Tag: Strive To Be Earth's Best Employer

Show Business

Show Business

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I’m sitting on a flight somewhere over the middle of the country on my way home after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with family in Ohio. Naturally it’s a time to be thinking about being thankful, both personally and professionally, a topic I’ve written about before.

That advice (say it often, say it aloud) is still true, but it’s incomplete. While expressing thanks to co-workers is necessary to being a good leader, it isn’t sufficient. Thankfulness must be shown through giving of time, empowerment, listening, and taking action when needed. Oh yeah, and through compensation too, if it’s within your power to influence. The expression “give thanks” is apropos: being thankful costs something.

When not backed by action, spoken words are empty at best, and counterproductive at worst. Might be better to say nothing if you’re not truly grateful.

Show and tell isn’t just for kindergarten and job interviews.

TL;DR

TL;DR

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I’ve discovered a couple highly practical uses for GenAI this week relative to performance reviews.

In one case, I collected various stakeholder feedback for an individual on my team (using these questions from the other day) and used AI to extract common themes (both strengths and growth areas) that I could share without revealing who wrote what (which I’d promised in the hopes of getting more honest responses). It was also useful for me as a manager to see what emerged so we could review together.

In another, I took all the self-evaluations across a team and asked AI to identify and then summarize specific portions that would be relevant to pass along to the broader leadership group (e.g. feedback they had about the organization, common challenges that might be indicators of systemic problems). It’s a lot to ask of an executive to read these docs in their entirety, but there’s valuable insights to be gleaned. Building this summary was the best of both worlds.

Something my years at Amazon taught me is the usefulness of discussing performance in light of shared values. Our evaluation forms this year broke down questions along those lines (at my suggestion), but I’m now seeing it may be a bit too structured and artificially constraining. So next year I might see if we can keep the reflection questions a bit more open-ended, and then use AI tooling to align people’s responses to our specific guiding principles. Will that be effective? Not sure! But worth a try.

Made Along The Way

Made Along The Way

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For reasons not worth getting into here, I’ve been waxing nostalgic (a phenomenon to which I’m apparently rather vulnerable; I mean, seriously). In particular, I took a brief mental stroll down memory lane to think of key leaders who influenced my career trajectory in a positive way. People who took a chance on giving me more responsibility than I’d had previously.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but thank you to the following folks:

  • Greg, who hired me to my first full-time coding gig despite me not even having yet graduated from my undergraduate computer science program.
  • Rick, who got me internal funding to implement an idea I had, giving me my first taste of leading a project completely my own.
  • Cathy, who brought me to San Diego without having seen me in action, only my reputation with a particular set of skills, which her project desperately needed.
  • Lori, who first promoted me to a management position when my prior boss left the company, and trusted me to scale an engineering organization to meet the company’s big goals.
  • James, who gave me my first singleton leadership position, and helped me think beyond my team and begin operating at a broad organizational level.
  • Taj, who twice helped me step up into broader responsibilities, and who first challenged me to consider business implications of technical decisions.
  • Abby, who recruited me into my current role, and has taught me much about how to be a true partner at the executive level.

In all these cases, the individuals didn’t just give me advice. They made opportunities happen and put me in places that caused growth. That’s what makes a mentor a mentor.

If you’re on the other side of a mentoring relationship now, don’t just pontificate. Open doors. Delegate. Trust. Support. Praise. Endeavor to be on someone else’s list.

Story Time

Story Time

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I’m hiring again, this time for a Director of Engineering. A requirement for application is submitting a cover letter, which apparently has fallen out of favor? Enough so that one candidate DM-ed me on the side to let me know our recruiting tool was misconfigured for having the field non-optional. Nope!

Personally, I enjoy reading cover letters, because they tell me something more than just what a resume can. It’s the same reason I want to hear real stories in interviews. They’re especially useful in revealing the “why” behind an application, which, in the line of work I do, is especially important.

Producing them does require some effort, which is a feature not a bug, but hopefully not too tough because you do document your work, right? And it’s getting even easier with AI, which I have no problem with a person using to get a cover letter started, given a thoughtful prompt that customizes the result to the job, the company to which you’re applying, and unique details about the applicant.

Speaking of “why” and AI, the other day I had a potential candidate ask me why I chose to join my current company. Great question! I put Claude to the test, again giving it my entire blog corpus as reference:

Based on the content of your blog, your reasons for leaving AWS to join RIPL as Chief Technology Officer can be summarized as follows:

1. Mission-driven work: You've expressed a strong interest in using technology to improve people's lives and promote human flourishing. RIPL's mission to work with governments to help them use data, science, and technology to improve policy and lives aligns well with this interest.

2. Intersection of technology and public policy: You mentioned that you've "doubled-down on situating myself at the intersection of tech and politics." RIPL's focus on working with governments to improve policy through technology is a perfect fit for this goal.

3. New challenges: You've indicated a desire for work that isn't a "solved problem." Moving to RIPL likely offers new and unique challenges that weren't present at AWS.

4. Leadership opportunity: The CTO role at RIPL allows you to have a more significant impact on the organization's direction and strategy, which aligns with your growing interest in leadership roles.

5. Building from the ground up: You've expressed enjoyment in creating and building things. A smaller, more focused organization like RIPL might offer more opportunities to build systems and processes from scratch.

6. Applying cloud expertise: Your extensive experience with AWS can be directly applied to help governments leverage cloud technologies for public good.

7. Ethical considerations: You've shown interest in the ethical implications of technology. RIPL's focus on improving government policies likely involves careful consideration of these ethical aspects.

8. Desire for meaningful impact: Your blog suggests a strong desire to make a significant positive impact. The role at RIPL seems to offer a more direct path to seeing the results of your work in terms of improved public policies and services.

While you didn't explicitly list these reasons in a single post, they can be inferred from your various writings about your interests, values, and career trajectory. The move appears to be a natural progression that combines your technical expertise with your interest in public service and desire for impactful work.

Like my request from the other day, that’s pretty accurate! I wonder what other uses I can find for an LLM whose context window is big enough for nearly 9 years of writing…

Into The Flood

Into The Flood

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A great example of “you don’t know until you know” is being responsible for hiring. It’s a non-trivial task, hard to get right, and absolutely essential to running a successful organization.

Look, I remember what it’s like to be on the other side of this equation. Reaching out to anyone who will listen. Sending your resume far and wide. Waiting. So much waiting. It sucks, no question about it.

But right now, with so many technical professionals on the job market, it’s been a little overwhelming to sort through all the interest in open roles, especially for an organization that’s not big enough for professional recruiters. I like to think I’m a pretty responsive guy, but it’s simply impossible to review and respond to every single email and LinkedIn message, let alone include personalized details about exactly why we made the decision we did.

I wish the above weren’t true, but it is. And I’m not willing to “solve” it by handing the reins over to AI. At least not yet, because hiring is not a formula. Like much else, it’s a human process, and in general, everyone is doing their best.

Straight Talk

Straight Talk

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Much digital ink is spilled on LinkedIn pontificating about hiring processes, what recruiters and hiring managers should and shouldn’t do, etc. There’s some truth amongst the noise, but I get a good chuckle when perspectives are shared with no basis in either data or experience.

This is especially true of management advice. If you haven’t actually been a manager, your opinions on how to do it are worth less than a byte stored in S3 (i.e. not much). Go give it a try and let’s talk again, eh?

Even if you don’t see yourself in such a role long-term, I recommend everyone do a tour of duty as a people manager if they can. You’ll gain valuable insights into what it takes do the very human work of running a business.

Dig In

Dig In

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Getting to know your professional colleagues at a personal level is risky. I regularly read advice to avoid it. That’s a reasonable strategy to avoid some of the lows of gainful employment, but it also hamstrings the chance to achieve truly beautiful successes, not to mention it forfeits a potent antidote to loneliness.

So yeah, not only am I going to ignore that advice, I’m doubling down on getting better at being a student of other people. To that end, last week I started reading How to Know a Person, from which I extracted the following list of conversation starters:

  • Which of your five senses is strongest?
  • What are you most self-confident about?
  • What’s working really well in your life?
  • What is the “no” you keep postponing?
  • What have you said “yes” to that you no longer really believe in?
  • What forgiveness are you withholding?
  • Tell me about a time you adapted to change?
  • Have you ever been solitary without feeling lonely?
  • Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?
  • What crossroads are you at?
  • What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
  • If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating?
  • If the next 5 years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?
  • What has become clearer to you as you have aged?
  • What is the best way to grow old?
  • If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing?

Full credit to David Brooks here, I’m just repeating his excellent ideas. Keep learning, friends!

Life Hack

Life Hack

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It may not seem like much, but you never know the lives you touch
just by always showing up, even on the days you feel so small.
Turns out it all matters after all.

– Derek Webb

Want an easy way to be perceived as good at your job? Set aggressive goals for being responsive across all your communication media, and especially strive to avoid failing to respond or missing messages altogether.

My own personal targets are the following:

  • Slack / Text: 5 minutes ideally, 1 hour median, never more than 24 hours
  • Email / Voicemail: 4 hours ideally, 24 hours median, never more than 3 days

Even just an “I got it, will have you a better response by X time” goes a long way (assuming of course that you do indeed follow-up). Liberal use of tools like reminders, snoozed messages, and do-not-disturb / notification settings make this achievable without completely giving up on work/life balance.

I call the approach “radical responsiveness”. In my experience, it’s a simple way to earn trust with colleagues and customers alike. It works across levels and roles, though it’s particularly helpful when being attentive is part of the job, like sales positions, and especially critical for people management. Be the boss that always responds quickly and your team will be imminently thankful.

Of course you won’t be able to meet these objectives 100% of the time, but being known as a responsive person 95% of the time usually means others will assume the best of you for the 5% of time you fail.

Praise And Thanksgiving

Praise And Thanksgiving

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Never pass up an opportunity to express gratefulness, especially in the workplace. In my (almost) 45 years of life, I’ve never heard someone say “You say thanks too much, please tone it down.” Do it often, do it out loud, and do it in front of an audience.

That being said, the object of your expressed gratefulness matters. What you praise is what you encourage to happen more often. But the converse is true too, what you don’t praise you will discourage. And if your praise for a person’s work is disproportionately towards things less important to their job, you may be having the side effect of making them feel they aren’t actually doing a good job with the things that do matter.

Of course, that may literally be true. You may be using praise of the inconsequential as a defense mechanism to avoid hard feedback of what is consequential. Or you may not be. But if your praise quotient is out of alignment, the individual you’re praising will have to guess. And that ambiguity can be disheartening.

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