new beginnings and how to scale w/ ryan burgess

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What's going on podcast listeners? Thank you, thank you, thank you for tuning in to Guidance Counselor 2.0. The point of this podcast is to allow individuals a resource in their careers when they need it the most. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school, we had Guidance Counselors in high school, but yet now in the real world, we don't have anything or any resource to listen to, to turn to, to learn from others. And so that is what this podcast is for. I interview real people who have had real challenges in their career in hopes that you can take a little bit out of it and to apply within your own career.

As always, please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast. I really want this podcast to become discoverable to others. And so they can use this as a tool. And the only way that happens is if you rate and review it so it climbs the charts. If you need to reach me, all social media handles for me at Tdss and Tdss, E-Y-N. I do a ton on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you need to reach me the old-fashioned email way, shoot me an email, taylordadubacot.com. Again, I know there's a lot of podcasts out there and I really appreciate you taking time to listen to guidance counselor 2.0.

I hope you enjoy the episode. We'll show music. We'll show music. What's going on y'all? I mean, we're live, but we're not live because no one's here Yeah, but yes, you're like, Taylor, damn, this is your second live. It is. This is my second live. So we had unicorn finders this morning. Ryan Ryan was a guest on unicorn finders many moons ago. We've pivoted to that now. I'm unicorn finders is now just going after early stage startups with companies you probably haven't heard of. So we actually had a music company on today that's making booking for artists and venues easier. So that was really, really cool.

So that was this morning. Then today, guidance concert 2.0. We are doing the Pacific coast time. Um, either there's two times for guys comes from 2.0. There's 930 a.m. Central and then there's the 11 o'clock Central, which is for our my PSD folks. So Ryan, it's good to see you. As always. Good seeing you man. Always good to talk. And yeah, it's been a while. So it's nice to thank you for doing the Pacific time zone. I'm like, yeah, the other it's like, I might be up but dealing with like running kids around and yes, it's, it's a little hard and hectic at that time.

Yeah, so but for those of you tuning in, welcome. Say, hey, I would love to hear from you. Again, the reason why it's helping people to comment, to engage, to say, hey, is to bring visibility yourself. So this shows a two-sided platform is kind of what I'm saying now. So it's a networking platform and then like a Q&A platform. So there's not many places where you can get together live and ask an engineering manager at Netflix some things without being charged for it. So I would, so use this to your advantage. But also too, this is a networking platform. So people can connect with others, right?

I've, you know, I say this a lot. There's this one girl, I think her name was Melina. She comments a lot on the show. She said she found a mentor from the show, right? And it's because she was, what I say is, if I were you and you have problems networking, use my show as like the intermediary to get into other people's DMs. Hey, I saw you on Guine's Council 2.0. let's talk, right? So that's what I want. So that's what I tell people to comment to engage. Because I want people networking because we all we all need it. Ryan Ryan is Ryan's a dear friend.

Anybody who's been on my show more than twice is a dear friend in my book now. Nice. So Ryan and I caught up we don't do any prep Ryan and I were just chit chatting is like, what do you want to talk about? And it's interesting. Ryan and I both started new jobs. And we are going to talk about scaling teams especially from scratch and Ryan, I don't know how from scratch you were. Mine was, we had the pieces in place, but definitely need a lot of organization. So we're going to talk about that today. Get your questions ready. I do want to give Shouse to folks joining in LinkedIn user.

I'm pretty sure that's you, Jonathan. John is great. See you Becky, the knit Erica, LinkedIn user, see me know me. Love you. I don't know who that is, but I just, I love the energy this morning. Michelle, it's great to see you. Jorge, it's great to see you. Shradda, Geneva. It's wonderful to see y'all this morning. So let's go ahead and dive in. So Ryan, you know, congrats on the new job. And I definitely want to talk about it. But first, give a quick back about who you are because while I know you, you know, maybe some don't. Yeah. So I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager.

But I think I've been a manager for jeez, it's been like nine or 10 years. Like obviously went through the engineering route for many years and then made that transfer. I've been at Netflix for going on eight years, started out leading UI engineering teams and have last, I was about two years ago, moved to our platform org. And actually what you had mentioned, Taylor is like, I've recently taken on a new role, which was where we are building a new team within our productivity engineering team. And so what our job is is really taking a lot of the tooling and infrastructure that productivity engineering has built over the years and trying to pull it all together to make a more cohesive experience, making it easier for engineers across Netflix to discover to leverage and use.

So it's a tall order. It's been interesting. It's a horizontal team. It's been bootstrapped from other teams within productivity engineering. We've hired a few folks, but most of it was actually just pulling together engineers across our economy. The same with me too. Yeah, exactly. I love that. Elliot, man. I love how you get back to the community. If anybody's looking for a mentor, reach out to Elliot. I love that so much. always nice to see another engineer who fell on the sword to move to leadership. So, let's talk about, so let's just dive in, man. So bringing people together, you first, and then I'll talk about my experience.

But how do you create buy-in with a bunch of people that you didn't hire? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah, one also I think it goes even before that too, right? gets by and as like a leadership team thinking about like, why would you build this team, right? Like it's, you don't just say, hey, you know what we should do is go build another team. It's like, why? Like what problem are you trying to solve? And I think for me for this one was something that, I don't know if I saw it exactly like this, you know, two years ago, but coming from heavy background in UI engineering, I come over to productivity engineering.

I start seeing a lot of our tools in what's existing. I mean, in my old team, we leverage a lot of these tools. And so you start noticing some of these patterns where you're like, oh, there's inconsistencies. Like, you know, this is just what happens is there's teams build in silos and these tools start to become, you know, their own stand up tool that, but there's some commonality beside them that could come together. And so that's something that I had mentioned to, like even my directors like, yeah, I think we're gonna need to, you know, start to address some of this. And I think it just, you know, planting that seed all of us, it wasn't just my ideal loan.

It's funny because there was other leaders saying the same thing. And so we all just over time realized, okay, we need to really go after this. What would that look like? But then yes, you also have to sell it to engineers or the rest of the team. Some people were coming from my existing teams moving into this new team. And so I remember having conversations of like, well, what does it look like and what are the And some of it is very, very ambiguous, right? Like I don't know how to exactly solve this. Here's the problem set of what we're trying to do. Here's how I think we can do it.

But I also don't want to be super prescriptive because I think part of the exciting part of being on a new team is also trying to like help influence that direction. And so it's a work in progress. Like I think we have ideas of where we need to go. We do have a roadmap. We have things that we're going after. But we also need to constantly be checking in, does this still make sense? Are we doing the right things? How are we operating as a team, is this working? And then you have some people that you're like, I think you'd be really great on this team.

They're like, yeah, I don't know. Do I move? Is this the right time? And so you have to convince them too, and like get them on board on that too. And you know, some people were like, it's not the right time for me. I'm excited, but hey, like touch back with me in like six months or something like that. But others are like, all right, I'm in. But like, yeah, it's hard to pitch an idea when you're like, there's no proven track record. Yeah. Well, I don't know how it's going to work, but we're going to make it work. And so please go on for the ride, which is great.

I want to give a few people a few people tuned in. James, I need to get you to connect with Ryan. I think you guys really hit it off. So I will do that after the show. LinkedIn user, it's good to see you. Also another LinkedIn user, hi, Ryan. So yeah, so going back, so how did you do it right? So you talk to your managers, you're like, Hey, I think I want to do this or directors. Hey, I think this needs to happen. Okay, Ryan, go do it. How many people did you inherit? And then like, did you sit down with them? Be like, hey, I'm Ryan, like, I love you.

We're going to figure this out together. Like how do you create that buy-in? Yeah, it's interesting too. And so this is actually a larger effort now too, where there's actually two managers. So there's myself and a peer manager that are taking this over. And so it's really funny, as him and I think both were coming at this from similar angles, little different and trying to figure out. So then as we're going at it, it's like, all right, cool. How does this come together? He had a smaller team that was doing something similar to this, but not exactly. And so then it was also orienting his existing team to the new pieces.

So it was a lot of moving parts. I think for me too, when you take on anything new, and like if you talked to me two years ago, I maybe I'll think of it that way, is that when I moved into productivity engineering, it was taking over two existing teams. And so I think a lot of that, when you dive into especially an existing team or even taking on a new team with like existing engineers that have worked at the company, you wanna really understand like what they're working on, how they like to work, how they like to have a relationship with their manager, their team, what problems are they seeing on the ground?

You do a lot of investigating and learning. And I think that the first few months, that's a lot of what you're doing. I think in the new team, it's a little bit different because it's also like, hey, what am I learning? There's no existing thing that's here. There is still some historical pieces that you wanna know, like what's worked in the past. Like I said, my manager, Pierre, his team had been doing some of this. And it's like, okay, well, what have you done so far? what's worked, what's not working. And so a lot of it is still that investigating and trying to really get the lay of the land before you start going, don't worry, I know what we're gonna do.

I've got this solved like, because that's not gonna work. I mean, especially to your point, you want buy in, right? Nobody likes having someone come in and tell them, I got this solved, I've got all the answers. Cause you know what, nobody has the answers. I don't think that's true. I think you have to iterate and learn as you go. So you're saying, godly, our stories are very, very similar. So this new team, you actually even inherited another manager. Well, he's actually a peer in mind. So we both are. Yeah, but we both. But you still had to create, so it's not just you running the ship and you doing another manager.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Which adds, it adds complexity too, because he and I have to be on the same page. If we're not aligned, then that's gonna not show up well for their team. Him and I both have very different styles of leading too, which I think is awesome. But it's something to be aware of too, right? Yeah. You really have to think about that and okay, that's how he would do this and understand and think through that. And so that's been, you know, it has its challenges, but I'm also happy about that too. What, let's reverse it a little bit, a little further back just kind of in this story.

Because I think there's a lot of people watching this now in the future that are sitting at a company right now that they like what they're doing, but they want to create something within the company, right? Intro for a neworship, right? And that's something that I did, kind of my first endeavor before, this current endeavor. What's your advice to people who like to stand up for themselves in the organization to be electable yada yada? What's kind of your advice? Yeah, I think like, I love that in the sense that in a lot of these larger companies, there are opportunities, there's always opportunities like that people may just not be seen.

And if you're seeing that opportunity, think about it and really like put your idea like pen to paper is my kind of thought on that is like, I would often put together like a Google Doc of explaining like, here's what I'm seeing. here's like my proposal, here's some pros and cons of it, and really think about that in that way. And if you're starting a new team, you also want to remove the people at that part. Like I think sometimes you have that idea of the people in mind, but it's more about like, how do we solve this problem? And not even saying like, I can go lead that.

Yes, you're probably thinking that, but like you really want to present it. Like, are you all still, are you seeing this opportunity or problem? Do you think that having a dedicated team to go after this would be feasible? What would that look like? And so I think it's like phases of steps to get there versus like, hey, I've got it. You know what? I'm going to go run this team. And like, I'm going to do it all. It's like, maybe I'm not the right person. I can still propose that idea. But maybe like, Taylor, you're on my team and you should go run it. But I think it's like taking steps and really outlining that and getting input is always really valuable.

say the Google Doc, I'm a big fan of it. And like, I know Netflix is known for doing a lot of like documents and getting buy in that way. But I think that you can get a lot of asynchronous comments and visibility that way very fast versus like, we got to pull together a meeting. Sure, you'll probably have meetings, but that's a good way to get an idea out fairly fast. One of the things that I'm using, I don't know if you've seen Gabe Greenberg pop up on your Twitter, he runs a React consulting company down in Miami. And he uses Loom Video and I'm a big fan now.

Like I'm late on Loom, but essentially Loom takes out a meeting. Yep. Because you can just do it all video and then just send them the video file. And it also notifies you when that person watches it, which is pretty cool. So that is cool. So what you're saying is you're like almost presenting to like here's my proposal as a video. Yeah. It's basically, it's essentially like you're on a video call, sharing your screen like on a teams or a Zoom, but there's just no call. You can share your screen, it records it, your little face is down the corner. So you can literally just kind of go over everything and then you can end the video and then send it to that person.

And then they can watch it. And so literally you don't have to be in a meeting. Yup, right. Highly recommend. And I think, you know, my thoughts on entrepreneurship, because my journey was I was recruiting manager in Nashville for four or five years. And I started developing content, you know, started putting myself out there a lot more than a year later, I had the opportunity to kind of start my own thing with the NERD group, which was the Nashville engineering remote division. And then now it's global solutions. And so basically my big thing is, is I started to do the work before asking to be the work.

That's a good way to do it too, right? And improving it, right? Exactly. A lot of people, a lot of people are like, well, I want to get mine. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. It's kind of like what you said, like we should do it. And it's like, man, if you don't, if you haven't spent the time either on the side or working into your day to day, if you haven't done any of that and then you go ask your manager, that manager would be like, I don't know if you can do it, right? But I've had, I had, in my manager told me this too, he and I joke the other day, he goes, I thought you were crazy, that your entire business was going to be on social media.

And I said, I know. But the thing is, is he let me do it because I was doing it for over a year. And then he gave me the opportunity. Yeah, that's really cool too. I like that piece too, is like, you don't necessarily have to wait for permission to do it. It's like, you can start to tease things out and really demonstrate that value. Because I'm sure there is an ecosystem of entrepreneurship within Netflix. And I'm sure that there's a lot of folks probably tinkering or building on the side and especially in developer productivity, man. There's always something being built. And so I just think for people who have that, I never consider myself entrepreneurial.

And I would still not call myself entrepreneur, like I don't know if I can go out on my own, like I'm just, that's not who I am. But I think there's a lot of entrepreneurship in people who haven't been unlocked yet, who has not been unlocked yet, because they don't know how to go after it and go after something they want. And so my big thing, it's like John said, I'm a huge fan of show, don't tell. Like, yeah, just do it, just do it now. And then good things will come. Good things will come. I think that way of approaching it too is like, I think times too, like even just to the social media aspect that I've seen you do tons of, it's like, I think people are worried about like, oh, I need to get views or follows or whatever.

It's like, you gotta start somewhere. Just start throwing some things out there and learning as you go. And that's how it works. Yeah, absolutely. Talk about, man, have you dealt with impostor syndrome at all? I deal with it all the time, Taylor, honestly. I think this is- I feel like there's times where it can be good and bad. And I think it's just knowing how it shows up and not even aware of that. And I see it show up in others too. And so I think there's a way in which, especially as a leader, you can show up to help someone going through that. But I definitely see that throughout my entire career.

Probably like, I don't know, whenever like 10 years ago, I probably didn't even know what imposter syndrome was. Right. But as it's become like you call it out, you're like, Oh, my God, I've gone through that. And I constantly still go through that at Netflix. It's like, you're just, you know, working with different people or taking on a new role, you're like, Am I doing the right things? Especially when the problem is very ambiguous. There's not a like on paper. Here's how to solve it a task list. You did this work and it's done. And so there's times where I'm like, it's a good way for me to check myself.

I'm like, am I doing the right thing? I don't like to let it take over and just remind myself too that, hey, I'm doing the right thing or the thing that I believe to be the right thing. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's not, you know, just don't let the imposter syndrome take over and you won't deliver at that point too if it kind of takes over and inhibits you. Yeah, absolutely. Elliot, I'm gonna get to your question in a second. That was a great question because I want to talk about mind posture syndrome. I have dealt more with imposter syndrome the last two and a half years and I ever had my entire career.

Why is that? Because I'm actually pushing the limits. Gotcha. Yeah, I like that. You're getting out of your comfort zone. Oh, I am. I mean, so out of my comfort zone. And I'll tell you this too. Like, you know, I've, I've, you know, in full transparency, you know, I've been, I've been contracted out, hired out to develop content for some people and some organizations and it hasn't worked. I've gotten fired. Right. And, and, which has led to even more, more impostorative because, because I've only ever worked at Vaco. I've never been fired. I've never been let go. Yep. So I really tried to deploy as much empathy as I feasibly can creating content around the job search because I've never been in the job search.

And so for me, I want to let people know that I have dealt with major impostor. I mean counseling for it, like a lot of anxiety. I'm doing a lot of crippling anxiety, not crippling, but like a lot of anxiety. And so I just tell people this, like, and I'm more on the other side of it now. Now, I told my buddy the other day, I said, now, like now, the, the, the, the, the, the The impostor syndrome that I thought I had now is like no, I know what I'm doing now But I will tell folks if you're doing with impostor that means you're growing a fuck down Yeah, I think it is that's why I say there's like It's kind of like a double-edged sword that it there is some pros and cons to having impostor syndrome And it's you know it can be crippling I've seen it crippling for people and it's I think as I mentioned to as a leader sometimes if you see that in someone where they are dealing with that, it's good as a reminder of why they're there, what are they contributing that is positively impacting the goals of the team or the work, whatever it is, the need for the business, but that's hard.

It's not an easy thing to deal with. No, not at all. So, LA, I wanna get to your question. Ryan, my team has been going through a re-yard where our startup was absorbed by parent company. Our goal is to transform the company culture from within, not a manager, but I'm coming in as a contributor. There's a lot of work to be done. What's your advice? How would your manager approach and contribute, a contributor approach? Oh, how would a manager approach and contributor approach look different to help the goal? Yeah. Oh man, there's a lot there. And I'm telling you. How long we got? I know, I'm like, I probably won't, you know, be able to answer very specifically.

This is the whole podcast in and of itself right here. Right. No, there's a lot. And I think it's also like, well, if my advice is also understanding like, why was the reorg happened? Like what was not working before? I think that's so important to understand in why the reorg is hopefully going to fix or address or make things better. I think it's really important. I think it's also really important to remember that no reorg is perfect. Like I've never seen a reorg done perfectly well. It's not working. It's messy and that's okay. And I think that is okay. And sometimes I've seen reorgs happen where they like, like basically we did that two or three years ago and we're almost going back.

And I think that's okay too, because you're trying to solve the problem that's in front of you today and for the next couple years. And so that this reorg may in fact help that. And so I think as a manager and as an individual contributor, it's really good to understand like, all right, how did we get here? What are we trying to solve? what is my role in this? And I think as an, if I was an engineer, I'd be asking my manager those questions, like, really, how can I help? Exactly, how can I help? How do you see me helping? And I wouldn't stop there either.

Like if you have time with your skip level, like if it's a director of that, you know, manager of that manager, who made the decisions to make the reorg, spend time and ask those questions because I think you may get different answers And then you can really build the best informed decision on like how you best show up. I think also checking in, don't think that, that's like three months in, how's it going from what we thought it would do, is that actually working, you know, having those retrospectives. And also hopefully there's flexibility to tweak. Like a reorg is just meant to be like, here's our best foot forward, but can you change things if it's not working, you know, you don't want to massively change something, but like iterate on not change.

So Ryan, not Ryan, but Jesus, Elliot, you know, I will tell you this from somebody who's going through this right now, you know, my team is reorging, rebuilding, whatever you want to call it. You know what, you know what I need from my individual contributors, I need positivity and I need encouragement and I need you to be present and show up every day and ask how I can help. Because I would say as a, I tweet this all the time, You don't have to be a leader in an organization to have leadership responsibilities. And for me, the people who are present, and I'll tell you this too, I'll tell you this too, I'm becoming kind of more aware of this too.

Turn your videos on. It's the small things from being present in video calls with putting your video on, asking questions, right? I mean, listen, I wanna know that I can go to battle with you, right? And I know that seems to be like, Jesus, why are you pulling out like, you know, what's that movie, 3000 or whatever? But like, like why are you pulling that? That seems a little intense, but it's true, right? Because like we are all on a team and I need to know that like I can step on the field and you know, we're gonna execute. So that's my two cents there.

I don't know if you want thoughts, right? I like the positive attitude. I almost feel like I forgot to mention that, but that it goes. We're good together, that's why. But it goes such a long way, right? Because I think it, you know, I'm not gonna lie, like going through rework, especially sometimes as an IC, you didn't see it coming, right? And so you don't have all, I hope that your leaders are sharing that context of why. But not always. Oh, I want to go ahead and further. That is so key. That is so key. The why behind things. And I always have to check myself.

Like I say, there's a lot of, I told you so leaders out there. It's just because I said so, right? As dads. That's awesome. Yeah. Because I said so, that doesn't work in the workplace. You got to give me a why. We're adults. You can tell me why. And because as leaders, like, you know, I'm there to do my job, but my team has a lot of amazing insights that like, I don't have the best answer. And there's many times I'm wrong, like so many times. And I want my team to be able to say like, I think you're wrong. And I'm like, great, let's have a conversation around that.

it may change things or it may not and we can talk through that, but it's not because I said, so that's a horrible, horrible way to work with it. A few more people commenting. We still got people tuning in. This is great. Yeah, Esther comes in. It's so true. Going back to the imposter being fired or jobless. Yeah. And again, right. So my LinkedIn post right before I went live today was around like, I think 75% of the reason why people don't get a job is not because of you. There's a lot of other factors in play. And so try to not, you know, try to try to not take that personally, but it's easier said than done.

Patrick, thank you for your kind words there. Garrett says the best. Oftentimes, Reras can lead to opportunities for those to stick around. To be honest with you, the reorg that happened with this new team is the reason why I got this opportunity. That is a good call out too, because I think like it challenges people in new ways, right? I was excited about this. So sort of reorg, but I mean, it was a little reorg, but going after a new area with a new team, I was excited because it was a new challenge. And I felt like I was coming up on that, needing that new challenge.

So that was really great too is like, you don't necessarily have to take on a new role at a new company. There's often times where if you're feeling that I need a new challenge, there might be something internally. And voice that, right? Yeah. I'll do this. If you just want a different opportunity and you feel like you have to quit because of that like I failed you as a manager Yep, I agree like So let me help you man. Just tell me like hey Taylor listen. I'm a little bored right now like I Want to do something different tell me I want to know that Let's see here being involved shorter comes in being involved in the reorganization and looking for how we can help Yeah, again just be involved show up How can I help listen to people who have a servant mentality?

It helps a lot, especially for us like more senior managers. Man, if we know there are people who are supportive with what's going on, it just makes it a lot easier. John comes in here with all the tech layoffs happening and going, a little off topic here. No, no, a little off topic. John, I appreciate it. As a candidate, what type of questions can you tell if a company is scaling for the sake of scaling? If they really need additional engineers, this is a great question. That is a really good question. That's a really good question. Ashley and the like everyone's worried about yeah layoffs it's happening we all know that so I think the first question is is have you all gone through layoffs?

I think it's the first question right? Yeah I mean I think like we've all seen layoffs in tech especially right like it's happening Netflix had a little bit not much thankfully I think a lot of it is we ours happened a little a little bit sooner, sometime last year. And it was, we do run fairly lean. And so that's a, maybe a benefit of running lean. It's like it comes with like, yeah, you're not over hiring. Cause companies do that where they have like some sort of business need that they want to go after. Not a bad thing either. It's a way in which to deliver something really fast.

But to your question, John, it's on point. It's like, how do you know that that's going to sustain? Is like, are you delivering in then, or if that's not successful, what happens? And so I think there, I think there is some due diligence you can do to understand it. I don't think you're ever going to get a perfect answer. It's never, you know, there's a risk. There's always, always going to be a risk. But I think for me, I would be asking too, is like, why are you hiring? Like, how do you see that? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Garrett just comes in here.

That's what you just said. I like the question, is this position a backfill or? Oh, that's a perfect question. Yes. Absolutely. And then like, if it is a backfill, why? Right? Like, you know, all the person left because they were taking on some completely new role and excited about that. Like, you can learn a lot of even why someone left, right? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Let's see here, as we wrap up here, Esther comes in here. I've been jobless for three weeks. I'll get over it. but I have a friend, a really good developer has been job-seeking for over 11 months and he is good.

How can I help him? I mean, well, first off, Esther, I love where your heart's at. I think I think I'm always big fan of helping others, I think can help you at the end of the day. I would, listen, I've talked about this, like I would create a community, whether it's you or your friend or you, your friend, and maybe a few other people. And I'd have like a Slack Discord text community and just share opportunities with each other. Like, hey, you know, let's just say your friend's name Thomas, hey Thomas, we'll check out this job description. I think this could be a fit for you.

And then Thomas starts sharing job descriptions with you. And then all of a sudden you start crowd sourcing your own job search, which makes it a lot easier. Yeah, I like that. I'll add on to because that's definitely community is a huge one. You can, I mean, you can do it alone, but like it does help building that community. Um, and then you start to three or four years from now, you're like reaching out to that same guy and be like, Hey, I'm looking for a new role. or how's that company that you're working at? But that being said, I was going to add on too, is that it's worth asking people you know, or even reaching out to people that you may not know, right?

Like if they are at a company that you're like, I really see myself there. You know, you're not going to get responses from everyone, but reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever it is and be like, hey, do you have, you know, keep it short, 10, 15 minutes. Do you have 10 or 15 minutes? I would really love to hear more about the role that you play at said company or what the culture is like at that company I'm you know I see some openings there and I'm interested sometimes that can go a long way to that you've now kind of met with someone Maybe they can act as a referral for you You know doesn't mean that you've got the job, but it can just get you a little bit further in that job search.

I love that Ryan any more thoughts on leadership that we've been talking about I have three rapid fire questions for you But I wanted to wanted to see if you have any more thoughts on kind of what we're talking about Oh, man, I probably have too many thoughts. Let's let's go with the rapid thought or rapid thought Because this is valentine's day week. I've been asking all my guests this question um, what's your favorite candy? Oh, man, uh I gotta go with like something that I can't seem to find a lot Maybe it's just in california, but moving from canada to california For some weird reason, I can't find a lot of the cinnamon hearts, the little hard can.

And I know people are probably like, those are pretty gross. But for some reason, I've always really liked them. Are you more of the sugary type sweet type of guy, not chocolate? Are you more like the sugary stuff? I know they're sugar and chocolate, but you don't know. I was going to say there is, but I don't know. I'm not a huge candy person or sweet to dinner. I'm more baked goods. Give me a cookie, a cake. Yeah. But all right. And then you've been like, I'd probably like savory over like. Same. Same. But for some reason, that's always been like a weird staple that I've always like gravitated towards as like a kid for and forever.

That when Valentine's came up, these little red hearts that like, you put too many in your mouth and your whole mouth is numb. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Just this just childish nostalgia, I guess. They're spicy. I don't know. I love it. I love it. Second question. Any tech trends, tooling frameworks that you are experiencing, on Netflix or just maybe tech trends in general that people should be checking out and please don't say chat, GPT or open AI. Oh man, come on. That's like, like if you're to say a trend right now, it is absolutely AI. And I think that like, maybe good or bad, I think teams should be thinking about it.

and experimenting with what can that tool do for you? I think you can go too far on it, Taylor. Like I think you can be like, oh, it's gonna solve all of our problems. I don't believe that. Are y'all using it in a way you can share right now where it's like a real use case example? I mean, I've seen it. Yeah, it's hard to say, but I've seen it more from like standpoints of like even in code, like where I see a lot of advantages, like it's coming from a productivity engineering team, I see a lot of advantages coming from like, how can you write better comments in your code?

How can you like better documentation or poll requests where something like chat, GBT, OpenAI, whatever it is, can almost build a scaffolding for you. It can give you, you know, 80% of that. And then you're like, oh, that's not exactly right. But it can really just help save you that little bit of time going from a blank comment or blank poll request to it's got something there and I can tweak it. I think that's really powerful. I love that. Last question here. And you've answered it before, but I always ask it about the biggest piece of career advice you would tell your younger self. Since this is guidance counselor 2.0 and just trying to share some career advice.

I don't remember what I answered before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to do it. This is great. Yeah. I think one thing that I've always reflected on and that I admittedly probably wasn't great at and is just getting out of your comfort zone. And what I say that more so to my old self is moving. Moving has been a big success for me. I've moved across Canada, different places in Canada, but then moving to the Bay Area. That's tough, it's a scary thing. But I started to get better at that kind of, it wasn't easy for me to be like leaving things or getting out of my comfort zone.

I have to thank my wife for that. I think she was always good about pushing that a little bit harder or just being a better risk taker. But really at the end of the day, like if I hated it, move back. I mean, it's a cool thing to do, but you know, it's never, nothing's ever done. And so same thing, if you're hating your job, like go try something different. It's never, you know, it's easier said than done, but it's not like, it's not end of the world. That's not done. Your career is not over. Um, years go by. It things change. 100%. I love it.

All right, man. Well, I could talk to you for hours, but we're at time. So let's, let's, let's go be productive now. Um, but for those of you who are on Twitter, that leverage Twitter, please go follow Ryan on Twitter. Go follow Ryan on LinkedIn too. and you know he's a he's a great follow and also check out front and happy hour as well that is Ryan and Jim's gems pod I was on it it was great blast yeah it was fun having you on yeah and then and then yeah Ryan thank you so much my friend I appreciate you and stay on real quick but you all have a great one and there's no guys counts are 2.0 tomorrow I've over I've over done myself this week so I'm taking tomorrow off Thanks for having me, Taylor.

I'll always have some pleasure. All right. See you on Monday. Peace. 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, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T-Dastin on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.