Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and if you're interested in
moving from software engineer to Engineering Manager like me,
this episode is for you. Joining me today is Michael Doy.
He's Director of Engineering at Mobiquity and I love his
perspective on balancing people, business and engineering
responsibilities. I'll put all his socials in the
description below, check him out.
And with that being said, enjoy the episode beyond coding BBQ a
lot still. Yeah, I mean, as a South
African. We call them bries, yeah.
And it's like embedded in our culture.
So when I moved into the apartment I'm in now, one of the
first things I bought was a BBQ so that I could bry and you have
a terrace like you can do it. Yeah, I've got like a rooftop
terrace. Beautiful.
Yeah, it's quite nice and it's quite high up.
Nice view of the water and stuff.
So I have a few colleagues from South Africa and they were like,
OK, we're gonna do a BRY for the whole unit.
Yeah, and I really enjoyed it. But they were like never again
because there was like 50 people in there like cooking.
Yeah, we convinced our company as well to buy like a gas BBQ to
put outside and every like at least one Friday a month.
We do. We bry hamburgers for the for
the company. Nice.
And it's also a huge pain in the Oscars.
There's a lot of people. Yeah, right.
And you have to stand there in the heat for like 50-40 minutes
brying these burgers. Yeah, but yeah, it's always
worth it though. It's good food.
Like, I really enjoyed that night.
But I could see them. They were like cooking the whole
time, people giving them praise, and they were like never again.
Yeah, yeah. It can be a bit rough, yeah.
It was fun. They told me that people in
South Africa, I don't know if I should generalize, but they
don't really clean the BBQ. They like, rub an onion on it
and then it's like the more you use it, the better it tastes.
It adds flavour. That's, and I mean, it gets so
hot that it's going to obviously kill any bacteria, that type of
shit. But yeah, typically, like, just
take an onion after the grill is heated up and rub the shit out
of it. That's the thing that's good.
That's really funny. You do in winter as well.
If the weather is nice enough, but not so much.
I mean, especially, well, not so much here in the Netherlands,
because winter's typically a little bit colder, yeah, than
South Africa. Significantly colder, actually.
So not so much in winter, No, not so much.
If it's like a nice sunny day, then yeah, I'll often like, if I
get some nice burger patties or something like that, then I'll
just go up and put them on the BBQ for like 30 minutes or
whatever. Or 20 minutes and no.
It doesn't have to be a whole thing.
I don't have to cook, like for 10 people, I'll often just do it
for myself. So sounds good.
Yeah. But that one Friday, like once a
month in the office, you still do that.
Are you involved there as well? Yeah, I mean, we have quite a
few S Africans working for the company, so we normally sort of
rotate the responsibility of cooking the burgers, Yeah.
But yeah, last time I did, I burnt my fingers so bad, really.
But we haven't done it now. Well.
I was on PTO the last time we did it.
So, yeah, I don't know who's in it is next actually.
Yeah. And is it, I mean, we talked
previously, there's no back to the office policy yet, right?
Well, they they, they are trying to encourage people to come back
to the office, but there's no like official policy so to say.
But I think it's the same for a lot of companies.
They are obviously trying to sort of not necessarily get back
to where we were before COVID, but there is you know.
At least in my opinion as well, there is sort of a nice vibe
when you're all with people in the office and it's often easier
to actually talk to people. You missed those sort of coffee
machine chats, you know, like the small little talks in
between. It's a good example that
happened to me last week. I was trying to reach out to one
of my colleagues, sent a message on teams like hey, I need you
for 15 minutes, can I schedule something on Monday?
And he didn't get back to me. And I went downstairs to the
canteen and get some coffee and boom, he was right there.
And I. It took me 5 minutes to get the
information that I needed and I also saved saved a meeting the
next day on the Monday. So yeah, it all depends.
I mean I do see the value in being in the office, but I think
for a lot of people it's it's kind of difficult because you
have, you know, a lot of people change their lifestyles
completely when they when like everyone had to work from home
permanently. For example, people stop sending
their kids to daycare and to ask people to switch back like on a
dime like that is a little bit challenging.
So yeah, I mean, I think any company that tries to enforce
working permanently from the office is probably going to face
a little bit of backlash. I agree.
Because people are not going to want to do it.
No. Like so soon after being so
comfortable working from home. Yeah, I wonder like what the
lasting impact is gonna because I see the trend that companies
are trying to encourage. Like not every company has a
policy that's like, OK, you can only work X amount of days from
home now. But the encouragement starts and
I think it's gonna kind of progress in some companies, but
I hope other companies will still kind of offer that
flexibility. But exactly as you say, when
people got, like, when COVID happened, people got more
flexible in how they did their personal time versus their work
time. And even people that became
parents during that period have no clue how to now manage.
Yeah, exactly. Kind of their kids and daycare
and stuff like that. If they have to go back to the
office, like it's quite a challenge.
Exactly. And I mean, I personally feel
like I'm way more productive when I work from home because
there isn't so much distraction. Yeah.
You know, if I'm at the office and there's always, it seems
like there's always somebody who needs something, you know,
there's always someone at the desk.
Not always, but more often than not there's someone at the desk
asking for something, or they need help with something, and so
on. Whereas if you work from home,
then it's a little bit more asynchronous.
It's like you can reply to a Slack message after an hour.
You don't have to necessarily reply straight away.
So, yeah, I like that aspect of it.
How's the company encouraging you to come back?
Oh, they do a lot of activities in the office, this type of
stuff. We had this ping pong tournament
last week. Oh, that's dope.
That was it was really cool, actually.
It was a lot of fun. I didn't take part.
I suck at ping pong. Yeah, same here.
It was fun. And then we had an air hockey
table in this last Friday, which was also really fun.
Again, I sucked at it. But yeah, I mean there's small
things like that, you know, like lunches, breakfasts, this type
of stuff. So they are definitely trying to
encourage people to come back to the office.
I think that's the. I think that's the better
approach rather than being like you have to come back.
Yeah, try and be like, OK, we have this thing and either it
could be food or it could be an activity and it's a thing.
Show up if you want to. Yeah, exactly.
Make it fun. But also like, how do you
enforce it right? Unless you have some sort of
like. Like ID system where you know
and someone is tagged in so you know that they are at the
office. Yeah.
If you don't have that, then you sort of rely on the people
managers to micromanage the people to some extent to ensure
that they are there in the office, which is, I don't know,
it seems pointless and like too much work.
Yeah, Could you do that, you think if there was a company
policy that said, OK, every team and they basically toss the
managers with make sure your team is at the office?
Fuck, it'll be difficult though. It really will be because I mean
we have the the company is quite big in the Amsterdam office, so
it's going to be like every single people manager is going
to be spending the most of the time following up with someone
to check if they're in the office and if not why not, blah
blah blah blah. So it's like a full time job
basically, yeah. Basically so and I yeah.
Personally, I don't think I don't really see it.
At least not any time soon. Any company is going back to
full, full time work at least in the IT industry.
I think other industries maybe a little bit more need for them to
be in the office. But for IT, I mean a lot of the
work, in fact almost all the work you can do remotely and a
lot of our clients for example are based overseas or in the
neighboring European countries. So it's not like we are on site
at the offices in any case. So yeah, it makes sense.
It's kind of an interesting thought and I I never thought
about it. Has there ever been?
Because kind of going back to the office is an interesting
policy to discuss, but that hasn't happened yet in your
past, has there ever been like a a mandatory policy or something
that you didn't agree with but that you did have to kind of
follow through on or have you always kind of found middle
ground there? Well, not in the company I work
for now, but back in South Africa I was working for this
company where we had the Super strict.
It was for a period, yeah. We had the Super strict time
logging policy, so we had to. It was actually really
ridiculous because you had, we used a software called teamwork.
I think it was OK. It was years ago and they had a
timer functionality where when you start a task, you could
start a timer so you could you know how long a task took you.
Yeah. And there was this policy that
they enforced, essentially, that made sure.
That we had to start that time every time we started a task.
OK, to make sure that we logged our eight hours of work a day
per task. Yeah, yeah, basically.
And then they would follow up, You know, like, we see you only
worked 7 1/2 hours on this day. What happened?
Wow. So that was, that was a pain in
the ass, Yeah. But were you, were you on the
kind of, were you in the IC roles like individual
contributor or were you the person that had to like follow
through that? A little bit of both.
I was the head of development, yeah, there, So.
And it was a small team there, so it wasn't super difficult to
make sure that people were doing what they were supposed to be
doing. But it was kind of ridiculous,
to be honest. I mean, nobody liked it.
No. What do you like?
You have to pause the time when you get up to take a pee.
Yeah, it's a. Little bit ridiculous.
I mean, from my Dutch perspective, it's like that is
like not done. Yeah, that was one of the things
I really enjoyed about moving and working for a Dutch company.
It's super, super flexible. Yeah, there's not a lot of sort
of policies that will scare people away, I would say, at
least from my experience up to now.
Yeah, there's this thing like that.
You call it Hazon Fristant, which is like, I don't even know
how to translate that. But it's like, yeah, if it
doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense.
Basically, it's like it's not even think for yourself, it's
just think. The direct translation is Think
healthy. Yeah, I was thinking because I
mean Afrikaans is quite similar to that.
Yeah. So there's some, you know, you
can sort of extrapolate some of the translations through just by
knowing some Afrikaans. And yeah, I was.
What is the word again? Because on for stomp.
Yeah, yeah. It sounds almost like a stand
healthy. Yeah, basically, yeah.
And I think a lot of people like it's ingrained in the culture.
If it doesn't make sense, people argue it.
People were kind of stand their ground and be like why or I'm
not gonna do it even. And principally sometimes people
say I don't do this, which I think is like I've I've grown up
in it. So for me to hear the opposite
is weird And I think it would be even weirder to then experience
that. I mean maybe I shouldn't label
it as weird. It would just be a a different
experience. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, yeah. But I was like I've only worked
for one company since Sabenia in the last five years.
So I am sort of curious how it works in other companies, but I
would imagine it's more or less the same.
It seems like a very much a cultural thing.
I think so. It's not so sort of individual
to each company, but more just of sort of a globally accepted
thing or a regionally accepted thing.
Yeah, yeah. I think it's really ingrained in
the culture and I don't know it's hard for me to reflect how
it would have been otherwise. Like even growing up in school I
I had moments where I stood my ground and be like I don't agree
or I would tell the teacher you're wrong and it doesn't make
sense and I'm I'm not sure if in another country in other
cultures that would like go through and as it did and.
If I did that in school in South Africa, I probably would have
been sent straight to the principal's office.
I mean like, yeah, that's what I hear.
But I'm kind of curious because you you moved from a role of
more so individual contributor to more of an engineering
manager position. Like how, how was that
transition for you? It was relatively smooth I
think. So I first started as when I
joined the company I'm with now when I moved from South Africa
here, yeah, I joined as just an individual contributor, software
engineer. And then I think it was after
about six months they asked me to be team lead, so to help
manage some of the front end team at that time.
Yeah. So I did that I think for, I
don't know, a year and a half or so, how was the work
distribution? It was more heavily focused on
the still on the like just normal software engineering
individual contribution side of things.
Yeah. And then you had like 4 to 8
hours, so more or less like one day a week to focus on like the
people management side of things.
So have you one on ones mentoring, coaching, this type
of stuff. And then they there's like a
little bit of internal restructuring happened and they
opened up three director positions at the company and to
be honest. When I heard that they were
opening them up, so they split it across three different
groups, basically Foundation, Platform and Applications.
And since my experience is mostly around sort of front end
full stack application side of things, my manager at the time
asked me if I was interested in applying for the Applications
director role and initially. I thought to myself, not, not
really. You know, I was sort of happy
where I was. I wasn't super interested at
that point in sort of progressing more along the
management track. But the more I thought about it,
the more I thought actually maybe it is the right time.
Because I think every software engineer reaches a point in
their career when they sort of have to not have to, where
there's an opportunity for them to make that decision whether or
not they want to continue as an individual contributor or if
they want to actually step into the management track and pursue
that side of it. Because yeah, I mean also like.
I didn't want to necessarily be still coding full time in my
50s, you know, although I know a lot of people who are above 50
and are still full time individual contributors.
There's nothing wrong with it. Of course, it's a choice, but I
decided for me personally that would be the best, the best way
forward. Because I also do like soft
engineering is funny sometimes because it is really easy to
burn out and I think you burn out a lot without even realizing
it. There's like, small signs that
people don't really pick up in themselves when they are burning
out. Yeah, yeah.
And then my manager asked me again, will you apply for the
role? He's like, please apply for the
role. So I was like, OK, so I applied
for it, did the interview, did a small presentation and yeah, I
got the job. Basically sounds like a great
manager as well to kind of see that this is maybe in line with
what you want to do, even though you might not have noticed and
this is a good opportunity and a good fit.
And the last thing is it's still, I still do some
individual contribution. It's not like a full time
management role. So there's still I still work on
clients. How's the ratio?
It's more or less like it. It varies, you know, depending
on the need. But I would say mostly like
8020. OK.
So, yeah, so like kind of the opposite of what you had in the
team lead, more or less. Yeah, makes sense in kind of
stepping into that team lead role because that's where I'm at
now actually. And that's kind of a recent
change to see if this engineering manager path or
track is kind of something I like because I like interacting
with people. I like talking about personal
development, about growth. But there's a lot of challenges
there. Like I I did this course and it
was more so about influence styles and I noticed I can, I
can be really good at like the logic part.
So argumenting, setting expectations, even asking
questions. I mean the podcast is fully in
line with that being curious and I'm I'm less great at kind of
the inspiring part, maybe that's kind of what your manager did
for you as in we have this role I think you could do it.
That's one of the inspirational part in stepping into that team
lead role and even going beyond as full like director of
Engineering. Have you seen kind of challenges
with how you communicate versus kind of the flexibility that
your team requires or what have been some of the challenges?
I mean I think you know for when you're when you're a team lead,
it's it's. Very much focused on the people.
So that is pretty much your to some extent your only focus,
right, making sure that you set people on the correct career
paths given everything they need in order to reach their career
goals etcetera. And then sort of when you go one
level above that then there's other things to consider like
the business side of things. So the way I look at it now,
it's sort of three, three parts. You have the people management
side of it, like actual engineering side of it.
And the business side of it and it's always sort of around
finding the balance between those three things.
So you have to at some point, you know, learn to put your foot
down to some extent. You can't necessarily let people
walk over you in the sense of, yeah, I don't really know how to
put this, but you have to to put it.
I plainly I think deny some requests.
You have to learn to say no essentially a lot more than you
would in a in a typical team leader because part of your
focus is on the business side of things as well.
You know like how are the margins on a particular project.
You know what can we do in terms of staffing to make the margins
a bit higher and but at the same time also make sure that the
people we are allocating to a particular project or a
particular client are going to be happy there and it fits their
career growth or their career goals and their their skill set
as well. Yeah.
It's like I say, it's like 3 prongs basically.
Yeah. And the business side I think
comes kind of the higher up you get probably.
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, right.
Yeah. But I mean, going back to what
you were saying about the old recent change to team lead,
yeah, it's interesting because I think.
If you're new to a leadership role then it always takes a
little bit of time to sort of find your leadership style and
it's there's no sort of right way or wrong way to do things.
What I think is really has the most value is just being
authentic. If you just if you are sort of
have natural leadership capabilities then you can
literally just be yourself and that's it.
And that is, to be honest, how I've gotten through most of my
career as a leader is just literally by being myself and
not trying too hard. Because I think it's it's it can
be quite obvious sometimes when. Someone is being like they are
sort of forcing themselves with depth or adopt A particular
leadership style. And it might not suit them, but
that's OK. And it does take a while for you
to sort of find your footing and to find your leadership style.
So yeah, I try. I think it's really hard to act
like someone I'm not like. I think I'm authentically myself
kind of most of the time or hopefully all the time.
But I do see sometimes limitations or I hear stories
about what other people do and be like.
Maybe I could grow in that or maybe I'm not great at that yet.
Like there was a conversation and this was years back with
people that have, for example, end of year, end of year chats.
I'm not sure if it was this company actually, but it was a
while back and they said, well, I talked to my manager and there
was a mismatch in expectations, right?
And that manager was like putting the blame somewhere else
and like fully on trying to inspire like we can do better
next time. I'm going to put you in
positions and stuff like that. And I'm like they only did
inspire basically. And I I might not be great at
that, but at least I can see where kind of the limitations of
certain certain communication styles would be and I try and be
as flexible as possible. I don't want to enforce anything
upon anyone. That's why I was really curious
if you had, like if you were ever in a position where you had
to do that, because I would really struggle with that.
I feel like if I had to follow through on something I don't
believe in, yeah, I think that's really hard.
Yeah, it is. I mean, there there have been
certain situations where I've sort of said no, very directly.
It's something that I don't agree with.
Yeah. I mean, one instance does come
to mind, but it's not something I can necessarily talk about,
Sure, unfortunately. But yeah, I also like you have
to be true to yourself to some extent, right?
That is sort of part of being authentic.
Yeah. Staying true to yourself.
And that's, I think that's one thing that is quite sort of
undervalued in terms of what people think about leadership.
So yeah, always try and keep that in mind.
It should be your North Star. Just.
For yourself, yeah. How was it kind of transitioning
into the flip side, cuz you had kind of 4 to 8 hours more so
people management as a responsibility and then it
flipped and it was like kind of 20% more so hands on stuff.
Yeah, it was quite interesting initially actually, because I
didn't know what to do with my time.
I was like, OK, that's what I was going to ask, yeah.
And then that's when you have to sort of be a little bit more
proactive and start finding things to do to some extent as
well and following up with people.
And you know, just like ultimately you have to own the
role to some extent, right? Like, you know what your mandate
is? You sort of know what your
boundaries are and what your parameters are that you can work
with and like make the most of it.
If you see an opportunity in the company to change something for
the better, then you have sort of the power to do it, which is
quite nice. So that's a part of it that I
really do enjoy. And it took me a little while to
actually sort of get to that point where I was like actually
I have the power to just do this thing.
I have this nice initiative that I want to implement.
Let's see if I can make it work. And with those initiatives, how
often are you in the driver's seat and how often do you like,
enable other people or like, get a following to?
That's a good question. Actually, because it's, it's
often times in situations like that it's a great opportunity to
test someone else's leadership abilities as well.
Yeah. So because the team leads report
to me, I will often try and delegate, delegate things to
them to see how they might handle a particular situation,
Yeah. And then you can see a person's
sort of strengths and weaknesses through that, through that as
well. But there are of course some
initiatives that I will take upon myself to do if I always
and it's a little bit weird, but I always have this thing in my
head, like, if you want something done right, do it
yourself, which is not necessarily the right attitude
to have. So I do try and put that in the
back seat as often as possible. But there are some things where
if it's really important, then I know I'm gonna do it myself
because. Either if it goes South and I
will be the one to take responsibility for it, yeah.
Or if it works really well, then no, then it works really well.
So yeah, it's I think it boils down to the accountability part,
right? Can I, how do you say that?
Like can I give this away or do I need to kind of keep control
on this and make sure this goes right?
Because this is maybe more important or at least more
important to me. Yeah, it also depends on
schedules, right? I mean, sometimes I just don't
have the time to do to do things, so then I have to
delegate them. So is that hard?
Because I from my role, I like doing a lot and sometimes saying
no to stuff I really want to do is kind of painful.
Yeah, I guess prioritization becomes important in, you know,
in time management because if they're if I know something is
coming up on the horizon that I really do want to do, then I
will try and make time for it. So I'll either and delegate
something I'm busy with to someone else or.
Find some way to make time in my schedule for that particular
thing that I'm super interested in.
Yeah, and that makes sense. You you touched on burnouts a
little bit ago as well and I'm, I'm wondering if you have any
like affordances in place to kind of see burnout signals
early on because it is more so rampant.
I would say within our field. I was having this chat with
someone and he said something interesting like even even take
Scrum as a framework we work in sprints is that no other athlete
sprints over and over and over again and and we do and I was
like that's genius like that's a really good that is true.
So it might even be apparent in in our way of working, but I
yeah that's I'm not sure what the solution.
Would be. I mean there's there's sort of
certain science you can pick up in engineers I think when they
are starting to burnout, especially from you know sort of
lack of energy. Yeah, just the way a person
talks, the way that they sort of.
Interact with you or the way that they behave in certain
situations. Like one of the biggest signs
for me is cynicism. When when someone starts
becoming super cynical about the work that they're doing, then
that for me is a clear sign of burnout.
Like they are not they are not necessarily enjoying the work
that they're doing anymore. But it's also it's it's it's
kind of difficult because you know when you really enjoy
something that you do, you want to do it a lot right?
But with with. Software engineering.
I think if you do it too much, then you do tend to burn out.
I mean, when I first started, I was working a lot.
You know, I was like when I got home from work, I was opening up
my computer and working more because I wanted to do it.
It was fun and it still is fun. But you have to also be careful,
You know, there's there's, you have to find that balance again
between making sure that you are, you know, able to actually
code. Yeah, sort of a good standard.
Without draining your energy too much.
So, but there's there's a lot of variables that come into it as
well, depending on the project. I mean, they are super high
stress projects as well where you can burn out super quickly.
But yeah, I think luckily in the Netherlands there's again a
really big culture of this work life balance, which I think is
missing in a lot of other places.
And that's really nice. And I find, at least from my
experience up to now, there's a lot of people who take that very
seriously. You know, when 5:00 comes or
6:00 comes. Laptop is closed.
Yeah, sorry. No worries.
And that's it. They don't think about work
until the next day. Yeah, but are you also taking
that into account in your own way of working?
Cuz sometimes I'm like, I'm typing this e-mail cuz I'm
working late and I'm like, should I send this e-mail?
Cuz some people, when they receive an e-mail, they think
about work or they get into a mode where they have to do stuff
and I'm like, maybe I'll just you can now schedule stuff to
send during office. Hours.
I tend to use that scheduling functionality quite often as
well, because, yeah, sometimes with the nature of my role, I
have to respond to emails after working hours and that type of
stuff. But there are days I don't have
my e-mail or my personal phone, for example.
I have Slack just in case of emergencies.
But so there are days, for example, where I just do not
want to sort of. At work after working hours and
then I'll just leave my work phone upstairs or leave my
laptop upstairs and not really worry about it.
If something is really urgent, someone will phone me.
But of course, like it typically is 9 to 5 most of the time.
And they're so in certain industries, so there's not
really a hell of a lot of action that happens after hours.
It's mostly just like follow up emails and small things here and
there, the top stuff. So yeah, you touched upon the
kind of engineering part, the people management part and the
business part as well. And I'm wondering, I'm assuming
you got more involved into hiring as well as kind of
expanding your own team or even the team laser team managers
there. Is there any like particular
thing you always pick on where we're hiring or what is kind of
your focus when hiring for new people?
I think capability for me is the most important thing, so
regardless of a person's color, agenda, anything like that.
They should be capable, but in general, I think hiring in tech
is a little bit broken. It's like for example, the whole
thing with the live coding. I think that's a little bit
ridiculous to some extent. I understand the necessity you
have to sort of make sure that the person that you are wanting
to hire is actually has the skills that you're looking for
because people lie on their CVS and blah blah blah blah, but.
Yeah, I think it's trying to write code in an environment
like an interview is not really super cool.
No. For anyone, really.
I mean, it sucks. It's stressful.
It really sucks. Yeah.
Yeah, sorry. And yeah, it is really
stressful. And I don't know one person who
enjoys doing that stuff. No.
So I honestly discourage it for our teams because you can ask
very technical questions or ask someone to walk you through a
solution that they've built. And just by hearing a person
talk, you can understand whether or not they are capable, if they
actually understand what it is that they're talking about.
It's a very big difference, for me at least, between someone who
has really internalized the concept versus someone who has
maybe read about it a few times and has some insight.
So that, I think, is one key point that people don't think
about too often. So in my opinion, do away with
the live coding because it really sucks.
It's horrible. Nobody likes it.
Is that your process then as well?
That there's no kind of live coding component or?
Well, since I'm not really involved in the technical
interviews anymore, I don't always know whether or not they
are doing live coding, but I discourage it.
Like I say, if a person who is doing the interview feels like
they need to do it, then they can do it.
But yeah, it's not sort of mandatory, let's say.
I get that. For me, I always enjoy from both
ends, more so the conversational aspects.
But it is like I I get what you say that you can pick up if
someone has internalized those concepts, but I feel like it's
still kind of difficult because if their way of working is,
let's say, lacking, I mean they can fix that, but sometimes it's
also hard to fix. Yeah, yeah, true.
I mean, one thing I I tell people quite often as well is
even if a person, if we're hiring for example, for a senior
role and we can see that a person is not necessarily.
On a senior level, technically. But they have great soft skills,
they are great communicators, you know, they talk easily.
Then we would still hire them at that senior level because it's
easy to teach technical skills. In my opinion, it's not so easy
to teach soft skills, like you can't necessarily change a
person's culture in a short period of time and you don't.
That's not maybe something you want to do, but also like you
will never get it 100% correct because.
Nobody is their true self during an interview.
You know, they are selling themselves to some extent, so
they are bullshitting here and there.
Of course, that's a great thing. Everyone does it.
Yeah. So, yeah, you have to sort of to
some extent trust your instinct as well.
And that's why we have things like probation periods, where if
someone is not sort of what you expected or how they presented
themselves during an interview, then you have the opportunity to
let them improve or to let them go basically.
So without naming any names like, has that happened where
you hired someone, just your instincts, but at the end like
it wasn't as good of a match as you thought it would be?
Well, yeah, I mean that has that has happened, but it's never
happened where we've let someone go during the probation period
because they've always sort of. I mean, if you sit down and have
a serious discussion with someone and tell them, like,
look, this is the expectation, this is what we expect of you.
You're not sort of reaching it yet, but you have some time to
still get there. And if that person then sort of
sees that and you can see them trying, then it's more or less
OK. And I think that's mostly the
situations that I find myself in because, yeah, like I say,
you'll never get 100% right. And your gut is always not
right. Maybe you have a hangover and
your gut is just hungry. Yeah.
Like, yeah, it's not. It's not.
It's not going to always be perfect, unfortunately.
Have you gotten better at having those conversations?
Because it's for me to have that conversation.
I think I can do it, but it is. It can be a difficult
conversation, like setting the expectation, being like,
especially with a person that just got on, like, you might
just crush their motivation if you do it the wrong way.
Have you gotten better at that? Well, we have done a lot of
training. Obviously we have a lot of
ongoing like sort of management training and that type of stuff
and difficult conversations is one of the.
Topics that is always there. Yeah.
And but honestly, the more you do it, the easier it becomes,
you know, and you can sort of there's like AI don't know
really how to put this. It's like a red thread that runs
through any sort of dialogue where you you sort of know what
points to touch on and what points not to touch on touch on,
regardless of a person's culture or anything like that.
Yeah. And again, like, if you are
authentic and transparent, then people will sort of listen, you
know, and have, yeah, just have like empathy with people.
Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand how they
would be feeling if they were the ones receiving, sorry, if
you were the 1 receiving the feedback from them, from
yourself. And yeah, that's.
I mean, again, it's never, it's never easy, but the more you do
it, the easier it does become. Yeah, I really like that.
You have to just keep doing it. It's like that scene from Bojack
Horseman thinks it's a popular meme all the time.
Like, it's really what something like it's really difficult, but
you have to. It gets easier.
You just have to do it. You have to keep doing it every
day. Something, something along those
lines. Yeah.
And that's basically how it is. The more you do it, the easier
it becomes. Yeah.
Is there any kind of moving from IC to Engineering Manager and
even Director? Has there been any, like,
specific components that you don't really enjoy compared to
the other ones? Or ones that you even
surprisingly do enjoy? Well, I think the ones that I
don't enjoy, of course, like I think any reasonable human, all
the difficult conversations because you know, sometimes you
have to sort of not necessarily reprimand someone, but you have
to remind them of where they are and that they can't necessarily.
You know, because people will always take advantage.
Some people will, will take advantage where they see the
opportunity to do to do so. So having conversations where
you have to sort of remind someone that they can't do a
certain thing or that they have stepped out of line like address
their behavior. Yeah, exactly.
Those conversations are even still like always a little bit
difficult to have because to some extent you're sort of like
not hurting that person. But you're saying, you know,
you're you're like, I don't know, you're sort of.
Rubbing them the wrong way to some extent, because I mean, I
know from my own personal experience with my manager tells
me you outline doing this, then it doesn't feel great, right?
It's like a little bit disappointing when you sort of
have to have to deal with situations like that.
But so yeah, difficult conversations I think are the
part that I don't enjoy. And the rest, I think I would
say I enjoy the rest like equally there's nothing.
I can think of that sort of sticks out as something that I
enjoy more than something else. Yeah, You think you'll ever grow
to a point where you're gonna let go of the hands on part,
even though it's like 20% now? Will there ever be 5 or 0 even?
Maybe, maybe not. I mean you know, I I still
really enjoy coding. Yeah, so I will still always
want to have some some. Some some part in it.
But it's funny because we started this sort of internal
project recently at work and one of the one of the people who's
working on it was like breaking down what technology they were
going to use for this particular project.
And it was front end project. And honestly, I didn't recognize
half of the half of the shit that she like had put in the
message, like, what is this goes quick.
I haven't. Even heard of this and it's it
hasn't even been that long since I was like out of it.
So. 02021 like 2-2 and a bit. I think maybe 2, 1/2 or so.
Yeah, things go fast. Yeah, and it's it's it's amazing
how quickly it does actually move.
Yeah, like the only the only two things I recognized out of all
that whole stack was React and TypeScript.
I mean, that was. Like the rest of the stuff.
But yeah, I mean The thing is also you have to have some level
of trust in the people that that you manage as well to make sure
or or to be confident that they are capable enough to make
decisions for themselves. So it's hard to then go back as
well. Like if you're on this let's say
engineering manager track and you're two years down the line
and you might at some point want to go back, then especially when
it comes to front end technologies like certain
fundamental knowledge will always be there.
But it when it comes to kind of the the latest tech that
everyone's using, you might have to kind of catch up again.
Yeah, definitely. Which is quite, quite hard.
Although I don't, I don't really think it'll be that hard to be
honest. I think if you like, you say
those those fundamental concepts don't necessarily leave you that
quickly. So if you were to pick it up
again after a few years, I think you would probably pick it up
relatively quickly, I would say in my opinion, but I don't know,
I mean, no, right? One way to find out I can go, I
don't know, rebuild some website I built 10 years ago and see how
that goes. But yeah, one of my biggest
concerns going on this track and especially doing it in the same
company. Like, I like being friends with
my colleagues, but not just be colleagues but also know about
their personal life. And when shit is like hitting
the fan, we talk about it like there's no filter.
I feel like if I get to a point where I have more of the
business responsibilities as well as the people
responsibilities, those conversations are not going to
be as authentic. There's going to be this
hierarchy in place that I might be their team leader, manager or
what have you and I feel like I'll lose that, which is like
scary to me because I don't want to lose that, but I feel like it
might be inevitable. Yeah, it's it's actually this is
something I've thought about quite a bit because I've been in
the situation a lot. So I have worked with like some
of my best friends as their managers and the way.
Have this comparison so you know how in software we always sort
of have the separation of concerns.
Like you always maintain the separation of concerns when
you're creating an application or something.
You have to sort of keep that same mindset when you are
working or managing your friends as well.
And that's the same thing that I tell them compartmentalization.
So if we are talking in a work context, then forget about
everything else you know and just.
That's basically it. Like when I'm at work, I'm your
boss and that's it. We can still talk shit and blah
blah blah blah and have fun. But there are certain situations
like I I know this one friend of mine who he recently left the
company actually, but you know, I I told him at one point, just
tell me when you need to have a serious conversation and then
that's it. Like the friendship goes out the
window for 5 minutes while we talk about it and that's it.
And it actually makes those work conversations a little bit
easier because you're also sort of very comfortable with that
person. And they might not necessarily
be too easily offended at something you say that they
don't agree with. Yeah.
So yeah, just that that sense of separation concerns,
compartmentalization becomes really important when you do,
work with or manage your friends on that level.
Did that, like, come easy to you, flipping that switch and
being like a yeah cuz it sounds like it.
Yeah, I don't know why, but work for me is like a box.
It's completely different to. Like work, relationships are of
course different to relationships outside of outside
of work. Yeah, but things like that just
just feel very natural for me. It might be the only way for me
to handle that, but I like I have really good memory,
especially when we have a conversation.
What someone said, like it sticks with me, helps with this
podcast. Yeah, I can imagine that.
But in in having those conversations in and out of
work, then for me, I think it would be hard to, I don't know,
maybe even let go of some things like I don't know how I would
handle that. Like that, to me is kind of the
scary part. Yeah, but again, that's
something that sort of comes with practice.
When you do it enough, you sort of get used to it, yeah.
And then you find a routine that works for you.
It doesn't have to be what the other person is doing.
It can be. You will find your own way of
dealing with it eventually, yeah.
And you communicating that to your team or to your friends
even, has that allowed them to kind of be as open with you or
do you still notice that they're not telling you everything
sometimes? Sometimes I do notice that,
yeah. But for the most part, I think
it's, you know, again, there's transparency is super important.
And that's one thing that I always do try and press on
people as well, especially if I'm working with friends.
Just be, be transparent. I mean, we are friends, right?
You can tell me what, whatever. It doesn't matter.
I'm not going to get annoyed with you.
I'm not going to fire you. I'm not going to, you know,
like, whatever. So yeah, I mean there was a
situation where a friend of mine who I was working with was.
He had, he didn't tell me at the time, but he had done a few
interviews and was looking at accepting a final offer from a
different company. Yeah, and he only, he came and
told me only when he was when he had the final offer.
He was like, I didn't tell you I was doing interviews and things
like that, but I have this offer, you know, I got it, yeah.
What can you do about it? And I was like, OK, well, yeah,
you should have come to me first because we can pay you more than
what that company is offering you.
So you should have just come to me first with whatever the issue
was. And in that case, it was a
salary issue. Yeah.
So yeah, like, again, just if you can impress on them to be
transparent and open with you as a friend in a work context, then
that should be fine. Yeah, just in general, cuz I
think what you laid out is quite interesting.
I've heard that before that people look outside, get an
offer, and then try and negotiate whatever they have.
Yeah. Why is that a thing?
Why? Why can't it just be like, oh,
you get what you deserve in kind of an end of year chat?
Why do people have to go outside and then kind of renegotiate
their position sometimes? I don't know.
I think it's like this thing of, you know, people get super
comfortable where they are, especially if you're there for a
long, long period of time. But then, you know, you see
someone else who's like earning a little bit more on a different
company. And you know, you start sort of
daydreaming about the lifestyle you could have if you're earning
that much money, blah blah blah, so.
Yeah. Then you sort of get to the end
point with that. You all sort of need to make a
decision whether you're actually going to leave and go work for
that other company. And I think human nature people
want to stay where they're comfortable and then they start
having second thoughts and like, OK, but maybe I can use this
leverage at, you know, where I am currently to get to get more
money And from my, from my experience because this has
happened quite often and it works.
It does sometimes, like we we've.
I've I've had situations where someone has said I have an offer
from another company. What is anything you know, like
can you match it or can you do better?
And in some cases like, no we can't, but we can.
We can do this or we can set out a plan for the next three years
where we can get you to you know somewhere close or whatever it
is. And in most cases people will
accept that rather than jumping ship and going, going and
working for another company, because that whole thing is
really stressful, right? Like going.
Yeah, exactly. It's like no one really wants to
do that. But at the same time, it's sort
of like a double edged sword because life begins at the edge
of your comfort zone, right? Like you have to become
uncomfortable to grow. So yeah, you sort of risk
becoming too content if you stay somewhere for too long.
And I think that's one of the important things about being a
leader as well is trying to get people out of their comfort
zones to make sure that they are still feeling engaged as often
as possible because. And it's also like it, it comes
down a lot to the individual themselves like some people just
are not super interested in career growth and they are happy
where they are and they just like coast, you know, but they
are the people who are super ambitious and want to grow fast
and they want to grow far. So as a as a manager you have to
identify those like two different types and react
accordingly, Yeah. Do you also like put more energy
into the one that wants to grow kind of faster and and has more
career ambitions compared to the people that coast?
Definitely, yeah. Because you know, to some extent
the people that coast, you can always like The thing is, yeah,
I mean, you can lead a host of water, but you can't make a
drink, right. So you can sort of encourage a
person who is not super interested in career growth to,
you know, pursue a particular thing.
And whether they do or not is ultimately up to them.
It's a choice that they they have to make.
Yeah. But typically, from my
experience, at least from the people who are really ambitious
and who do want to grow. They don't necessarily know
where and how, so that's the people who do need a little bit
more guidance and mentorship. And honestly, as a manager, you
have to have time to invest into people because that's how people
grow. For me, mentorship was one of
the most important things for me.
I had great mentors throughout my career and that's one of the
reasons why I was able to sort of reach.
Where I am was because I had a lot of great people to look up
to and to learn from. And I think without that people
who are sort of not necessarily in the early stages of their
career, but maybe looking for a career change or looking for
something new, it's important to be able to offer them that path.
You know, within like the parameters of where you work.
You might not be able to give them everything they want, but
you can try, you know, and come come to some sort of reasonable.
Middle ground, Yeah, I really aligned with that.
Like I was always when I joined, like especially in my first
company, I joined in operations. I wanted to grow as fast as
possible cuz I had no clue where I wanted to end up, like where I
would end up. But I wanted to get there faster
cuz I knew it would be maybe more relaxed, maybe more
comforting in knowing that I really like what I'm doing and
this is gonna be there for the long haul.
Now. I still don't know if I found it
and I'm I'm still kind of on this track of of trying to grow,
trying to develop on a personal level and I don't think it ever
goes away. So then to offer that, to now be
able to offer that to other people is for me like the bare
minimum, like that's what I'm here for.
I want to offer you those options that I had also in
growing in my career myself. And I do recognize that some
people have kind of different ambitions in that aspect and
we'll pull on you harder than others.
And in the beginning I thought it was very difficult because I
I wanted to be equal to everyone, right?
Equal distribution of my time, yeah.
But if not everyone requires equal distribution of my time,
then I shouldn't do that basically.
Exactly. Yeah.
That's what I do. I mean, there are some people on
my team who I have monthly calls with, Yeah.
And there are other people who have biweekly calls with and
others want to talk to me every single week.
So it all depends sort of what the situation is and what they
want. And yeah, how you exactly can
help them? Yeah, absolutely.
You touched on transparency as well when it kind of came to
that conversation with your colleague, with your friend,
when it came to them kind of looking outside of the company.
Transparency has always been an interesting topic for me because
especially from an IC role like I I'm like, give us more
information because I think everyone I work with is a
reasonable human being. The the more problems we know,
the more like we know about what's going on.
We can also offer help in that way.
So now, especially in the position I am, sometimes they're
like, or there's conversations where they're like, OK, this
might not be the best time to kind of talk about this thing.
And I'm like, why not? Like, I try and challenge
everything because I also don't like holding my cards close to
me. I guess maybe that's there's a
wrong analogy. I just don't like talking about
things that are kind of in the middle or when someone brings up
something, I'm like, well, something's coming, but I can't
really talk about it. I have a real hard time doing
that. Sometimes.
I don't do that because I don't really see sometimes why we
can't communicate and be more transparent as an organization.
Like it can be a general thing. But have you ever found yourself
in positions where you couldn't be as transparent or where even
your transparency hurt rather than it they could?
Yeah, because I'm curious about that.
Yeah, definitely. I mean it happens all the time,
especially in more senior management roles because again
you have part of it is business focused, right.
So, but my approach is normally to say like if someone asks a
particular question or was looking for specific piece of
information. If I know that information, but
I know that I also can't tell them, then I will tell them
like, hey, I know this, but I can't tell you about it, OK?
It's because of these reasons. And often times that's that's
sort of enough. I think what is helpful for a
lot of people, often if they have grievances is literally
just to talk about them, you know, because that helps to just
sort of clear the air a little bit.
But yeah, there's definitely been instances where, you know,
I haven't been able to be as transparent as I would like to
be because of the business side of things.
Or for fear of sort of maybe hurting their feelings.
Or I don't know, like not, I don't know like sending them off
the wrong or sending them onto the wrong path.
This type of stuff, when it comes to the information that is
kind of, let's say, withheld sometimes.
Where does that lie in? Like what information is shared
and what information usually is like?
OK, we can't share this yet, but we're working on this.
Is it like because it obviously affects the people within your
team, but I'm not sure where the line is then?
Well, it depends. I mean, a lot of it I would say
is around like policies, new policies that are upcoming,
things that change, salary, brackets that changed stuff.
Because I always feel, especially from like, I always
try to lean back on my experience as a software
engineer. Because there's.
I mean, it's. 90% of it is problem solving, right?
Like you're basically solving problems.
And if there is, if there's a particular piece of information
that I know that I that I can't necessarily share with someone,
then yeah. Again, just like, be honest with
them and tell them like, hey, I know this, but I I can't tell
you because it's gonna like you like it'll come out eventually.
Yeah. There will be an announcement or
there will be an e-mail or something to let people know.
No. But then when it comes to the
information, do you see a line between what can be shared and
what cannot be shared? It's more so policy based you
mentioned. Yeah, policy based pretty much.
But there is I mean. It also depends on the
relationship that you have with the person, right?
Like sometimes if even if you are not necessarily supposed to
share something that you can because you trust that person,
then that, then that's also OK. That also like helps to build a
relationship with that person as well because they feel a little
bit more like you are being more transparent with them.
So it has happened to me on a few occasions where I'll be
like, I can't actually tell this, I don't tell anyone.
But this is the story. I love that you're honest about
that because I hadn't thought about that.
Like sometimes I feel stupid for playing dumb.
Like, yeah, I don't know anything about that.
I'm really bad at that. What's?
Talking about yeah, but just just explaining to them like
something is coming and I can't talk about it.
I think I'm. I'm gonna adopt that for sure,
cuz I don't like playing dumb. Yeah.
The thing is, I mean, then people will sometimes go and
look around for information in other places.
Yeah, Yeah. Again, I think transparency is
really important, especially in leadership roles as often as
possible. Yeah, I think reason of course,
for sure. Yeah.
And kind of laying out your track from IC to engineering
manager, engineering director. Is there anything that's still
missing that you want to add to the conversation we had?
I'm not sure. I think I would say for anyone
who's sort of transitioning through that period, don't like,
don't be too worried, you know, And if you feel like you're not
sort of able to find your feats in leadership.
Everyone feels like that it will take a little bit of time, and
if it doesn't, then damn, please come and work for me because we
need people like you. But yeah, it'll take time to
find a leadership style and you don't have to necessarily adopt
one particular style, right? There's also a lot about
flexibility. Different people require
different styles of management as well.
So you have to be adaptable and you have to be flexible in that
sense. So yeah, just.
There was, there was this guy who worked at our company on the
design team like years ago and he said one thing, it was in
context it sounded really silly but it stuck with me and he was
he said just be like water, just go with the flow and that just
be like water thing is something that I think is actually really
valuable advice to be honest. So and not always, you can't
always just go with the flow like sometimes you have to fight
back and swim upstream. But yeah, for the most part.
It's OK to just go with the flow and don't feel bad.
Impostor syndrome effects, everyone.
Yeah. So yeah.
And you're flexible like water as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
Good stuff. I love that.
Cool man. Thanks, Michael.
This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on
ARE. We done already?
Yeah. I'm gonna round it off here.
How did things go? Yeah, good.
We're still recording. No, no, I would imagine so hell,
but it was good. It was went a lot faster than I
thought though. Yeah, right.
Those are good conversations, I've noticed.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Great interview. Thank you.
I try.
Cool. I'm going to round it off here,
everyone. I'm going to put all Michael
socials in the description below, check them out, let them
know you came from our episode. And with that being said, thank
you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.