colin lord - pto, hobbies, and taking care of yourself

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

there's notification really yeah what's going on y'all we live happy Monday uh I want to build the excitement come on we're supposed to come on Thursday Wednesday uh sometime last week Wednesday and uh um my mother-in-law was a little under the weather so she was my babysitter and she had to cancel last minute she had to go home so we rescheduled but I'm actually calling I just to be totally truth alone so Mondays are the best days um for like reach and engagement on LinkedIn just a little Pro tip if you're posting on if you're trying to decide what days to post on on LinkedIn

Mondays the earlier the earlier in the week better Monday Tuesday Wednesdays are great Thursdays are fried tails off a little bit so that's just a little fun free bit of information but Colin did not know that yeah there you go there you go uh so Colin actually Colin and I were just chatting about some some other things Colin when when did we meet again when was the first time we met yeah maybe 2017 2018 down in Chattanooga yep so um so so this relationship was forged by a conference again get out there do the conference thing um it works I promise then Carl and I

have been friends since um but I'm really excited about today's conversation not quite we're going to talk work stuff don't get me wrong it's all going to be centered around work work-life balance yada yada but we're going to talk about some fun stuff that I really haven't talked about a lot PTO Hobbies taking care of yourself what does that look like Colin and I both have a both have um I was gonna say a passion project but like we have hobbies right Colin likes to run which is crazy crazy person my body would really just break um if I ran long distances and then I

play Ice Hockey um my body would break if I played ice hockey so there you go so uh so really excited to catch up for concert a few a few announcements as always first off please comment say hey let me let us know we tune in from right so I I've just coined this thing as a networking event this is a networking event you show up you watch somebody you watch me go live you learn some things you say hey drop your name in the comments tell us where you tune in from and the reason why I say that is because so this way Dev

can connect with Erica can connect with JC can you connect with Richie John etc etc and so very very important even if you're watching this in the future please comment there's a lot of people that still come through here also another thing I got a DM the other day from from one of one of our one of my usuals or whatever they're called one of one of y'all that tune in constantly and they they actually made a good point actually I think it was John actually which which he's here I just saw his name John John actually said this to me John said hey can

you let people know to send a note um in the LinkedIn invite that you're you came from guidance counselor 2.0 because he says I have a lot of people connect with me but I don't know where they came from so this is so this is a really good point please make sure whenever you are connecting with people always drop a note right always drop a note I don't know where Colin went hopefully he comes back here in a second um but but drop a note um hey Khan hey I don't know what happened there that was crazy you just dropped uh so please drop a

note that'll be great uh second thing ask questions uh Colin is a very busy man um and this is one of the few times that you can get an engineering manager uh like one-on-one and he doesn't bill you right so ask questions um please be engaged the final thing um I actually have a few more things we we got quite a little bit of announcements um I want to give a shout to that conference they are the official coffee sponsor of the show um I so I'm not drinking it right now Clark I know you're here I'm not drinking at the moment I drank it

all last week I got a new shipment of coffee and I try I just want to try something today but that conference d oes have coffee beans but they also Clark puts on an amazing conference called that conference um I'll be keynoting in July which I'm very very thrilled about Colin was in the Austin one in January um and so I would highly check it out go sign up um after going to conferences last week it's worth it you need to be at conferences people you need to be at conferences it's where the magic happens um next thing so I actually um I don't know

if you remember I had a guest on the show David Roberts so he David is is a former developer turned um recruiter and um he actually put out a book and um we talked about it and he loves what we're doing and so we have an affiliate code right so essentially if you buy the book um I get a little money on the side right let's just call what it is but I actually really like what he's doing right he I love guys that were once a developer that is a recruiter and trying to give back so if you do want um I would highly

recommend buying the book um check it out use this link um and uh and yeah go I scope goes for David he's great uh final thing actually I think that was the final thing oh final thing um again uh I am with vaco global Solutions so here's my little business blog vanco Global Solutions we do everything across uh all different parts of your company right so it accounting Finance Ops HR marketing you name it so basically what we want to do is we want to be the One-Stop shop um where you don't have to use another recruiting firm right and so if you do want

to use us um Colin I already talked about it off air smile direct Club has a massive recruiting team so they don't need us right now but if your organization is hurting like if you're like Taylor I really like your content but I'm a CPA and I I'm a I'm a controller at a company that's great we have an entire division that does accounting and finance stuff so hit me up I'll make connections and we'll go from there all right that's enough thank you for attending my TED Talk um ther e's a lot of comments here we got the crew out today Khan I promise

you're going to start talking here in a second Deb Erica JC Richie John uh Taya Clark Alex Joe LinkedIn user and pretty shots Jonathan Riley JC Scott John uh groupies yeah groupies Allison John let's see yes it was John Brett uh Holly's great to see you uh I know Clark don't be mad I listen I I love it um Joe again it's great to see you um Dev let's see here Alex um fritzin I love this so much awesome cool Colin let's give the people what they want who are you what do you do and we'll go from there so uh since the end of

2018 I've been working for smile direct Club I started as a software engineer and for the last two years or so I'm the engineering manager of the front end teams so basically everything with the website uh goes through one of my teams nice that's cool awesome um and what do you so Colin give a quick background about your backdrop here because uh background about the background background go ahead so uh this is obviously not a very professional background it's full of Coca-Cola bottles and Atlanta Braves bobble heads uh I grew up in Atlanta Georgia uh I was a brave season ticket holder a falcon season

ticket holder and just because I now live in Nashville Tennessee doesn't mean my sports pack my sports passions have changed and in 2020 when we all got sent home for covid uh that like weird March 2020 time where nobody quite knew what was going on and all the news was at home I we all kind of noticed on my team at the time that if you had won an Emmy suddenly it ended up like behind them and they tried to make like these super professional backgrounds for the news so with us being at home we tried to make weird strange backgrounds so these Coke bottles

and these bobble heads were in a box and they'd been in a box for years and years and years and every time we moved my wife's like what are you gonna do with these and I always said I don't know but I'm not getting rid of them and now s ince March 2020 there's a shelf behind me with all of this stuff since then I've added lighting so now you can see the bobble heads better uh but there's really no backstory other than March 2020 it was a weird time I have a weird background and now I still have a weird background come May happy

May 1st May 2023.

I love it I love it and so let me are those Coke bottles are they all like limited runs yeah they're all like for a sports championship that an Atlanta team won or something that's like limited it's not just like I just went down to Publix got a six-pack of coke because if I did that I would drink it all those bottles shouldn't be drunk I'm sure they're all flat and probably toxic yeah exactly exactly um all right Colin so so let's get into the topic and why people are here to to see you so PTO hobbies and taking care of yourself um let's just

go ahead and start super high level you and I were chatting backstage um why is it so important to have hobbies in PTO and taking care of yourself so above all else for me as an engine when I was writing code every day if I don't have a chance to take a step back and get away from a monitor and go outside or something like you're you're gonna get sloppy and it's like there was a point in my career where I would write code all day and then go home and work on a side project and then play video games and I was always staring

at a screen uh back in I guess like 2016 2017 uh my my boss at the time actually peer pressured me into trying a triathlon and I didn't really know how to swim I owned a bike but didn't really ride it and that has become like my all-encompassing hobby I had a triathlon over in Knoxville on Saturday uh I usually get up around five in the morning to do training um it's very much away from the screen away from writing code and there's been so many times where like I've been in the pool swimming laps and I'll think like oh my God that's the fix

for the buck like your brain being shifting into doing some thing else yeah just you'll you'll end up being more productive at the thing you're trying to be productive at I've I've noticed that and I'm kind of curious about your your behaviors and your Tendencies I've noticed specifically with me you know I've had a lot of engineering managers and leaders on the show and we've we we've we've talked about rest and and working rest into Sprints for engineers and having that that time you know um uh you know Jason langsdorf um for those who do not know him he actually was the one he was

the very first conversation I had about rest about two years ago he was the very first guy to start talking about rest so it's been a fascinating topic I love talking about this uh for me icon I don't know when you've when you feel like you hit a wall me is like around three or four o'clock I start scrolling on Tick Tock or well he's scrolling on Twitter a little too much like I find myself just not engaged and and if a few like a year ago I would just kind of sit in it a little bit more now the moment I catch myself I

get up out of my desk and I go you know make the bed or clean the hat like do something like that empty the dishwasher just to try to like give my brain a break and still be productive active what what's kind of your Tendencies look like that maybe you've had to learn or relearn well what you just talked about I mean I don't know what what the right phrase is here but there's two kinds of walls was the phrase that popped into my mind there's the I need to take 15 minutes and just go for a loop around the building if I'm in an

office or around my neighborhood or whatnot and then there's the I need to take a week off because I'm totally burned out and I think it's a skill like anything else learning to recognize which one it is uh sometimes you just need a 15 minute walk sometimes you need a long weekend sometimes you need a week away from from the code uh if anybody um from my team is watching or will watch us in the future uh some thing I always I've always said to them a thousand times over is let me know if you're hitting either one of those and whenever anyone on my

team ever takes a vacation I always encourage them to like literally uninstall outlooking teams from the phone I you don't need to be on your vacation getting your pop-up notification on your phone about stand up or whatever the bug is because you're in you're instinctively going to want to click on it and oh is this my bug is this something I have to fix could they help me and I don't want anybody to do that when you're unplugging and you're we're charging you can't half do it that's why I always tell them like uninstall teams like I literally don't want to hear from you until

I see you next week yeah absolutely absolutely what um uh so talk about how do you balance the 15 minutes right so let's talk about that and and try to maybe give some and also by the way Allison's talking about Garden Allison there's a foot of snow building up out of your window Allison is in Michigan Allison's in Michigan um that's insane because it is stunning in 55 degrees and beautiful here right now it is wonderful in Nashville today I know um so what do you do in the 15 minutes Colin like like where you need a quick brain break what's you know because again

I want to share this stuff because maybe you do something that somebody else can Implement right so so for me I I'm usually pretty good at identifying I've got to take a step back because eslint is bombing out or I'm just not productive at writing this documentation or whatnot uh what I would do in that 15 minutes where I just kind of need to take a step back and recharge I don't think there's an answer that is like one size fits all I think you kind of have to listen to your your own body maybe it's for me I want to go watch some highlights

from the Braves game I want to go walk outside like those are two totally different things but like when I'm doing Triathlon my my coach always says like l isten to your body that's the same kind of same thing here listen to your brain it's it's telling you it's tired but it's also gonna probably on some level tell you what it needs to do instead to recharge and I mean there's obviously a time to power through if production is down like that's not the time to take a walk but I've very rarely ever regretted just standing up from this desk and and going somewhere outside

and then and then coming back in 10 minutes or so and and just starting fresh I I think there's all value in doing that so we both lead teams and I think I think the I I think it's hard for people and you got to create a safe place right I'm trying to figure out how to unpack this question a little bit because it's multifaceted so managers have to create a safe place for their employees to feel comfortable taking time during the middle of the work day right um so one you gotta encourage your people in Crazy switch to that but two you the the

on the other end of it individuals you got to communicate when you're taking time off right just just hey drop it and doing it but I would also encourage folks to to do it more right because I feel like right now I feel like in today's society and I think if there's one thing covet has shown me with everybody is everyone's overworked right everyone's taking on too much or has taken on too much maybe trying to back out of it I know I'm trying to to to back out of just all the work that I've taken on to try to get a little bit more

even even killed um what would be your advice for people who maybe in their mind are struggling to take the time to to get away from the desk because they feel like they're not being productive because I deal with that too well the the longer term answer to that I would say is to cultivate a good relationship with your manager yeah and if you're in a manager position your your teammates uh because you want you want ideally a world where if they aren't feeling up for it or if something's bumm ed them out or if they're stressed out to feel comfortable bringing that to the

table yeah uh like it's not like I expect them to tell me all about their personal lives but if one of them shares that they're in the process of buying a house I I want to know that because I want to make sure that I don't burden you with extra stuff while you're trying to sign your name a thousand times and deal with closings and all and all that type of stuff and then the inverse was is true if if you're in that spot and you're kind of struggling with how to talk to your manager I would say just go have the conversation one thing

that I think is true that's happened with remote work in covid is it's scarier to go ask for something via a screen or a team's message or a slack message versus if I was in the office which I was every day until March 2020 like just going and talking to my manager or seeing them in the break room like you it's harder to read your team it's harder to read your manager because all we get are our little dings on our phones and and slack messages but if you've spent the time to try to cultivate some level of relationship with the people you work with

Beyond work which on some level is obviously kind of hard but it's it's it's more about just kind of knowing each other's personalities and sure then it's less scary to say hey like I'm having a day like can can you just can you cover this meeting that we've got in 20 minutes because I need a sec and yeah let's catch up on the other side I I would never say no I want you in that meeting like I would reschedule it or I would cover for them or whatever most people I think and I'm certainly guilty of this for a lot of my career is

oh well I'm asking for something that sounds bad this is going to look poorly upon me right right and and in the manager spot somebody bringing that to me I'm going to think more highly of you because it's something that I need to know if you're not ready for that meeting or you're not up for it like that the meeting's not going to go as well so instead of being nervous about bringing that to your manager look at it as I would hope most managers would be appreciative and respect that you're bringing it to them because it's helping both of our jobs be easier and

it's important information to have well and it's the whole thing and I want to get the comments here in a second because we got a few comments coming in I I want to get like like managers can't help you unless they know yeah right so it's like for us you know both call and I leading teams like if you're struggling or you know you're stressed out you're trying to sell a house or you know you're dealing with sick kids and you're not telling me and your work starts to suffer you're distracted or missing calls like I I can't help you unless you tell me and

so um I I would definitely coming at it from that perspective if you feel bad taking doing it try to change the narrative and be like I need to just let you know this just just to put this on your radar right and I think that's incredibly important it's the same kind of thing as this is kind of a different tangent but during an interview where if there's 10 things that are listed on the re on the the job listing of Technology you need to know and I only know seven of them if somebody says directly to me hey I crush it at these seven

these other three I'm gonna need I'm gonna need help with that's so much better than just saying oh yeah I know everything I'm ready for this job like the more honest thing you can bring the the better it's going to be whether it's hey I'm struggling with this code I'm not going to look down on you I've broken the build a thousand times so it's not like I I'm like some genius over here like okay let's let's screen share Let's Help the same's true of if there's something in your life that's going on if it's going to it's it's all the same kind of we're

problem solving whether it's hey eslint is angry or I have to meet wi th an appraiser in 30 minutes and I'm stressed about it yeah one is code one is not but they both in some way have the same kind of impact 100 100 I want to get to the questions here uh Joe or not questions comments Joe separate phones I love that nothing work related on my personal phone you know I've been at vaco for so long that I just have one phone one work phone so I mean I kind of can't do that one thing I've done I would say on that maybe

you're I didn't mean interrupt you sorry no no no you're fine I know people all the time okay uh on iOS there there's Focus mode and I you can toggle it and set up your own ones I have one of my focus modes I think I named it vacation or something it it just mutes all work notifications so I I don't want to carry two phones because then it's two things I have to charge and two things but if there's a time that I like really need to disconnect and I don't want to have teams notifications and stuff popping up on my screen I just

toggle on that that Focus notification and you can even set it to like come back in 15 minutes or an hour so I'm gonna need to talk to you about that the one thing I do is I just I shut my whole phone not shut it down I just do not disturb comes on my phone at 6 PM every night so um the only text that comes through on it is my wife's that's it so do not disturb um but to be honest with you it doesn't help I'm on my phone too much uh that was Advocate time it could be a double-edged sword too

it can be distracted in your shiny object that I am guilty of wasting time in the day uh I mean here's the deal right I mean I I think it can be distracting if you find yourself doing it if you're finding yourself kind of getting in this rutting communicating to your manager over and over it's like hey I'm out again I'm out again I'm out again that that can be distracting but I would hope that your manager would be like hey you've you've talked about this a few times now it's becoming an issue like let's let's try to figure this out because I know Colin

would probably do something like that and I would do that too and the absence of any information like everybody's still going to draw a conclusion so the more background you can provide the the better like I I not to say that like you it's obviously scary to bring that sort of stuff up but if you don't bring it up people are still going to ask why and they're they're gonna probably come up with an answer and right more information you can provide for them the better 100 Alex Goes how important are breaks during the job search ooh it's hard to feel good about taking time

off looking for work but also burnout all right come on you go first I have lots of thoughts on this but I want to hear I I I think you should try to approach it much in the same way that you would like a personal side project or whatnot you can't just apply for jobs 24 hours a day and search for them either like at some point there's a point of diminishing returns uh it depends on where you're looking what your skills are all that stuff but at some point it is more productive for your job search to not keep searching because the quality of

your work is going to go down much in the same way at some point it is productive for me not to code because my code is going to go downhill and then I'm going to have bugs to fix on Monday yeah absolutely I would say this Alex so I actually had an engineer message me this I would say about three or four years ago and I'll never forget the message he messaged me and he goes hey I'm really struggling right now I'm on the job search and I can't find a job and I'm sitting here walking my dog in a park trying to clear my

brain and all I can think about is how I how I'm not doing something you know what I told this guy I said listen I said the only thing you need to focus on is the number one the one intentional conversation today I talk about all the time one conversation a day if you can at least get somebody on the phone or z oom and talk with them and have an in-depth conversation about who they are what they like about their job all that stuff then in my opinion you've done your job for today everything else is is is is is a plus and again

some people can take that and don't like it some people could like that but for me Alex I think that your the job search is a full-time job and so you need to approach it like you do your job right you don't work all the time with your job right you take breaks and so again I would highly recommend it to schedule time for lunch schedule time for an afternoon walk like do that stuff um but then again focus on that one number right that one conversation more thoughts on that that's solid sounds good uh Elliot because of distractions with Garden my garden DIYs Etc

and phone distractions I went on some ADHD meds now to get off more stuff but yeah now I struggle stepping away a lot even here yeah again right like people you know one of the things that I've realized is is I like bouncing around a lot with it at work and doing a bunch of different things hence the recruiters Anonymous unicorn finders guys I mean just everything um and and I do realize I need to step away from it time to time so again I'm I'm glad that you've acknowledged that Colin anything yeah I mean I'm glad that you've you've found a solution here uh

because it's something that it there's there's no glory in just powering through it and for other engineer especially when you power through it eslint's going to find you yeah I know John comes in learning how to disconnect from work when not working is extremely difficult with work from home and teams across several time zones it's almost someone working on normal hours yeah yeah so amongst SDC we're we're across multiple continents multiple time zones just on my team and one nice thing about teams is if you hover over each user it shows what their time is and um you know like oh it's it's it'd be

6 30 here in Nashville but it's 8 30 or 4 30 whichever way it is um it even before work from home and across several time zones the internet is always on like if prod goes down at 2 30 in the morning is that any worse or better than 2 30 in the afternoon I guess on one level it is from an audience perspective but if if prod's down like my phone's gonna ring and I've got to go after it and fix the problem right um it's really I would say uh like kind of a discipline that we've got to hold ourselves and also figuring

out other people that you work with um if if there's somebody that I know like there's people on my team who are Pacific time and I'm in Nashville and I'm starting my day at 8 39 o'clock the sun may not be up over there yet I either need to know that I need to like hold messages to them until they're they're awake or I need to start a message with hey when you get up and get online and and just kind of learning your team there's some people who if I message them they're going to respond and I don't want them to respond at seven

o'clock there's other people who if I message them early I know that they're not going to respond until their working hours start so it's it's kind of finding a dynamic with each person I don't know one size fits all solution to this year other than we have to respect each other's time zones and we have to respect working hours because everybody can't be on all the time you know it's funny I when I was at connect to Omaha last week I caught up with a uh um uh we were um uh we were at dinner and I was talking with the director of engineering at

Accenture he runs 300 people across the globe and he was talking about the time time difference so yeah it's a thing you know one thing I've started to do to respect my team members that I used to not do um is schedule send so schedule sent on slack schedule send on Outlook um you know if I think of something at six o'clock at night you know old Taylor would have fired it off immediately but I also know that if I got an email from my boss at six o'clock I would want to respond to it immediately so I I try to respect that time so

that's something I've tried to do as well yeah uh let's see here I think I said Jonathan my wife experienced vertigo for the first time before my work day start brought it up to my manager he told me to take the day off take care of her yeah again right I mean I I think at the end of the day I think I'm not going to over speak so there's a lot of bad managers out there but I think there's a lot of managers out there who would still who who still want to do the right thing and so I just think you got to

communicate I can only speak for for me as a manager here but if somebody came to me with that I would say by all means take the rest of the day and then the the following day I would check in and say hey how are things going yeah we need more time right yeah and like whatever we might have lost in the the four hours or eight hours like I would hope that it would be a great experience like like what you were just saying there and it would cultivate a better relationship uh between the two yeah absolutely a lot of comments it'll this is

hit a chord and I knew it would with a lot of people uh since I've made a Candor my default about where I'm at um I've seen a mark difference in how it's received almost no one has ever responded negatively to sharing honestly from my sharing honestly what's going on yeah I mean listen like if you go hey come on this is where I'm at I'm extremely stressed I got a lot of stuff going on at home I need to stay off Colin be like okay I mean what's wrong gonna say like no I don't know like my answer for that if you if somebody

on my team came here with that I would say cool I'll see you tomorrow and let me know how I can help or something to that effect the hardest thing about that I think honestly isn't saying it to your manager or saying it to to your teammates or whatever it's being at a place where you are comfortable to say that because as a manager I I of course want to know if you're having problems and what can I do to help but you're also having to tell people hey I'm having problems with something and that can be scary and uncomfortable and that's probably the biggest

challenge to overcome because now you're not presenting yourself in this perfect image of I'm this awesome person I got everything figured out my code never breaks the build prod never goes down I'm a perfect engineer actually I'm saying I'm having some stuff that I'm trying to struggle through yeah it'll make other people honestly from from my perspective I will think more of you that you are comfortable bringing that to me but it's also scary and challenging to go bring that to somebody else and I respect that it's not a simple hey how am I how are you doing I'm fine like that's an easy answer

how are you doing I've got a lot of stuff going on in my life right now I might need some time that is a scary bridge to cross when I was younger I wouldn't have felt in any way comfortable saying that to my manager hell I might even struggle saying that to some of my friends and now I'm bringing that to the workplace so like I get that this on some level is is scary but it is probably one of the most productive things you can do to deal with the problem that you're you're facing is to bring it to other people and see how

they can help like nobody should ever have to go at this alone right I love that I love that a lot of comments Lord have mercy trying to get through them uh let's see here Elliot comes in talk talking to your manager about these things is so hard though how did you learn how to have these hard conversations um I'm gonna be honest with you counseling uh I am in counseling to have hard conversations I for those of you Enneagram fans I'm a three and and unhealth and when things are nervous it it pivots to a nine which is The Peacemaker which is let's not

have any confrontation so something that I'm having to work on column it is extremely scary the first time that you would bring something like this to your manager uh the first time that that I did this I was hella uncomfortable I think I was worried oh he's gonna fire me because I have stuff going on in my life um it gets easier with practice I know that's kind of a cliche thing to say but once you're you're kind of comfortable with being who you are uh like I'm the guy that sits in front of soda bottles and bobble heads I I am who I am

and if I'm having a hard day I would really hope that on my team folks would bring that to me so from a manager side I try to cultivate a place where people are comfortable with that uh if we have a bad day at work or there's something going on as a company that's rough I usually try to reach out to everyone on my team and say how are you doing I try to be honest with them how I'm feeling and if I kind of start the process I think it kind of gets it going um if your manager doesn't do that there's still nothing

wrong with with going to them and saying hey here's how I'm feeling and here's here's the real deal if they respond negatively then you've learned that maybe that's not something I want to do maybe you need to find a different manager type stuff but I think that most managers especially like good managers are going to be happy and receptive to you saying that even though it is scary it feels scary it that's but it it really shouldn't be and once you kind of establish that relationship it it that that fear uh hopefully will go away yeah for sure the income's in my biggest subscribers I

love it it's good to see you man um all right so we have a lot of comments here I want to go and wrap up respect Collins time and I gotta bounce to something else Colin last two questions for you and again thanks for coming on man um I knew it was gonna be a blast and we'll obviously have to have you on for part two since since and this was totally fine this was very audience-led which was amazing um so first thing a ny tools technology Tech trends that you or your team are evaluating right now and that that you may want to share

share with the with the crew um I think everyone's trying to figure out some piece of how AI is going to affect each of our roles and what the answer is there I don't have the answer to that yet I do know that GitHub copilot's pretty cool um debug some stuff uh the answer probably isn't a black and white it's not like it's bad it's good um but that's a short high level answer to something that was on my mind last week I love that uh last question I always end um you know we had guidance this is shows called guidance counselor 2.0 because we

had guidance counselors in middle school high school kind of college but now as adults we don't really have like a guidance counselor um what would be your biggest career advice to your younger self oh man we don't have enough time um it it was it is a hundred percent very clearly uh to reach out to others when I need help be it LinkedIn be it co-workers be it my manager uh when I started in this I I I had imposter syndrome to the max I probably still do I thought I was a lousy engineer I didn't know what I was doing and I wanted to

try to hide those feelings from people and my career grew only when I started getting comfortable with other people letting them look at my code letting them critique my conference talk submission something like that there's a lot of places out there that offer help and most people do not take advantage of them and I think it's because they are trying to fight an internal battle with themselves like you mentioned that conference earlier Clark lets people go talk to him about their submissions to speak at his conference and he says that most people don't go that is a man offering help and people are not taking

him up on it I think most managers would offer help if somebody said you know what view is blowing my mind right now or next is blowing my mind I need help with this yeah I would say okay well I don't want you to struggle like what can we do to help exactly help is always out there and I think the biggest bridge to cross is in your own head and that that was that'd be my biggest advice for a younger column without a beard that is rapidly graying is to go and get help from others because it's out there and it's helped my career

every time I've done it I love it I love it awesome well y'all thanks for tuning in um today we appreciate it Go Go connect with Colin on uh Twitter on Facebook um he posts a lot of his uh running stuff on um I said Facebook uh Instagram um there's not a lot of Colin Lords out there so if you find one it's probably me I love it I love it Collins down real quick so I can say bye to you off here but y'all thank you again for tuning in this morning tomorrow I have my guy Shashi low Shashi is another connection I met

at that conference um down in Austin he is a senior engineer at Microsoft it's gonna be a fantastic conversation he has a huge huge passion for helping people especially Junior Dev so it's gonna be a great conversation tomorrow y'all have a