building tech culture from the ground up w/ brian hogan

full transcript

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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.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint. 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. If you enjoy the episode. Brian, let's get to people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? We'll go from there. I'm Brian, and I build code, content, and people. I mean, that's kind of what I do. I am currently the Director of Education at Temporal, helping people build resilient cloud applications.

Prior to that, I was at DigitalOcean, working leading their education efforts on the DigitalOcean community. And prior to that, I taught software development higher education and I have been building code for a very long time. I've done work for companies, worked for, I worked as a freelancer, done a lot of stuff. And I am the author of 11 technical books with the pragmatic programmers. I have edited about 20 other ones. So that's amazing. I can barely string two senses together. Here's Brian releasing all these books. So that's awesome. So Brian, we'll get you we'll get you there. We'll get you there. I first say that.

I wanted that man, so we got a few topics to cover today. The first topic I want to go over, this is something that obviously you're super passionate about. We're talking off air and I always ask the guests, hey listen, here are my pillars. Here's what I want to talk about, but what are you passionate about? Brian jumped right into this, and so I want to talk about this. As Scott, I see your question will get to that in PIA. Thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate you more than you know. So Brian, let's get into how to, you talked about let tired gene developers, Let's bring on junior developers.

And there's a lot of talk, but there may not be a lot of action. So break that down and kind of what we talked about out there. Yeah, so one of the things that I think is really great. I mean, there's so many opportunities in software development. When we talk about a lot of times, there's a lot of talk on social media about, you should get into tech. You should get into tech. How do I break into tech? And there's always a lot of people creating content about how to break into tech. But then if you kind of follow that a few months later, There's a lot of people who are trying to get their first tech job and they're really struggling to get that first tech job.

And one of the things that's been on my mind for the last, I would say, several years is, you know, just just to kind of a challenge to the developer community, including, you know, engineers and hiring managers. I mean, I know we got to move fast with our products, but how about a little bit less mentorship and a little bit more sponsorship? You know, what can we do to open doors for people? What can we do to say? Yeah, you know what? We really do need to figure out how as an engineering team, we can bring on one junior developer this year. And if we can have every engineering team figure that out across the industry, we can create a lot more opportunities for people to do that.

But it takes effort on our part. The people who are the candidates, they're doing the work. They're going to the boot camp. So taking the classes, they're reading the books, they're buying all the content that people are putting out to help them learn how to code. And the next step is what do the organizations, what are the people who are creating the content, what are they doing with the leverage their networks to help people find jobs, to help these junior developers that they've helped through their courses, find jobs. Universities, traditional colleges, do this through placement offices. They do help people pound the pavement to get them their first jobs.

And there's pipelines that are connected. And there are some schools that are kind of doing that and some of the boot camps are kind of doing that. But if you're kind of a self-taught person, you're kind of on your own. And I think that there's a lot of opportunities for engineers to push upwards. I think there's a lot of opportunities for hiring managers to push upwards. I think I've seen situations. I have personally seen situations where people have tried to hire a senior level person for six months, they could have hired a junior level person and gotten that person up and running in six months.

I think a little bit too much sunk cost fallacy there. So that's my challenge to the industry really is, what can we as an industry do to open more doors for people who are coming into the industry to create more of it? It was interesting that you brought sponsorship because I was talking to a senior recruiter on Friday, Jermaine, And here's how about sponsorships as well. And this is kind of, I mean, to be honest with you, the first time I've heard this term, sponsorships. And so can you break down like, what a sponsorship looks like, at least to you? I mean, to me, it's, this is something that, this is something that I kind of became aware of a few years ago, just listening to other, listening to other people.

And, you know, I look at it as, okay, mentorship is I'm gonna tell you some stuff and maybe we'll learn and grow together. Like a good mentor isn't just someone who talks at you. You know, a good mentor is someone who connects with you. And you'll, there's a, there's a benefit on both sides of the vision because like when I mentor someone, for example, they'll eventually go on and become a great, a great developer in their own right. And then they'll teach me things because I can't learn everything. I can't know everything and it can be this, this, you know, we learn from each other.

They help me level up. I help them level up. But that's kind of where things stop. like, okay, the sponsor is, you know, a sponsor relationship is I'm gonna help you, I'm gonna advocate for you, I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna help you find roles, I'm gonna talk with people in my network. Hey, I know this really awesome person, you need to interview them, they are fantastic. Or if I have the ability to open a rack, I'm gonna try to push for, you know, creating a rack for people who fit that category. There's, you know, this happens in companies, like inside of companies, you will find someone will sponsor you.

Like a lot of promotions happen that way. You connect with a director or whatever and that person really does help you accelerate your career. And I think extending that because we're not we're not getting it done like the trades get it done. I like to look at the trades a lot. That's kind of like an interesting thing to me if you look at the trades. You want to be a plumber, you go and take some plumbing, some glasses on being a plumber and then you get an apprenticeship with a plumber. Right. And so like what does that look like in software development? And there are places that are doing apprenticeships, What does it look like on a micro level?

If everybody who currently has a job, you know, you have influence. You might not know it, but if you, you know, you might have influence within your network to help other people get in the door. Because when there are, when there is an open position and there are 300 job applications for it, and this speaks to your point, Taylor, about building that network. Like, 299 people are gonna get no thank yous. That's just the math, right? So what do you do to increase those odds? Well, you know, there are things that you can do as a candidate, but I don't think it all falls on the candidate.

I think that falls on us as people who currently have jobs, who are currently in positions where we have influence, with our networks or with whatever, to say what are additional things that I can do to help open the doors for people? They still have to walk through it. But what can we do to identify opportunities and open the doors for people? What do you think, well, you talked a little bit about, You talked a little bit about what job seekers can do. Let's dive into that briefly, right? And I'm sure you get to have a lot of people on the show talk at job seekers.

So we don't have to go super deep. But what is your advice right now? Just super high level for all these job seekers right now, like for a job? That's a really tough one. Because like I said, there's so many applicants coming in for every position. It's the same, I think it's still the same advice though. Like if you don't have a network, you're already at a disadvantage. So like the time to build your network was a month ago and the second best time to do that is now. But also stand out. Like there, I review a lot of resumes that all look the same and there are some places, not every place does this, but there are some places that will do, that will remove all the personal information from a resume.

So we just see the skills that you have and all that. And in an attempt to create, you know, to reduce bias and all that. And I think what's important is, is for a person who is writing a resume, what if you took your name off of it? And all of the, all the things that identify you specifically off of the resume, how would you look any different from any other candidates? To me, the hiring manager who's looking at 300 resumes and I have 60 seconds max to look at yours. And that's kind of being generous, to be honest, because what candidates do need to understand is that when you're the manager of a team, hiring is an additional job that you get every once in a while.

On top of all the other meetings you have to go to and planning you have to go to and one on one means with a team that you go to and all the things you do to keep your organization running. Hiring is an additional responsibility that you kind of fit in around it. Well, I've got a half an hour in between this meeting and the next meeting. I just want to give you some resumes. I don't have a lot of time to do this. So how do you stand out? How do you stand out? And the way you stand out is you tell me not, I'm sure everybody on your, on this, on this show has said the same thing over and over again.

Don't tell me your responsibilities. Tell me what your accomplishments were. Yes. Show me your accomplishments. Show me, I grew revenue by this much or I, you know, I developed a new version of the system that reduce the load times, you know, increase the responsiveness of the website by X percent or something like that. You can get those quantifiable measurements in there. So that, because what you're trying to do in your resume is you're trying to show me, you're not really trying to tell me what you did in your last company. You're trying to show me what you can bring to my company. Oh, I like that.

You're trying to sell a store like, it's not about what you did previously. It's what you can bring to the table for me. Show me how these skills you have, what you currently have will help me solve the problems that I have. Yeah, that's so good. I mean, I said the same thing, right? I mean, I always go back to my serving, serving days, serve tails at Outback Steakhouse in my hometown, right? Yeah. And if I put on my resume, server at Outback Steakhouse made sure customers were happy, you would say, yeah, no shit, right? I mean, like, just to be totally honest, sorry, we're cursing on a Monday, but it's like, yeah, no crap, like duh.

But if I said, hey, I hit 10 sales quotas when no one else hit three, I worked out a restaurant that worked in that top 10 in revenue out of 500 restaurants, average $5 million a year in revenue, then it's like, oh, wow. So this guy was a server at a high pressure high volume restaurant. in the vision could probably step in and work well under pressure, right? But Brian, let's say Brian was trying to hire me. Brian would know that if I just said I serve like I made sure customers were happy, right? Like me again, so get quantitative. I love that Brian. Not many people say that.

So I'm glad you said that. I want to move in too because we're already halfway through, I this flies by. So let's talk about building culture from the ground up. Now, I think we we could literally talk for nine hours on this topic. So we'll try to convince it in five minutes. What are some core things you believe that all good leadership in tech should either embody or have right now? I think you have to create an environment of, I think honestly it all comes down to being people first. And what I mean by that is creating an environment that is psychologically safe, an environment where people are not afraid to bring you your issues.

You'll have to build trust. Like as a manager, it takes so much time to build trust because people have all the baggage they have from their previous job with it when they come work for you. Their manager may have treated them poorly, they may have always had to ask to go to the restroom, things like that. You don't know where people are coming from. And as a manager, it's gonna take you time to build trust, but you have to do that. Because this is me speaking to managers now, there are gonna be times when you will have to ask your team to walk through fire with you.

You'll have to be able to follow you. You need to take care of them. Take care of your people on your team. Creates to protect them. Empower them. Give them opportunities. Help them when they fail. Lift them up so that when the times do come, when there's something that you have to ask your team to do that they're not going to like, because that's going to happen. I have had that situation to me as a director of court. I've had managers who were so supportive and so, they would defend us, they'd defend our team through all the little stuff. And every once in a while they'd have to ask us, you know what, this isn't gonna be pleasant, but we have to do this thing that you don't like.

I was happy to follow them into the fire. And that's how I lead is like, we're gonna build this environment of psychological safety. You can tell me things. And I will do that and I will lead by example. Like even the little things like, yeah, I'm gonna take a day. I'm gonna take, I need a mental health day, I'm gonna take one. If I take one, it lets my team know that it's okay to take one. If I take a week off of vacation, let's my team know it's okay to take a week off vacation. If I, if I help them identify and really set aside those times for intentional weekly one-on-one meetings with my direct reports, where we're really bringing up their issues, doing that repeatedly for six months, builds up this level of trust, that's really, really valuable.

It's just putting the effort on the chair. The other stuff follows, the other stuff comes. The other stuff comes, like comes with these are, you know, these are adults. You're working with adults. They're not kids, they don't need to be micromanaged. You need to treat them like professionals and show them the care and love that you need and when they'll do that for each other. It's so good. I get, so I guess in my old age now, I start to get goosebumps when people say good things And I got goosebumps the entire time Brian was talking. And I think that's it. And then I see some questions come in and we'll get to them in a second from Scott and Halicio.

But I want to just piggyback. So I've talked again. One of the reasons why I want IT leaders on the show is to literally talk about building good culture remotely in tech because I'm building a team that's fully remote. And quite frankly, I'm just trying to cheat off everybody else's paper, just to be totally honest. And I will tell you this, the biggest thing I continue to hear is trust. That is the most consistent theme in empowerment. And I think that's the issue. I think that's where companies are running the roadblock and bringing people back on site. Because I think it's a trusting, right? You don't want people on site, in my opinion, because you think it's the best.

What I've heard and what I've witnessed is there's some trust issues. and that people don't think you're working. And that's incredibly important. Also noticing too, I heard this from the individual the other day, Hope. Managers should give their team hope. And when there is no hope, your people leave. Now, that could go on multiple different levels, right? You can take that everyone, take that, depending on the industry, depending on your team, what structure, whatever it is. But hope to me, what that means, is that they know they have somebody going to war for them every single time. And I think I still incredible. And finally, what Brian said, and then Brian, I'll let you add some comments all this.

Finally, what Brian said about taking, setting the example, I have dealt with this for a long time. I've told my wife this, I've told my team this, I haven't taken time off, just to take time off. I only take time off when I travel. And so I've implemented, I'm taking the second Friday off of every month now, from here on out. I'm just taking it off because I want to sit, I always talk about burnout and trying to save people in the Senate Street and find out an example. Why won't why won't anybody else follow? And that and that really resonated with me. So Brad, I don't know if you anymore thought.

Yeah, you know, that you're you're right on the mark of a good leader and a good teacher. This is what that's what I learned like this is like this was this was drilled in me when I was learning to be a teacher like, you know, I I my family, my dad was a teacher, my mom was a teacher. But I still like when I took a job teaching adults, I went through some formal classes, like how to teach adults. And, you know, one of the things they drill into you very early on is that you have to model the behavior you want to see. You can't just say things and then not do them.

You have to, it's like being a parent, but it's just that's the way people are. Like, you get a new job, you look around, how does your boss behave, how does these other people behave? And you go, oh, that's the culture here, I will do the culture thing here. Say that one more time. Say that one more time. Right? You get into a job, you look around, how does my boss behave? How does the output do you... How did you boss behave? Yeah. How did he behave? Like, oh, that's okay, that's the culture here. That is how I will behave here. I think, but one of the things that, when you're kind of like the low level manager at a company, like you're just managing ICs directly, you're not managing managers, but when you're managing ICU directly, I was used to joke that, yeah, in a large company as a first-line manager, I have very few tools that I can use to help people and a lot of tools that I can use to hurt people.

And some of those are intentional and some of those are absolutely accidental. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time causes the team to be stressed out That's accidental, but it can do damage. Doing, you know, as a manager, you know all kinds of things that you maybe should or should not share at certain times. If you share them with the wrong time, you create anxiety. If you share them too late, people get mad because you knew something and then you didn't share it with them. So, you know, but with the things that you do have at your disposal that are tools to help you, are those things like building hope and building trust and building empathy, sharing and leading by example.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I want to get a few questions here. So Scott comes in early in the show. How would you find out the whole company culture as opposed to just what the person tells you during the interview process? So you're probably not going to like the answer because it's the answer that we've been being they're all about networking. You need a back channel network. Like, you know, when, what I went to a digital ocean, there were several people that I knew in my network that worked there. And I was like, hey, can I bug you? Could I like have a virtual coffee with you or whatever?

15 minutes, just ask you about the culture. And, and, and, you know, kind of going about it that way. These people I would not report to, they weren't gonna be on my team, but I knew them. And they could tell me things. And sending with, sending with Temporo, I, I did my research. I asked people in my network that new people that worked there or had gone to the interview process before, things like that. That's how you find out the whole company culture. And if you got people in your network that don't work there anymore, that's also very helpful. If you talk to them about, like, oh, hey, you used to work at Spotify.

Well, what was that like? Or you used to work at Netflix. You used to work at Google. What was that like? And also, I think what's interesting to think about too is like, I don't think that, I think small companies have company culture. But I think what bigger companies have is, there's lots of little companies inside of big companies. And so there are people that I know who have had absolutely awful experiences at a company in one division who are like, Yes. Absolutely great experiences in a different division. And again, that kind of comes down to who is running the show in those individual divisions.

These large companies, they're like, Hundreds of little companies. And even your own company. It's on its own company. Even your own team is gonna have, like if you move teams, even your own teams are gonna have a different culture than the rest of the company. So I think it's a little bit hard to say, like what's the company culture at Google? What's the company culture at micro, that's- Even at Makeup. I mean, we're a billion dollar recruiting company now. Like, I'll tell you this, there's some different cultures out there at Makeup. So, yeah. And I would tell us too, I mean, like Glassdoor, I don't put all stock in Glassdoor, don't put all stock on the Google reviews, but those are good places just to scam and get a baseline.

What I would do is I would look at those if there's any consistent themes, benefits are bad, micromanagement. If there's consistent themes on those reviews, then maybe dig into those in your interview. Hey, did some research, you know, in Glassdoor, it seems like they're quoting a lot of issues on benefits. Can you guys speak to this right now? Right? And I think almost use it as a way to ask more thorough questions in the interview process. But I totally agree, network, DM people, people that have worked there in the past, people that work there now. I think that's great. Um, uh, Alicia comes in the other day, I was talking to a more experienced dev and he was advising me and another guy to get mentors.

Brian mentioned it again, makes me believe finding the right mentor mentors is very important. How important is it for people trying to get their foot in the tech industry to have mentors? I don't, I don't think it's entirely important because it's not a, nothing is a guarantee because it's also like you can't just go out and find a mentor. There are people who are willing to say, I will mentor you, but it's not the same thing. But the really thing is I'll teach you stuff. I'll tell you things and teach you stuff. Most of the people that I mentor are relationships that just kind of happened.

They adopted me as their mentor and that's awesome. All one day, oh, you're my mentor now. I think that's what happens. you form bonds with people and you discuss things and then that it sort of happens. So I've never really, I used to think that it would be something that would kind of work out. Like, oh yeah, we could just, I could just put myself out there as a mentor, but it doesn't actually happen. It doesn't actually seem to work that way because it really does need to be this two-way street or house with something in it for both parties. And I don't think it's like, I don't think it necessarily gives you a leg up.

It might have that mentor happens to end up being a sponsor for you. Yeah. open doors for you. But I do think that it's probably more important to focus on building a network, knowing a lot of people. I sort of think about like, I don't have one mentor. I have a many I have someone I look to for teaching. I have someone that I look to for software development. I have someone that I look to to know what's next, what I should spend my time on learning next. These are the people in my art that I know. They are the pioneers in all these different areas that I can look to and have conversations with.

But they're also good friends of mine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is so good. I do think, I think if you, so I have an episode on guidance counselor 2.0, if you go to the App Store or the podcast app. I've been caught up with the director of engineering. He's now a Microsoft about the mentor mentee relationship and what it should look like because it is a very unique and to do it well. There's a lot of emphasis on the mentee. You need to drive a lot. I will tell you this, Lucio. There is nothing wrong with you getting a mentor. I think, but it is a unique relationship and you're going to have to drive the conversation.

Like if somebody be like, hey Taylor, I want to catch up with you once a month on recruiting. I'll come with questions for you for 15 minutes every month. Absolutely, I'll do it. I don't want to have to like do any work. If you do all the leg work, there will be a lot of people that will be your mentor, but you got to drive it. You got to drive it. Let's see here, going through this. But good morning, Leo's great to see you, tomorrow's great to see you, James, you're too kind. Let's see here. At least here comes in again. How do we position ourselves as valuable for the companies we are trying to get in.

I think that's kind of what Brian said about the resume writing. Don't talk about what you've done, talk about what you can bring to the table. Yeah, talk about those accomplishments. What kinds of things did you do? What kind of quantifiable things did you do? So as you tell me, so as I'm reading it, I go, oh, if they weren't able to scale this, you know, this web property to this, well, then, you know, bring coming here, they can probably do that for me too. That's really what it is. Your whole first year at a new job is just they're gambling on you. Like to take a gamble.

Like we think you can do this based on your best experience. We think you can do this for us. And so it's about you telling that compelling story. Telling that compelling story through your resume. It's super funny because there's a lot of conflicting advice out there. Should I write a cover letter? And it's like there's so much. I don't know. Should you? job ask for one, then yeah, you should write one. But if the job doesn't ask for one, you probably shouldn't write. Like, I don't even find them that useful as a hiring manager. I know that there are people who are job changers who say they find them useful, but as a hiring manager, it's usually, hi, I'm applying for a job.

Here's why I would be good for a job. Please contact me for interview about job. It's the same cover letter from every single person. And so I don't even sure that that's useful. But the resume is still useful. And the thing is that it's really hard to give hiring advice because I don't care if you had college degree I don't care if you have a lot of projects on your GitHub because you might have a family and you might have other obligations so you can't put in that kind of time but Other people do so I can't sit here and say you don't have to work on the nights and weekends to build up your skills to get the next Job that you don't have I can't genuinely say that because I don't know what the hiring manager at the company You're gonna go for once.

Yeah So the best way you can do that is again networking, back channel network. Hey, I'm applying for this job with this company. Do you know the manager? Well, so and so, where they look for in Canada? Seriously, seriously, I mean if somebody interviews with me, you know, my team can tell you what I look for with my team, right versus versus another team. So, all right, so we're gonna wrap it up here to have a hard stop. But Brian, I always, always let people, so we didn't get to freelance consulting, so we will have you back on and cover it. But any last words of wisdom at all for hiring major job seekers right now?

I don't have, like, again, I don't have like a magic wand I can wave or even give you to say here, boom, poof, you got a new job. I can say is just emphasize those, emphasize those people skills that set yourself apart. I'm a big believer in this idea that software is 80% people and 20% code. You got to know the code. That's a non-negligible. You can't be in software without that. But so much of what you're going to do as a software developer is going to revolve around not code. You're going to be delivering feedback on a pull request. You're going to be trying to pitch your idea on what new thing to use.

You're going to to be maybe making a presentation to your manager about something that you'd like to do. You're gonna be angling for promotions. You're gonna be doing a lot of people things. And so when you're building your resume and when you're putting yourself out there and you're not working all that, make sure that you're focusing on those skills as well as those skills that you focus on to learn a new web framework or learn a new backend framework or a new technology. I love that. I do wanna add this real quick. People are like, how do I work on my people skills? How do I work on my communication skills?

I heard this in a leadership podcast. It's called the leadership lean in or how to check it out if I were you. Literally the gentleman and I grew with him, when's last time you asked somebody in your family or friends, hey, how do I come across in social situations? Hey, how was I with this conversation? Yeah. People don't ask that because people don't want the truth. And a tip that I've heard recently that I wanna start doing a little more is rather than putting someone in the spot like, you know, how do you feel? And I act is like, what do other people think about me?

That way it doesn't put them on the spot. They don't have to be the one to do that. And so they can, yeah, it wasn't this meaning. How do you think that went? Like, how do you think I came across to so-and-so? How many I can across to this person? Oh, there's this idea, this concept of something called the Johari window. It's like what we know about ourselves and what we present to other people. But there's also like what other people know about us that we don't know. And I encourage people to look into the concept the Johari window and how to increase that area where we, I know things about me that you all know about me and try to decrease the area of that where there's things that I don't know about myself.

What are my blind spots? I love that. I love that. Well, Brian, thank you so much, man, for coming. I appreciate it. Stay on real quick as you wrap up. But y'all, I hope you enjoyed this one. Go connect with Brian on LinkedIn on Twitter. He's fantastic. I hope y'all have a wonderful rest of your Monday. Tomorrow, really excited. I I have a buddy of mine. He's in Nashville. He got a job at Netflix because of 1DM. So we're going to talk about his job search journey and just the power of the DM. So you won't want to miss it. So tomorrow morning, not 30 AM Central.

His name is Connor and he's at Netflix. And he and I are good friends. So looking forward to catching him tomorrow, Brian. Thank you so much. You all have a great one. We'll see you all tomorrow morning. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish 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, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T. D. E. S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.