Tag: Strive To Be Earth's Best Employer

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.

Taste The Rainbow

Taste The Rainbow

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I’m sure there’s research out there that says people do better work when they’re happy. But anecdotally, it’s an obvious truth. Of course there are limits (“fun with respect to work” will almost always be “work with respect to fun”). But in general, fostering a positive work environment and encouraging employees to take care of themselves is good business.

Last week a colleague of mine was revising the spreadsheet we use for high-level estimation, and as part of her adjustments added a few splashes of color. The highlights had a functional purpose, yes, but they were also simply more pleasant to look at. It made me want to work on the spreadsheet at a subconscious level.

Isn’t that nice? I suppose the 49″ ultrawide monitor doesn’t hurt either. 😛

Another obvious example of this phenomenon is font quality and syntax highlighting. Take a look at the following “identical” code samples; which one would you rather work with?

Literally as I was drafting this blog I learned about Monaspace. Taking code aesthetics to the next level, I dig it. Describing the process of adjusting glyph widths as “texture healing” is an especially humanizing touch. Happiness matters!

Give And Ye Shall Receive

Give And Ye Shall Receive

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Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

We’re in the midst of performance review season, a process I enjoy. Really! Of course performance conversations can happen throughout the year, but there’s something especially valuable about a concentrated time of reflection and intense discussion. Describing strengths, celebrating successes, identifying growth opportunities, rooting out behaviors that are holding someone back; these are all reasons I became a manager in the first place.

It isn’t just a manager’s job, though. It’s incumbent on us all to both be seeking feedback on ourselves (especially critical feedback), and to give feedback to others. The responsibility of Radical Candor applies to everyone.

This responsibility can feel like a chore, if not a terrible annoyance. Pointing out shortcomings or negative behaviors in colleagues is uncomfortable at best, and if not done with grace and from a foundation of trust, can be damaging and career limiting. But when the feedback is honest, timely, actionable, and includes both positives and critiques, it is a great gift to the receiver. An act of love, even. We don’t use that word often in the workplace, and that’s unfortunate. Genuine human connection is the foundation of anything worth doing. It’s good for you, it’s good for your colleagues, and it’s also good business.

If you don’t know where to begin giving feedback, I recommend the SBI framework for guidance. And no matter if you discuss in person or provide in writing, you should give your feedback some thought ahead of time (and maybe take a few notes). I promise that it gets easier the more experiences you have giving it, though it will always be an emotional process, and that’s a good thing.