leading from the bottom and creating a safe space for feedback

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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 and 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. All righty, good morning. Good morning. Happy Tuesday. No one's here yet. That's fine. But when you do get here, say, Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Took a few days off.

Hockey team Ben and I were talking about it. We finished. It was actually a long tournament. It was like four nights, three nights, four nights. Yeah. So me and the guys went to Pittsburgh hockey tournament. We finished second in our pool actually went to the championship but unfortunately we had to we had to pull out our our main goalie got hurt man we had some other guys that had to leave early for the championship is they didn't realize it was so late the day the championships at 730 in the evening so anyways but it was fun it was great it's gonna be back though and Ben you're you're the first guest back after for a few days.

Man, awesome. I feel honored. But for those of you tuning in, welcome. Say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know if you tune in for me. And the reason why I tell people to comment, say, hey, to engage is really a networking thing. Because one thing I realized, so I started this show, I started this show just a way to give back to people, right? Eight to 12 minutes lives, how to write a resume, how to work with a recruiter, and then I'd hop off, right? Well, then what I realized is that networking virtually about showing up day in day out. And the way to do that is to comment is to say, hey, because what happens, I've had people on the show like find a job, I've had people on the show find mentor mentees, I've had people like make a ton of new connections.

And so it's really, really cool. So I tell people to comment to engage to say, hey, it's just as a way to show up, right? I think the big thing about networking is saying, hey, is to being present and to being consistent, right? And that's why I tell people, if you watch the show, Like I have a lot of people that comment like a week from now that finally watch it. If you do get that chance, I would still comment because there's still people that come through and still network with people. So also number two, I do this as a live Q&A show for a reason.

The reason for that is because I want you to ask questions to really good people like Ben and Ben and and and that way you don't get billed for it. Right. So so it's live for a reason. So ask questions if you have them. Ben's a great guy. I can't wait to dive in here shortly Finally I want to give a shot up to that conference. I'm not drinking their coffee right now. I'm a little under the weather But they are the official coffee sponsor of guidance counselor 2.0. I am keynoting their conference in July as well But if you like coffee, they actually have really good coffee beans.

I actually mean that So go check that out. I want to give a shout to a few people tuning in today. Michelle, great to see Raymond Emmet, Christina. Let's see here. Emmet, I love that so much. I'm actually interviewing Emmet on the show here soon. LinkedIn user, what's going on? Brian, hey, Fink, Stevost recruiter tuning in. I love it. Aruna's great to see you, Brandon. Emmet, those glasses are sick. I'm assuming you saw my band not me. Facts, I network with Taylor's fans all the time, I love that so much. All right, cool. So, nothing to be wrong with my mouth. Ben, let's give the people what they want.

Who are you? What do you do and why are you wearing a master's shirt? Yeah. Hey, good morning, guys. I'm Ben. So, live here in Dallas, Fort Worth. I'm a builder and a developer. I've been doing it for a long time. It's currently a CTO of a healthcare company. So, building EMR tech, hospice and piet of care, really interesting, super sensitive space. You know, as I get older and my family gets older and my family's family's get older. So a really interesting space to be in with people taking care of others, right? Is there even a really difficult time? So on happier note though, you know, Master's shirt, why Master's Master's week, right?

So I was waking up this morning and telling my wife I was like, I can't go on live internet. Well, I'm a Master's shirt on Master's week. So I can't. Well, and then well, and but talk about your background though. I just realized this from Ben. Yeah, so I started playing golf at like three years old. My dad used to take me out when I was a little kids and so then I played all through junior golf and I school golf and play college golf and I'll do the same thing with my kids so I had a blast doing it I tell people all the time I would have never gone to college had it not been for golf.

That's all I wanted to do like I just wanted to play golf and so I ended up getting a degree which worked out really well for me. Yeah so Masters Week is awesome so always my best on the year we're gonna do food this weekend, fermented cheese, egg salad if you've never been before it's an experience. Who do you think is going to win? I'm not a golf guy, so I have no idea. Man, I'm going to pull for the Dallas guys. I'm going to go for Zalatoras and Sheffler and Speed. I'm somewhere in there. I love Scotty Sheffler, so I just I like him.

I like how he plays. I like who he is. I'm hoping for him. But then Rory's great too. So if Rory wins, I'd love to let him see you at the Grand Slam. I love it. Evan asked, have you taken your kids to the master? No, I can't. A lottery. I don't know. It's like astronomical. I got in one time really small side story. So I worked for the Louisiana Golf Association 20 plus years ago and my boss was an official at the Masters and that's how I got tickets. That's how I got in the one time I got in like 22 years ago now I guess.

So if I get in and I get the lottery my boys will definitely count for sure. I love it. I love it. Can I see Rachel? Why for Rachel? Rachel jumped on a minute ago. I think I saw her. I hadn't seen her in years. that was fantastic. That's awesome. That's awesome. Alright, man. So let's talk about leading from the bottom and creating a safe space for feedback. I mean, so for those of you who are watching right now, I haven't automated that automated email that sends because just to kind of get the blood pumping and the thoughts going on kind of what we want to talk about.

And I love what Ben sent. And so Ben, I mean, let's go ahead and kick it off. I mean, you know, talk about leading from the bottom because I'm really big on that. I'm really big on it. I don't think you need to be senior to lead. Nope. I don't think you need to wait around to be appointed a Tech lead to lead. So I mean, I'm curious your thoughts on this. Yeah, no, I've seen a couple of really good presenters talk about this and so I earlier on my career You know, I noticed there are always gaps to fill right? So as a developer as a QA as a scrum master Just because you're a developer doesn't mean you have like seniority on the team right a scrum team to me a tech team is is it's a collection of people trying to deliver value.

So it's Scrum Master, our project manager, in my opinion, gets the same voice as everybody else in the team. So what I think you'll notice is the scrums are hard and scrums are fast. And it's not called a scrum because it's like a knitting club. There's a lot of action going on in a rugby scrum if you ever watched it. And so I think what's important is that, leading from the bottom to me is you're filling those gaps as an individual. and you're stepping into spaces that maybe you feel uncomfortable with, but you know that need to be done. And I think as a leader, what's really important is you want to embrace that with your team, right?

Like I want to get down there and I want to help them in every way possible from a supportive standpoint, right? I don't want to be dictating how things are done. You know, I'm not in the weeds every day. I mean, I'm, I'm two or three levels removed sometimes from, from what's being held. And so, you know, getting into the weeds, I think, how arrogant would I be if I thought that I could tell you as a person doing work that you know exactly how to do that, right? So leading from the bottom for me is, you know, I heard something a while back that I think resonates.

If I've got something to do and I've got a plan in my head, right, and I'm thinking that my plan is a nine or a 10, but my team comes to me and says, Hey, you know, what we really want to do this, we have a shared mission, we have a shared goal. And I think they're plans like a seven or an eight, 100 times out of 100, I'm going to let them go do their plan for two real reasons. Number one is accountability, right? like they're going to own their plan. If I pass a plan or I force a plan down, people aren't naturally going to be as excited about that plan.

Sure, sure. If you do it yourself. And number two, it builds confidence, right? Especially as, you know, I was thinking earlier when you were doing the intro, there was nobody around when I turned 22 and hit the job market to say, hey, here's how you write a resume. Here's how you integrate into a dev team. Here's how you, you know, get a job. Here's how you do it. I mean, I mean, that's why I created the show because I didn't have any of it. So, as a leader, I feel like, especially now being in my mid-40s, like, it's my responsibility to pass that on, right?

Because I had sports enough when I was 22 to have some really good leaders who passed that on to me. And I'm just doing the same thing. I mean, I'm not doing any magical. Just doing the same thing that people did for me. And I feel like that's what most people want. When it comes to, you know, I'm always curious of OG stories, right? I mean, I think there's a lot of bad leadership in tech, right? I think we can all agree with that. Where did this kind of awareness come from? I mean, was it something from an early age? Were you born with it with your parents?

Was it developed? Like, because it's hard to be a good leader and it's really hard to say the things, it's really hard to exit on things you just say. Yeah, no. And so I tell you the funny part is I'm a super individual person. I'm not naturally a team player. I'm more naturally an individual. That's why I played golf, right? Yeah, I was about to say that's golf right there. I wasn't playing, you know, a team sports, right? And so for me, it was an awareness. It was realizing at some point that, you know, this is a team sport, software is a team sport. And if you want to be successful, you've got to work in a team.

And there's, you know, when I got my first leadership job, quote unquote, I didn't create it, right? somebody pulled me up. And even in the position I'm in now, I didn't create this position. I was pulled up into this position. And so anybody that's trying to work their way into more responsibility, they need to be pulled up. And that's a leader's job, is to find those places where people can be good, put them in those places. And then just like, I don't know, support them and watch magic happen. That's usually where it works. So I'm curious with creating a safe space for feedback. I mean, you said some pretty awesome things backstage, quote unquote, and I want to get into that.

I mean, you said, I'm not going to say it. Talk to me what you said about creating safe space for feedback and why bad news is sometimes good news. Yeah, so, you know, bad news, nobody likes bad news, right? Like nobody ever goes, because man, I can't wait to get some bad news, especially nice stuff. Give me all the bad news. Yeah, because like, and a software, people wanted to, when's it gonna be done, how much did it cost? You know, did we hit all the features, right? None of that like exudes, hey, give me some bad news. But so if I've got a team that's bringing me bad news, I've got two things that I think that are happening.

Number one is I've done my job in the fact that people can be authentic and who they are. They can come and say, look, I'm having this struggle. I'm having this challenge. We're having this issue. Here's what I'm thinking about doing about it. The second thing is, it means I've established trust. If people are willing and open, especially in this market where it was hot for a while and then everything going on right now, people are probably scared to speak up and say, hey, I don't wanna be the glowing red light that says, hey, I'm really having a hard time with this project or this feature or we had a hard time with this or that.

As a leader, I think it's important when you do have those interactions to be able to celebrate and say thank you. First of all, and then second of all, what would you like me to do about it? Would you like me to get involved? Would you like me to listen? Would you like me to unblock something? Love that. What is it, right? What is the right thing that you need me to do to help you overcome whatever it's happening? Because again, as a leader, they're paying me for my experience and my judgment. They're not paying me for my fingers. The keyboarding is gone, right? Like I still code a little, but they're not paying me for that at this point.

So as a leader, that's something that I think is important. And if you've got bad news coming to you, celebrate it. Like don't want it every day. Like I totally prefer we deliver it on time and things are great and the world's awesome. But yeah, you need to make a point to say, Thanks for bringing me this bad news. Let me help you solve it. Cause if they never bring it to you, guess what? Bad things are still happening. You just aren't being included in the conversation and able to affect them, which I think is bad. Yeah. No, and I think that's so cool, man.

I think, I don't know, just having the opportunity to be able to share, it's, because I feel like there's just such this huge insecurity to not be open. Yeah, right. And I've seen it in my career, I'm sure you've seen it as well. And when I talk to managers, CTOs, like yourself, like senior level leaders in tech, it's like all they want is for people to be vulnerable. But I feel like there's such bad management that people don't feel comfortable. Well, I mean, I can tell you, even getting up this morning, like I don't get live on the internet that often. It's a natural reaction even being a pretty confident person to go, man, am I gonna do the right thing?

Am I gonna say the right thing? What if I get, you know, there's got to be somebody better than me, right? There's always gonna be, you hear about the imposter syndrome and I hate the label stuff, but it's true. We all do. We help that self-doubt, right? We all show up to work, maybe not every day, maybe not more than a couple times a month, but we all have that like insecurity, right? And I think as a leader, it's important to fill that gap sometimes and go look, You're doing a great job. Keep it up. Or hey, I know you struggled here, but how can we not do that next time?

Or how can I help you? And I do think that it is, yeah, it's our responsibility as leaders to get to do that because you don't. I had a vice president at one time, told me a long time ago. You know, welcome to management. Today's the last day of your life, you're going to get the truth. And I thought that was really sad. Oh my gosh, that's so true. You know, I thought it was really sad and it's partially true, but I think it's, I think it also is, it becomes self-evident when you allow that to be the narrative. Right, if you establish relationships, and again, I'm not a huge, I'm an introvert at home.

Like I have a small circle, I'm not like an out in front person. But if you're aware enough to know that you need to build relationships because this is how this works, right? And this is what matters. Yeah, the software comes second. All that stuff comes second. your spoken teams and teams are building software and customers are getting value. And, you know, if there's an issue today, I always tell people this too. Rias to the occasion or the issue, but don't break your back because in six months there'll be something else. It'll be another issue. The hot thing of today, the urgency of today, this will be gone and in six months there will be something else.

So you have to figure out a way, yeah, to find that balance. Yeah, I love that. So how have you, here's a bigger question. How have you instilled that in your leaders within your organization? I mean, I think it's one thing to have it yourself, but it's another thing to try to instill it. It's a good question. You're leaders. We dialogue about this a little bit. Middle management often gets a bad rap, right? Because it is, and I think it's like vitally important. And so because of all, whether we want layers or not, right? Let layers exist. I can't have 50 people reporting directly to me.

First of all, you have 50 angry people because it's not a good model, right? So when you've got leaders that are important, I think the thing, first and foremost, it's model of behavior. And I think that's, you know, I hate to draw the parallels between work and family, but with kids, it's a similar approach, right? You model the behavior that you wanna see. You reinforce that behavior when you see it. Hey, John, Mary, Sue, you did a really good job the other day, whenever you got involved in whatever it was, right? Like it's a simple reinforcement. And then when you see something you don't like, it's hey look, we chat about this, right?

And you pull them off and you talk about it. And I don't think you do it in like a one-on-one because I don't like to make those about correction. It's one of the things where like, hey, I saw this, I think we should probably look at a little different. First, although, what were you thinking? And what was your approach and where were you coming from? And so I think it is, it's modeling and reinforcement. And then some people, I think it's prescription, right? Because we're not all the same, right? And I think that having, you know, a playbook a little bit in some kids, it makes sense to people.

It doesn't make sense to me. I'm more a free-flowing person, but some people are like a playbook. And it just depends on who you have as a leader. And everything's down to knowing your people. 100%. I think it's just my guy, Jonathan, learned the other day that every convo can fall into learning, exchanging, and convincing as a manager and of course, employee, I feel like learning and exchanging are so crucial. Yeah. With the festival team. That's great. I hadn't heard that, that's awesome. Without a doubt. I think one of the things that I was doing around table with some engineers in Cincinnati a year and a half ago, and we were talking about culture and engineering culture, and how do you develop a culture of vulnerability and putting things in the open.

And one of the girls actually said at her company that they actually discouraged. They openly say, hey, we would like you to not actually DM people individually. Oh. If you have a question, just put it out in the open. Okay. what that'll do is that'll allow others to, I mean obviously you know, slack DMs are a thing. But they actually said like, hey if you have a question like please post it publicly. And because what that does is that starts to develop this culture of vulnerability and openness which I think so desperately needs to happen a lot of organization. I like that. I think it does because a lot of times because a hundred people in a room 30 have the same question some percentage.

I don't I don't know what it is, but it's some percentage of people have the same thing. I think that's great. What, when it comes to, you know, I'm trying to think of best way to ask this question, but so if I'm a manager, right, on the other end watching this now, in the future, or listening to this or whatever, and I'm like, man, what if my employees aren't telling me the truth? Like, what if I'm that manager, then I'm not creating a safe place? What would you tell that manager? I get feedback. Like, I think 360 feedback is super important, right? I've been fortunate to go through some management coaching along the way, and I don't know that there's any right coaching, but I think coaching is important, but I think 360 feedback is really important.

So get peer feedback, right? But talk to your peers, because chances are, if there's six or seven or eight of you, you're not all eight that manager. Somebody's got good data, right? Somebody's got some good information. So I would start with feedback. And then I would just be a good human and take stock and do you have a relationship with the director of ports on your team, right? And you know, like you walk out on your porch, you know that your neighbor across the street will not look at you and has called the HLA on you twice in the last 90 days. You don't have a good relationship, but you know the guy next door like any ketchup and he's always willing to, she's always willing to use a ketchup, right?

You're a human. you've got a good relationship with me. And if you don't, do the 360, get some feedback and take stock in it. And then I would, after that, then I would sit down with my directs and not like formal, just chat with them and see if you know them like you know them. And if you're like me and you sometimes get wrapped up in the tasks of the day, be intentional about finding 30 minutes to do something outside of work with that person, not like outside of work, but like go to their desk and talk to them. I have Legos in my office, right?

When I do go to the office, simply because it's like, we can play Legos for 15 minutes and chat, not really about work, but work often comes up, but it's just, do you have a relationship? Yeah. If you do, chances are you'll start to build trust and don't get frustrated if like, you're like, I've been building a relationship for like a week and personally, it's like anything, right? It takes time, you have to curate. It's unfortunate that like a lot of our careers that companies happen so fast, because people are in and out in 12, 18 months. You know, I've got some people that were lapsing five years together this year, and it's great because you have a depth of relationship on five years, but yeah, it does take time.

Yeah. That's what I was saying. Barrett comes in the air, Barrett's a former guest of the show. Problem managers will never recognize where they are the problem. So I agree with you, but here's my argument. And this is, so actually this is why I push back. I think there's a lot of problems proper managers out there who actually would love to get better. Yeah, but they haven't had the safe space. Sure. In their past to be able to make a safe space for themselves now. Yeah, I think that there are definitely people in this world that you will come across that are not self-aware, right?

I think Steve Jobs used to call it the reality distortion field or whatever it is. Right. It's like you just don't believe whatever the rest of the world is reflecting. Right. I think that percentage of people is smaller than the percentage of people that what you just said. I don't know what it is. I don't know what the balance is. But I guess it's like nine out of ten or this and like one out of ten or like I am not that person, right? Right. And I agree. And I think it's tough because I do think that it is a it's a it's a cycle, right?

Because you see people get promoted for not having this behavior. Therefore you start to exhibit that behavior in order to get promoted. And I really think that the current generation and remote work and what's happening in our tech culture is changing that. And it's going to end up cycling that stuff out. But I do think there's going to be this period where we've got to figure out how to how to grow as people. Yeah. I don't know. 100% Jason comes in. If you're asking that question, you're likely in the right place. Again, just that was a few minutes ago with just, Hey, how can I be better?

Yeah. Unless it comes in when you speak up and give someone else the courage to do the same 100 or people resonate with this point. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, look who it is. Alex, Nate, that was like, hey, buddy. Yeah. Man, can I come into town and go to Cool Springs and get some of that place down there? We love to go. I love it. I love it. So as we, so I'm kind of curious, right? We're talking about vulnerability and stuff. Yeah. I want to kind of put you on the spot here. Sure. Go for it. What do you think is one thing that you struggle with as a leader right now and you're trying to get better with?

Man. And so if you go back to the fact that, you know, I'm still pretty involved and it's letting go, it's letting go of things. So like I was, I don't know, in the 10, 11, 12 employee range where I'm at now, we're, I don't know, we're much bigger than that now. And so letting go of stuff I worked on, right, and letting go of some level of control. And it's letting people have that space to go make mistakes, right? Yeah. the CTO, the pressures are on delivery, the pressures are on market, the pressures are on all these things. And if you're sitting there going, hey, look, my team's gonna be a month late because they came up on something.

Do I have the courage to lean in with my team, or do I have the backbone to collapse and go, you know, hey, you guys just get done the next two days? Like, I mean, for me, it is. And I mean, I'm, I think that's the biggest thing. And it's the thing that I always struggle with. And it's the thing I'll probably always struggle with in my career is just allowing people to go do an experiment and fail and support. It's not natural in my nature. Well, I was talking to, I think I don't know where I was recently, but I was talking, oh, it was actually another podcast I was doing last month.

And I was actually talking to someone on my team and she has two kids and we were talking about learning how to fail and how I feel like in today's society, we're not really, we can't fail. Right? I just feel like there's just like overall expectation where, you know, don't fail. You got to do it all right the first time.

And I feel like I feel like that can really manifest itself in a really poor way, especially as you get older and further in leadership, where if you don't let give Give yourself the grace to fail let alone give give grace to me around you to fail then all of a sudden everyone's just stressed They are entire time they are I mean going back to golf, you know, I think about it You know if you play 18 holes you play really around let's say shoot 67 right ago I'm play really around you 67 never on coffee promise you I didn't hit 67 perfect golf shots

Right, I've never done that like in anybody that's on p2 to our prom even a 59 guys you for the United like me I could shut 57 to 58 right there's always going to be some level of that and I think if it's the same thing in life right like in the same thing in tech you're not going to make every decision perfect you're not going to make every day perfect what I think you kind of have to go back to is you know how well did I do on the things that I can control and how well did I do in my process and

how well I'm doing on some of that and then it adds itself up right I think sometimes we get so focused again it's on that goal on the outcome And it's fantastic to have goals.

But if you don't hit them, you don't beat yourself up over it. It's OK to go, man, I didn't get there. But what did I learn? Right. I don't know how many different want to recast that goal. It is. And you're right. I think there's a ton of pressure and stress. And the bleed in of work from home is, I'm just looking at my kids. My kids are homeschooled. So they're on a break. And they're literally out there. Now, there's so many distractions. And my life is bled together. How do you, yeah, how do you have the grace to fail? I love that. I love that.

So, as you wrap up here, last five minutes or so, and Rakesh, time to do an unfortunate work with you for years. There's Rakesh, here's my buddy, he and I, we're at WeJoke, we're gonna be in the nursing home together, like still talking about tech, like it needs new stuff. I love it, I love it. So as you wrap up here, I always want to obviously give feedback to hiring managers and job seekers, even when we go super kind of heavy leadership like we've done today. Yeah. You know, listen, the market's hard right now. You're a CTO. You're a part of hiring. What's some advice that you have for job seekers right now in just the world that I've been right now?

I'm pretty, I don't know. I've kind of got an interesting approach on it. When I talk to people, again, I want you to be authentic. I don't want you to pretend to be outgoing. I don't want you to pretend to be super nerdy. Just be who you are, right? And I have some really, really good developers that I've worked with that have been musicians. I've had some really good developers that have like classical computer science training. It doesn't really matter where you're coming from. The two biggest things are aptitude and attitude, right? And I would highlight that when you're talking to people. And I would do what you're telling people to do.

Connect, right? I do believe that you're going to find a job through your network, whether your network is a recruiter you trust or whether it's through peers you have or through other folks. Continue to reach out even when it's uncomfortable. And even if it's just one connection a week, right? Like make some connection, get out there. The other thing I would say is I like, I like what you tell people, create content. You know, I think it's, I've met more people just through talking about stuff we're doing. And so I would go out there and just post, post your GitHub repo, go do something, go do a side project, go, go write some art.

I don't know, I would get out there and just create some content because it is. It is gonna come through networking, but you wanna be able to highlight not what you've done, but what you can do, right? And I think that's important. And you wanna highlight that you can be good on a team. And then you can, you know yourself and you know what role you fit in and where you play. And guess what, if that company doesn't need exactly who you are, unless you absolutely have to, which I've been there, I've absolutely had to have a job at that moment, know your value, right?

Know what you want to do. And if you can stand it, find what makes you fit, because honestly, my dad used to tell me, and I bet hundreds of dads have told people this, you know, finally you love and you'll never work a day in your life, right? And find where you want to be and what you want to do. And it won't be like work, right? I think that's really important because work is such a big part of our life. You want to find meaning in it. Yeah. What quick advice to hiring managers right now and other organizations, I mean, what are you seeing in regards to maybe, what your team's doing well with interviewing, and just in general thoughts from that.

So we move quick. Like we go from, and we're working with, got a couple of agencies. I've shout out to the Vaco guys. Well, definitely the Vaco Dallas. So move quick. We'll go from Monday to Friday with a hire. So don't make somebody sit for two, three, four, five weeks. If you don't like somebody for whatever reason, give them feedback, especially if they went through an interview. If it's like you get 10,000 resumes, You can't talk to everybody, but if you talk to somebody on the phone or on a Zoom, give them that feedback as soon as you know it. So that they can either continue to be excited about the role or they can move on.

So the second thing is don't burden people with complicated assignments and take homes and all that stuff unless you're gonna compensate them. People are busy and there's lots of places to work that there's other ways to suss out good technical capabilities. I feel strongly about that. I've been through a bunch of those. I've been psychoanalyzed in interviews. I've gone through like 12 person round tables where you get beat up for like four hours. And like you really want, you really want people to, it's like the first experience you want people to have on your team, right? Like you wanna go people into your circle and see if this is a good fit for you.

And the third is don't hire for skills, hire for that aptitude and attitude. You'll be surprised that, you know, like some of our tech stack, a lot of people don't have a lot of experience in it. And we hired several people last year We've never touched it before and they were productive in two to four weeks because we've got some really good training. Thanks to guys like Rakesh and others who've done a good job onboarding. And so look for people that have good aptitude, good attitude and you just, good humans you want to work with and they'll surprise you. Preach, preach. All right, ma'am. So as you wrap up here, last question I always ask.

Cool. So this show is called Guidance Council 2.0 for a reason. We have Guidance Councilors of Middle School, High School and College, but now you don't really have that. And I think you alluded to this a little bit when we were chatting backstage, but I'm curious if you bring it up again or not. What would be your biggest piece of career advice for your younger self? Oh man, that's a really good question. So lean into those that wanna help you. I think find those people that you really value that generally have your best interest and listen. Even when it's hard to listen because I'm a doer, I touched the hot stove as a kid, even after my dad warned me.

You know, I have to experience, listen. And I think we talked about it. I was fortunate to have two or three people that were instrumental in kind of setting me on the right path. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing now. And that's the way that's the reason I like being this way is that it's knowledge is free and I'm literally just paying it forward, right? And so to my younger self, just listen, learn, put your time in and good things will happen from hard work. I love it. I love it. Well, Ben, thanks for joining me, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

I'm going to blast. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for Alex for the intro. I love you and I. I love it. But for those of you, please go kang with Ben on LinkedIn. He's actually posting more content now, which I love it. A lot of AWS stuff. Yeah. I'm getting the latest works. I know Ben. I know Ben even more now for the show, but I, even if I didn't know Ben, the thing that you posted a lot about is AWS stuff. So in my mind, I might bend, bend the AWS guy, right? And so again, it's my encourage people to, to post, because you start to be not become known as that person without you even realizing it.

Right. So I think it's incredibly important. Cool. Yeah, come time me. I'm always happy to connect. And if I can help anybody, I've told you for Taylor, I'm happy to help, like whatever you need. And if I can't do it, I'll try to connect you with somebody that can't. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, y'all. Are you all the good ones for tomorrow? 11 a.m. Central tomorrow, new time, just for tomorrow. I did a poll. Everybody wants me to move to 11 AM Central. We'll have to figure it out, because that just kind of wrecks my entire day. But I have the head of DevRel for Snapchat.

Oh, sweet. I mean, on the show tomorrow. Her name is Teresa. I'm very excited to have her. She's been on maternity break for the last six months. So she says I'm the very first interview that we've gotten after maternity. So I'm really, really excited to have her on the show tomorrow. So 11 AM Central, head of DevRel at Snapchat. And Ben, thank you so much, my friends. Thanks for having me. Stay on real quick. Stay on real quick. I can say about it y'all. You have a good one. Bye, y'all. 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. Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.