1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:05,400 What did a CTO really do? A CTO, it's about giving the 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:09,480 business the technology needs to be able to drive their success, 3 00:00:09,680 --> 00:00:11,520 Okay. So from that perspective, you're 4 00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:14,360 not simply delivering tools, you're not delivering solutions. 5 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:17,760 You're delivering a vision, you're delivering A roadmap to 6 00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:20,880 allow the company to be able to grow in scale, at a level and at 7 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:24,560 a speed where technology never holds up their growth. 8 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:34,880 Hey everyone, my name is Henry Surya Virawan and you're 9 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:38,440 listening to the Technical Journal Podcast, the show where 10 00:00:38,440 --> 00:00:40,680 I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders, 11 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:44,560 practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to 12 00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:48,800 discuss about their journey, ideas and practices that we all 13 00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:52,320 can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team 14 00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:55,000 and to make an impact in your personal work. 15 00:00:55,640 --> 00:01:04,140 So let's dive into our journal. Hey, what's up, My listeners? 16 00:01:04,300 --> 00:01:07,420 Welcome to the Technijunal Podcast, the podcast where you 17 00:01:07,420 --> 00:01:10,340 can learn about technical leadership and excellence from 18 00:01:10,340 --> 00:01:12,940 my conversations with great thought leaders in the tech 19 00:01:12,940 --> 00:01:15,180 industry. If this is your first time 20 00:01:15,180 --> 00:01:17,860 listening, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite 21 00:01:17,860 --> 00:01:20,660 podcast app to get notified for future episodes. 22 00:01:21,100 --> 00:01:24,860 Also subscribe to Technijunal contents on LinkedIn, Twitter, 23 00:01:24,900 --> 00:01:28,580 Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. And if you have been enjoying 24 00:01:28,580 --> 00:01:31,980 this podcast and its contents, support my work by either buying 25 00:01:31,980 --> 00:01:35,940 me a coffee at Techly journal dot def slash tip or becoming a 26 00:01:35,940 --> 00:01:38,740 patron at Techly journal dot def slash patron. 27 00:01:39,700 --> 00:01:42,380 My guest for today's episode is Alan Williamson. 28 00:01:42,900 --> 00:01:45,500 Alan is the author of Think Like a CTO. 29 00:01:46,060 --> 00:01:50,260 In this episode we discussed in depth how to become a great CTO. 30 00:01:50,780 --> 00:01:55,340 Alan first described what a CTO role is, how the role differs at 31 00:01:55,340 --> 00:01:58,840 different company stages, and the attributes of a good CTO. 32 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,600 Alan then explained the importance of a CTO coming up 33 00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:06,400 with a vision and how we can all improve ourselves in visionary 34 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:09,639 thinking. He then touched on how a CTO 35 00:02:09,639 --> 00:02:12,600 should work together and understand the expectations of 36 00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:15,800 the CEO. Alan also gave his tips on how 37 00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:18,440 to build engineering teams that can produce high quality 38 00:02:18,440 --> 00:02:21,650 results. Towards the end, Alan gave his 39 00:02:21,650 --> 00:02:26,010 personal advice on how a CTO can deal with imposter syndrome and 40 00:02:26,010 --> 00:02:29,010 the importance of a CTO doing a personal review. 41 00:02:29,970 --> 00:02:32,730 I hope you enjoy listening to this episode and learn great 42 00:02:32,730 --> 00:02:36,290 insights on how to become a great CTO or engineering leader. 43 00:02:36,810 --> 00:02:40,450 Many of us aspire to become a CTO one day and I hope this 44 00:02:40,450 --> 00:02:44,010 episode gives you some practical tips to build yourself into that 45 00:02:44,010 --> 00:02:46,290 direction. And if you enjoy listening to 46 00:02:46,290 --> 00:02:49,410 this episode, please share with your colleagues, your friends 47 00:02:49,410 --> 00:02:52,920 and your communities and leave a 5 star rating and review on Ale 48 00:02:52,920 --> 00:02:56,760 Podcast and Spotify. Your small help will help me a 49 00:02:56,760 --> 00:02:59,720 lot in getting more people to discover and listen to this 50 00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:02,200 podcast and I really, really appreciate it. 51 00:03:02,840 --> 00:03:06,160 Without further ado, let's go to my conversation with Alan. 52 00:03:08,810 --> 00:03:09,570 Okay. Hey everyone. 53 00:03:09,570 --> 00:03:11,930 Welcome back to another new episode of the Technical Journal 54 00:03:11,930 --> 00:03:14,010 Podcast. Today I have Alan Williamson 55 00:03:14,010 --> 00:03:15,810 here. So excited to have you here and 56 00:03:15,810 --> 00:03:19,290 we'll be discussing a lot about the role CTO, I'm sure many of 57 00:03:19,290 --> 00:03:22,650 you are intrigued by this role. So today I hope you have a good 58 00:03:22,650 --> 00:03:24,650 discussion about it. Welcome to the show, Alan. 59 00:03:25,370 --> 00:03:27,930 Thank you very much, Henry. Honored to be here my friend. 60 00:03:28,770 --> 00:03:31,610 So Alan, I always love to start the conversation by knowing 61 00:03:31,610 --> 00:03:33,570 about you first. Maybe if you can share any 62 00:03:33,570 --> 00:03:36,410 career highlights or turning points in your career, that may 63 00:03:36,410 --> 00:03:39,070 be good for us to learn from. Okay. 64 00:03:39,270 --> 00:03:43,430 Well, I think being a child from the 1970s is it where I started 65 00:03:43,430 --> 00:03:46,590 off life with my home computer, the ZX Spectrum. 66 00:03:47,110 --> 00:03:51,310 And I remember convincing my parents to buy me one of those 67 00:03:51,310 --> 00:03:53,630 and for them it was like a month's salary for them. 68 00:03:53,950 --> 00:03:57,430 But anyway, Fast forward a bit, I convinced them and then I 69 00:03:57,430 --> 00:03:59,430 remember I still remember it to this day. 70 00:03:59,430 --> 00:04:03,470 My mother's face when she walked into my bedroom and I had it 71 00:04:03,550 --> 00:04:07,430 opened up and I had things soldered into the back of it. 72 00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:11,160 And what I was doing was I'd figured out how to control my 73 00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:15,440 railway points for changing points on my railway track using 74 00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:21,399 basic in the ZX Spectrum and my mother just screamed blue murder 75 00:04:21,800 --> 00:04:24,200 cause this expensive piece of kit. 76 00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:27,960 I had managed to solder bits onto the back of it and trying 77 00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:30,400 to figure out what and said look, but look at what I've 78 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:32,520 done. I could I can press this button 79 00:04:32,920 --> 00:04:34,600 and it makes the train go that way. 80 00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:38,540 Now the woman didn't truly get the cheer genius of what I was 81 00:04:38,540 --> 00:04:41,820 doing many, many years. It took about 30 years for her 82 00:04:41,820 --> 00:04:46,060 to finally see OK that spectrum thing was a wise investment from 83 00:04:46,060 --> 00:04:49,260 that perspective. I've always loved this computing 84 00:04:49,260 --> 00:04:51,860 space. You know I found university just 85 00:04:52,020 --> 00:04:54,220 I was like a sponge bring it on, bring it on. 86 00:04:54,220 --> 00:04:56,220 Bring it on. I've never worked a day in my 87 00:04:56,220 --> 00:04:58,460 life. I I truly do love this. 88 00:04:58,500 --> 00:05:01,060 And again, we're in an industry where we reinvent ourselves 89 00:05:01,060 --> 00:05:04,780 every five years. And what I'm doing now was like 90 00:05:05,060 --> 00:05:06,900 cloud, serverless, all that sort of stuff. 91 00:05:06,900 --> 00:05:09,700 I mean, that's not what I was doing 10 years ago or five years 92 00:05:09,700 --> 00:05:12,340 ago or 15 years ago. I actually love it. 93 00:05:12,620 --> 00:05:16,860 So my career has always sort of been more from the embedded side 94 00:05:16,860 --> 00:05:20,700 of the fence. And as I've evolved through 95 00:05:20,860 --> 00:05:25,100 that, the embedded philosophies that we have in terms of memory 96 00:05:25,100 --> 00:05:28,940 constraints, processor constraints, multitasking, etc, 97 00:05:28,940 --> 00:05:32,140 with different areas of the embedded world, it migrates to 98 00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:35,750 the enterprise horrendously well, just at a different scale. 99 00:05:36,110 --> 00:05:38,710 So all of the sort of the hardcore techniques and 100 00:05:38,710 --> 00:05:42,750 algorithms that I was taught 35 years ago is still as relevant 101 00:05:42,750 --> 00:05:46,310 today as as what it was then, but it's just the different 102 00:05:46,310 --> 00:05:49,870 packaging now and and that's why I always consider myself still a 103 00:05:49,870 --> 00:05:54,310 hardcore developer at heart, even though I'm at a CTO level 104 00:05:54,310 --> 00:05:57,270 now as I guide and mentor other teams. 105 00:05:58,230 --> 00:06:00,590 This episode is brought to you by Miro. 106 00:06:01,150 --> 00:06:04,230 Being a CTO or engineering leader requires you to share 107 00:06:04,230 --> 00:06:08,230 your vision, strategy, systems and processes within your team 108 00:06:08,310 --> 00:06:10,630 or with the other leaders and stakeholders. 109 00:06:11,230 --> 00:06:12,950 Not to mention when building them. 110 00:06:13,310 --> 00:06:15,790 You will also need to collaborate interactively with 111 00:06:15,790 --> 00:06:19,590 multiple people to come up with the best ideas, and one tool I 112 00:06:19,590 --> 00:06:23,550 find that allows us to do so effectively and in a fun way is 113 00:06:23,550 --> 00:06:27,700 Miro. MIRO Mirror is an online virtual 114 00:06:27,700 --> 00:06:30,700 workspace and a visual collaboration tool where the 115 00:06:30,700 --> 00:06:33,940 whole team can build on each other's ideas and create 116 00:06:33,940 --> 00:06:36,140 something innovative together from anywhere. 117 00:06:36,540 --> 00:06:40,020 With Mirror, you need only one tool to see your vision come to 118 00:06:40,020 --> 00:06:42,180 life. Strategic planning becomes 119 00:06:42,220 --> 00:06:44,500 easier when it's visual and accessible. 120 00:06:45,020 --> 00:06:48,180 Planning, researching, brainstorming, designing, and 121 00:06:48,180 --> 00:06:51,100 feedback cycles. It can all happen across teams 122 00:06:51,180 --> 00:06:55,110 In Mirror you can quickly start collaborating within 90 seconds 123 00:06:55,110 --> 00:06:57,830 without having everyone registered as a mirror user 124 00:06:57,830 --> 00:07:00,310 before. There are also more than 300 125 00:07:00,310 --> 00:07:03,870 predefined templates you can use to kick start your collaboration 126 00:07:03,870 --> 00:07:06,830 within seconds. So the next time you're looking 127 00:07:06,830 --> 00:07:09,710 for a digital tool to support your strategic planning and 128 00:07:09,710 --> 00:07:12,550 online collaboration, do give Miro a try. 129 00:07:12,990 --> 00:07:18,030 You can Sign up today at mirror.com podcasts miro.com 130 00:07:18,350 --> 00:07:20,600 Podcast. And your first three mirror 131 00:07:20,600 --> 00:07:23,560 boards are free forever when you signed up now. 132 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:25,960 And now let's get back to our episode. 133 00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:27,920 Thank you for sharing your story. 134 00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:30,920 I think that childhood moment is I think very unique to you, 135 00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:32,560 right. And I think you could always 136 00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:34,640 remember it. But I think also another thing 137 00:07:34,640 --> 00:07:37,560 that I look from your profile right, you have a very vast 138 00:07:37,560 --> 00:07:41,280 experience at the CTO level so to speak, right from startups, 139 00:07:41,280 --> 00:07:44,000 you know SME's and even including from private equity 140 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,600 firm right when you invest in different portfolios of 141 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:48,870 companies. So today we'll be talking a lot 142 00:07:48,870 --> 00:07:52,070 about CTO role, definitely from your book think like the CTO. 143 00:07:52,350 --> 00:07:55,590 But first of all, almost every engineers that I talk to aspire 144 00:07:55,590 --> 00:07:59,190 to become a CTO, right. But what does it mean to become 145 00:07:59,350 --> 00:08:01,550 a CTO? Maybe a little bit of definition 146 00:08:01,550 --> 00:08:03,630 from you, what is this role all about? 147 00:08:04,230 --> 00:08:06,270 Sure. So you're absolutely right. 148 00:08:06,270 --> 00:08:09,390 I mean, when I first started out, when I first graduated from 149 00:08:09,390 --> 00:08:11,430 university, I didn't even know CTO existed. 150 00:08:11,430 --> 00:08:13,870 I didn't know Chief Technology Officer was a thing. 151 00:08:14,390 --> 00:08:16,510 We always knew what that managing director and the CEO of 152 00:08:16,510 --> 00:08:19,470 a company did. But what did a CTO really do? 153 00:08:20,110 --> 00:08:25,070 A CTO it's about giving the business the technology needs to 154 00:08:25,070 --> 00:08:27,070 be able to drive their success, Okay. 155 00:08:27,350 --> 00:08:30,070 So from that perspective, you're not simply delivering tools, 156 00:08:30,070 --> 00:08:32,909 you're not delivering solutions. You're delivering a vision, 157 00:08:32,990 --> 00:08:36,110 you're delivering A roadmap to allow the company to be able to 158 00:08:36,110 --> 00:08:40,030 grow and scale at a level and at a speed where technology never 159 00:08:40,030 --> 00:08:45,490 holds up their growth okay. And in many respects that's the 160 00:08:45,490 --> 00:08:49,570 hard part that most in my experience of of mentoring and 161 00:08:49,570 --> 00:08:53,010 going through this with other teams, developers and senior 162 00:08:53,010 --> 00:08:56,370 developers have a problem with is because they're no longer 163 00:08:56,650 --> 00:09:00,210 talking to like minded people. They're now talking to the 164 00:09:00,210 --> 00:09:03,290 business, they're now talking to clients, they're now talking to 165 00:09:03,290 --> 00:09:05,970 board levels. So it's a whole new vocabulary 166 00:09:05,970 --> 00:09:07,770 they need. They need to be able to distill 167 00:09:07,770 --> 00:09:11,700 down what is effectively complicated stuff into items 168 00:09:11,700 --> 00:09:14,420 that the board and the leadership can understand and 169 00:09:14,420 --> 00:09:16,980 appreciate. Because frankly, the board does 170 00:09:16,980 --> 00:09:22,260 not care if it's Azure or AWS, does not care if it's Node or 171 00:09:22,260 --> 00:09:26,220 Java or Python or Go. They couldn't give a crap about 172 00:09:26,220 --> 00:09:29,340 the latest framework. They just want to know, does it 173 00:09:29,540 --> 00:09:33,180 make our delivery of solutions to our clients easier or not? 174 00:09:33,620 --> 00:09:34,780 That's all they're interested in. 175 00:09:35,060 --> 00:09:39,340 And sometimes technologists, we get caught up and get excited 176 00:09:39,340 --> 00:09:42,630 with the detail and we don't know how to distill that detail 177 00:09:42,630 --> 00:09:46,350 in a way that says okay, fine, How do I package that to the 178 00:09:46,350 --> 00:09:49,910 board for them to be able to say, wow, we can build a 179 00:09:49,910 --> 00:09:52,190 business off this. We can grow the business using 180 00:09:52,190 --> 00:09:56,150 this okay. Now as it's CTO, you're there 181 00:09:56,150 --> 00:10:00,030 between the technology side of the fence and the business side 182 00:10:00,030 --> 00:10:03,830 of the fence. So yes, you do care if it's Java 183 00:10:03,830 --> 00:10:06,750 or JavaScript or Symphony or hardcore PHP. 184 00:10:07,030 --> 00:10:10,040 What you're trying to figure out is, if I make a decision one way 185 00:10:10,040 --> 00:10:14,200 or the other, is this going to speed up my ability to deliver, 186 00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:17,360 or is it going to slow down my ability to deliver? 187 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:21,680 Am I chasing the cool new technology that maybe hasn't yet 188 00:10:21,680 --> 00:10:24,640 matured enough that we can bet the farm against? 189 00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,920 Because scalability is more than simply how many hits can you 190 00:10:28,920 --> 00:10:32,400 process in a second? It's about how healthy is the 191 00:10:32,480 --> 00:10:36,640 ecosystem around that particular area, technology, software, 192 00:10:36,640 --> 00:10:41,030 whatever it is that I can find resources, I can recruit for it. 193 00:10:41,270 --> 00:10:43,190 I can have a long term vision for it. 194 00:10:43,590 --> 00:10:46,870 And you know, somebody said something to me a few months ago 195 00:10:46,870 --> 00:10:50,110 that that sort of resonated at that level is when a car 196 00:10:50,110 --> 00:10:52,910 manufacturer, for example, introduces a new car into the 197 00:10:52,910 --> 00:10:55,350 market. They have to be able to show and 198 00:10:55,350 --> 00:10:59,110 prove that they can support that car for at least 25 years, 199 00:10:59,550 --> 00:11:00,670 right? There's going to be servicing, 200 00:11:00,670 --> 00:11:02,670 there's going to be all of the warranties and all that sort of 201 00:11:02,670 --> 00:11:04,430 stuff you. And that's because you don't 202 00:11:04,430 --> 00:11:06,930 want somebody to be able to buy a car and suddenly it to be not 203 00:11:06,930 --> 00:11:08,610 supported. We're the same in the software 204 00:11:08,610 --> 00:11:11,490 world. As technologists, we always love 205 00:11:11,490 --> 00:11:14,090 the new shiny, bright toy. We're always going for the 206 00:11:14,090 --> 00:11:16,530 latest version, the latest cool stuff, the latest stuff. 207 00:11:16,530 --> 00:11:20,690 And I suffer the same fate, but I just simply can't turn the 208 00:11:20,690 --> 00:11:22,170 business around. Quick to say, right, we're all 209 00:11:22,170 --> 00:11:23,810 going in this direction now. We're all going in this 210 00:11:23,810 --> 00:11:26,010 direction now because the business is sitting there 211 00:11:26,010 --> 00:11:28,170 thinking we we've got clients to deliver. 212 00:11:28,170 --> 00:11:30,690 By the way, guys, are you creating more noise for us? 213 00:11:30,690 --> 00:11:32,610 Are you creating less friction for us? 214 00:11:32,650 --> 00:11:36,970 So from a Cto's point of view, you're always trying to balance 215 00:11:37,450 --> 00:11:40,330 those two areas. Thanks for emphasizing the 216 00:11:40,330 --> 00:11:43,450 importance of knowing about the business and also the clients, 217 00:11:43,450 --> 00:11:46,210 right, because ultimately the technology that you use or 218 00:11:46,210 --> 00:11:49,890 deploy is actually used for a business impact, business growth 219 00:11:50,210 --> 00:11:51,810 and also user satisfaction, right. 220 00:11:51,930 --> 00:11:54,930 And I like the way that you mentioned that Cto's role is to 221 00:11:54,930 --> 00:11:56,450 come up with a vision and roadmap. 222 00:11:56,950 --> 00:11:59,830 And ensuring that technology doesn't hold up the business 223 00:11:59,830 --> 00:12:01,550 growth, right? I think that's a very key, 224 00:12:01,550 --> 00:12:04,630 important thing for people who aspire to become a technology 225 00:12:04,630 --> 00:12:06,310 leader, not just CTO, Probably, right? 226 00:12:07,110 --> 00:12:09,750 Yeah, and that's always my sort of first litmus test. 227 00:12:09,750 --> 00:12:12,190 When I'm introduced to CTO, I say okay. 228 00:12:12,190 --> 00:12:14,750 Well, here's a whiteboard pen. Draw me your vision. 229 00:12:15,230 --> 00:12:17,630 And if they're blanking, then I'm thinking okay, you're not 230 00:12:17,630 --> 00:12:19,350 quite ready for the CTO level yet. 231 00:12:19,830 --> 00:12:23,870 Okay, a CTO should be able to off the back of their get me a 232 00:12:23,870 --> 00:12:26,710 road map in a vision because everybody should be aligned as 233 00:12:26,710 --> 00:12:28,430 to where they're going on that front. 234 00:12:28,430 --> 00:12:31,270 And if they don't even know what the vision is, then how does the 235 00:12:31,270 --> 00:12:34,150 business know what to plan for and how does the engineering 236 00:12:34,150 --> 00:12:36,430 team know how to align to that vision. 237 00:12:36,550 --> 00:12:40,510 So it truly is CTO is simply not the guy that knows the most, 238 00:12:40,910 --> 00:12:43,830 it's the one that knows how we're servicing the business, 239 00:12:44,150 --> 00:12:46,670 how we're moving towards that and what are we going to look 240 00:12:46,670 --> 00:12:48,990 like in two to three years time, right. 241 00:12:49,450 --> 00:12:51,810 But first of all, I mean in the industry there are so many 242 00:12:51,810 --> 00:12:55,370 different terms of, you know, there's a CIO, there's a VP of 243 00:12:55,370 --> 00:12:58,810 Engineering, there's also Chief Data Officer, you know, Chief 244 00:12:58,810 --> 00:13:00,890 Transformation Officer. There's so many things, right? 245 00:13:01,050 --> 00:13:04,050 Is there any differentiation between CTO and all these roles 246 00:13:04,050 --> 00:13:07,050 or are they just different names, that same flavor? 247 00:13:07,690 --> 00:13:10,490 No, there there is. I would, I mean again, this is a 248 00:13:10,530 --> 00:13:13,490 Pepsi versus Coke argument. There's going to be many people 249 00:13:13,490 --> 00:13:15,130 that will have different opinions on this. 250 00:13:15,570 --> 00:13:18,450 My opinion is that the CTO is the one that's pretty much sits 251 00:13:18,450 --> 00:13:21,530 above the malls because they take all of the stuff. 252 00:13:21,530 --> 00:13:26,050 So Chief Data Officer, Chief Information Officer is probably 253 00:13:26,050 --> 00:13:29,890 one that's maybe sits alongside the CTO, but Security Officer, 254 00:13:29,890 --> 00:13:31,890 all of VP of Engineering, etcetera. 255 00:13:32,250 --> 00:13:34,650 The CTO, at the end of the day, is at the top of the pyramid, 256 00:13:34,930 --> 00:13:38,210 coordinating and getting input from all of those different 257 00:13:38,210 --> 00:13:42,330 quarters in order to come up with that single vision, right? 258 00:13:42,920 --> 00:13:45,840 Thanks for the clarification. Another thing that people also 259 00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:49,080 think about when they have this CTO role, right, is there any 260 00:13:49,080 --> 00:13:52,360 difference for you know maybe a startups or small startups 261 00:13:52,360 --> 00:13:55,240 versus a big companies or even like traditional corporate 262 00:13:55,240 --> 00:13:58,680 companies because I can see variations in the different 263 00:13:58,680 --> 00:14:01,560 types of companies as well. So what do you feel from your 264 00:14:01,560 --> 00:14:04,840 point of view for sure at the startup level? 265 00:14:04,840 --> 00:14:08,400 The CTO is often one of the founders as well. 266 00:14:08,900 --> 00:14:11,620 They're also the ones that are truly building the product. 267 00:14:11,620 --> 00:14:13,180 They're the ones that are coding. 268 00:14:13,180 --> 00:14:14,300 They're the ones that are delivering. 269 00:14:14,300 --> 00:14:15,660 They're the ones that are producing. 270 00:14:15,660 --> 00:14:18,380 They're they're supporting. They're doing everything at that 271 00:14:18,380 --> 00:14:20,180 level. You're not really being a CTO 272 00:14:20,540 --> 00:14:21,980 okay. You're in founder mode. 273 00:14:22,500 --> 00:14:24,980 You've got the CTO title in order to show, yeah, I'm the 274 00:14:24,980 --> 00:14:27,060 tech guy, the other guy's the business guy. 275 00:14:27,500 --> 00:14:30,980 But really you're playing the role of proving the concept of 276 00:14:30,980 --> 00:14:33,500 the startup right. You're truly are in proof of 277 00:14:33,500 --> 00:14:36,660 concept mode because anything that you're building at that 278 00:14:36,660 --> 00:14:39,090 level 9 times out of 10 is going to be thrown away. 279 00:14:39,570 --> 00:14:42,690 Because once you get a greater team around you and more 280 00:14:42,690 --> 00:14:45,570 discipline around you and much more responsibility around you. 281 00:14:45,570 --> 00:14:48,090 And the fact that hey, we've got paying customers and they simply 282 00:14:48,090 --> 00:14:50,450 can't go down. So therefore I just can't 283 00:14:50,450 --> 00:14:53,650 release this code tomorrow. I I've got to schedule it and 284 00:14:53,650 --> 00:14:56,010 there may be downtime. I've got to go through a process 285 00:14:56,010 --> 00:14:57,970 now and if something goes wrong, I've got to be able to roll it 286 00:14:57,970 --> 00:15:00,290 back because I've actually got paying clients that's going to 287 00:15:00,290 --> 00:15:02,890 get angry at me and they may want refunds, etc. 288 00:15:02,890 --> 00:15:04,610 And that's going to throttle my cash flow. 289 00:15:05,060 --> 00:15:08,540 So the discipline comes through a natural evolution, not because 290 00:15:08,540 --> 00:15:12,180 that we love process, it's because we want to guarantee a 291 00:15:12,180 --> 00:15:14,340 quality of service to our clients. 292 00:15:14,860 --> 00:15:17,900 That's why these processes get started and get pushed in the 293 00:15:17,900 --> 00:15:20,380 1st place. So the CTO at the founder level, 294 00:15:20,940 --> 00:15:22,580 frankly, they get to have the most fun. 295 00:15:22,940 --> 00:15:25,540 They have no process, they're a free reign. 296 00:15:25,540 --> 00:15:28,260 They get to play, they get to do all that stuff and they get to 297 00:15:28,260 --> 00:15:31,900 truly forage a new path in the trees. 298 00:15:32,260 --> 00:15:36,210 As that path starts to get more beaten, then the company starts 299 00:15:36,210 --> 00:15:39,210 to evolve, it starts to get either more investment or it 300 00:15:39,210 --> 00:15:42,730 gets more money through simply organic growth. 301 00:15:42,730 --> 00:15:45,210 So therefore there will be a natural evolution that the CTO 302 00:15:45,210 --> 00:15:48,290 then becomes further away from the code or further away from 303 00:15:48,290 --> 00:15:51,810 the responsibility. And often what happens is and 304 00:15:51,810 --> 00:15:56,010 again another little test is can that CTO go on vacation for two 305 00:15:56,010 --> 00:15:57,850 weeks and not worry about opening up his laptop? 306 00:15:58,410 --> 00:16:01,810 I would argue that most startups can't afford that luxury and 307 00:16:01,810 --> 00:16:05,030 again, why not? Everybody deserves a vacation 308 00:16:05,310 --> 00:16:08,230 Okay. So you know, as we get up higher 309 00:16:08,230 --> 00:16:10,710 into bigger companies, even into the public companies. 310 00:16:10,990 --> 00:16:14,670 Yes, the CTO can take two weeks off because there's a team 311 00:16:14,670 --> 00:16:16,750 underneath them. There's a team, I keep saying 312 00:16:16,750 --> 00:16:19,390 him, but it it is sadly the majority of males. 313 00:16:19,390 --> 00:16:21,710 I would love to see more females in in the world and there are 314 00:16:21,710 --> 00:16:23,630 some great examples of female CTO's. 315 00:16:24,190 --> 00:16:27,910 So please apologize, the gross sexualization there, the 316 00:16:28,150 --> 00:16:31,670 fundamental difference there is that you want to be able to have 317 00:16:31,670 --> 00:16:36,370 an organization whereby the CTO is operating at the level that 318 00:16:36,370 --> 00:16:39,570 the business needs of it at the time of the business evolution. 319 00:16:39,970 --> 00:16:42,650 So you're right, the startup needs to have that person 320 00:16:42,650 --> 00:16:46,050 cutting code, but the company is sitting at 5000 employees. 321 00:16:46,290 --> 00:16:50,250 If the CTO is still cutting code and releasing it, something has 322 00:16:50,250 --> 00:16:51,610 gone wrong in the in the line there. 323 00:16:51,610 --> 00:16:55,300 They're probably not a CTO. So thank you for clarifying 324 00:16:55,300 --> 00:16:56,940 that. So I think, yeah, it's always 325 00:16:56,940 --> 00:16:59,460 like a misnomer, right, the title in the startup versus 326 00:16:59,460 --> 00:17:02,460 title in the big companies, they may not be all the same with the 327 00:17:02,460 --> 00:17:04,260 responsibility and also day-to-day job. 328 00:17:04,819 --> 00:17:08,060 So we have discussed a little bit about you know, like what is 329 00:17:08,060 --> 00:17:11,060 the CTO role and you know responsibility and all that. 330 00:17:11,300 --> 00:17:14,700 I mean in your book I read you define a quality of what a good 331 00:17:14,780 --> 00:17:17,260 CTO looks like. You mentioned just like what you 332 00:17:17,300 --> 00:17:19,660 mentioned in the beginning about technology probably is the least 333 00:17:19,660 --> 00:17:23,450 part of the CTO role. But you mentioned interestingly 334 00:17:23,450 --> 00:17:27,170 about the people that actually will make or break your success. 335 00:17:27,490 --> 00:17:30,370 This is probably a bit of something that unexpected for 336 00:17:30,370 --> 00:17:34,090 people to hear as a CTO role. Your success actually depends on 337 00:17:34,090 --> 00:17:35,850 people. Maybe if you can elaborate a 338 00:17:35,850 --> 00:17:38,770 little bit more about this part. What a good CTO do. 339 00:17:39,370 --> 00:17:42,010 Yes. And again, I mean, this often 340 00:17:42,010 --> 00:17:44,370 speaks to the engineering's heart. 341 00:17:44,850 --> 00:17:47,610 We're a very egocentric personality. 342 00:17:47,770 --> 00:17:49,170 You know, we love our little wins. 343 00:17:49,170 --> 00:17:52,190 We love puffing ourselves up. We love to think that we're the 344 00:17:52,190 --> 00:17:55,350 best at things, etcetera, right. And and there's usually the sort 345 00:17:55,350 --> 00:17:57,550 of not invented here syndrome that kicks out here. 346 00:17:57,670 --> 00:17:58,950 Well, I could develop that better. 347 00:17:58,950 --> 00:18:01,190 I could do that better myself. I could oh, I wouldn't have done 348 00:18:01,190 --> 00:18:01,790 it like that. Okay. 349 00:18:02,430 --> 00:18:05,390 The reality is that you should never be the smartest person in 350 00:18:05,390 --> 00:18:06,470 the room. Okay. 351 00:18:06,470 --> 00:18:09,470 You should always have good people that you can bounce ideas 352 00:18:09,470 --> 00:18:13,750 off of and that they can challenge you and pull you and 353 00:18:13,750 --> 00:18:16,150 move you. And somebody that's not scared 354 00:18:16,150 --> 00:18:20,560 to say no to you Okay. And that's why having strong 355 00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:24,960 people is so important to the development of any team. 356 00:18:25,360 --> 00:18:27,720 That when you're bringing on somebody to do a specific role, 357 00:18:28,120 --> 00:18:31,640 yes, they should be able to do that role at a very high level. 358 00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:35,520 But you should be able to give them the latitude and the 359 00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:39,560 responsibility to do their role and for you not to micromanage 360 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:41,800 Okay. And if you find yourself as a 361 00:18:41,800 --> 00:18:44,960 leader, having to micromanage each of the different layers, 362 00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:48,740 then either you're not hiring correctly or you're not a leader 363 00:18:48,740 --> 00:18:50,500 that's confident to let go. Okay. 364 00:18:50,780 --> 00:18:54,780 Why do I want to hire a SQL developer if I'm always writing 365 00:18:54,940 --> 00:18:58,020 the SQL statements for them? Save myself money, Get rid of 366 00:18:58,020 --> 00:18:59,260 them. I'll just do it. 367 00:18:59,380 --> 00:19:00,700 Okay. But you're never going to scale 368 00:19:00,700 --> 00:19:02,500 A-Team if you keep having that attitude. 369 00:19:02,820 --> 00:19:05,140 So you've got to hire. Well, you've got to hire of a 370 00:19:05,140 --> 00:19:08,100 good quality, but more importantly, you've got to let 371 00:19:08,100 --> 00:19:10,000 them do their job. Okay. 372 00:19:10,240 --> 00:19:13,760 So I think what you mentioned is actually very, very important 373 00:19:13,760 --> 00:19:17,400 for whoever is in the top right, not just CTO, but maybe also 374 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,080 leaders, right, VP of engineering or whatever that is, 375 00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:23,840 is to be able to help people grow and also scale yourself, 376 00:19:23,840 --> 00:19:25,480 right. You can't be micromanaging every 377 00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:28,760 little bits of technology aspects of the organization. 378 00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:32,240 And this is something I find it difficult for some engineers, 379 00:19:32,240 --> 00:19:35,320 right, Because they will never train for it in the 1st place, 380 00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:36,880 right? I mean, there's no university 381 00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:39,960 that, you know, guides you to become a CTO or becoming a CIO, 382 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:42,000 right? So you mentioned in the 383 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,800 beginning that the most important part for the CTO is 384 00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:47,000 actually to be able to draw the roadmap division. 385 00:19:47,440 --> 00:19:50,040 And I think probably this is also one thing that many people 386 00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:53,790 are not trained of. So maybe can you tell us how can 387 00:19:53,790 --> 00:19:57,550 we actually improve ourselves to go into this route so that 388 00:19:57,550 --> 00:20:02,270 probably become a better CTO. So there's usually one of two 389 00:20:02,270 --> 00:20:04,630 problems that happen when somebody's laying out a vision 390 00:20:05,030 --> 00:20:08,070 well, the first problem is recognizing the fact that you 391 00:20:08,070 --> 00:20:11,230 can do one. You never have to be asked to do 392 00:20:11,230 --> 00:20:14,190 a vision okay and most developers. 393 00:20:14,610 --> 00:20:17,650 Probably have their own vision in a sort of very macro level in 394 00:20:17,650 --> 00:20:19,730 terms of, well, I want to upgrade to this version or I 395 00:20:19,730 --> 00:20:21,730 want to refactor this code. I want to do that. 396 00:20:22,090 --> 00:20:25,570 That is indeed a vision, Okay. It's very short term vision for 397 00:20:25,570 --> 00:20:28,930 sure, but it's still a vision at a CTO level. 398 00:20:29,050 --> 00:20:31,490 You have to think of that vision a little bit longer and a little 399 00:20:31,490 --> 00:20:34,850 bit bit broader, but you have to give yourself license to come up 400 00:20:34,850 --> 00:20:38,050 with it in the 1st place. No, you can fail in one of two 401 00:20:38,050 --> 00:20:39,890 ways. When you're coming up with that 402 00:20:40,450 --> 00:20:43,050 failure, one is not thinking long term enough. 403 00:20:43,540 --> 00:20:46,820 It's thinking more in incremental improvements. 404 00:20:47,220 --> 00:20:49,860 But you're not doing anything big, you're not giving the 405 00:20:49,860 --> 00:20:52,380 business anything to hang their hat on, for example. 406 00:20:52,860 --> 00:20:56,820 And the other one is your vision is too big, that it doesn't have 407 00:20:56,820 --> 00:20:59,260 any detail in it. There's no milestones in it. 408 00:20:59,460 --> 00:21:02,660 OK, You know, perfect example that I'm sure every CTO with 409 00:21:02,660 --> 00:21:05,660 this precise moment, it's got a line in their deck somewhere 410 00:21:05,660 --> 00:21:08,220 saying we'll move the company to AI in three years. 411 00:21:08,820 --> 00:21:10,620 What does that mean? Two years ago? 412 00:21:10,620 --> 00:21:12,220 We're going to move everything onto the blockchain. 413 00:21:12,920 --> 00:21:16,160 Again, what years before that was everything will be big data. 414 00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:19,360 Notice there's a cyclic nature at all of this sort of stuff. 415 00:21:19,840 --> 00:21:22,200 But again, those are two big visions. 416 00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:24,840 What does it mean that I'm going to go onto AI? 417 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:28,040 Which parts of the business is going to improve to get to 418 00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:30,240 there? What are my steps that I need to 419 00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:32,840 do in order for us to realize that vision? 420 00:21:33,160 --> 00:21:35,680 Simply saying that I'm going to be the best technology company 421 00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:39,160 in the world, not enough. Your vision's got to be able to 422 00:21:39,160 --> 00:21:41,780 lay out plants and how you're going to get there and what are 423 00:21:41,780 --> 00:21:45,260 going to be the benefits to the business and to your engineers 424 00:21:45,260 --> 00:21:48,380 because you're going to recruit for this to be able to do part 425 00:21:48,380 --> 00:21:52,500 of that exciting vision. So a much more down to earth 426 00:21:52,660 --> 00:21:55,500 vision would be for example an organization that has 427 00:21:55,500 --> 00:21:58,620 historically got physical servers in Iraq somewhere saying 428 00:21:58,820 --> 00:22:02,460 we're going to move in the next three years to a cloud enabled 429 00:22:02,500 --> 00:22:06,900 API driven architecture. Brilliant benefits being reduced 430 00:22:06,900 --> 00:22:12,040 cost to the business, more flexibility for spending, easier 431 00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:15,400 way to utilize existing components and not have to keep 432 00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:17,960 redeveloping stuff. That's a real vision. 433 00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:21,120 Now I've got tangible results. And now that every time we're 434 00:22:21,120 --> 00:22:24,120 doing something, every time that we make a decision and say, 435 00:22:24,120 --> 00:22:27,600 okay, we're creating a new file service, I need to buy 4 new 436 00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:30,360 Dell boxes. Hold on, is that getting us 437 00:22:30,360 --> 00:22:33,040 closer to the vision or further away from the vision? 438 00:22:33,520 --> 00:22:35,760 Well, I'm having to buy more boxes, so therefore I'm getting 439 00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:37,840 away from the vision, okay. So let's not do that. 440 00:22:38,340 --> 00:22:40,660 That's not in support of what our vision is, Okay. 441 00:22:40,820 --> 00:22:44,620 So a vision truly has to be factored into every decision 442 00:22:44,620 --> 00:22:47,900 that's being made in order to be realized that the vision is 443 00:22:47,900 --> 00:22:50,940 indeed correct. No, the vision is not a one and 444 00:22:50,940 --> 00:22:54,580 done statement because the business changes, the industry 445 00:22:54,580 --> 00:22:56,740 changes. So it's got to be always 446 00:22:56,740 --> 00:23:00,900 evolving, always changing, but it's not going to be changing to 447 00:23:00,900 --> 00:23:04,220 the point where it's a complete and utter 360 every single six 448 00:23:04,220 --> 00:23:06,460 months that we're going after a completely different vision, a 449 00:23:06,460 --> 00:23:09,300 completely different world. It's got to be true to the 450 00:23:09,300 --> 00:23:12,100 nature. So for me, it's usually a two to 451 00:23:12,100 --> 00:23:16,460 three-year vision with a very lofty 5 year goal as to where 452 00:23:16,460 --> 00:23:18,340 we're going. But you don't want to be going 453 00:23:18,420 --> 00:23:22,860 any further out than that because there are too many 454 00:23:23,060 --> 00:23:26,220 factors that are going to come in that could completely change 455 00:23:26,500 --> 00:23:28,540 the way you operate. Right. 456 00:23:28,820 --> 00:23:31,340 Yeah, I think, I think this is a good guidelines, right. 457 00:23:31,340 --> 00:23:34,460 So two to three years of vision, but not too short, because too 458 00:23:34,460 --> 00:23:36,820 short probably is more like incremental like what you 459 00:23:36,820 --> 00:23:39,290 mentioned, right. It's more project management at 460 00:23:39,290 --> 00:23:41,170 that point, yes. Yeah. 461 00:23:41,330 --> 00:23:44,450 So how can engineers train themselves to be able to come up 462 00:23:44,450 --> 00:23:47,450 with good visions? Because many engineers work on 463 00:23:47,450 --> 00:23:50,810 low level tasks and it's always incremental unless there's a 464 00:23:50,810 --> 00:23:53,890 series of projects being driven from the top. 465 00:23:54,010 --> 00:23:57,130 So how can engineers prepare ourselves better to become a 466 00:23:57,130 --> 00:23:59,810 better CTO? It's a great question, Henry. 467 00:24:00,090 --> 00:24:03,170 So for this one here, I always sort of liken it to the stock 468 00:24:03,170 --> 00:24:05,460 market, Okay. One of the nice things about the 469 00:24:05,460 --> 00:24:09,020 stock market is that you buy and trade stocks and you can 470 00:24:09,020 --> 00:24:11,420 effectively play the game without losing money. 471 00:24:11,780 --> 00:24:13,500 Okay. You can sort of say Okay, I'm 472 00:24:13,500 --> 00:24:16,940 going to go back ten years and I'm going to sort of run my same 473 00:24:16,940 --> 00:24:20,780 sort of methodology or algorithm, if you will, on the 474 00:24:20,780 --> 00:24:23,500 stocks 10 years ago. Would I have made the money fast 475 00:24:23,500 --> 00:24:26,660 forwarding it or I'm going to play with play money in the 476 00:24:26,940 --> 00:24:29,420 current stock market and see if that would have worked or not. 477 00:24:29,780 --> 00:24:31,860 Okay. You can do the same thing with 478 00:24:31,860 --> 00:24:35,300 the Visionary statement. You can go back in a company's 479 00:24:35,700 --> 00:24:40,980 history and say Okay at the time and you know, perfect example 480 00:24:40,980 --> 00:24:44,340 would be like Microsoft at the time that Bill Gates stepped 481 00:24:44,340 --> 00:24:46,740 off. If you were the CT of Microsoft, 482 00:24:46,740 --> 00:24:49,140 then what would have been your vision at that point? 483 00:24:49,540 --> 00:24:51,380 Would you have gone all into the Internet? 484 00:24:51,380 --> 00:24:52,940 Would you have gone all into Azure? 485 00:24:52,940 --> 00:24:54,820 Would you have gone all like what would have you have done 486 00:24:54,820 --> 00:24:58,620 there and did that play out as what was expected? 487 00:24:58,940 --> 00:25:02,510 We've plenty of examples of companies that have failed and 488 00:25:02,510 --> 00:25:04,710 failed to adapt to the existing environment. 489 00:25:05,230 --> 00:25:09,150 Kodak completely missed out on the whole digital phone sort of 490 00:25:09,150 --> 00:25:11,590 stuff, etc. So the CTO there probably didn't 491 00:25:11,590 --> 00:25:14,030 do a great job, but what would you have done? 492 00:25:14,430 --> 00:25:17,270 Now of course you've got the benefit of hindsight, but that 493 00:25:17,270 --> 00:25:20,870 hindsight history teaches us a lot about what's going to come 494 00:25:20,870 --> 00:25:23,230 up. So even though that we're all a 495 00:25:23,230 --> 00:25:25,710 little bit more intelligent and it's easy to look at the likes 496 00:25:25,710 --> 00:25:28,630 of Blockbuster and Netflix, Kodak and the smartphones, is 497 00:25:28,630 --> 00:25:30,190 it? Well, I wouldn't have done that, 498 00:25:30,710 --> 00:25:32,510 Yeah. But at the time, given the 499 00:25:32,510 --> 00:25:36,110 knowledge you had at the time, what could you have done 500 00:25:36,110 --> 00:25:38,150 differently? Nobody can seize into the 501 00:25:38,150 --> 00:25:39,510 future. But at the time, what could you 502 00:25:39,510 --> 00:25:41,670 have done? So as you look at the evolution 503 00:25:41,670 --> 00:25:46,110 of your own company, yes, the developer sitting there who 504 00:25:46,110 --> 00:25:51,270 doesn't maybe have the authority or the visibility, they do have 505 00:25:51,270 --> 00:25:54,390 a history of their own company. They can see how the company's 506 00:25:54,390 --> 00:25:57,590 evolved and even from the point of view of when they first 507 00:25:57,590 --> 00:26:00,450 joined to where it is now, be king for the day. 508 00:26:00,770 --> 00:26:03,090 What would you have done? What difference would you? 509 00:26:03,090 --> 00:26:05,610 What change would you have done? I suppose you're sitting there 510 00:26:05,610 --> 00:26:08,130 going, well, I told you so. I knew that wasn't going to 511 00:26:08,130 --> 00:26:09,330 work. We should never have gone with 512 00:26:09,730 --> 00:26:14,130 whatever the language of the day was, Play that game and and then 513 00:26:14,130 --> 00:26:16,810 sort of look at it. And if you've got a good strong 514 00:26:16,810 --> 00:26:19,490 relationship with your management and your leadership 515 00:26:19,850 --> 00:26:22,770 and your Oneonones, ask them the questions. 516 00:26:23,170 --> 00:26:26,370 So why did you go that fast? I'm interested. 517 00:26:26,570 --> 00:26:30,160 What was the thinking there? Why are we now considered a Java 518 00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:35,080 shop and not, say, Node? Teach me what you did to get 519 00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:38,440 there. A good leader will never shy 520 00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:41,600 away from that conversation. And they could be the, well, 521 00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:43,920 yeah, you know what? At the time, it was the right 522 00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:45,640 decision. But given where the industry's 523 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,720 moved now, we're going to have to pivot a little bit and move 524 00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,840 off of that stack and we're going to go this direction or 525 00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,520 we're going to go away from servers, going to look, whatever 526 00:26:54,520 --> 00:27:00,320 it is, a good CTO and a good leader will always be mindful of 527 00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,400 being adaptive to the current environment and therefore will 528 00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,400 change. You never want a person in that 529 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:09,440 role. It's just so frigging stubborn 530 00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,080 it will work. I just need the rest of the 531 00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:16,080 world to catch up to my vision. Okay, no, we're not Amazon. 532 00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:18,240 We don't get the set certain tones. 533 00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:19,800 You have to figure this out by ourselves. 534 00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:25,190 So from that perspective, ask, ask, ask and doing a respectful 535 00:27:25,190 --> 00:27:28,390 way, you're not sort of going to your mind, well, why did you do 536 00:27:28,390 --> 00:27:31,110 it this way? I wouldn't have done it that 537 00:27:31,110 --> 00:27:32,950 way. No, you're you're listening, 538 00:27:33,510 --> 00:27:35,590 you're listening. So make the conversation 539 00:27:35,590 --> 00:27:39,550 fruitful and understand their data points because the bit that 540 00:27:39,550 --> 00:27:43,510 you're probably not appreciating is the business side of the 541 00:27:43,510 --> 00:27:45,830 fence that you may not have exposure to okay. 542 00:27:45,830 --> 00:27:49,350 You may not be seeing certain details that at your level 543 00:27:49,780 --> 00:27:51,220 doesn't make any difference to your job. 544 00:27:51,220 --> 00:27:53,580 So therefore you wouldn't get to see the balance sheet, you 545 00:27:53,580 --> 00:27:55,860 wouldn't get to see the current sales sheet, you wouldn't get to 546 00:27:55,860 --> 00:27:58,740 see the forecast because it doesn't help you in your job 547 00:27:58,740 --> 00:28:00,900 really. But as you're laying out 548 00:28:00,900 --> 00:28:04,420 division of where it's going, then yes, you do want to start 549 00:28:04,420 --> 00:28:06,780 that. And areas that we've seen before 550 00:28:06,780 --> 00:28:10,180 is where a CTO would say, right, we're now moving towards an API 551 00:28:10,180 --> 00:28:13,060 driven architecture and you get people sort of thinking, well, 552 00:28:13,540 --> 00:28:15,980 why aren't things working the way they are. 553 00:28:16,460 --> 00:28:20,560 I know this code is doing well. What they may have missed is 554 00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:25,040 that clients are now starting to ask for the API so they can go 555 00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:29,800 deeper into their organization. And any time that a client asks 556 00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:33,280 for an API from your organization, you want to run 557 00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:37,080 100 miles an hour towards that request because that creates a 558 00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:41,520 very sticky client. Now that's the sort of tools and 559 00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:45,720 the sort of way that a CTO can truly help the business get a 560 00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,490 lot more. Integrate it with their clients 561 00:28:48,490 --> 00:28:51,050 by providing them tools that the clients are looking for. 562 00:28:51,410 --> 00:28:54,290 As opposed to saying, well, we don't do APIs, just give us a 563 00:28:54,290 --> 00:28:56,130 file upload and an FTP directory. 564 00:28:56,570 --> 00:29:00,370 How old school is that? So when it comes to visions, 565 00:29:00,370 --> 00:29:03,970 when it comes to figuring out what a vision should be, ask, 566 00:29:04,050 --> 00:29:07,320 ask, ask. Thanks for sharing this 567 00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:09,920 interesting technique right for all engineers out there. 568 00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:14,000 If you want to exercise your socalled visionary skills, look 569 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:15,560 at the evolution of your own company. 570 00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,480 Make sure you probably analyze some of the key decisions, 571 00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:20,280 whether it's right or whether it's wrong, right. 572 00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:22,840 Maybe you can analyze and use that as your knowledge right? 573 00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,200 And maybe even ask your leaders if they are supportive to share 574 00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,040 with you, right? I think these are all great, 575 00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:30,000 great learnings. Don't forget that you can also 576 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:31,720 learn from the past history as well. 577 00:29:32,210 --> 00:29:34,530 And I just wanna quote a few things about, you know, you 578 00:29:34,530 --> 00:29:37,290 mentioned about visions, right? Vision is not just one project. 579 00:29:37,650 --> 00:29:40,930 So let's say you wanna develop this API driven technology, 580 00:29:40,930 --> 00:29:43,330 right? It's not just once done and you 581 00:29:43,330 --> 00:29:45,530 know, dusted, right? So it could be a series of 582 00:29:45,530 --> 00:29:48,130 projects 2-3 years. That's kind of like your rough 583 00:29:48,130 --> 00:29:50,250 guideline. And also one thing that is very 584 00:29:50,250 --> 00:29:53,490 important, I find that it can be delivered and celebrated by the 585 00:29:53,490 --> 00:29:55,810 people as well, right? So it's not something that never 586 00:29:55,850 --> 00:29:57,650 celebrated. Exactly. 587 00:29:57,650 --> 00:30:00,650 And that's very important because otherwise you're just a 588 00:30:00,650 --> 00:30:03,810 snake oil salesman, you're never delivering, you're always 589 00:30:03,810 --> 00:30:06,050 delivering tomorrow, you're always delivering tomorrow. 590 00:30:06,970 --> 00:30:10,130 One company that suffers from that big time would be Tesla. 591 00:30:10,490 --> 00:30:14,010 I mean I was a Tesla owner and I got sick of self driving is 592 00:30:14,010 --> 00:30:15,890 coming next year. No, it's coming next month. 593 00:30:15,890 --> 00:30:18,130 No, it's coming next year. Self driving's still not there. 594 00:30:18,450 --> 00:30:20,570 It's like okay. Elon, can you actually deliver 595 00:30:20,570 --> 00:30:22,650 on a product? I I don't think you can. 596 00:30:23,090 --> 00:30:26,050 So the cyber truck, it may not be released this year, it may be 597 00:30:26,050 --> 00:30:28,530 released next year. I mean, they are the never 598 00:30:28,530 --> 00:30:30,930 release company. Now they do eventually get 599 00:30:30,930 --> 00:30:34,570 there, but think of the fatigue that that puts on your customers 600 00:30:34,570 --> 00:30:36,250 and your clients and all that sort of stuff. 601 00:30:36,250 --> 00:30:40,770 So a good vision should not be too lofty that it cannot be 602 00:30:40,770 --> 00:30:43,810 celebrated when it's delivered. Right. 603 00:30:44,170 --> 00:30:46,810 So yeah, please do think about milestones when you set up your 604 00:30:46,810 --> 00:30:49,250 vision. Don't think of too far ahead and 605 00:30:49,250 --> 00:30:52,930 you'll never deliver some incremental milestones in the 606 00:30:52,930 --> 00:30:55,330 journey, right? So one thing when you mention 607 00:30:55,330 --> 00:30:57,850 about business, right, definitely CTO needs to talk 608 00:30:57,890 --> 00:31:00,490 with other leaders, especially CEO right? 609 00:31:00,610 --> 00:31:02,570 And it could be also their boss, right? 610 00:31:02,570 --> 00:31:06,410 The CTO boss, Yes. So this dynamics is for sure is 611 00:31:06,410 --> 00:31:08,690 very interesting. So maybe a little bit of wisdom 612 00:31:08,690 --> 00:31:10,290 here. How do you actually work 613 00:31:10,330 --> 00:31:14,210 collaborating with the CEO? Any gutters that CTO must know 614 00:31:14,210 --> 00:31:16,490 about in order to maybe collaborate better? 615 00:31:17,490 --> 00:31:20,970 It's the hardest part of the role, Henry, to be quite honest 616 00:31:20,970 --> 00:31:24,230 with you. Because the CEO, while you're 617 00:31:24,230 --> 00:31:28,150 the CTO and you've only got the responsibility of the technology 618 00:31:28,150 --> 00:31:31,710 side of the fence, they have the responsibility for the overall 619 00:31:31,710 --> 00:31:35,190 company, right. We are just one but leg that 620 00:31:35,190 --> 00:31:38,630 reports into them. They have many other legs and 621 00:31:38,630 --> 00:31:42,190 they're trying to straddle the vision for the company's whole 622 00:31:42,550 --> 00:31:45,830 delivering to the clients as a whole, putting together the 623 00:31:45,830 --> 00:31:49,150 growth plans etcetera. And a good CTO has got to 624 00:31:49,150 --> 00:31:52,630 appreciate that there are small cog in a much bigger engine. 625 00:31:53,150 --> 00:31:57,190 They have to serve everybody towards that end goal and to 626 00:31:57,190 --> 00:32:01,470 also have empathy as to what the CEO is trying to accomplish. 627 00:32:02,070 --> 00:32:06,030 And that is, they don't want to micromanage you any more than 628 00:32:06,030 --> 00:32:08,270 you want to micromanage your people, okay. 629 00:32:08,630 --> 00:32:12,150 They want to be able to look to you and say, is this done? 630 00:32:12,590 --> 00:32:15,470 And you'll say, yes, we'll get that squared away. 631 00:32:15,710 --> 00:32:17,950 You don't need to micromanage me here on this front. 632 00:32:18,390 --> 00:32:20,910 I understand where you're coming from. 633 00:32:21,310 --> 00:32:23,630 I know what you're trying to do and what you're trying to 634 00:32:23,630 --> 00:32:26,550 accomplish. Now the flip side of that is 635 00:32:26,990 --> 00:32:31,750 understanding the level of detail to which your CEO enjoys 636 00:32:31,750 --> 00:32:34,270 to have a conversation with. And I've worked with many 637 00:32:34,270 --> 00:32:37,550 different ones where some are truly business level. 638 00:32:37,550 --> 00:32:40,830 They don't want any details as to what stock we're doing, what 639 00:32:40,830 --> 00:32:42,110 we're doing, da, da, da, da, da, da. 640 00:32:42,430 --> 00:32:44,390 They trust us to do what we're supposed to do. 641 00:32:44,750 --> 00:32:47,710 Then there are others are a little bit more interested. 642 00:32:48,110 --> 00:32:51,360 They would actually like to know well what are we using, are we 643 00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:54,120 cloud, are we data, why are we going this direction, Dadadada, 644 00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:57,880 have you thought of this, etc. Those are wonderful CEOs to work 645 00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:00,960 with as well. So it's finding that balance 646 00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:06,440 with that CEO and then talking in their language to know that 647 00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:11,000 okay, they're interested at a sort of let's call it an API 648 00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,640 driven layer. But do they really care if it's 649 00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,000 driven by Java Node or third party service? 650 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,100 Not really. So I don't need to go into that 651 00:33:21,100 --> 00:33:23,780 level of conversation when I'm talking to them. 652 00:33:24,180 --> 00:33:28,060 And the other important part that I often sort of spend a lot 653 00:33:28,060 --> 00:33:31,460 of time mentoring people with, and I go over this in the book 654 00:33:31,460 --> 00:33:34,140 as well, which you've probably read when CEO was asking you a 655 00:33:34,140 --> 00:33:36,700 question. Most of the time they're not 656 00:33:36,700 --> 00:33:39,220 asking the question for themselves, okay. 657 00:33:39,460 --> 00:33:43,380 They're asking the question on behalf of probably somebody else 658 00:33:43,780 --> 00:33:48,130 okay because they have to stand up at a board, or stand up to a 659 00:33:48,130 --> 00:33:51,450 client or stand up to other leaders of the business to be 660 00:33:51,450 --> 00:33:55,330 able to effectively communicate what you're telling them for 661 00:33:55,330 --> 00:33:59,810 their audience. So therefore think about your 662 00:33:59,810 --> 00:34:03,930 answers in such a way that you give them the talking points to 663 00:34:03,930 --> 00:34:06,850 make it easier for them to convey their results. 664 00:34:07,330 --> 00:34:10,969 So the last thing you want to do is to get sucked into a whole 665 00:34:10,969 --> 00:34:13,610 buzzword laden geeky explanation. 666 00:34:13,610 --> 00:34:17,620 Because roof, it may go over the CEO's level, but sure as hell 667 00:34:17,620 --> 00:34:19,620 it's going to go over the board level, right? 668 00:34:19,940 --> 00:34:23,980 They don't care. So when you're talking, talking 669 00:34:23,980 --> 00:34:27,900 the language that their audience is going to be in, and that's 670 00:34:27,900 --> 00:34:32,699 very, very important. And a good CEO will help guide 671 00:34:32,699 --> 00:34:34,900 you in that respect, particularly when you're first 672 00:34:34,900 --> 00:34:38,580 starting out in that journey. But they will come to respect 673 00:34:38,580 --> 00:34:42,420 you and start to sort of look forward to your conversations, 674 00:34:42,420 --> 00:34:45,620 your one to ones, your quick five minute calls, etcetera. 675 00:34:45,620 --> 00:34:48,340 Because they know that you're going to be able to distill this 676 00:34:48,340 --> 00:34:52,060 down in such a way that A, they can understand it and B, they 677 00:34:52,060 --> 00:34:55,659 can envelope that into their own words and then go and do what 678 00:34:55,659 --> 00:34:57,540 they need to do with that piece of information. 679 00:34:57,940 --> 00:35:00,940 The last thing you want to do is, yeah, the website went down 680 00:35:00,940 --> 00:35:04,140 because Java went through a upgrade and we didn't have the 681 00:35:04,140 --> 00:35:05,460 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 682 00:35:05,940 --> 00:35:07,980 And all they heard was the website went down. 683 00:35:08,460 --> 00:35:12,140 It doesn't help them understand what what we're doing and how 684 00:35:12,140 --> 00:35:16,020 we're mitigating that future problem as part of that example. 685 00:35:16,380 --> 00:35:19,620 So talk to the CEO in their language. 686 00:35:19,820 --> 00:35:23,860 And that's the hardest part that a technologist has, because you 687 00:35:23,860 --> 00:35:26,940 talk to any technologist. We love our buzzwords. 688 00:35:27,420 --> 00:35:31,220 We love our geek speak because, hey, it makes it sound way more 689 00:35:31,220 --> 00:35:34,100 impressive than we really are, makes it sound way more 690 00:35:34,100 --> 00:35:38,060 intelligent than we really are. But in a business setting, you 691 00:35:38,060 --> 00:35:42,260 don't get away with saying out a buzzword and then thinking, 692 00:35:42,300 --> 00:35:44,220 well, it's your fault if you don't know what that buzzword 693 00:35:44,220 --> 00:35:45,740 means. What do you what do you mean you 694 00:35:45,740 --> 00:35:48,620 don't even know what that means? Well, you must be be gone with 695 00:35:48,620 --> 00:35:51,660 you, Okay. We have a very arrogant attitude 696 00:35:51,660 --> 00:35:55,140 at times and we do this in sort of microaggressions as we talk, 697 00:35:55,380 --> 00:35:58,100 as engineers talk with each other and what have you, we 698 00:35:58,100 --> 00:36:00,780 subconsciously do it. It just what happens. 699 00:36:01,260 --> 00:36:04,660 You don't get away with that at a business level, okay, because 700 00:36:04,860 --> 00:36:07,660 you're there as a team. You got to empower your CEO. 701 00:36:07,660 --> 00:36:11,300 You got to empower your CFO. You got to empower everybody 702 00:36:11,300 --> 00:36:15,580 else that's at the same level as you to know that, ah, don't talk 703 00:36:15,580 --> 00:36:18,740 to Alan because, Jesus, I feel stupid after every conversation 704 00:36:18,740 --> 00:36:20,980 I have with him because he just hits me with lots of buzzwords. 705 00:36:21,500 --> 00:36:24,060 You've failed as a CTO when you're getting that 706 00:36:24,060 --> 00:36:25,900 conversation. Right. 707 00:36:26,180 --> 00:36:29,300 So I think it's important to know what success to them, 708 00:36:29,300 --> 00:36:31,580 right? So like explaining things in 709 00:36:31,580 --> 00:36:34,600 their own language as well. Don't get too much details as 710 00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:37,480 well, especially the jargons, the technologies, they may not 711 00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,920 get it anyway, but they also want to convey your message to 712 00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:44,160 other, maybe board directors or maybe other people who are 713 00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,360 interested in the growth of the company, right. 714 00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:50,040 So thanks for sharing all that. So one aspect is to be able to 715 00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,120 understand what CEO wants, translates that to technology. 716 00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:56,160 The other part down there is actually to build a great team, 717 00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,440 right? Maybe have the leaders under you 718 00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:00,880 as well who can perform and execute your visions. 719 00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:04,440 So any tips about building and managing teams for engineers 720 00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:05,640 here? Yeah. 721 00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:09,360 And I think like to your point, you know, a CEO will say that 722 00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:11,360 that's assume we're sitting in New York at the moment. 723 00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,560 We're driving what I need to get to San Francisco. 724 00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,920 That's the level of detail he's going to give you right now. 725 00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:22,040 As a CTO, you got to figure out how are we getting to San 726 00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:23,880 Francisco? Are we going to fly, We're going 727 00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:25,280 to take the train. We're going to take the car. 728 00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:26,920 If we take the car, how many cars do we need? 729 00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:31,560 Da da da da da da da da. As you think through the ask of 730 00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,800 what the CEO is doing and the spirit of what the CEO is 731 00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:39,360 saying, that then dictates the team to which you need in order 732 00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:42,880 to get to that vision. And as long as everybody is 733 00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:46,720 completely clear as to where they're going and what role they 734 00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:51,080 play in that particular journey, then building the team up 735 00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:54,720 becomes relatively simple because you know exactly what 736 00:37:54,720 --> 00:37:57,480 you're looking for. I've been quoted many times 737 00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:00,080 before that I'm not a big believer in the full stack 738 00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,560 developer Mentra, because it's like okay, You're Jack of all 739 00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:06,640 trades, master of none. But in this journey, do I need 740 00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,880 more of an API person or do I need more of a web person? 741 00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:12,400 And frankly, if those were two separate people, would I be able 742 00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,320 to get there faster? So this notion of building up a 743 00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:19,360 team of effectively Jack of all trades, master of none, isn't a 744 00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:22,920 good way of building a team. You want disciplined people that 745 00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:27,190 know their particular area very well, that know that they're 746 00:38:27,190 --> 00:38:30,630 going to deliver at the best level, that this is the best 747 00:38:30,630 --> 00:38:34,230 code or the best query or the best structure or the best 748 00:38:34,470 --> 00:38:38,070 infrastructure that I can build because I eat, breathe and live 749 00:38:38,390 --> 00:38:41,830 this particular discipline. So therefore, I'm of course 750 00:38:41,830 --> 00:38:43,910 going to be far better than somebody that's just got a 751 00:38:43,910 --> 00:38:48,910 cursory view of it as a whole. And as the company grows, you 752 00:38:48,910 --> 00:38:54,230 have more budget to allow yourself those very strong 753 00:38:54,230 --> 00:38:57,610 disciplined areas. As a startup, of course you've 754 00:38:57,610 --> 00:38:59,570 got to have that one person that knows everything. 755 00:38:59,730 --> 00:39:02,730 You can't afford to buy each of the different expertise. 756 00:39:03,050 --> 00:39:06,450 But as the company evolves, you get to a point where you say 757 00:39:06,450 --> 00:39:09,970 okay, we're now a database company because we've got like 758 00:39:09,970 --> 00:39:13,850 literally terabytes of customer data sitting in databases. 759 00:39:14,290 --> 00:39:19,130 Maybe we need a SQL person, maybe we need a dedicated DBA to 760 00:39:19,130 --> 00:39:22,010 be able to manage this, to optimize our queries, that eats 761 00:39:22,010 --> 00:39:26,240 and breathes and lives this, whereas before said it wasn't 762 00:39:26,240 --> 00:39:28,720 that big a deal in our company, so therefore we could have made 763 00:39:28,720 --> 00:39:32,080 do so. As the team evolves, you will 764 00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:36,720 find where you need that very disciplined and focused 765 00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:42,040 expertise to maximize the resources and again to not get 766 00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,160 in the way of the business delivering what they need to do. 767 00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,120 Right. So thanks for explaining how to 768 00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:50,560 hire the team, right. Especially the different stage, 769 00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:53,080 different growth, right, requires different kind of 770 00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:54,640 people, right. Maybe in the beginning you have 771 00:39:54,720 --> 00:39:57,840 more full stack engineers, as you grow, maybe you need more 772 00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,520 disciplined people. So the other aspect apart from 773 00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,920 just skill set is actually how to execute, right? 774 00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:04,880 How to make sure the team aligns. 775 00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,000 That's the first thing because sometimes it's very hard to 776 00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,240 align and how they can execute it with high quality. 777 00:40:10,240 --> 00:40:12,640 I think this is probably $1,000,000 question for every. 778 00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:13,920 Technology. It sure is. 779 00:40:14,530 --> 00:40:18,450 Quality is. It's my #1 bugbear, to be honest 780 00:40:18,450 --> 00:40:21,370 with you. Quality to me, Henry, is kind of 781 00:40:21,370 --> 00:40:24,770 like the old school. How you treat your waiter is how 782 00:40:25,090 --> 00:40:27,530 you treat other people. It's kind of like that litmus 783 00:40:27,530 --> 00:40:30,050 test, how well you're going to do it. 784 00:40:30,050 --> 00:40:33,370 Same thing for me. I like to see quality at all 785 00:40:33,370 --> 00:40:35,250 levels. So if, for example, you're 786 00:40:35,250 --> 00:40:38,450 building a web form and there's a little bit of inconsistency 787 00:40:38,450 --> 00:40:42,250 with UX, or there's a label that's misspelled or there's 788 00:40:42,250 --> 00:40:45,230 something that's just not quite right, why was that little 789 00:40:45,230 --> 00:40:48,550 simple thing not corrected? And if you missed that little 790 00:40:48,550 --> 00:40:51,110 thing, then what did you miss in the back end of the stuff that I 791 00:40:51,110 --> 00:40:54,150 can't see? What shortcuts did you do back 792 00:40:54,150 --> 00:40:57,830 there that I'm never going to see, Maybe one in every hundred 793 00:40:57,830 --> 00:40:59,510 execution path it'll get triggered. 794 00:40:59,550 --> 00:41:01,990 So okay. So for me, that's the litmus 795 00:41:01,990 --> 00:41:05,190 test. So if a team is truly focused 796 00:41:05,390 --> 00:41:09,110 and gathered around quality, then it trickles down to every 797 00:41:09,110 --> 00:41:14,680 level and what we all like in any product or anything ticket, 798 00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:18,160 your favorite car, your smartphone, anything, there's 799 00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,440 that one thing that it does that you go that's cool. 800 00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:25,000 How I really like that that that's a nice little touch Okay. 801 00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:29,640 And for that reason, you're no loyal to that particular thing 802 00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:31,800 Okay because you like the way it does it. 803 00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:33,440 You create that relationship with it. 804 00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,680 We sometimes forget to do that as software engineers and as the 805 00:41:37,720 --> 00:41:40,840 products that we're delivering, we're too focused on getting the 806 00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:45,210 clinical solution over the line. We sometimes forget about the 807 00:41:45,210 --> 00:41:47,530 spirit of what it is we're delivering. 808 00:41:47,930 --> 00:41:53,610 And I like to instill that sense of spirit and quality into the 809 00:41:53,610 --> 00:41:57,450 things that we're building so we can anticipate what the end 810 00:41:57,450 --> 00:42:00,490 user's going to need. So instead of us just delivering 811 00:42:00,650 --> 00:42:04,490 the bare minimum, we give them that little extra, extra little 812 00:42:04,490 --> 00:42:07,770 touch that makes it easier for them to fulfill their job. 813 00:42:08,210 --> 00:42:11,130 And again, it comes down to quality. 814 00:42:11,710 --> 00:42:14,590 Empathy is another word that I use a lot on a weekly basis. 815 00:42:14,870 --> 00:42:18,070 Have empathy for the person that's using your product now. 816 00:42:18,070 --> 00:42:20,230 It could be the person that's reading the report. 817 00:42:20,430 --> 00:42:22,350 It could be the person that's doing the data entry. 818 00:42:22,350 --> 00:42:24,510 It could be the person that's installing your software. 819 00:42:24,910 --> 00:42:28,670 Have a little bit of empathy. What can you do to make their 820 00:42:28,670 --> 00:42:31,470 job that little bit easier? And it could be as simple as a 821 00:42:31,470 --> 00:42:34,790 DevOps guy writing a read me file to make it easier to be 822 00:42:34,790 --> 00:42:36,950 able to turn on this service. Okay. 823 00:42:37,070 --> 00:42:39,740 Whereas in their head to thinking, oh, but this is so 824 00:42:39,740 --> 00:42:42,020 goddamn obvious, why do I have to even write this out? 825 00:42:42,580 --> 00:42:45,340 Well, you probably don't, but there's going to be that one 826 00:42:45,340 --> 00:42:47,140 person that one day is going to look at your read me 827 00:42:47,140 --> 00:42:50,260 documentation and go, oh thank God, he just saved me hours 828 00:42:50,260 --> 00:42:51,500 worth of work. That's wonderful. 829 00:42:51,780 --> 00:42:54,060 Thank you. So that little bit of empathy, 830 00:42:54,340 --> 00:42:59,300 that little bit of quality check does help a lot in building up 831 00:42:59,300 --> 00:43:03,300 confidence, building up faith and building up stickiness of 832 00:43:03,300 --> 00:43:05,300 your users. When something is delivered, 833 00:43:05,620 --> 00:43:08,120 they look forward to the next release. 834 00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:12,200 They don't fear that, Oh my God, what have they broken now from 835 00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,240 that perspective? And again, I go back to Tesla. 836 00:43:15,720 --> 00:43:18,680 Every time they did a major release in my car, I knew that 837 00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:21,960 three days later there'd be two more releases coming because 838 00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,120 they'd have to fix the stuff that they released the first 839 00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:26,200 time. I'm speaking from like a 2 year 840 00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,560 old releases. Maybe they've got better, but 841 00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:30,800 they locked me out of my house for three days because I 842 00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:33,760 couldn't use the garage door opener to be able to get into my 843 00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,970 house. I was like 2 days later they 844 00:43:36,970 --> 00:43:40,290 released a fix and it's suddenly my my guy's door started to work 845 00:43:40,290 --> 00:43:45,410 again and it's like okay guys, there is such a level of lack of 846 00:43:45,410 --> 00:43:49,050 quality that was being pushed out, but we have that at all 847 00:43:49,050 --> 00:43:53,050 levels, Okay. And you know, we no longer 848 00:43:53,050 --> 00:43:56,570 distrust the Windows Update. We no longer distrust the 849 00:43:56,570 --> 00:44:00,450 Samsung update on our phones because it just works. 850 00:44:00,690 --> 00:44:02,530 Same thing with our Chrome update. 851 00:44:02,530 --> 00:44:05,310 It updates in the background because we just have faith that 852 00:44:05,310 --> 00:44:08,190 it it just works. When was the last time somebody 853 00:44:08,190 --> 00:44:11,190 updated their Chrome and it completely destroyed everything 854 00:44:11,190 --> 00:44:13,270 that they were working on? Rare. 855 00:44:13,710 --> 00:44:17,390 Very rare. We as software engineers have 856 00:44:17,390 --> 00:44:19,990 got to get back to that level of quality. 857 00:44:19,990 --> 00:44:23,470 And it all starts with the team. It all starts with everybody 858 00:44:23,470 --> 00:44:26,710 knowing that that's what you're needing to be doing as part of 859 00:44:26,710 --> 00:44:29,750 your role. And collectively, it's how we 860 00:44:29,750 --> 00:44:32,230 build a great product. It's how we build a great team. 861 00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,480 We never want to get into a situation where we say, oh, but 862 00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:37,680 QA will find it, QA will catch it. 863 00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:40,720 No, QA is not your safety net. Okay. 864 00:44:41,280 --> 00:44:44,320 QA, if they're doing their job right, should never find 865 00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:47,240 anything. They should be that level of 866 00:44:47,240 --> 00:44:49,720 assurance that Yep, you did have a good quality. 867 00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:51,720 You know the clue is in the title. 868 00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,560 Quality assurance. Yes, I'm assuring the quality is 869 00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:57,960 there. Too many teams rely on QA to 870 00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,640 find the bugs, to find the stuff and for them to be the I got it 871 00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:03,960 off my JIRA ticket list. It'll come back to me if it's 872 00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:07,200 really broken, knowing fine well it is going to come back to you 873 00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:08,840 and you should have done it right in the 1st place. 874 00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:13,280 So yes, I believe a good QA team is not your safety net. 875 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:17,280 It's there to assure that the team is indeed producing quality 876 00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,560 and it all comes down to everybody's responsible for 877 00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,520 producing the quality. Thank you for emphasizing that 878 00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,200 quality is at all levels, right? I think one of the aspect of 879 00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:29,440 Cto's to ensure everyone, every team understands about this 880 00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:31,970 aspect. And be able to deliver quality 881 00:45:32,090 --> 00:45:34,410 results, right? Not just, you know, like 882 00:45:34,410 --> 00:45:36,210 delivering features over features, right. 883 00:45:36,610 --> 00:45:39,450 Another aspect that I want to ask you about CTO is actually 884 00:45:39,770 --> 00:45:43,130 sometimes as individuals, right, they are suffering from 885 00:45:43,130 --> 00:45:45,730 impulsive syndrome, right? Because they can't know 886 00:45:45,730 --> 00:45:47,490 everything for sure in the technology. 887 00:45:47,490 --> 00:45:50,090 You're saying that they keep reinventing themselves every 888 00:45:50,090 --> 00:45:52,250 five years, right? So first of all, how do you 889 00:45:52,250 --> 00:45:55,550 manage yourself as a CTO? Dealing with the busser 890 00:45:55,550 --> 00:45:58,670 syndrome, dealing with uncertainty and dealing with not 891 00:45:58,670 --> 00:46:02,350 knowing the maybe the results of the visions that you are taking. 892 00:46:02,550 --> 00:46:04,990 So maybe a little bit of guidance here for great 893 00:46:04,990 --> 00:46:07,670 question, Henry, and you know, imposter syndrome. 894 00:46:07,670 --> 00:46:10,190 I had imposter syndrome 5 minutes before we had this 895 00:46:10,190 --> 00:46:13,150 interview. Am I going to live up to Henry's 896 00:46:13,150 --> 00:46:15,030 quality? Am I going to live up to the 897 00:46:15,030 --> 00:46:18,310 quality of the guests that you've had historically? 898 00:46:18,710 --> 00:46:20,750 Did I have selfdoubt? Of course I did. 899 00:46:20,870 --> 00:46:23,570 Everybody has it. We all have it. 900 00:46:23,650 --> 00:46:26,290 And it's that stage fright. It happens. 901 00:46:26,690 --> 00:46:29,810 So how do you deal with it? Oh, frankly, you don't. 902 00:46:29,970 --> 00:46:31,810 You just learn to live with it. Okay. 903 00:46:31,810 --> 00:46:34,570 You got to live with the fact that you don't know everything. 904 00:46:34,890 --> 00:46:37,170 You got to live with the fact that some days you're going to 905 00:46:37,170 --> 00:46:39,370 wake up that everybody's going to be talking about a new 906 00:46:39,370 --> 00:46:43,730 buzzword and you have no clue what they're talking about and 907 00:46:43,730 --> 00:46:46,370 you're going to feel dumb, dumb, dumb. 908 00:46:46,370 --> 00:46:49,530 Because I've heard this buzzword 4 different Times Now for four 909 00:46:49,530 --> 00:46:51,250 different people. I'm thinking, how the hell do 910 00:46:51,250 --> 00:46:53,840 you know about that buzzword? Well, I I have no clue what 911 00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:55,240 you're talking about. Okay. 912 00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:59,080 So embrace that and actually run towards it. 913 00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,040 And instead of sort of trying to bluff your way through a 914 00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:06,760 conversation and thinking, yeah, no, just say guys, I have no 915 00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:09,760 clue what you're talking about. Somebody educate me here And 916 00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:12,400 what you'll probably find is that most people are probably 917 00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:14,480 playing the buzzword game is themselves and they don't really 918 00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,680 know it, truly at a level themselves. 919 00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:21,160 I've discovered this a lot. How somebody says something 920 00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:24,190 confidently can make you convinced that they actually 921 00:47:24,190 --> 00:47:28,230 know what they're talking about. So get past that confident layer 922 00:47:28,550 --> 00:47:31,750 and simply be vulnerable to ask questions. 923 00:47:32,230 --> 00:47:34,150 I don't know what you're talking about, Okay. 924 00:47:34,510 --> 00:47:36,710 And there are certain times that this will happen inside of an 925 00:47:36,710 --> 00:47:39,310 organization. You know, we've we've all been 926 00:47:39,310 --> 00:47:41,430 there. We've been talking to somebody, 927 00:47:41,790 --> 00:47:43,990 we've maybe met them at a party, we've maybe met them at a 928 00:47:43,990 --> 00:47:46,470 meeting, but it's gone beyond that point. 929 00:47:46,470 --> 00:47:48,870 We think I should have remembered the name at this 930 00:47:48,870 --> 00:47:50,350 point. I've forgotten their name. 931 00:47:50,860 --> 00:47:52,020 Now. It's going to feel real awkward 932 00:47:52,020 --> 00:47:53,980 when I asked them, but what's your name again? 933 00:47:54,060 --> 00:47:57,420 Because it feel awkward. That's imposter syndrome. 934 00:47:57,580 --> 00:47:59,940 Okay. Every so often in a company that 935 00:47:59,940 --> 00:48:02,380 you may have been there for a number of years, a term will 936 00:48:02,380 --> 00:48:05,620 come up and you're thinking, I should know that by now, but I 937 00:48:05,620 --> 00:48:08,140 don't. Can somebody help me? 938 00:48:08,140 --> 00:48:08,660 What? What? 939 00:48:08,660 --> 00:48:10,340 What do you actually mean by that? 940 00:48:10,780 --> 00:48:15,500 And again, it's just laying yourself to be vulnerable and to 941 00:48:15,500 --> 00:48:18,140 be that person that is comfortable holding their hand 942 00:48:18,140 --> 00:48:21,110 up a class and saying, teacher, can you go over that one again? 943 00:48:21,110 --> 00:48:23,710 Because I don't know what you're talking about, because if you 944 00:48:23,710 --> 00:48:27,110 have that confidence, then I can guarantee you that there's 945 00:48:27,110 --> 00:48:30,430 probably somebody else in the room that's a little bit nervous 946 00:48:30,430 --> 00:48:33,030 to hold their hand up and ask the same question. 947 00:48:33,470 --> 00:48:36,470 But the nature of you asking it, they will get their answer as 948 00:48:36,470 --> 00:48:40,070 well and hopefully will inspire them to see that, hey, I asked 949 00:48:40,190 --> 00:48:42,990 about this particular term. People seem to be receptive to 950 00:48:42,990 --> 00:48:44,150 it. I didn't get fired. 951 00:48:44,550 --> 00:48:46,910 In fact, I increased the knowledge of the room. 952 00:48:47,390 --> 00:48:49,150 Maybe it's okay for me to do it next time. 953 00:48:49,730 --> 00:48:53,250 So the whole imposter syndrome is just acknowledging the fact 954 00:48:53,250 --> 00:48:56,610 that you don't know everything, you won't know everything, but 955 00:48:56,610 --> 00:48:58,730 don't be scared to ask the question there. 956 00:48:58,730 --> 00:49:02,450 And then when something new does come up in terms of how one 957 00:49:02,450 --> 00:49:05,290 tries to get ahead of some of this stuff, and I pull out a 958 00:49:05,290 --> 00:49:06,850 couple of examples in the book as well. 959 00:49:07,330 --> 00:49:10,490 If you're in a given industry, then there are going to be 960 00:49:10,490 --> 00:49:12,930 certain disciplines within that industry that you should 961 00:49:12,930 --> 00:49:16,690 probably keeping an eye on. And that can be done very easily 962 00:49:16,690 --> 00:49:20,540 through trade journals, websites, etcetera that you read 963 00:49:20,540 --> 00:49:22,940 maybe once or twice a week, etcetera. 964 00:49:22,940 --> 00:49:24,260 You just to hear what's going on. 965 00:49:24,740 --> 00:49:27,940 But if you're not, say for example, in blockchain or 966 00:49:27,940 --> 00:49:31,540 crypto, then don't be concerned about what's going on in Bitcoin 967 00:49:31,620 --> 00:49:34,300 that particular week. Don't feel stupid or don't feel 968 00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:36,820 dumb that you don't understand what the latest and greatest 969 00:49:36,940 --> 00:49:39,860 contract protocols are going to be for blockchain. 970 00:49:40,020 --> 00:49:42,020 No, you're allowed to not know that. 971 00:49:42,380 --> 00:49:46,300 OK, just like embeddeds that I'm allowed not to know certain 972 00:49:46,300 --> 00:49:48,140 stuff because it's not within my field. 973 00:49:48,500 --> 00:49:52,100 If, however I'm in this sort of database field and I'm not being 974 00:49:52,100 --> 00:49:54,500 kept up to date with the latest releases of the particular 975 00:49:54,500 --> 00:49:57,100 server that I'm on or the particular trend that things are 976 00:49:57,100 --> 00:49:59,820 going on, then yeah, that's a problem. 977 00:50:00,340 --> 00:50:02,300 Don't try and consume the full space. 978 00:50:02,660 --> 00:50:05,580 Consume the space to which you're focused in on. 979 00:50:06,020 --> 00:50:10,420 Give yourself the license to say I'm okay not knowing about that. 980 00:50:10,900 --> 00:50:14,020 It will come up as and when I need it, so I'm not going to 981 00:50:14,020 --> 00:50:15,500 stress about it. Okay. 982 00:50:16,130 --> 00:50:21,410 And as long as you're open to new knowledge, because yes, we 983 00:50:21,410 --> 00:50:24,490 do reinvent ourselves every five years, but that doesn't mean 984 00:50:24,490 --> 00:50:27,690 that suddenly on the 5th year we get all of this knowledge 985 00:50:27,690 --> 00:50:32,450 suddenly inherited to us. No, we get pointers that things 986 00:50:32,450 --> 00:50:34,450 are starting to go off in a different direction. 987 00:50:34,450 --> 00:50:36,970 Things are starting to go. This buzzword keeps popping up 988 00:50:36,970 --> 00:50:39,530 time and time again. Maybe I need to learn a little 989 00:50:39,530 --> 00:50:42,450 bit more about that, give you an example that that I've had to 990 00:50:42,450 --> 00:50:44,170 sort of come around in the last six months. 991 00:50:44,670 --> 00:50:47,870 Machine learning and AI, yes, knew all about that. 992 00:50:48,230 --> 00:50:51,990 But generative AI, we keep reading about that all over the 993 00:50:51,990 --> 00:50:55,110 place. What is this generative AI and 994 00:50:55,110 --> 00:50:57,350 what's it, why are we now calling it that? 995 00:50:57,830 --> 00:51:00,110 I had to go and learn about that, had to go and read about 996 00:51:00,110 --> 00:51:01,230 that. Now that was everybody was 997 00:51:01,230 --> 00:51:02,470 starting to drop it into buzzwords. 998 00:51:02,470 --> 00:51:04,750 And I said, well, what's the between that and say, machine 999 00:51:04,750 --> 00:51:07,150 learning and AI? And you get like blank 1000 00:51:07,150 --> 00:51:09,750 expressions and so you're clearly not the person to ask 1001 00:51:09,750 --> 00:51:11,150 about that. Okay, let me go and ask somebody 1002 00:51:11,150 --> 00:51:13,360 else. I eventually found that person 1003 00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:15,920 that could sort of sit me down and say, Okay, let me take you 1004 00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:17,720 through. And now I suddenly feel much 1005 00:51:17,720 --> 00:51:20,400 more knowledgeable on it. But that was an evolution. 1006 00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:24,080 That was me laying myself bare to say I have no clue what 1007 00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:26,120 genitive a I really. I think I've got to guess at 1008 00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,080 what it is. But I I'm not confident enough 1009 00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:30,600 to to use it in a conversation. Somebody explain it to me. 1010 00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:34,040 We're going to have that every single year and there's big 1011 00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:38,370 seismic shifts every five years as as you know, so don't get 1012 00:51:38,370 --> 00:51:41,450 stressed about suddenly needing to know everything about 1013 00:51:41,450 --> 00:51:43,410 everything on a five year window. 1014 00:51:43,970 --> 00:51:47,850 Embrace the learning, embrace the lack of knowledge in certain 1015 00:51:47,850 --> 00:51:51,330 areas and use that as a mechanism to run towards but 1016 00:51:51,330 --> 00:51:53,170 imposter syndrome. Live with it. 1017 00:51:53,410 --> 00:51:56,570 There's no cure, yeah. Thanks for emphasizing that. 1018 00:51:56,570 --> 00:51:58,490 We have to live with the Impulsive syndrome, right. 1019 00:51:58,490 --> 00:52:01,090 And I think in your book you mentioned that it doesn't mean 1020 00:52:01,090 --> 00:52:03,530 that we have to be at the bleeding edge, but we have to be 1021 00:52:03,530 --> 00:52:06,370 at the leading edge, right. So not enough probably when the 1022 00:52:06,370 --> 00:52:08,810 time you really need it and you can dig deeper, right. 1023 00:52:09,010 --> 00:52:11,010 So I think thanks again for reminding that. 1024 00:52:11,610 --> 00:52:14,410 So apart from dealing with the impulsive syndrome, which you 1025 00:52:14,410 --> 00:52:16,450 cover really brilliantly just now, right. 1026 00:52:16,650 --> 00:52:20,010 So I have one other question about managing yourself as a 1027 00:52:20,010 --> 00:52:22,490 CTO. So most of the times as an 1028 00:52:22,490 --> 00:52:24,570 engineering leader, right, most of the times when you're at the 1029 00:52:24,570 --> 00:52:26,690 top, it can be very lonely up there, right? 1030 00:52:26,690 --> 00:52:30,170 So with very limited input signals for people to give you 1031 00:52:30,170 --> 00:52:33,010 feedback. So maybe my next question is how 1032 00:52:33,010 --> 00:52:36,490 do you actually review yourself, maybe your performance, maybe 1033 00:52:36,490 --> 00:52:39,890 your skill sets and how can you improve in order to also be 1034 00:52:39,890 --> 00:52:43,170 effective? CTO OK, it's a great question 1035 00:52:43,170 --> 00:52:44,610 Henry. And I think there's a couple of 1036 00:52:44,610 --> 00:52:46,930 answers and a couple of techniques that I do personally 1037 00:52:46,930 --> 00:52:48,930 to keep myself in check as it will. 1038 00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:50,800 The first thing I do is I keep a journal. 1039 00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:54,920 I keep a dear diary. Now that journal is ironically, 1040 00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:56,560 it's actually a Google spreadsheet. 1041 00:52:56,880 --> 00:52:59,840 It's linked to every device that I've got, every browser, etc. 1042 00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:02,880 And it's got a line item for every single day and a column. 1043 00:53:03,240 --> 00:53:05,480 It's for free for the various different things. 1044 00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:08,640 Now what I do in that journal, it's not like a, you know, dear 1045 00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:11,240 diary, he didn't speak to me again type sort of thing. 1046 00:53:11,240 --> 00:53:15,440 It's more of a I track my emotions, okay I attract, did I 1047 00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:17,080 feel I had a good day or a bad day. 1048 00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:19,900 And if I had a bad day, what made it a bad day? 1049 00:53:20,340 --> 00:53:22,420 Did things not go the way I wanted it to go? 1050 00:53:22,420 --> 00:53:25,140 And if things didn't go the way I wanted it to go, then how 1051 00:53:25,140 --> 00:53:27,060 could I've done something differently afterward? 1052 00:53:27,340 --> 00:53:31,580 So what I do is I don't try and analyze the journal, frankly, on 1053 00:53:31,580 --> 00:53:35,340 a daily basis. What I do is that I collect all 1054 00:53:35,340 --> 00:53:38,500 that data during the week and it could be silly things like had X 1055 00:53:38,500 --> 00:53:41,860 number of meetings, da, da, da, da, da, various emotions, etc. 1056 00:53:42,220 --> 00:53:43,700 It's more like tags, if you will. 1057 00:53:44,100 --> 00:53:47,860 And then at the end of every week, as I'm planning my next 1058 00:53:47,860 --> 00:53:50,060 week out, which is usually Sunday evening or Sunday 1059 00:53:50,060 --> 00:53:53,940 morning, I look at the week that just gone by and say, okay, ha, 1060 00:53:54,300 --> 00:53:56,620 what could I have done better? What did I do? 1061 00:53:57,020 --> 00:53:58,660 Okay? Which members of the team 1062 00:53:58,660 --> 00:54:00,900 impressed me? Which members of the teams 1063 00:54:00,900 --> 00:54:04,100 caused me problems? Which meetings were productive? 1064 00:54:04,100 --> 00:54:05,860 Which meetings were not productive? 1065 00:54:06,300 --> 00:54:09,260 What new things came in that were completely out of my 1066 00:54:09,260 --> 00:54:11,940 control that I had to do something about. 1067 00:54:12,460 --> 00:54:15,460 So I use my journal very much as that touch point. 1068 00:54:15,870 --> 00:54:19,390 And I also like note things like when I was traveling, where I 1069 00:54:19,390 --> 00:54:22,310 had to go, did I have doctor appointments and all that sort 1070 00:54:22,310 --> 00:54:24,470 of stuff. Because it's funny how I just go 1071 00:54:24,470 --> 00:54:27,910 for every time I go near the dentist, which is my every four 1072 00:54:27,910 --> 00:54:31,430 months I go to the dentist. Any meetings I have beforehand 1073 00:54:31,710 --> 00:54:34,310 are generally not good because I'm anxious about going to the 1074 00:54:34,310 --> 00:54:36,510 dentist. But that's a data point I didn't 1075 00:54:36,510 --> 00:54:39,390 realize I had for such a long time until I tracked it. 1076 00:54:39,390 --> 00:54:41,150 So it's as silly as that may seem. 1077 00:54:41,790 --> 00:54:44,230 So I do that. Now, the other secret weapon 1078 00:54:44,230 --> 00:54:48,150 that I've got, I have a good strong right hand. 1079 00:54:48,630 --> 00:54:52,190 I'll, I'll name him Ryan Birch who has the license and has the 1080 00:54:52,750 --> 00:54:56,750 authority to say to me, well, you didn't do that. 1081 00:54:56,750 --> 00:54:59,270 Well, Okay. He's my man. 1082 00:54:59,510 --> 00:55:02,910 That is pretty much in a lot of my meetings or our orbits 1083 00:55:03,070 --> 00:55:05,310 collide a lot. But he's the one that I will 1084 00:55:05,310 --> 00:55:07,430 always use as my litmus test to see. 1085 00:55:07,790 --> 00:55:10,350 Did that go well? Did that was was that right, 1086 00:55:10,350 --> 00:55:12,590 etcetera? No, he can't Like, he reports to 1087 00:55:12,590 --> 00:55:15,510 me. Yes, but we have that strong 1088 00:55:15,510 --> 00:55:18,550 relationship whereby he will tell me how he feels. 1089 00:55:18,910 --> 00:55:20,870 Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong. 1090 00:55:21,190 --> 00:55:25,190 But to have that trusted third party person, that's not just 1091 00:55:25,190 --> 00:55:28,910 going to be a yes person to you, that's going to say, yeah boss, 1092 00:55:29,190 --> 00:55:32,350 you probably were a little bit strong there, or maybe you 1093 00:55:32,350 --> 00:55:35,510 weren't strong enough or I have no clue what the hell you were 1094 00:55:35,510 --> 00:55:38,350 talking about there. So maybe you want to reclarify 1095 00:55:38,350 --> 00:55:41,510 that again to see how well that worked, Okay, because in your 1096 00:55:41,510 --> 00:55:44,100 head you think you've communicated perfectly and we 1097 00:55:44,100 --> 00:55:48,700 don't sometimes feel how we came across and what Ryan does 1098 00:55:48,700 --> 00:55:53,940 beautifully, he never tells me at the time in the meeting. 1099 00:55:54,340 --> 00:55:56,420 It's always a one-on-one very confidential. 1100 00:55:56,420 --> 00:55:59,660 I trust him, right. I've also got a little visual 1101 00:55:59,660 --> 00:56:03,460 cues from him that during the meeting I can read his face at 1102 00:56:03,460 --> 00:56:05,260 times and say Okay and and right. 1103 00:56:05,620 --> 00:56:09,940 So having that trusted person huge, and he has helped me a lot 1104 00:56:10,300 --> 00:56:12,980 and that I think is, is, is something that will help with 1105 00:56:13,390 --> 00:56:15,910 keeping a check on yourself. So between that and the journal, 1106 00:56:16,430 --> 00:56:20,190 what I'm basically saying, Henry, is be open to feedback, 1107 00:56:20,590 --> 00:56:24,350 be open to the fact that maybe you have areas to improve, 1108 00:56:24,350 --> 00:56:27,270 nobody is getting it right all of the time, Okay. 1109 00:56:27,590 --> 00:56:31,230 And different external factors will affect your moods because 1110 00:56:31,230 --> 00:56:33,630 hey, we're not machines, we are emotional beings. 1111 00:56:33,630 --> 00:56:35,470 We're affected by our environment. 1112 00:56:35,870 --> 00:56:38,630 So therefore, if one can be a lot more mindful of your own 1113 00:56:38,630 --> 00:56:42,690 environment, well, that that would usually spill over to 1114 00:56:42,690 --> 00:56:45,330 being a little bit more empathetic to the people that 1115 00:56:45,330 --> 00:56:48,410 you're trying to lead. If your rock star developer is 1116 00:56:48,410 --> 00:56:51,490 suddenly having a bad week, maybe there's something else 1117 00:56:51,490 --> 00:56:53,250 going on. Maybe there needs to be a bit 1118 00:56:53,250 --> 00:56:55,930 more latitude given because something now you don't need to 1119 00:56:55,930 --> 00:56:59,330 get into details as to why it's going on, but be empathetic to 1120 00:56:59,330 --> 00:57:01,890 the fact that hey man, there's clearly something that's 1121 00:57:01,890 --> 00:57:03,810 changed. Do you need a little bit more 1122 00:57:03,810 --> 00:57:05,970 time? I don't need the details, but do 1123 00:57:05,970 --> 00:57:08,850 you need a little bit more time? That is an empathetic leader. 1124 00:57:09,370 --> 00:57:11,450 So that is somebody that's truly keeping yourself. 1125 00:57:11,490 --> 00:57:14,890 But it starts with yourself. Can you be introspective to 1126 00:57:14,890 --> 00:57:17,010 yourself? And can you be honest with 1127 00:57:17,010 --> 00:57:19,490 yourself? Very interesting answers. 1128 00:57:19,530 --> 00:57:22,410 I was thinking that you might want to say, you know, find a 1129 00:57:22,410 --> 00:57:24,570 mentor, read the books and things like that. 1130 00:57:24,730 --> 00:57:27,370 But actually you first advocate having a journal. 1131 00:57:27,610 --> 00:57:29,530 Surprisingly. Actually, I do have a good 1132 00:57:29,530 --> 00:57:31,810 journal as well. I use an app for that. 1133 00:57:32,210 --> 00:57:34,810 And sometimes you can find interesting insights just by 1134 00:57:34,810 --> 00:57:37,210 tracking your activities and the So what sort of things do you 1135 00:57:37,210 --> 00:57:39,090 track, Henry, when you say that? So that's wonderful. 1136 00:57:39,090 --> 00:57:41,530 I'm glad you do that. Yeah. 1137 00:57:41,770 --> 00:57:43,810 So the first thing is about mood tracking, right? 1138 00:57:43,810 --> 00:57:47,570 And then I most of the time I put the high, not so much 1139 00:57:47,570 --> 00:57:50,170 highlights like interesting activities that I do. 1140 00:57:50,490 --> 00:57:54,290 So things like for example meetings, playing sports right 1141 00:57:54,610 --> 00:57:57,370 and activities that I also want to track as habits. 1142 00:57:57,870 --> 00:58:00,870 So all these things I normally track in an app called De Leo. 1143 00:58:01,110 --> 00:58:04,750 And the good thing about the app is that it also gives me 1144 00:58:04,750 --> 00:58:08,550 statistics and you know, interesting visualization of how 1145 00:58:08,550 --> 00:58:11,670 I do those stuffs. So sometimes it gives me a very 1146 00:58:11,670 --> 00:58:14,470 good interesting insights. Fascinating. 1147 00:58:14,470 --> 00:58:17,150 I'll check that out. And yes, to your point, I do 1148 00:58:17,150 --> 00:58:19,630 have a mentor. You know, Jim Millbury is my 1149 00:58:19,630 --> 00:58:21,950 mentor. He's been a mentor for the past 1150 00:58:21,950 --> 00:58:25,230 sort of near on 20 years. I've known him for over 25 1151 00:58:25,230 --> 00:58:27,440 years. I dedicated my book to him. 1152 00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:31,040 He's my guy that I ring up and say hello, How do I handle this 1153 00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:33,560 for sure? And he will tell me he doesn't 1154 00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:36,800 sugarcoat it. And the second interesting thing 1155 00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:39,720 that you suggest right find so-called the right hand right 1156 00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:42,160 maybe in your team it could be direct report. 1157 00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:46,040 Although I know that some maybe leaders may not have access to 1158 00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:48,600 this trusted right hand person. It depends on how you build 1159 00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:51,200 trusted exactly yes. Yeah. 1160 00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:53,360 And I think it's really interesting if you got that 1161 00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:56,520 person in your team as well who can give you the cues and give 1162 00:58:56,520 --> 00:58:58,600 you feedback. I may not necessarily direct 1163 00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,880 feedback in the activities of itself, right, but maybe through 1164 00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:03,560 private one on ones and things like that. 1165 00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:06,640 So I think that's a very good, interesting advice that you give 1166 00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:08,640 for all of us engineering leaders out there. 1167 00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:12,560 So thank you so much for all these great, wonderful coverage 1168 00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:15,680 about think like a CTO due to the interest of time, right. 1169 00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,270 We have to cut it short. And I'm sure we could talk all 1170 00:59:18,270 --> 00:59:20,070 day long about being a great CTO. 1171 00:59:20,390 --> 00:59:22,990 I have one last question because you know, this is a custom 1172 00:59:22,990 --> 00:59:26,230 question that I normally ask for all my guests, which I call the 1173 00:59:26,230 --> 00:59:27,710 three technical leadership wisdom. 1174 00:59:27,950 --> 00:59:30,430 You can think of it like get an advice you want to give to the 1175 00:59:30,430 --> 00:59:32,630 listeners here so that we can learn from you better. 1176 00:59:32,670 --> 00:59:35,390 So what will be your 3 technical leadership wisdom, Alan? 1177 00:59:36,190 --> 00:59:39,350 OK, that's I, I I love that that question. 1178 00:59:39,710 --> 00:59:43,550 First one is listen. Listen to not only your own 1179 00:59:43,550 --> 00:59:47,350 team, but listen to the outside because they're your real 1180 00:59:47,350 --> 00:59:49,470 customers. Listen to management, listen to 1181 00:59:49,470 --> 00:59:53,550 that sort of stuff and don't be quick to offer solutions as part 1182 00:59:53,550 --> 00:59:55,630 of that. Sometimes we jump to, I can 1183 00:59:55,630 --> 00:59:57,150 solve that, I can do this. Oh, you need to do it. 1184 00:59:57,150 --> 00:59:58,390 We can use that tool. We can use this. 1185 00:59:58,670 --> 01:00:02,830 No, just listen. And the more you listen, the 1186 01:00:02,830 --> 01:00:06,790 more data you're receiving. So the better validated solution 1187 01:00:06,790 --> 01:00:08,550 that you have. Now you may quickly jump to a 1188 01:00:08,550 --> 01:00:11,550 solution in your head. Great, continue to listen. 1189 01:00:11,870 --> 01:00:14,700 That's number one key. And something I've had to learn 1190 01:00:14,700 --> 01:00:16,980 myself. Because as a young engineer I 1191 01:00:16,980 --> 01:00:19,460 was always quick to solve a problem, quick to think. 1192 01:00:19,460 --> 01:00:21,340 I was like, everything is easy, everything can be done. 1193 01:00:21,340 --> 01:00:23,860 But the more I listened, the more I learned. 1194 01:00:24,140 --> 01:00:29,220 The second tip I would have is assemble the right team around 1195 01:00:29,220 --> 01:00:31,540 you. You are not going to do 1196 01:00:31,700 --> 01:00:35,100 everything yourself. Therefore you have to rely on 1197 01:00:35,140 --> 01:00:38,980 others and you have to rely on what they are bringing to the 1198 01:00:38,980 --> 01:00:41,220 table and the skill sets that they are doing. 1199 01:00:41,620 --> 01:00:44,380 So the the first thing that you have to do as a leader is 1200 01:00:44,380 --> 01:00:49,180 determine what skill sets do you need to be around that table for 1201 01:00:49,180 --> 01:00:53,260 you to be successful in your role as you deliver for the 1202 01:00:53,260 --> 01:00:56,460 company as a whole. So very carefully and 1203 01:00:56,460 --> 01:01:00,780 strategically determine that skill set and then recruit 1204 01:01:00,820 --> 01:01:03,020 accordingly. And at sometimes you're going to 1205 01:01:03,020 --> 01:01:05,260 have to make hard decisions because there are certain people 1206 01:01:05,260 --> 01:01:06,980 that you think, I really like you. 1207 01:01:06,980 --> 01:01:09,700 You've done a great job for the company but your skill sets just 1208 01:01:09,700 --> 01:01:11,340 don't match what's going forward. 1209 01:01:11,740 --> 01:01:15,100 And we're going to have to have that conversation square peg 1210 01:01:15,100 --> 01:01:19,020 round hole does not work. Get the right people by the 1211 01:01:19,020 --> 01:01:21,380 right skill sets. And then finally my last 1212 01:01:21,700 --> 01:01:25,060 leadership thing is and just finished I've just I've just 1213 01:01:25,060 --> 01:01:28,420 finished reading the the the the power to fail book which is the 1214 01:01:28,420 --> 01:01:30,380 whole history on General Electric. 1215 01:01:30,380 --> 01:01:31,700 It's been absolutely fascinating. 1216 01:01:31,700 --> 01:01:35,140 The the author goes through each of the different CEO's and he 1217 01:01:35,380 --> 01:01:38,100 focuses of course on Jack Walsh which is the considered to be 1218 01:01:38,100 --> 01:01:41,870 the greatest CEO in the world. And his big tip, which I have to 1219 01:01:41,870 --> 01:01:44,710 say I've I've embraced myself and I have been doing it a long 1220 01:01:44,710 --> 01:01:47,190 time and it was kind of like oh, Jack does it as well. 1221 01:01:47,190 --> 01:01:49,270 So I must be on the right track as well. 1222 01:01:49,270 --> 01:01:52,230 That sort of validation stuff, which is make sure you have 1223 01:01:52,230 --> 01:01:56,070 people around you that will argue you want people that will 1224 01:01:56,150 --> 01:01:58,670 actually put up a strong argument with you, will not be 1225 01:01:58,670 --> 01:02:02,190 intimidated by you or your title or your role. 1226 01:02:02,630 --> 01:02:05,470 And it doesn't matter if they report directly to you or not, 1227 01:02:05,710 --> 01:02:08,510 but have people that will actually put up an argument. 1228 01:02:09,190 --> 01:02:12,710 If you don't, then you're never going to evolve to the right 1229 01:02:12,710 --> 01:02:15,150 solution. And what's interesting about the 1230 01:02:15,150 --> 01:02:18,310 Power to fail book is that Jack was was one of these people that 1231 01:02:18,470 --> 01:02:21,110 love to have an argument that was never a personal argument, 1232 01:02:21,110 --> 01:02:23,750 it was a argument around the particular issue of the day. 1233 01:02:24,150 --> 01:02:27,470 And apparently Amazon works in the same manner as well from 1234 01:02:27,470 --> 01:02:30,950 what I've read from their books. But the following CEO that came 1235 01:02:30,950 --> 01:02:33,990 after Jack, he didn't like the argument. 1236 01:02:33,990 --> 01:02:36,790 He surrounded himself with people that were effectively, 1237 01:02:36,990 --> 01:02:41,510 yes people and therefore an awful lot of solutions were 1238 01:02:41,510 --> 01:02:43,550 effectively never really vetted out. 1239 01:02:43,990 --> 01:02:47,190 We're never really, we never really kicked the tires on those 1240 01:02:47,190 --> 01:02:50,590 at General Electric and it was absolutely fascinating to see 1241 01:02:50,590 --> 01:02:54,110 the two different CEO's being contrasted back and forth from 1242 01:02:54,110 --> 01:02:57,150 one another. So again, it's have people argue 1243 01:02:57,150 --> 01:03:00,870 and and that tip came from my mentor a long, long, long time 1244 01:03:00,870 --> 01:03:04,710 ago which was make sure people are not scared to stand up and 1245 01:03:04,710 --> 01:03:08,270 say, Alan, you're wrong and here's why I think you're wrong. 1246 01:03:08,830 --> 01:03:11,990 That's my top three. Thanks for sharing this wisdom. 1247 01:03:11,990 --> 01:03:13,150 I like the last one. Right? 1248 01:03:13,150 --> 01:03:16,470 Have people to argue, Of course, in the spirit of good faith, 1249 01:03:16,470 --> 01:03:20,310 right in the best psychological safety as possible, right? 1250 01:03:20,390 --> 01:03:23,590 Otherwise, it will be just a debate and fight internally. 1251 01:03:24,390 --> 01:03:26,550 You've got to argue with data. You're not allowed to argue with 1252 01:03:26,550 --> 01:03:29,190 emotion. That's the key differentiation. 1253 01:03:29,750 --> 01:03:31,310 Right. I think that's a very good tip 1254 01:03:31,310 --> 01:03:33,710 as well. So for people who you know, you 1255 01:03:33,710 --> 01:03:35,470 feel that you don't have enough argument. 1256 01:03:35,470 --> 01:03:37,990 Especially for engineering leaders, maybe create that 1257 01:03:38,110 --> 01:03:41,310 ecosystem or you know, culture in which people are not afraid 1258 01:03:41,310 --> 01:03:43,750 to give their feedback as honest as possible, right? 1259 01:03:44,070 --> 01:03:47,470 And you do have to listen and you know, maybe acknowledge even 1260 01:03:47,470 --> 01:03:50,030 though maybe you don't agree. In the end, I think the best 1261 01:03:50,030 --> 01:03:53,790 ideas should win, right? Not just the highest person pay 1262 01:03:53,830 --> 01:03:56,190 opinion, you're absolutely right. 1263 01:03:57,130 --> 01:03:58,890 So Alan, it's been a wonderful chat. 1264 01:03:58,890 --> 01:04:01,490 If people want to continue this conversation, is there a place 1265 01:04:01,490 --> 01:04:06,170 where they can find you online? Alan dot IS keep it simple and 1266 01:04:06,170 --> 01:04:08,650 you can also find me LinkedIn. Right. 1267 01:04:08,770 --> 01:04:11,010 Very short and simple. And I'll put it in the show 1268 01:04:11,010 --> 01:04:12,930 notes as well. So thank you so much for your 1269 01:04:12,930 --> 01:04:14,650 time, Alan. So thank you for writing the 1270 01:04:14,650 --> 01:04:16,250 book. I think this is a very, very 1271 01:04:16,250 --> 01:04:20,450 rare book for people who are the CTO, not many resources I find 1272 01:04:20,450 --> 01:04:23,970 that will give people advice or insights how you can become an 1273 01:04:23,970 --> 01:04:25,810 effective CTO. So thanks again for that. 1274 01:04:26,510 --> 01:04:31,550 Thank you again, Henry. Thank you for listening to this 1275 01:04:31,550 --> 01:04:33,950 episode and for staying right until the end. 1276 01:04:34,310 --> 01:04:37,430 If you highly enjoyed it, I would appreciate if you share it 1277 01:04:37,430 --> 01:04:40,430 with your friends and colleagues who you think would also benefit 1278 01:04:40,430 --> 01:04:43,230 from listening to this episode. And if you're new to the 1279 01:04:43,230 --> 01:04:46,230 podcast, make sure to subscribe and leave me your valuable 1280 01:04:46,230 --> 01:04:49,230 review and feedback. It helps me a lot in order to 1281 01:04:49,230 --> 01:04:52,500 grow this podcast better. You can also find the full show 1282 01:04:52,500 --> 01:04:56,060 notes of this conversation on the episode page at techlyjuno 1283 01:04:56,060 --> 01:04:59,700 dot dev website, including the full transcript, interesting 1284 01:04:59,700 --> 01:05:02,700 quotes, and links to the resources mentioned from the 1285 01:05:02,700 --> 01:05:05,540 conversation. And lastly, make sure to 1286 01:05:05,540 --> 01:05:09,060 subscribe to the show's mailing list on techlyjuno dot dev to 1287 01:05:09,060 --> 01:05:11,380 get notified for any future episodes. 1288 01:05:11,860 --> 01:05:15,140 Stay tuned for the next Techlyjuno episode, and until 1289 01:05:15,140 --> 01:05:16,220 then, goodbye.