, super impactful on the business. So I think that's the kind of partnership or that's the kind of impact that we'd like to see with our customers. You know, from my perspective, my thought is that, well, Retool is well known.

50:44Retool is somewhat even saturated. I know a lot of people who know Retool, but you've said this before. What makes you think that Retool is not that well-known? Retool today is really quite well-known amongst a certain crowd. I think if you had a poll like Engineers in San Francisco or Engineers in Silicon Valley, even, I think you'd probably get like a 50, 60, 70 % recognition of Retool. I think where you're less likely to have heard of Retool is if you're a random developer for a random company in a random location, like the Midwest, for example, or like a developer in Argentina, for example, you're probably less likely.

51:20And the reason is, I think, we have a lot of really strong word of mouth from a lot of Silicon Valley companies, like the Brex's, Coinbase's, DoorDash's, Stripes, et cetera, of the world. There's a lot of chat, Airbnb is another customer, NVIDIA is another customer, so there's a lot of chatter about Retool in the Valley. But I think outside of the Valley, I think we're not as well known. And that's one goal of ours, to go change that. Well, friends, now you know what Retool is. You know who they are. You're aware that Retool exists. And if you're trying to solve problems for your company, you're in a meeting, as David mentioned, and someone mentions something where a problem exists, and you can easily go and solve that problem in 30 minutes, an hour, or some margin of time that is basically a nominal amount of time.

52:04And you go and use Retool to solve that problem. That's amazing. Go to retool.com and get started for free or book a demo. It is too easy to use Retool and now you know. So go and try it. Once again, retool.com.

52:24So Laura, a lot of our audience are engineers or were engineers and now are managers and leaders. and it's always a difficult thing deciding if that's a move for you once you've decided that it is making the transition like what does success look like in that case you've done the transition a while ago and now you're succeeding and teaching other people how to be managers and leaders so advice for us and for our audience about how do you make a decision like that and once you do how do you navigate that successfully? I love this question I talk to and work with a lot of people that have made the transition multiple times.

53:07One of my former colleagues, Dan Na, has written a bunch about how do you choose? How do you make decisions? How do you know when to go back and forth? When is it right? There's just so much good stuff out there. The way that I like to think about it is the same question we've been talking about, like the what are you optimizing for question. Get really clear on that for yourself because that's a precursor to knowing whether or not you can actually achieve that thing you're optimizing for in a different role. If you're optimizing for gaining more power, for example, and you're thinking about becoming a manager, you may not actually get more power.

53:40It'll be really important for you to do some research, talk to some other managers to ask about what they have influence on, what they have authority over, etc. Because it's often a bad surprise. If you're optimizing for making a new team charter, a new vision, giving the team purpose, maybe. Maybe that's a possibility at your company. If you're optimizing for a change of pace, I guarantee you management will give you a change of pace. But then I would ask, okay, what are you optimizing for with the change of pace? And that could also breed additional questions. So getting clear about what you're optimizing for will allow you to figure out whether or not you can have success in the other role in either direction.

54:17People who skip this step have asked themselves, what am I optimizing for when I'm thinking about changing roles? often change roles and then hate it because they find out that they can't achieve the thing that they were optimizing for because they were working under a bunch of assumptions or that's just not how it works. So the role doesn't have as much authority or power as they thought it would. When I was experimenting with leadership and management and thinking about that, I just really, really, really wanted to support the people that I was working with day to day. I was working at a really small startup and we were basically the UI UX front-end site performance developers.

54:51And we didn't have a manager that knew any of that stuff. Our manager really only knew Perl. And as much as we could spend all day talking about Perl, I really want to be able to provide a little bit more structure, a little bit more career progression for folks that were experimenting at the time with like CSS 2.0. Oh my goodness. You know, I think about those sorts of things. So for me, it was about providing team environment where we could kind of self-identify as this front-end slash UX group. And so for that reason, becoming a manager worked. Like I was able to achieve the thing I was optimizing for with that role change.

55:24There have certainly been times when I've thought about other kinds of role changes that I wanted to figure out, could I be as successful in that new role based on what I was optimizing for? And the answer's always been different. So yeah, I would definitely suggest thinking to yourself like getting really clear with yourself about what you're optimizing for before making a switch. Yeah. Something that I learned while doing the show, of brain science, which I've mentioned before with Dr. Merrill Reese was a thing she had said was try it on. So any new big decision, like anything really in particular.

55:53So in this case, this transition, try the thing on, you know, how could you sort of get a feedback loop quickly? So I guess step one would definitely be, what are you optimizing for? Okay, sure. I do want to think about this decision or consider it. How can I first take a step to try it on? How can I try this decision on temporarily? How would my drive to work change? And maybe in these times, it's no drive to work. How would, you know, my interactions with my counterparts that I really care about, like in your case, I want to step up and help in these ways because I care about this team and what we're trying to do.

56:25How does my relationship change as a result of this? How does my relationship change at home? You know, beyond just simply work, because sometimes we make work decisions or professional decisions and kind of forget that like we have other constraints that don't map to that opportunity. And like you had said, if you don't consider what you're optimizing for, you know, in our case, I know for us running this business, Jared and I, we have certain personal constraints that help us navigate choices we make in the business. Things we just definitely probably will never do. And I have a hard time saying absolutes.

56:56Jared, you probably know me to do that. So that's why I say probably never, but maybe not. But the point is, is that, you know, we have certain things that give us structure and constraints to say, okay, well, when we make that transition or we do that kind of thing? How can we try it on? Or no, we're optimizing for to do that. It's such a key phrase. What are you optimizing for? It's such a key phrase in so many places. Really, it is. Absolutely. You're at the grocery store trying to sit between different apples. What are you optimizing for? Crisp or small. Yeah, absolutely. Price, freshness, bulk.

57:32But back on that point of trying it on, And Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path, is just so brilliant in so many different ways. And one of the ways is that her first few chapters are all about before becoming a manager. What are the different ways you might try on some of those responsibilities? So in what way can I be a mentor? In what way can I be a tech lead? You know, trying it on before you actually go in. So if folks are trying to figure out how they could try it on, definitely check out Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path. Yeah, it's great. So we're a fan of Camille, and she also wrote the intro to your book, right?

58:02The foreword for your book. and then she also obviously wrote her own book The Manager's Past. And I think it's part of her story too a blog post you had written while she was writing that book was so influential to her like she had to kind of incorporate some of your ideas so I definitely want to give a shout out to Camille. She's awesome. Hi Camille. Do you find and I'm asking you to generalize here do you find that engineers make good managers?

58:29That is an impossible question to answer. I like it. Give us a shot. I find people of any ilk make great managers and terrible managers. I find that one of the hardest parts about transitioning to management from any individual contributor worker work is the lack of measurable progress. So in engineering, you're shipping things. You've got code reviews. You send things launch. You actually have observable progress forward. In management, a lot of your work is invisible or there's a long lead time between when you do a thing or say a thing and you see the results of that thing. If ever, you might do a thing or say a thing and think it's incredible and then nothing ever happens.

59:09One of the ways that I coach managers struggling with this is to start to think about celebrating wins, tiny, tiny, tiny wins that might have to be confidential with a supportive group that you trust to keep those wins confidential. Like somebody could be like, all right, that reorg, it's done. I can't tell if it's good yet, but it's done. Let's celebrate, you know. Yeah. Find some way to kind of basically measure and observe progress in yourself and your work as a manager. It's challenging, certainly. Yeah, I like celebrate the wins too. We sit a lot around here. Like, you know, even one time, I think we were in a call.

59:43I can't remember how far back, but Jerry was just sort of like down a little bit. And he's like, I just need to win. I just need to ship something and get it out there and like just know it's done. You know, like he's very task oriented, very list. And if there's a list in front of him, it's not done. Like he's fretting about it. Like he wants that, that list to be done. And so celebrate, and that's a different context, but, you know, celebrating the wins is something I like to say a lot too, for us, even because I think too often you just forget to like, if you waited to celebrate, it's almost like a process over goals.

1:00:12Like if you only celebrate the goal and not the process, right. That's kind of like the thing. Like that's a process. Getting the reorg done was part of the process. It may have been the goal too, but if you don't celebrate the little parts of those processes happening, getting done, and you wait to the goal, the goal is always moving, almost always moving. It's always sort of changing and you sort of camp out in this process land and just celebrate those wins. Yeah. I wrote an article for Increment on this exact topic for anybody that has invisible work. How do you start to identify where you can measure or even just mark those wins?

1:00:45I borrowed a lot of research about micro tasks and how our brain gets that sweet, sweet dopamine hit from the act of checking something off of a list. And that's what we crave. That dopamine. Yeah, it is. It's all for the dopamine. Dopamine is a I'm sure everybody knows what it is, but it's basically this chemical in your brain that you love to get. That is a reward factor. I'm paraphrasing terribly, of course, but it's this thing in your brain that occurs when you do things that you like. It's feedback to say that was good. that I like to do more of it, basically. And sometimes your brain even releases it in anticipation of checking something off of your list.

1:01:20And then what happens if you don't get the thing checked off? Does it go back? It's a bummer. It teaches your brain that maybe we don't need to do this. Maybe this person's failure. So is that article called Your Brain on Progress? Is that what it's called? It is indeed. All right, we'll put that one in the show notes along with all the other things. Thank you. I want to read that too, because I haven't read that one yet. And I'm all about progress. What about stories? stories i'm sure some like you've got tons of stories we didn't well define i think some of your past history you mentioned sort of somewhat where you've been before engineering director at etsy vp of engineering kickstarter you mentioned a couple i don't i'm not sure if like etsy was that startup in the i think you were there a while back i was a dns company before etsy so at etsy actually when i think about stories a lot of them are from etsy because it was such a formative time in my career just being at that kind of organization under the leadership that I was under, you just learn so much about being a human around other humans that care about humans.

1:02:16You know, a lot of the work that I do today can be directly tied back to that time. And when I think about war stories, horror stories, I think about the relationships that I formed there that have carried on today. Like, what did I survive? What did we all survive there? And I think about a time when I actually had to fire someone for the first time and I wasn't getting support that I needed from my manager at the time. He was checked out. He was unavailable. He just couldn't help. And I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know if I should fire this person. I didn't know, you know, was I making the right decision?

1:02:46What's the process? What do I need to make sure I do? How do I make sure that I'm supporting this person? I ended up basically hanging out with a bunch of other managers in this program called Dents that Paloma had created, where it was a confidential kind of like support group for managers across the company. So it was a cross-functional group, really small groups. I think there were maybe eight people in my group. we're all kind of baby managers. And I was sharing with them confidentially the questions I had and how challenging it was and how stressed out I was and just how sad I was about it.

1:03:18And even though we were all baby managers, they all had different experiences before of going through something like this within different organizations even. So one person offered to role play the difficult conversations with me so I can get practice and really hone what I needed to say. One person And it helped me really get a good gut check on how to make this decision and, you know, make sure it was good for everybody involved. One person had experience with working at the JAR, so she gave me advice on that process and connected me with someone to talk to. And by their powers combined, they got me through, right?

1:03:50Each of their different experiences, different skill sets were so, so, so incredibly helpful and powerful, you know, to help me survive this. They took me out for drinks afterwards, so I could just kind of cry a little bit, you know? And I realized this power in this group was so important because your manager can't be your everything. Your manager has one particular set of skills, right? One particular set of places that they can sponsor you for or types of feedback they can give. Maybe they're even bad at feedback. Maybe they're bad at mentoring. Maybe they're bad at coaching. It could be anything.

1:04:19You need a group. You need a collection of people that I like to jokingly refer to as a manager Voltron. Not just one manager, but who's in your manager Voltron? I don't know if listeners are familiar with the concept of Voltron. Any of you want to give a definition? Go for it, Adam. What's the definition, Jared? Are you a Voltron fan? I'm just checking out Voltron for the first time. I'm trying to grok this. Amazing. What does Wikipedia say? Voltron, of course, everybody knows, is an animated television series franchise that features a team of five space explorers who pilot a giant super robot known as Voltron.

1:04:56Voltron. Yeah, bingo. So if you're familiar with Captain Planet growing up, very similar vibes. Oh, yeah. Right. Biopowers combined, earth, wind, fire, air, heart, or whatever. Exactly. Like, you know. Captain Planet. Yeah, exactly. And the same thing with the Care Bears, too. Isn't the same thing with the Care Bears? Absolutely. Right, same vibe. They combine their care. And you need all of them. You need all of them to have the supportive, you know, whatever, powerful being that support you're going forward. And so I like this idea, you know, as we go forward, who are the people in your network that can provide the different kinds of support that you need?

1:05:24Who can provide good mentorship, good coaching, good sponsoring, good feedback, a good eye for the politics of your organization, you know, a good person to shadow at company meetings, a person with a completely different leadership style than you are. I actually made a little worksheet, a little bingo card for everybody to kind of brainstorm who is already in their Voltron for these variety of different skills. And where are the gaps? Where might you want to find someone to kind of fill that void for you as you grow and learn? And that way you can collect a supportive group of people that can continue to level you up as you grow together.

1:05:58Yeah. You know, listening to all this, it seems like there's really just such a wild framework to be a manager. Like I never really understood that it was like maybe I thought you were born with it, right? You know, like you were born with the ability to manage, the ability to lead. But it seems like it's such a learned skill. Like most things you just sort of discover more. The things that you can do well in life tend to be things you can really learn. Not just simply like, oh, that person is good at it because they were born with the skills. It's probably somewhat true. They've got some assurances and maybe a certain personality type.

1:06:27I tend to be very forward thinking. I tend to be very self-assured. I have self-assurance, you know, so I want to score on like, what's that, like the something finder, the strength finder, I believe it was. And that's almost wonder if you have something like that where you can sort of take a test. Like, am I fit to be a manager? Or, you know, like you mentioned the spectrum before, if you have anything like that, I'm curious. But, you know, that's something like for me is that, you know, this is something you can learn. You can go to a course like you might have or read a book like you've written or Camille's book or other books that you can suggest.

1:06:59But this is something you can sort of study. There's theory behind it. There's framework behind it. And so just because you don't have those skills today doesn't mean you can't, you know, bury your head in a book or take a course and learn this kind of thing. Because it seems that there's a lot of do's and don'ts and framework to it that are waiting to be found, basically. Yeah, I would argue that anybody can be a manager. It's actually important that we have a diverse set of approaches to management and to leadership. It's important that there's not just one archetype. Of course, we all have an archetype in our head of what a manager looks like or what a leader looks like, but that's not going to serve all populations, all organizations, all companies at all stages.

1:07:38Mm-hmm. So I've always approached this from here's a set of skills, here's a set of tools that you can have in your toolbox that you can learn how to apply based on who you are, based on the organization you operate in, based on what your team needs. And that context is going to keep on evolving. So you as a manager, you as a leader need to keep on evolving your toolbox going forward because, again, it's not one size fits all. It's definitely not one set of do's and don'ts. It's, oh, no, here's a new one I haven't seen before. How do I adapt? Who do I, who can I learn from to figure out how to approach this one in a way that works from my style and also works on for the environment?

1:08:14Yeah. I mentioned before, I thought I would throw this at you. You weren't much of a fan or you haven't read much of Seth Godin. Is that right? I have not read much of Seth Godin. Are you familiar with the book Linchpin at least? No. No. Okay. Not at all. Okay, good. I'll give you the paraphrase of the book and we'll see if I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. Linchpin is essentially that you are indispensable, that you have to be, you know, so good that they can't ignore you essentially. And so I sort of bucked at that. I really thought that's what I had to be as a leader. You know, I was a product manager.

1:08:44I felt like I had to be the linchpin. I had to be indispensable. I couldn't be replaced. And then I thought, well, that's just super arrogant. That's super self-centered. And aren't we all truly indispensable? Aren't we all truly replaceable at some point? And I thought, you know, this question I want to share with you or ask you is cog versus linchpin. You know, should someone aspire to be a linchpin or someone or should someone in a leadership aspire to be a cog? Because a cog sort of fits in and helps everybody else move, right? They're very helper, very servant potentially even. Whereas a linchpin is like, I'm the only one here that can do this.

1:09:17And, you know, at least to some degree. So I'm curious what you think about cog versus linchpin. Based on your description, I think I could not be further diametrically opposed to the idea of a linchpin. just because, you know, our job supporting other people as they grow, it needs to continue to evolve and change and we cannot be the only one. Personally, this is, again, based on the short description. I cannot imagine a world in which having a bunch of linchpins is a healthy way for it. What's everybody else then? You know, and when I think about COG too, certainly servant leadership has its pros and cons.

1:09:53There's definitely times when we need to be a servant leader and other times we need to be, I'm going to say more directive maybe. Then that, again, pitfalls to every approach, which is why there's definitely not one one size fits all approach to leadership. But I'm all about understanding what the needs are, figuring out how you might be able to support them or understanding when you can't and finding out where else can we get the support that I or my teammates or my organization needs to move forward. I personally landed on this idea that I need to be a cog. I really studied hard and I was like, you know what?

1:10:24I read the book. I thought the book was actually very influential to me. And helped me gain confidence. But over time, I learned that that's not really what I need to be. And this is, I'm going to share something I wrote on the subject just to see if it resonates with you. It says, and this is me sort of coming to this conclusion, essentially. And so this is my words. I'm a very sharp, highly specific, purposely purposeful cog that's part of a much bigger, much more grand machine. I play a very specific role. I highly need a part of this so others can do the same. I serve the unit, the team, and its mission, not myself.

1:10:56And so as a leader, I felt like that's what I needed to be as a leader. I needed to serve that mission and less of myself, not so much completely not myself, but I need to think about my team's motives, my mission, the unit, et cetera, rather than just simply saying, you know, Adam, it's all about you. I love that. And many organizations need exactly that. They need someone who's going to come in and understand the dynamics, understand what's needed and support in that way. Other organizations need some version of a linchpin at some, you know, moment in time. And I think that's the important part about understanding the context and also understanding who we are.

1:11:32That we can make sure that even if we can't fit the mold of what an organization needs, we can help make sure that that cog gets fit sometime. Yeah. Well, Laura, it was awesome talking to you. It's years in the making. Like I mentioned at the top of the show, I'd found your post in 2019. Don't ask us why it took us so long to invite you. Maybe we were, I don't know. So I don't know what it was. Now's the time. Now's the time. So reached out via email. You said yes. Here you are. It was awesome. Is there anything we didn't ask you? Anything we didn't sort of bring up that you love to share in shows like this when you do podcasts or whatever?

1:12:03You speak to audiences. Anything left unsaid, essentially? Honestly, I'm just so excited to talk about all of these things with you all. I think I could go on for hours and hours. So much is left unsaid for another episode. All right, Laura. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome talking to you. Thank you both. Appreciate you.

1:12:28well there you have it a conversation with laura hogan so nice we shipped it to you twice hopefully you enjoyed this remastered version replete with chapters which we didn't have back in 2021 when we first recorded this what do you think should we have her back on the show Let us know in Zulip. Yes, the ChangeLog community hangs out in Zulip now. Join for$0 at changelog.com slash community and come chat with us. What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Let's do one more mention of our sponsors of this episode. Thank you as always to Fly.io, to Heroku, making a comeback, to Depot, check them out.

1:13:10And of course, thank you to Retool. Please support our sponsors. They support us. And thank you as well to the Mysterious, Breakmaster Cylinder for serving up fresh beats for your listening pleasure. That new album, After Party, is right around the corner. That's all from me. We'll talk to you again on Changedog and Friends on Friday.

1:13:54Thank you.

1:14:17Thank you for listening. Bye.