w/ben henderson, vp of engineering

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at T D S N T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Ben, enough with me running my mouth. Give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Taylor. Yeah. So Ben Henderson, currently serving as a vice president of engineering at Celera Health, a health tech company based out of Phoenix, Arizona.

So I've been in the technology game for over 30 years, started off as an engineer, and thought I would always being an engineer because I love to just solving problems with code. And eventually got convinced that leadership was a path for me and had some good mentors to kind of pour into me and kind of put me in the right direction and gave me some good examples to utilize as I went forward and continue to grow in that space. So yeah, I mean, always looking for good startups that can make a ripple and drive to a bigger change in some sort of space. And I always found that healthcare was a good place for that.

If you could take a small ripple and turn that into a big change, then that would be very positive. Right? That's a big lot. So I always try to align myself with a company where I can see that happening. And then I just pour myself into it. I love that. So I do want to ask, and we didn't talk about this, but I do want to ask, can I ask every engineering manager this, what was the decision like to go into leadership, right? Because I've talked a lot of engineering leads. They think, you know, they think they're ready, then they get into it, and they're like, no, I'm not ready, I hate my life.

What was kind of your thought process to jump into leadership back in the day? That was funny. You know, when my boss at the beginning kind of told me that that was my path, right? I need you to be this engineering manager for this team and kind of help us put it in our direction. I told her, no, I told her what, I wasn't really. Really? Yes. No, sorry, I can't do that. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I never really saw myself in that role, right? I always saw myself writing code and architecting things and solving problems that way. And now she convinced me, she convinced me that she saw things in me that I couldn't see within myself.

And so I accepted, I said, I'll do it, but you've got to help me through this because I have no idea what I'm doing. And unfortunately, she was a very good mentor and kind of set me on the path of saying, you're going to figure it out, you know what to do, but here's your guardrails. And here's kind of where I need you to focus. So it was crazy. And so what's the biggest advice you have for people who wanted to jump into leadership then? Like something they should consider. Yeah, yeah. And for me, in that one, it was kind of a difference to me of really understanding the difference between management and leadership.

Yeah. And so that was... Right now, I'm just about to second. Yeah. Because there's two different things, right? Management is really focused on, you know, dining in the eyes, crossing the he's and really more along a project management type focus, right? I mean, it's not the same thing. Leadership is really focusing on the individual and really understanding what it is that makes them tick and how to make them get to the level that they want to get to, or even be that person that can see in them what they can't see in themselves, and an opportunity for me to kind of pay that forward. Fortunately, I've had opportunities to do that on both sides, you know, being able to see things and people that they don't see, and raising them to places where they didn't think they'd ever go.

And then even on the other side of just saying, okay, let's start building that path for you, and let's figure out how to get you there. So yeah, so it was good. Once I understood what the difference was there and how to figure out the blend, right? Because it's a little bit of both. You've got to do the management aspect of it and make sure that you're hitting objectives and KPIs and things of that in nature, but you've also got to focus on that leadership side to ensure that you've got followers. I love that, I love that. So the question, so I usually end with this question, but I'm starting from the beginning.

Ben, a little shocking on this Wednesday. Ben, why is IT leadership so shitty? Oh my gosh, there's so many different reasons, right? I know. I think part of it, one of the reasons is is that a lot of people get pushed into those situations without a good job description about what the true expectations are. And so you step into a role just because it's kind of this next step, and you don't have the people kind of pouring into you and guiding you and saying, this is how you are successful in this role, and not really just focusing on the concrete deliverables, I mean, really thinking of the job as a whole.

There's, in the technology space today, things are moving faster than ever, right? I mean, you can't take a break. Everything is moving so fast, and organizations are trying to move at the same pace. And so everybody is super stressed. And I think that we just, we haven't set people up for success and a lot of those positions. Maybe the success criteria from their perspective is hitting these dates that are really impossible, but not really trying to figure out how to communicate that with the rest of the organization so that we can get alignment. Do you think, and I know, and I'm, I'm curious your thoughts, because one thing I've learned leading teams virtually, it's, I posted this on the internet and the internet always has opinions.

So they're like, no, it's not, it's not harder. I think it's harder because you have to be more intentional because I think us working at home, we busy ourselves a lot. And then the commute, while we think we're communicating, we're really not communicating. Have you seen that as well with an IT organizations within your IT organizations? Yeah, I think it depends on which level you're talking about, right? Like my engineering teams would tell you that they're communicating in real time over Slack and they get stuffed on faster, right? And I totally agree with it, they do. But I think that as you get higher up in what we're doing and why we're doing it and what's going on with the organization, I think a lot of people are missing the mark as far as really communicating that across.

I was, that was one of the things when I joined And with Celera, there's a bi-weekly town hall. So it's basically a company update every two weeks where we're telling everybody what's going on in the organization, what's changing from a priority perspective. That's awesome. We're really trying to keep everybody in a loop. And so I think that's been very positive to just to make sure everybody's on the same page and knows why are we getting up in the morning and doing what we do, right? Yeah, I love that. So Josh, obviously Josh is so good to see, man. It's like a little reunion between me, you and Ben.

So many companies want to judge employees by metrics and KPIs. Would you judge artists by how many colors they use in a painting or how many paintings they produce? Software development is far more a creative endeavor and far more subjective than most companies employees, frameworks allow. Yeah, Ben, so I'm curious what your thoughts on this too because I agree, you know, I think dealing with more and more engineers over my career, It's very much of an artist type thing, right? I mean, you see stuff on the internet where it's like, they need to take walks, they need breaks, like they need, it's problem solving. And my, I mean, my wife's an artist and comes from that mindset and sometimes step in a way actually does more good than actually powering through it.

So how do you balance kind of the creative mindset? Like Josh went over, but then also trying to hit metrics at the same time. Yeah, well, it's really interesting. There are, there are so many metrics out there that people try to tie to software engineering and technology projects. And I think Josh is right, a lot of people get it wrong. You go back to the olden days where people are actually measuring people on lines of code committed. I mean, that's insanity, right? Is that a thing? Yes. And technically, because technically, and this is me being a recruiter, not even recruiter, technically, if you're a good developer, you should write less code, right?

That's right. Okay, all right, just making sure. Just making sure. You're absolutely not this recorded. So I can like cut that clip right there. Because that was great. But yeah, I mean, in today's day and age, and I'll just talk about how I handle this, metrics, we look at corporate objectives and what we need to do and what we need to get from a timeline go-to-market strategy, right? And then we figure out how we back into that from an engineering perspective. I don't want to measure individuals on their contribution level through code and things of that nature. And if you go to kind of the agile manifesto and how we talk about how teams should self-organize and kind of drive each other, I think that a lot of people get that wrong as far as dealing with team velocity and what the use of that is going down the street and things of that nature.

So I don't want to focus on individuals, but I do have to have some sort of measure of are we meeting commitments? And that's kind of the key to any agile process that you pick, is look, we're signing up for a commitment. And if we're not meeting it, why aren't we meeting it? So you've got to have some sort of measure to be able to say, look, Josh is doing four times the work as another person on the team, and you've got to be able to measure that, not necessarily so you can call it out, but so you can kind of figure out what the root of the issue is and kind of raise the team up as a whole.

Yeah. So yeah, I totally agree. There's a lot of metrics and KPIs out there that people are utilizing in totally the wrong way. And it doesn't make people to do better. Well, I think it's big. I think it's big. For me, it's the why, right? Like we miss as leaders. We miss saying why we want to do this, right? A lot of it's like, Hey, you need to do this. Yeah, that's it. Right, but it's like this, you know, we're trying, so like, you know, like with my team, right? Like their objectives that we're trying to hit, and it's like, listen, if your team does not know why you are trying to hit those objectives, like there's gonna be no buy-in, and I feel like that's where people really miss out.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's where you can kind of, you bridge the gap between the business side and the engineering side. And I know there's a lot of engineers out there They're like disconnected from that and don't really want to be involved with it. But I think it's really good when you can tie that together and figure out that, okay, if this thing that I'm working on is going to provide impact, not just from a revenue perspective, but it's also going to, you know, it's going to help, you know, people out there that are interfacing in the healthcare space. It's going to help people, you know, downstream, you know, so you can apply to the financial objectives, you can tie to the impact on society as a whole.

Or you can just tie to the fact that, look, this is a major milestone for the world. And we won, right? At least that maybe in that picture is very important. That's it. So all right. So one of the reasons why I wanted Ben, and we could keep chopping it up. I know we could. But the reason why I wanted to get Ben on the show is because one thing I've admired about Ben, especially when he's worked with us, is Ben is very creative when it comes to hiring. And Ben is very open to trying to get as many pieces to the puzzle plugged into an organization on how we can do it, right?

So Ben, I wanna break this down, right? So what are your thoughts on, you and I talk briefly, so what are your thoughts kind of on hiring from your side And why are you so creative in seeing contract to hire contractors part time? Like what are your thoughts around that? Yeah. Well, I mean, any hiring manager on here today knows that, uh, that the space for recruiting is insane right now, right? And so, um, you know, we're in a startup organization. We're moving fast and we've got to get stuff done. And so, trying to find the unicorns that we talked about earlier, I mean trying to find those that exist in a limited pool that meet 100% of the criteria isn't going to happen quickly.

And so, from my perspective, I've got deliverables that we've got to hit by the end of the year, and I need a quick way to be able to augment that. So, we open up all channels. I've got open wrecks that I need to fill from a full-time perspective, but if it's gonna take me a month to fill that position, just through all the craziness that's out there, a month to hire is insane, but it is what it is, right? But I kind of take a look at our landscape, take a look at what it is that we need to get done, and are there areas that I can kind of silo off that don't require a bunch of ramp up and domain extensions to where I can say, look, this is a perfect spot for someone that is fast on their feet, can come in, pick it up, deliver, and move out, leave us with some documentation on how it's built and we're good.

We got stuff done, we met our objectives. And if I can find a contract to hire, then that meets both sides, right? Yeah. In a review process, we get to spend a few hours together kind of feeling each other out and knowing whether it's a great fit. I know on our side, and I know a lot of other people on the other side from the contract side, or this is a great way to get to know each other. I've forgotten if it's a great fit. And then we can do all of those while we're looking to fill those full-time racks. Correct. I've got budget dollars set aside here, and if I don't have a higher in the C, then I'm gonna put that money on a contract or knowing until I get them there.

Yeah, and I think, And I want to stress this for hiring managers, watch this now in the future. I think Ben is, that's it, right? It's like he just said, I think hiring is really hard, right? And I think hiring is hard right now. And I think you have to be creative, right? And I tweet about this a lot. And so I want to say it here is there's really, there's really technically four types of employment right now that VACO or any other recruiting firm could help you with, right? We do this, we do the pure consulting statement of work, managed service approach, right? We have a practice that does that.

We have an entire engineering team out of Raleigh with my buddy, Jake Shepherd, home on the unicorn finders podcast with, um, he, he runs that group, right? They do great work, a lot of high, huge, high notable clients that you would know. Then there's pure contractors, right? Pure contracts with Ben's time out. Listen, we have this one feature that's going to take about probably three to six months to iterate on, we just need this unicorn to come in, hit the ground running and get after it. Then there's a contract to hire, right? Contract to hire out there is for a lot of people that want to try before they buy a lot.

And I've told Ben this off air, there's a lot of people out there that have been hurt during this time with hiring because hiring managers are hiring with reckless abandonment right now. There's no intentionality. And so there's a lot of developers that actually want to do the contract hire now to know what they're getting themselves into. And there's obviously the direct hire as well. So there's four employment types. And there's a lot of you hiring managers out there that are only looking for direct hire and you're really missing out on three other employment types. And so again, Ben, shout out to you for being creative and wanting to think out of the box and talk about part time.

We didn't even mention part time. I know, I was just, I was like, I think the fifth one. Yeah, so we were in a situation where I, you know, we've got something that is burning. Yes, totally siloed out and can be implemented on its own. And so yeah, yeah, we've had the opportunity to sign up to part-time contractors to kind of equal a hole, you know, to kind of fill in a media cap. And this is, I know this is something that's going on out there right now, right? People are in such demand that you've got some folks out there that are willing to put in the 60 hours a week to kind of spread themselves across a few different projects.

So yeah, we're kind of filling in wherever we can just to make sure that we're getting stuff done. What I think, I think right now, and Ben, I'm curious to what you've seen pre-pandemic and current about the X's nose, right? So I'm a big X's nose guy. My brother and I run a B. League guys hockey team where we're summer champs and we're currently first place, we're crushing it. But my brother and I always talk about X's nose always. We're like, hey, you know, you know, he and I go over lines every week. Like literally we have a game tomorrow. It's at 9.55 at night if you want to come to Centennial, you can come watch us, but that's an early game, by the way.

But basically, but my brother and I talk about Exisnodes all the time, hey, should we move this defensive person over to this line? Should we move the left wing over to being, you know, this left wing for another line? I feel like organizations need to do that right now. I feel like there needs to be more conversation around Exisnodes maybe than ever before, but I'm not a hiring major. So Ben, I'm curious here, your thoughts on the Xs and O's side of things. Yeah, absolutely. Even first coming on in the organization, it's really getting a view of the landscape of who you have, where they're currently fitting and where they want to go.

We've actually implemented a whole strategy here recently to move some of those Xs and O's, because we've built some silos of knowledge over time and knowledge transfer across those only works if you're actually able to apply it. And so yeah, we're moving some people around. The front end engineer that wants to be more full stack, guess what? You're working on the back end this process and taking us some stories so that we can kind of figure this out and make that KT really stick because you wrote code. And then that allows us to kind of strengthen the team themselves and then be able to determine, OK, where are the gaps after we're able to close these?

What's the next level that we need to close? And so yeah, we're always looking at that. I mean, road mapping discussions, figuring out what's coming down the pipe next and where we need to focus that talent, where we can build it inside and where we need to bring in from outside. I love that, I love that. So, obviously with the last few minutes left, if we wanna make sure we touch on the job secret side of things and the hearing, your special sauce when it comes to interviewing and hiring, let's start from the interview process perspective. you've obviously been hiring for a long time in your career.

What is kind of your strategy around hiring right now? Because we talked about the code test off air, right? I mean, you have a lot of people out there and I've been a big advocate. Listen, I think you got to judge coding somehow. I understand that's a thing, but assigning a five hour code test, just I don't think is the best way to go. So I'm curious how you structure your interviews. Yeah, no, it's really interesting, right? Because we took a look at that at one point, just to figure out how that would fit into the process. And a lot of those pre-canned ones are really focused on data structures and things of that nature, which is great.

You learn all that in your CS program. And then when you get out of the real world, you're gonna leverage some of it and you're gonna go all different directions. No, it's changed quite a bit over the years, right? Because my primary thing that I'm looking for when I'm hiring an engineer is a problem solver. That is, my very first thing you'll see on any of my job descriptions is that's what you need to be to be successful in this role. Yeah. Well, it's tough, right? So we've gone through iterations where we have conversations about, you know, just logical problems solving. And that works great when you're in person and kind of collaborate a whole wide-quarter things like that.

Today in the world of everything's remote and we're trying to pull together and really do some assessment, we've kind of changed it up a little bit now to say, I wanna look at it from a coding perspective. One part of the interview, I want you to bring some code that you've written that you're proud of and I want you to walk us through it and tell us why you made certain decisions. And then we've got another part of the interview where we want you to walk through some of our code. I want you to tell me what it's doing and how you're going to determine So you asked an individual to bring their own code, which I think is great.

I think it's great. I think if they can't talk about why they did something on their own code, that's not going to work. But then also too, I think seeing a new code base and seeing what they would do. I think it's incredibly smart. Yeah, because we're able to kind of target, you know, there's a problem in this code. I want you to go, you know, you would either add on to this code or try to find an issue with this code. And it's a great exercise for me because I'm looking for that person that is able to kind of dig, right? I can take a look at this module.

We do everything in TypeScript right now. So I can look at this and I can follow the imports back to find out that this method actually exists over here and it's doing this and just be able to walk through it and kind of show me that you know code and how it's structured and how to follow it. That gives me a good idea that you're kind of a self-motivated learner and you can figure it out, right? Right. I love that. So how fast do you like to hire? I think that's another thing. Yeah. So that's key. And that's always been my process is you've got to move fast.

You've got to have an interview process that's set up that you know when you're done talking to that person at the last stage whether they're a hire or not. You can't wait till tomorrow or get feedback from the team over the next few days. You've got to have that in real time, flowing through the interview process. And I do this every time. If it's a thumbs up, the offer goes out within 15 minutes. I mean, I don't like to mess around. If we find the candidate, it's pull the trigger. I want you to join my team. Hire manager, hear that? It's not hard. It's not hard.

Really not hard. All right. So as we wrap up here and again, Ben, thank you for coming on again. Thank you all for obviously chiming in. I appreciate it a lot. What should, what should, let's see, I'm trying to think of the question, from a job seeker side, what do you like to look for? What should job seekers do right now to really separate themselves, maybe from other people? That's a good one. Cause there's candidates out there, but it's really tough. You've got to be persistent. You've got to network and be persistent in your networking. I know you've talked about this several times. Putting your posting and submitting for all of these jobs through whatever job board, whatever is, it's dropping the bucket.

There are so many coming through right now. We posted a software engineering position and I had 75 people go through in the first night. It's too noisy, it's too noisy. ways your connections, use your networks. That's the best way to really call yourself out. If you've got someone vouching for you, they can get you into an organization that's hiring. That's the way to get to the top of list and get an interview. How do you like to be approached by a random job seeker online? Like what, because like I have my three steps for a DM game, right? Ask a question list specific amount of time, give a couple bit.

That's kind of my thing. Do you have any suggestions with people trying to approach leadership to network and kind of how people should be tactful with that? Yeah, I think that that works, right? You've got to understand that we talked about earlier on the process. Everybody is so busy right now. So busy. Everybody took on three jobs because of COVID. I have. Well, you know, and this is one of the things I'm dealing with right now because we are remote we're dealing with with time zones right and so people are working more hours across time zones I didn't think about that yeah you know and I'm actually looking forward to the time change this weekend so that I can not be so far from my team on the side also because getting up at 6 30 in the or 6 a.m.

when it's pitch black outside is terrible also that but yes that's who been yeah so so I would I would say that the cold reach out is is is the is going to be the least and it's effective in today's day and age, right? I mean, everybody is so busy that trying to answer all of those, all of those those hit ups are, it's impossible. So lever, leverish to the network, right? If you, if you can find, find a connection that's closer to that individual and it's, it's a warm connection. Yeah. It's gonna increase your, your rate. I love it, I love it. Well, that's all I got y'all.

That was it. Ben. That was great. I mean, I mean, here's the deal. That wasn't all of it, but that's all the time that we got time for. So again, y'all, thank you for tuning in this morning. I appreciate it. Ben, thank you. Thank you so much. Stay on for a quick second afterwards. We'll get you to chat for another minute. But y'all, thank you again for tuning in to Guy in Scamster 2.0 this morning. As always, shoot me a text. This is me. This is my number. If you want to know when I go live with guys like them, I send out a text for that and then I send out another text kind of recapping the show if you've missed it on maybe a tip and trick how you can apply it to your career in your job search.

Tomorrow morning Heather Downing, she's a rock star. She literally goes, how much time do we have? And I said, oh boy. So I think tomorrow is gonna be amazing. Heather's dynamic. She's the international speaker at all zero. and then Brahm, Grunir. I think that's his last name on Friday. Again, that's gonna be an awesome conversation. I had a really good chit chat with him before he end. So again, y'all have a great one. See y'all tomorrow morning, not 30 am since then. Stay on. Don't leave me. Okay. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why?

There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, tailor at vaco.com or at Tdaston on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.