Hi, everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and
joining me today is John Mueller, IT Lead of the
Analytics Engineering Department of ING.
And we talk about leadership in tech, especially at big
organizations like ING. There's a lot of complexity in
hiring, delivering, being responsible without being hands
on. John shares all of that and
more. So enjoy.
You and I were in a call and I heard you speak about hiring,
that it's one of the most important things that you can
do. And I was like, I mean, he's
right. But the way you said it like
that shows that you've had a lot of at least experience with
regards to hiring people and the right people.
He also mentioned that as things get more complex, you need more
specialized people. I wonder how you at least ensure
that you have the right people on board, because for me that's
always the tricky part. Yeah, it's yeah, it it to sound
like a real corporate guy. In the end, it's process, right?
That you need to put a good process in place.
But that starts with figuring out what you want, right?
So what's the process supposed to represent?
So when I speak about hiring and it's not, it's I'm not lying.
It's indeed based on a lot of my own personal experience and all
the people who taught me, who came before me is you need to
think about what, what kind of people am I looking for?
It's the old mercenary versus missionary kind of discussion,
right? Are you looking for missionaries
who will take whatever you want and evangelize it left, up,
down, right? Or are you looking for a
mercenary? Something just needs to get done
quickly, move on to the next thing or any 50 Shades of Grey
in between. Once you figure out what kind of
people you're working looking for in general, then try to make
that into a process. For example, what we did and
actually was based on the same hiring principle like Xebia at
the time, or code data-driven back then, was Make sure you
split it into different parts of the things that you want to
check, but also making sure that multiple sets of eyes look at an
angle of the same thing. So to make that specific, first,
there's a technical hard skill. So especially in the software
engineering and anything related to it.
Yeah, just can you code? Do you understand it?
What seniority level do you understand?
But then that's by all means the easy one, right?
That's fairly binary. You know, other people look at
whatever the person did and come.
Yeah, this, this, I know Medium media senior and so on the two
other interviews that we did back then were around when I run
HR more classical. OK, what do you want?
Why this company? I don't think we ever asked
them. Where do you see yourself in
five years? At least I don't hope so, but
it's it's those kind of questions just to get a a sense
of yeah, the basics, if you will.
And the thing that stood out for me was always that we, we had
something which we originally called team fit, then we at some
point renamed it to something a bit more inclusive to culture.
Ad does somebody adds add something to the culture?
And the basic premise, as is one of, you know, our colleagues
that you also know, Fab always says, do I just like this
person? Would I like to work with this
person? And that was it.
So you had three interviews, two people in each interview.
So 6 pairs of eyes and all six people had to have to say yes at
the end of the interview. It can be that I as manager of
the department say yes, but the most junior engineer that just
did an interview for the first time says no and has a good
reason. But even there I will not push
too hard. She says I clearly think no and
it's a no. And that has helped a lot over
the years because the of course, we're human.
So sometimes you get the five times, yes.
And the one time, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The number of times that it didn't work out in the end, or
at least there were questions I can almost always rehear back
to. That's pretty close to why the
one person said I'm not sure. And especially the ones where
somebody said no, but then you came in with an example of but
it's just for the first six months, we'll figure it out
later. Or he's a nice guy and not
everybody needs to be really good.
Yeah, that's where it always starts hurting.
Exactly. That's where you cut corners, it
feels like. Exactly.
Yeah. I'm curious because I had a
conversation, I think it must have been close to a year ago
with this person from Euro. And they have a very
standardized. I mean, I think the only kind of
blueprint for software engineering hiring out there is
lead coded system design. That's like bread and butter.
And from his perspective, he really like lead code from an
applicant perspective because you can really train for it,
right? You at least know what you're
getting into and you can train yourself to solve these
algorithms. But he also says that at least
in Miro, at some point it will matter.
You don't know when 95% of the time it's not going to matter.
But when those five, that 5% is there, then everyone went
through kind of this bar and people at least have a common
understanding of how to solve it.
And I thought, huh, that's interesting.
Maybe it's because I never worked in those types of
environments and we do have quite a high bar.
So getting then someone in that also passed that bar, I can see
that kind of helping the culture and at least helping with a
common level of trust. But system design and need code,
For me, that's like the almost exclusive blueprint that's out
there when it comes to testing for technical skills.
Every other company that I've heard talk is more of a
conversation, sometimes a live coding session, some other
flavour that works really well for them.
But it's not become a blueprint, not really a standard that
companies adopt. Now, and I think I've had this
discussion quite a bit over the last year ish when we were
looking at redo, redoing our hiring because we need to hire a
lot. So you also need to keep some
sort of pace in there, but also keep it manageable.
And there's many different angles to it, But I'm actually
quite opinionated on what the entire process looks like.
It'd be shocking for everyone. And and one of the things is
that we always used to do the take home case.
Gotcha. Because to give somebody some
time to prepare and we always said that spend about 8 hours on
and we can spend 48 hours on it. You can spend 4 hours on it.
That's up to you. That's how you want to prepare
for the interview. But because ING is not
necessarily an environment where you need to deploy code 5
minutes after you've written it, actually, that's really what we
don't want you to do and take your time, think too thoroughly
and so on. I, I always dislike the idea of
life coding because it creates this kind of atmosphere of oh
shit, how do I, what's the syntax here again?
Oh, oh, I'm now I'm getting nervous and so on where it's not
representative to what actual work environment in ING looks
like. Yeah, but I was getting
pushback, like especially in not the Netherlands, but in Poland,
but also in Romania, to take home exam was a hurdle for
applicants because they needed to spend time where they were.
It's a commitment. Yeah, it's a commitment versus
life coding or maybe just a conversation and so on.
So yeah, at least I'm open to listen.
So I said, OK, as long as we can find a way that because we
turned it into a life coding exercises and as long as the
life coding doesn't turn into, oh, what's the syntax I need to
get this out in 10 seconds. Oh, I'm getting so nervous.
As long as it doesn't turn into that, but we do have the time to
check what you want to check as an engineer, then I'm fine with
it. So stay open to the idea of of
change, right? Otherwise you get stuck in
whatever you were doing before. But for me, it was also
important that it does somehow reflect the work environment
that you're going to work in, because why else are you doing
this? Exactly.
Yeah. I mean, I never like, I like
pair programming, but that's from a sense of productivity.
And at some point, it's also comfort and learning from
another perspective, right? Yes, doing that and in the
interview process, I can see how that's kind of daunting.
But in essence, take home my exercise is what we have here.
That's how I got in in the 1st place.
And it was the same as you mentioned, you get 8 hours, you
can spend less, you can spend more.
I told them I spend more and I didn't finish the exercise
because that was my level at the time.
I was like, if it's not enough with this time spent, it's like
I don't belong here basically. In the end, I got in, but that
was like one of the interview steps.
And there was a more we'd call a culture fit.
I like culture, add more, I think linguistically, but that's
always there. I've never gone through, I mean,
I've applied, I have gone through system design, elite
code. It's just never been kind of
what I, from an interviewer standpoint, look at.
Me neither When when I I I did the same thing when I I had
already been hired in ING, but I wanted to, I wanted to be first
time I was an engineering manager chapter lead as we call
it for data engineering. My then manager said it's fine
if you want that, but you need to go through the case just as
everyone else does. So I also spent way more than 8
hours. I also did not finish everything
because it was a reflection of how could I was as a programmer
ever back then. Yeah, let's say I was.
I'm a better manager than the program, let's put it that way.
And I never went through that system design either.
In the end, it doesn't matter the way you check it, like the
entire basis, sorry. The entire premise of our hiring
procedure is that you hire your own colleagues, right?
It's six people. Hopefully a few of them you'll
actually start working with and otherwise of the large
department of which you're a part of, it is in your own best
interest to get everything you want out of that interview to
make a good judgement call on. Is this somebody that can help
us in doing whatever it is that we want to do?
Because experience tells me a miss hire is one of the most
draining things you can do to a team, right?
And they can be either not a good fit or add to the culture
of a team or squad or whatever you want to call it, which is
draining, right? Everybody walking around on egg
shells, you know who stand up is going to go, well, are we going
to get in an argument or the other one?
The person just doesn't cut it technically also super draining.
I've been part of both. And it's in your best interest
to get what out of the interview you need to make a good
judgement call. And of course you standardize a
little bit to help everyone. But if you as an engineer say I
understand everything I need to know by looking at one line of
code, fine, I need to look at a take home case that somebody
spent at least 24 hours on. OK, then we'll push back a
little bit. They'll give, we'll give them
eight. But yeah, it are you
comfortable? Can you make a decision?
But then, and then in the background of my, my mind you,
you see all the stats. Like most people know within 30
seconds whether they're going to hire.
Exactly. I like that you highlight that
from your experience, you've been in both situations, right?
Where you felt that, OK, a bad hire has detrimental
consequences. Basically for me, that's what I
look in leadership, right? Not only when they speak that
people listen and they get buy in, but they have to the
experience to back it up. Some people speak in like it's
not really substantial anymore. Some stuff feels outdated, like
that's how we did it 10-15 years ago.
Well, 1015 years ago nowadays is a long, long time.
That is ridiculous. I wasn't even in the field
nowadays, so things move really quickly.
I recently had a person on Marcel the Fleet's also from
CBA, and he said that he strongly believes that
leadership in tech should be technical, so also have hands on
experience and keep their technical skills up to date.
And I find myself agreeing with that just for of the fact of if
you have outdated skills, then it's harder to get by in from my
perspective. I'm curious to your perspective
because you do have experience to back it up, but you've also
been hands off, I think, for a long, long time now.
Yeah, true. Definitely true.
I I wouldn't trust myself to code anything right now.
Now I think there's levels to it and my architect friends will
laugh, but I'm going to say it depends because that's their
favorite answer to anything. It depends.
When I started out, ING was in a more generalistic management
kind of hiring style. So yeah, be a generalist.
You don't need to know the details.
That's what you have other people for and so on.
How long? Ago was this. 12 years, almost
12 years Ng now and already back then I was like that.
It doesn't make any sense because if my if my manager
doesn't even have the first clue what I'm talking about how how
he's how is he or she supposed to help me?
How's this going to work? How's this going to work?
So they also told me because I was hired as a management
trainee in IT, like make sure you learn a craft first, like
know something and then you can always go to management.
And I always struggled with that a little bit because when do you
know something? When do you own a craft?
When are you good at something? Good enough?
Yeah, an expert, like sure as hell was not going to be an
expert after two years, because I've worked with a lot of people
from Go to Drave. I was like, no, I'm not going to
get there in two years. So I always struggle with that.
Nevertheless, I had fun as an engineer, date engineer, we will
call it now. I learned a lot.
And at some point, I also realized that management and
technical skills are two very different things.
And especially if you're a manager of engineers, I think it
is important to know the technical details.
But once you get to a manager of managers, it becomes less about
it. Of course it helps I I refer to
myself as unbullshitable in my field.
I love that. It's, it's, it's, it's extremely
rare in ING to have, or at least I guess mostly everywhere that
I'm in senior management. But no, the insurance and outs
of the department that I run like the average engineer there.
Because for the most part, when you hit my level, you've
probably moved around a few times and you might have put a
back end developer and now you're looking after a
mortgage's tribe or something along those lines.
But that isn't because these people are not good at what
they're doing. Not at all.
Actually, I, I rarely have ever see senior managers where I go.
Like, how did this person get this job?
OK. It's because it becomes about a
wildly different skill set. It's about stakeholder
management. It's about communication, it's
about inspiring, it's about people management.
And the content should be as little as possible.
No, my, I might have even said it during the last OK R review.
If something in operational day-to-day business hits my
desk, I don't have a desk, but a virtual desk, then something
went wrong, which is not bad. Things go wrong all the time.
Yeah, that's fine. It's not an indictment on
anyone. But something did go wrong
because if it skips multiple management layers and nobody
could solve it, their technical leads, squads and so on.
And somehow it reaches me. Like, John, can you help us
solve this? First of all, more than happy to
help. How can I And second of all,
what went wrong? Is there something we need to
learn from this? Sometimes it's just yeah,
everything is down because a firewall change didn't go
through. You need to know.
It's like, OK, fair, good, good, good that you let me know
because people will start calling me in another case.
It's it's more of a yeah, we don't agree.
You need to decide on something Also fine, right?
If you an escalation in itself is never a bad thing, right?
It's just OK. We can't we at the same level.
We don't agree. Next highest level.
Can you help us? But something did go wrong.
So yeah, nowadays if I need to go into the details, I'm
probably not doing my job very well.
Got you. Yeah, I can see that.
It's a different skill set. But something that you mentioned
of the people that I'm surrounded with, like sealing
leadership, I, I never have the sense of how they get this job
from my perspective. Maybe it's because I'm not in
those circles of not having those conversations.
Sometimes I do see people and I'm at a consultancy, so I go in
and out of companies a lot. Sometimes I do have this feeling
of OK, how did this person get this role?
I'll be fair, of course, I have those moments too, but at some
point at the higher you climb, the less often you see it.
Gotcha. Simple fact that also
correspondingly the impact of a miss hire becomes bigger and
bigger, right? And the company just cannot
afford to have a really, really bad manager or senior tech
person or tech lead or whatever you want to call it in a in a
position of great influence because correspondingly the
impact is bigger and bigger right?
Not being said that you cannot be super influential as an
engineer, right, but from the perspective of setting the
direction of an entire company and it's just not heading where
it's supposed to, you cannot afford that much.
So there's also this self correction mechanism in in at
least in an, in large corporate like ING like yeah, at some
point you will get found out if it's not going very well.
Got you. Yeah.
I always, I mean for people in leadership, I wonder how they
kind of self reflect and grow because from my perspective, I,
I have a different role than I had a couple years ago, right?
I'm doing product management now.
Before that I was in software engineering and a lot of
decisions that I make are based on kind of a fundamental
understanding of software engineering.
I feel like if people or at least leadership don't have
that, it's like what else do you rely upon?
How do you get this gut feeling to get by in or to communicate
and say the right things sometimes even because from your
perspective, I can see you have had hands on experience, right?
You have had experience with people in teams that are maybe
not the right fit or an experience where things went
really smoothly and you can still kind of SuccessFactors and
try and educate others with that.
And I think you do it quite successfully.
That's getting buy in, right. But for people that don't have
that, I don't know how they or how they get that experience or
what they rely upon. How do they grow?
Yeah, the first and worst answer to hear for everyone is
experience, right? Just seeing things and seeing
around you. But that being said, I'm
relatively young in for the position I hold.
So it's also not it's not definitely the only thing.
I know people even younger than me climbed even higher in ING.
So for the it's not the only thing, but you need to be open
and learn and listen as much as you can, right?
There is there is different ways of going through the same thing,
right? You can sit in a meeting and
think, why am I here? I should be coding.
I'm not spending my time well. I should be doing other things
where I'm have bigger impact, more value, which could very
well be true for that meeting. The other one is apparently
somebody thought it was important that I'm here.
What can I take away from this? And even if it's not something
content related, like I'm not going to learn how to make a
better back end today in this meeting.
Fine, but how is this person trying to communicate it's
business requirements? What problem am I really trying
to solve here? Right, you as product manager.
And that's something that you must have learned also through
your software engineering, because not every software
engineer makes a good product manager and vice versa, of
course. But at some point you must have
also gone through the phase of, hey, what problem are we trying
to solve? Is this a problem worth solving?
Am I, as an engineer, actually spending my time in the most
impactful way? I might have fun coding what I'm
doing, but if that code is never going to amount to anything, at
least for me, that's where it started.
Like I wanted to make sure that if I was going to spend my time
working on something that it was the right thing.
And that takes then many different branches, right?
For me that very quickly moment going into people management
like how can I help others be successful?
You hit the nail on the head, I think, at least for me, because
those those questions, that's the reason why I do product
management, right? I was always in conversations
where it was like, I don't want to build something that is of no
value. I have fun building it.
I have, I see other people that have more fun building it and
they'll gladly build whatever. I'm not that person.
I want my stuff to be used and valuable.
And if I don't agree, then at some point it's like I would
love to have the responsibility and have those conversations.
Sure, I missed the hands on part, but that was then the next
step. I don't know if this is what I
want to do next. For me, it's not really, let's
say depth with regards to career.
It's like a sidetrack because product and software should they
go hand in hand, but they have different career paths.
You go senior staff principal, indeed, maybe engineering
manager. That's one of the people's side.
Product has its own track completely.
For you, you did climb and you climbed quite quickly.
You all said you're young for the position that you have.
Did you always envision yourself climbing a ladder like that?
No, not at all. It's a question I've had before.
It actually the answer is no, I didn't envision that way, but I
did envision where I wanted to be.
OK. And that was not because of a
title or something. It was basically I wanted to
make it concrete. I wanted to be a manager of an
an analytics department. Gotcha.
Which I I became, yeah. So you can also say I'm done.
I can just that. Was the next question.
Exactly. Yeah, keep doing this for the
next was it 30-40 years and then then retire happily.
Now I knew I wanted to be a manager in analytics And I think
that had more to do with being able to help steer direct
strategic decisions and people management because I knew that
that's what I had a lot of fun with.
And it had to be analytics because that's I've, I've done,
I've done nothing else in IG for 12 years, which is also
relatively unique. But did I then sit down and go
like, OK, then I need to make this step and then that step,
and then I need to do that? Not at all.
Yeah. It's a combination of pure dumb
luck, people leaving at a certain point in time and then
saying, oh, I think John should be my successor.
Very cool. If he didn't leave, then the
position would have been there twice.
That happened, by the way. But also, for example, we did
went to a bit of a restructuring and we're growing bigger,
talking about more complex other things that you want other
people to deal with, non financial risk, something that
you'll now be intimately familiar with with your time in
ING, right? Things like IT security and
compliance and legal and so on. And they were looking for
somebody to set up a team around that.
And then they came to me because when I started at ING and
analytics, we were three people just like a start up.
Everybody did everything. And one of the things I did was
no financial risk. Not because I'm particularly
fond of it, but it's just if you're one of three people,
everybody does something. I'm sorry, everybody does
everything. But I did that at that point and
they asked set up a team around. I was like, OK, fine, let me go
and do that. So for two years I did non
financial risk. I didn't write a single line of
code. I only talked to people who
wrote code. I was more into policy and AI
ethics and and ethical use of data and legal.
I know more about GDPR than I'd like to care to admit, but it
was super helpful because to this day I'm also relatively
unbullshitable on non financial risk matters.
Yeah, it's all relevant. It's all, it's all relevant.
But for two years I did something which I would never
thought I would do. I I like it to the day that I
did this. Also, after two years I said I'm
done. This is enough.
Now I wanted, that's when I became engineering manager.
So it was a big step because I hadn't done anything for two
years to go back into coding and, and, and, and being first
time actual people manager back then.
But I learned a lot content wise, but also setting up a
team, thinking about what kind of different specialists do I
need? How do I figure out the Venn
diagram that with the least amount of people, I think I got
to hire three others plus myself, SO4 in total, how do I
capture most of the specialisms that I think we need with three
people I can hire? That's super interesting.
And then finding the people, building it into a team, working
together. I was product owner back then,
super interesting. So no, I didn't have a client,
but being open to positions, listening, learning as much as I
can, that has been a constant. And sometimes just being lucky.
And the one advice that I got, which has now been through two
times already, is that sometimes they'll do this in a moment,
like your current position. Either you're bored or it's easy
to exist, or you know, these, these these moments where you're
unsure what to do and two different people without knowing
it said the exact same thing to me.
John, just wait, something will come.
Don't worry, we'll see what happens.
And I was like, yeah, well, I'm not, I'm not a very patient
person by heart. So I was like, OK, I'll end both
time. Well, like I already said,
somebody left and they said, OK, come in here, go and do this.
And the second time, same thing happened.
Somebody else left and they asked me for the position.
So sometimes just being patient is also fine.
Man, I, I hear your advice and I understand it.
It's just, it's right. It's really hard.
I, I, I hope you're really hard for someone to say just a way
and you see no out, no, no way out basically.
Of course there there are, there are levels to this.
I was, I would both times. It was not like sitting on a a
burning chair that I had to get out.
Yeah. But I'll also be honest, at
those moments where you're less busy, there's not much to do,
there's a lot of unclarity. Super uncomfortable to me.
Like it was during COVID, the first time that it happened, I
didn't have anything to do really.
Like legitimately nothing to do. Like work wise.
Yeah, work wise, OK. Because basically my people have
left. I was managing off in a
reorganization. I was literally manager of none,
but I didn't move with the people.
So the work also was really vague.
Everything was really vague and I just walked, OK, Just went
outside for walks. Endless walks.
And then just also talking, keep talking to my manager.
Just being I got nothing to do. Yeah.
Do you have that? Don't worry, just it will come.
Just go. Go for your walks.
Yeah, interesting. How vocal were you?
Because I'm very jealous and I'll tell you why.
Not for the position or anything, but you had a clear
vision of where you wanted to be at some point.
I don't have that. It's like, I like this and I
like that and I try and do everything until that vision
becomes more crisp. But until it does, I find myself
kind of in Nimbo and trying everything.
And I I like the perspective you bring because I, I also feel
like right now it doesn't really matter.
I can do a lot of things and I'll take bits and pieces and
they will have value in the future in their own way.
Maybe certain interactions, maybe certain hard skills, I
have no clue. Soft skills probably for sure,
for sure. Because we're going to deal with
people in any case, but I, I want to be able to grow to a
position that I'm like, this is where I want to be, or at least
where my starting point is for the next thing that has more
depth. And it sounds like like even
though people told you to wait, I'm not sure how vocal you were
with where you wanted to be. I feel like if you are very
clear minded of where do I want to be, you can also communicate
that and people are able to help you.
Absolutely. From the beginning with my
managers, I bought 2 managers. I had two managers in my first
eight years at ING and they were like joint at the hip.
And I told them from the start, this is what I want to do.
Yeah, so, or this is what I want to grow to of course, put it
that way. So indeed, they put me in all
sorts of positions, like I was already managing people before I
ever was a manager. Was like, oh, we got interns
incoming, please help take care of them.
Or oh, you want to do the, the appraisal cycle of this person
this year. I mean, you can do it on my
behalf. So it's also because that
current manager hated it. OK.
Yeah. So it was like a win, win was a
win, win, yeah. But it's also because I let him
know, of course, like, OK, you're interested in this,
please, by all means, I don't like it.
So you do it for me. Yeah, absolutely.
Being vocal. And this is also also what I
tried to do with with people right now.
One of the, the, the biggest joys I get out of my position
today is that I'm very well because I've been 12 years at
ING, I'm very connected. So I can usually help people if
they say I want to, I want to have a change or I want to be
open to a new challenge or something that because I know so
many people, I can help them quite often like, oh, hey, I
know something's happening here, or make an introduction left or
right, those kind of things. And that starts with that.
I need to know that you are interested in a certain
opportunity because if I do not know, then I cannot help you and
of course you don't need to tell me personally.
You can also be through your manager or whatever that you
know in some sort of conversation.
IT company pops up like hey, this lady would like to be in
product management next. All right, well, we have
something small there. Why don't you can see and see
what you do there? I think that's also something
that is strong within ING in general that we try to help
develop people internally. I like the, I like that a lot.
Like I, I would struggle with giving you kind of a context of,
OK, where do I want to be in five years?
I hate that question, but what do I like now?
What do I want to do more of or what role seems interesting or
what do I want to try out like that?
Those things. That's why I'm at a consultancy
basically. Like those are the things that I
can do. I have the freedom to do.
I do have to have a certain set of skills because as a
consultant things are just expected of you.
Like that makes sense, but that for me is growth, right?
And at some point also comes comfort.
And with comfort, I want to get to uncomfortable again, not
really willingly so, but it's just because I know that's good
for me. That's where growth is.
I'm wondering with you because you said you go from opposition
to another thing that you might have never done and then your
hands off for two years and you go kind of back to technical
again. How was that dealing with
uncomfortableness for you? You're good at that.
Yeah, yeah, just naturally, yeah.
I, I, I'm, I'm there's a tattoo here on the my arm which says no
worries. Which is really, yes.
OK, which which? Fun fact, it's a fun fact.
Yeah, it would have been somewhere I would have shown
you, but it's a little bit too cold right now.
No. So I'm not a person that that
worries a lot in general about things that I don't think are
that important. And of course, if I were a brain
surgeon, I would say I'm pretty, pretty important stuff all day
long. But in a lot of times I was
like, OK, what's the worst that can happen?
I write shitty code, what's the worst that can happen?
All right, somebody corrects me because I got a policy wrong
from some sort of legal thing. The one thing where I'll make an
exception where I do care if I get wrong is people management,
because that's the one where I'm, I had this conversation
last week. Like, you won't find me staying
up late at night stressing about the fact that we're not going to
hit some sort of deadline because nobody dies if we don't
make it. Literally nobody dies ever in
this field. In this field.
But what, what does stay with me is like people struggling,
right? If you're a manager or
especially manager of managers, there's a lot of people that
you're responsible for. And yeah, life happens to
everyone, right? Shitty things happen and they're
usually outside of the control of everyone.
And then they add up, right? Like the people you see go into
burnouts. There's always something going
on. Personally, there's something
going on at work. It's never just one thing.
And those are the ones that I struggle with.
So there I would be afraid to make a mistake.
Yeah. Do you think they're with you?
Like I think CBI right now, I'm part of, they call that team
leads. So I'm responsible for personal
development of a smaller group of people.
And we also have conversations with other teammates.
And one person really struggled with that.
They said that if someone tells me a problem and they don't even
do it, it's just I take it as my problem.
And then I worry at night about their problem, which has now
become my problem. Yeah, he says that's a problem.
That's a problem, yeah. Yeah, of course there is always,
you need to make sure that what's in your influence to
control, right, That that doesn't mean we're not you and
that you cannot, you know, stay awake because something really
bad happened that just that's just life.
But if it's inside your control and try to see how you can help.
Actually, I had the I've had the conversation many years over
many times over the years. What do you do when somebody's
struggling at work with delivering, but that person is
probably struggling with delivering because something's
happening personally. Gotcha.
Like a relative that is very sick or a pet that can also be
very impactful or you know, anything that's going on.
Like how far do you take into consideration that something is
happening in their personal life which they can or may not be
able to control, but it is influencing their work?
Because in the end, you work for GBI, work for ING, They pay us,
we pay that person to deliver a certain something.
How far can you go in saying, OK, maybe you need to deliver a
little bit less right now while you deal with this?
And how long can you keep that up?
Right? That's a very, very tricky
balance to strike something that we will as people managers will
struggle with undoubtedly all of us at some point.
And yeah, the, the, the wisdom that I got from one of my former
managers, like, you know what, everything is fine as long as
that person is still delivering and delivering according to what
you agreed to. It's the moment that it becomes
uncertain that it's affecting also their dependability, Eric.
And it has nothing to do with if you're actually available, it
has to do have you communicated about it.
And somebody says I need to be in the hospital every two days
with my sick relative, so I will be out every second day.
Fine, right? Don't depend on that person
every second day. But if it's only becomes we
cannot reach Patrick, we cannot reach John, What's going on?
Why can't we reach him? And then it turns into those
kind of conversations really difficult because that's the
moment where it starts to affect everyone around them as well,
so. It escalates, yeah, yeah, you
don't want to. And that's really tricky.
Like I, I haven't been in a situation like that specifically
like right now. Let's hope it's yeah, a bit.
Longer. Like right now in products like
OK, I, I have so on and so forth, or my son got sick, like
I have to take the day off. I'm like, absolutely.
And people are very, maybe I take that for granted, but
people are clear with what they do and how they spend their
time. I've never been in a situation
where it's unclear for a longer period of time.
Like sure, things pop up. And I had a person that broke up
with a significant other and then also decided to buy another
like a house. And it was like major life
changes back-to-back to back. And then, yeah, that person was
sorting their life out. Like I know that.
And even though they might not be clear with their
communication, I know things are unclear.
So that's like the leeway that you then give them when it
becomes kind of not clear for a longer time.
It's like a mis hire in the end because it affects deadlines, it
affects the people around them. It's like the flakiness, but
also well. Let's start by calling it a
learning opportunity for the other person.
OK, maybe, maybe, hopefully they haven't been through it before
either and they just need to learn how to communicate in
those times. But indeed, if that doesn't
improve, then at some point it becomes a misire.
Yeah, it looks very difficult to me, like I haven't been in a
position where I had to act where something like that
happened. But I feel like the more people
you are responsible for, the more you are kind of in you keep
top of mind, the greater good, which also means that sometimes
you have to make tough decisions.
Like for me, I like to be friends with the people I work
with. I think we we work better if we
are friends if I know at least a little bit about them.
But then those conversations become harder and harder, right?
When we talk about more the business sense where people are
maybe not performing or indeed they are a bit flaky.
There are learning opportunities, but if they don't
capitalize on that, then that's a problem.
Yeah, that absolutely. And I think this is just a minor
thought I just had was this is probably why escalations are
also not a bad thing, right? Because I hope as a manager you
have a good relationship with all your direct reports.
And that when it comes to the point like, hey, maybe we need
to let somebody go, then there's at least a level up that can
bring a more balanced perspective of, OK, maybe that
doesn't have a personal relationship with like for me,
I'm responsible for many people. I wouldn't even know the exact
number right now, but it's it's north of 150, let's put it that
way. So I don't know everyone.
It's impossible. You cannot.
I cannot of. Course, I know quite a few
because I've been there for so long, but it also helps me
sometimes with when they come to me with Hey John, what should we
do here? I don't have a personal
relationship so I can just take the bigger picture.
Doesn't take away from the fact that we're all human and we
should be staying human and take everything into account that we
can, but it does help. I can see that.
I'm wondering as kind of one of the final thoughts I had, how do
you measure success? Because right now for me in
product, it's like, OK, I was thinking when I was software
engineering, you deliver something, you see if it has
value. Product metrics with product,
product sometimes, OK, ours indeed, KPIs, those are all the
measurements. When you're responsible for
personal development, things become more soft.
Like it's not really as tangible.
It's definitely not black and white.
It might be more qualitative data, but then again, is there
any data? How do you measure if the vision
that you have or how people are moving, if it's going in the
right direction? I feel like it's also sometimes
maybe a longer time horizon if I deliver a feature and we have
two weekly Sprint cycles, it's like, yeah, two weeks.
You can see demo of what we built.
Basically, if I say, OK, this is our North Star and this is the
vision, and as an analytics department we should move that
way, it's like, yeah, good luck measuring.
To see you in a year. Exactly.
It's a very fun conversation to answer the first part first is
how do you measure that? There are of course things you
can look at, like what's your attrition rate?
Are people leaving a mass? Are people leaving really
quickly? Like did we mishire from either
side? Are we delivering?
That's a simple one, of course, because that's also very people
related, but also another one that is much less tangible.
But I definitely keep back in my mind, if people leave, where are
they going to? Are they going to a competitor
that's roughly equal or are they moving on to bigger and better
things? Gotcha.
And whatever that may mean, as long as I know it's bigger and
better, whatever that is, I'm like.
You can accept that. Yeah, that was one of my good
colleagues once mentioned it. Like if you see ING as as
playing football like Ayox or Bayes, Faye or Faye or then the
other DVC and somebody moves to Barcelona or Bayou Munchen or
anything along those lines, you're like, all right, fair.
Well done, Well done. Yeah, we we did.
We had our part in getting them to move.
If they suddenly move to I'll tease him to FA Doordrez.
Yeah. OK.
Something went wrong. Yeah, you remember that?
Yeah, Yeah. Now, so that that's also a very
intangible thing that I keep in the back of my mind are are we
successful as a, as a, as a company from a, a human
perspective? Like are we helping them?
And of course, people staying is usually very good indication
that that something good is going on.
But then the, the, the, the, the second part about yeah,
sometimes I help set targets where I have departmental goals
and so on. Yeah, there is so much
intangible over really easy to measure in a short time spent in
my job that I found something else to get something tangible.
It's like I just turned to do it yourself.
I do plumbing and electrical wiring and so on.
Something that gives me immediate feedback on exactly am
I, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong?
Because that used to be coding, of course for me, like compiled
doesn't work. I shit, in case something went
wrong, all the tests pass. I did something.
Well, yeah, so I just replaced it in another part of my life.
That's really funny, actually. But consciously?
Or did you just start with it and it grew to what it is now?
No, I think it's also definitely consciously interesting.
Yeah, just like doing sports, in my case, basketball, something
super immediate feedback. Yeah, I also need that in my
life. Yeah, makes sense.
Like that's what I like product a lot.
The hands on part is what I miss.
And I had this dream of I can do hands on and product stuff, but
I'm like, am I then doing the right things because there's
only one person responsible for products?
Like yeah, I'm not going to be able to manage my own time.
And especially if I set the priorities, I'm going to set
priorities for fun time and it's not good.
It's not a good thing. So I haven't acted upon that
thought. No, it's, it's a.
It's a it's a place where I've been twice now.
And actually, I had an epiphany last week that I'm in the same
position again, OK? Very.
Recent, very recent, but the first one was exactly this.
It wasn't a product, it was people management.
Anyway, I was coding and I wanted to do the exact thing.
Stay coding, be in a squad, deliver things and be a data
engineer. And there were other things at
the side and at some point I had a a walk with one of my managers
and he's like, yeah, John, but, you know, doing two things at
the same time means you're probably not doing both things
very well, or at least not as good as you could.
So he's like, yeah, at some point you got to make a choice.
And then in my personality is like, OK, then I make the choice
and it's done. So I made that choice that day
like that. I need to go.
I need to step away from coding because it's not helping anyone
really. I was getting into the squeeze
of it's basically turning into the review monster.
I didn't produce any code anymore.
I was just there to do the reviews and I was also probably
not doing my best as of acting people manager back then or
product I don't remember anyway. It's a good epiphany.
It was a good. Epiphany So I needed to step
away from coding back then because for me at least, it's
something that takes a long uninterrupted periods of focus
time, which were hard to combine with the other stuff that I did.
So it was the first time I had to make a choice.
And I this me being me, I was like, OK, from now, from next
week or next Sprint, whatever, I'll stop coding.
But I just last week I had the same epiphany is that if you
want to grow as a as a manager and work more strategic and
strategic, if you also need to go to the second one of just
really stepping out of any, almost any operational kind of
things. What I mentioned earlier, while
it is a strength of mine that I know analytics very well and I
lead an analytics department, it's also my pitfall because I
am hopefully out of date with everything last.
So you now get the the, the, the, the danger of me thinking I
still know the content while I don't.
And even if I do still know the content, am I the one that
should be steering on content or should I be getting the content
delivered to me and help make a decision right?
So now I seem to be nearing the second point where of course
it's super important to keep the content with me but not actively
use it anymore because it's probably detrimental to everyone
around me. I can see that.
I mean, I should grow. I feel like the priorities of
the greater good become more important for a person in a
leadership position, right? And if your own priorities
align, or at least that you get satisfaction out of doing those
priorities, then that's a win win.
But I'm assuming that's not always the case, right?
Especially if you're hands on and you get to choose what work
you work on, you work on what you like.
I see people navigate and do that all the time.
I want to do this technical work.
Then we see how we fit that in. Or you push for you things you
believe in that are also fun. And it's definitely not a
byproduct. It's definitely also sometimes
the main thing. But for the greater good, things
change, right? Especially from my position
looking sometimes to leadership, it's like, I believe these
things need to be done. And if no one likes doing them,
they still need to be done. That's the hard part.
And I feel like if you are then responsible and you also share
that vision, because obviously you have to believe that, then
you will pick it. You will pick it up I'm assuming
or I'm wondering how you manage your priorities otherwise.
It's This is why it's always a good question to yourself and,
and, and more in relationship to where I want to go is where do I
get my energy from, right? Because let's say you're chasing
titles or positions and so on, but you don't really actually
like the work that needs to be done.
Like if I would not be enjoying the, let's say, more strategic
discussions and the stakeholder management that comes with my
role and really only there for the money in the title, then I
would burn out very quickly. Quickly, right?
If yeah. And that's why it's always a
good question. It's also being asked to me, but
do you get energy from whatever it is that we're now being is
now being asked of you because otherwise what will probably
happen? I'll keep prioritizing that.
I keep meddling, let's say it like that in content because
that's where I really get my energy from.
So there's always a good check to do with yourself.
Like what do I like what, what what do we like to work on?
And also coming to the realization, if the next step in
whatever field is that I'm in now, but I don't even like what
that next step would mean, well then maybe that's not the next
step. Maybe that means something else
or that you're just good in what you are currently doing.
Sometimes it's always seems like it should be a race to the top,
whatever the top is. But at some point, yeah, I've
also asked myself, do I even want to grow further than this?
Yeah, it's because the the top is growth, right?
That's why upwards is growth. Basically.
I feel like there's this notion and maybe even I agree with it.
It's like if you stay still, you're stagnant, which means
you're not growing. Like, even though I don't, I
know practically you can grow in your communication, you can grow
in your hard skills. Things evolve, you keep up to
date. That means you're already
growing, but it doesn't feel like growth.
It feels like growth if you get a promotion, if you climb the
ladder basically, and if you stop climbing, it's like, oh,
this person has ambition. Or at least sometimes that's the
notion I feel. Absolutely.
But I think that's also a real sign of maturity when somebody
says like, I'm happy here, like, and that's also why I think it's
very important to not lose fact of the lose track of the fact
that work is just a part of your life.
Hopefully, I mean, for some equals, it doesn't for me.
It's also definitely not the only or even most important
thing in my life. Maybe sometimes it's very good
to be comfortable in your work and then you have more room,
mental headspace to do something more daring outside of work.
Having a kid, for example, I can I have two.
I would say be comfortable in your work when you're in your
first kit Lance like I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend going
through a very stressful. Time start up.
And Nah, maybe not, maybe not start your own start up.
Maybe if you're the 4th person and, and you're really resilient
or maybe, but yeah, there's a lot of maybes.
There's a lot of maybes like so there is so much to grow in
life. Work is not the only thing.
I, I love that perspective. It's one of my colleagues said.
I, I work to live basically, and some people live to work, and I
think that's going to stick with me forever.
Yeah. Yeah.
I've really enjoyed this conversation, John.
This was a lot of fun. Thanks.
Before we round off, is there anything you'd still like to
share? What will I like to share?
I always throw this curveball at the end and stuff either comes
out or feel like, no, I'm happy. I know a lot of people are
listening more than I expected to.
At least I have this feeling. So yeah, No, reiterate the last
message I gave. It's like there's more to work,
more to life than work. Awesome.
Cool. Then.
Thank you so much for coming on. Again, we're rounded off here.
If you're still here, let us know in the comments section
what you thought of this episode, like if you liked it
and otherwise we'll see you on the next one.