too much powerpoint not enough code w/neil chaudhuri, president of vidya software

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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. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it for 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, social media at T D S and T D E 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 right. What's going on everybody? Good morning. When I say everybody, I mean nobody. because no one is here yet because it takes always a second to populate. How did a great live show Friday if you didn't catch it? With Brandon, he's a designer at Uber.

He was at Twitter. He talked about getting into big tech. And then today I'm excited for a long weekend, long Labor Day weekend. I worked on my golf swing this weekend. Golfed a fair amount. But I'm excited to hang out with Neil. So I met Neil on the old Twitter. I will always call it Twitter never called X. Yeah on the old Twitter. And so I'm excited to catch up with Neil today Neil Neil has a gift Neil is a gift He is somebody who repurposes videos on the internet Beautifully again. Don't know how he does it. It is a gift is so much of a gift I was like, you know I want to interview him because based off the way he posts his videos.

He's got to be funny So Neil I hope you're funny today. Just just set them bar really really high boy. We're in trouble already We're in trouble. But for those of you tuning in, good morning, please say, hey, you all, most of you all know the drill. For those of you who do not know the drill, this is a networking platform. It is a podcast morning show first. It's a networking platform second. But the reason why I tell people to comment, say, hey, is because we're not in the metaverse yet, right? We don't have goggles on. Actually, guidance cuts with 2.0, the metaverse be pretty sweet.

But we're not there yet. And so the only way to really bring attention to yourself to network is to comment, even Even if you are lurking this morning, just throw up a favorite emoji or something because what happens is there's so many people that have found mentored mentees on the show, apprenticeships, internships, jobs on the show, all because they've DM people. Also what I want to do is I want to create an ecosystem for everybody that follows me to network off the back of me. So what does that look like? If I were you and I was watching the show, I would network with every single person, every single day that comments.

I would network with every single speaker I have on the show. So go connect with Neil, send Neil message that hey, Neil, sorry on guidance, Council 2.0 today. Then I would hop on over to unicorn founders, my other podcast, because the man can't have too many podcasts. And I would network with every single founder, CEO that I bring on there. If you do that and you take time for the next, I would say if you like sit down and do it for the next 30 days, you are going to know a buck ton of people. I'm just going to go and say it now. So that's what I want for you.

Also ask questions. Neil is very good what he does, at least I think he is, and so ask questions and he'll answer them. Finally, I do, listen, there's been a lot of people on my wall on my feed that have gotten jobs, that have gotten promotions. I don't do this enough. If you have gotten a job, if you've gotten a promotion, if you've gotten a raise recently and you feel like bragging on yourself, please do so. I feel like we as human beings, we always move on to the next thing, right? We're like, hey, we got a title change. When's my next title change? Right?

Or, hey, I got a raise. When's my next raise? Right? So I want to celebrate you. There's a lot of people on the, that are constant viewers of the show. So if you've gotten a raise, if you got an title change, if something good's happened in your career, please post it. I want to celebrate you for a second. If you don't feel comfortable celebrating yourself, which you should, but if you don't, please feel free to celebrate somebody else. Ricardo, it's good to see you RJ, Joe, Alex, Ritu, Menzie, Brett, Raj, Mary, you genius. Great to see you all this morning. Again, keep commenting. I would love to hear from you.

Want to give a shout out to that conference. I ask Clark Sell who runs that conference for a coffee mug. He sends me a goblet. This thing is big as my head, but check it out. It's the only conference that I know of that has their own coffee bean line, and it's really good I'm drinking it right now. So go check that out for a few bucks off. Also, the Austin call for papers, whatever. Or no, the Austin's already been announced. The keynotes are Danny Thompson, Kelly Vaughan, and Shonda Pearson. If you recognize their names, they've all been on my show, but they're also incredible speakers.

So please go check out that conference. And then also shoutoutgun.io where I work. They're great. If you need engineers on tap that actually don't suck, please let us know. We'd love to help you. We got a few more people commenting against Sophie. It's good to see you. Solid win for me. Hey, publish the website. I love that Joe proud of you, man. Joshua, it's great to see you buddy. First time tuning in. I love it, man. I got the top voice badge. That's awesome. Congrats, man. That's fantastic on LinkedIn. LinkedIn user. Yes, that mug is amazing. All right, enough of me running my mouth. Neil, let's get the people what they want, man.

Who are you, what do you do? And we'll go from there. Sure, hey everyone, my name is Neil Chaudhary. I'm the president of a company called Vidya. We basically do all kinds of software modernization and engineering. We're based around Washington, DC, so as you can imagine a lot of our customers or government, but we serve everybody. And there's a lot of people who need modernizing and government and other government. And so a lot of our work is basically web, data engineering, data science, cyber, just a lot of different kinds of areas, which is fine. That's one of the reasons why I decided to do my own thing is I could sort of pick my work and sort of pick my clientele and that sort of thing.

So it's been great. Like I said, in the DC area, so if anyone of you are local, reach out and certainly if you're not, then just find out. I feel like local in DC though isn't local. You got to figure out where in DC you are. I bet because it's probably like you could be in DC, but you can be an hour away from Neil up. That's true. Yeah, especially with traffic. Like you can actually be like maybe a mile away, but it'll take a thousand, two and a half hours. But it was great, but man, yeah, traffic, yeah, it was a lot. Actually, one of my favorite content creators lives in DC.

And he posts a lot about DC. It really is a cool city. I feel like it doesn't get the love that it should because of government and stuff, but it's actually a really cool city. Yeah, Stephen Colbert famously called DC the chocolate city with the marshmallow center. And I think people sort of focused on the marshmallow center part of it. Yeah, right. You know, all the kids who graduated high school back at Torian in the class of 38 kids and came to DC all thing and they're gonna be president one day. And yeah, there is that group. But real DC like Dachelors native DC has so much diversity and great food and culture.

It really does. And dance and just everything. Yeah, absolutely. Shout out RJ picked up a fortune 50 company as a client three weeks ago. Wow. I'm talking about Nick. It's good to see you. All right. So, yeah, we got a lot to dive into today. First off, I want to ask and I'm trying to kind of get out of the work tech talk just a little bit on the pod. What do you do? What do you do for fun, man? That really brings you passion right now outside of work? Sure. What do you win to right now? So right now, I can tell you I've always been a big baseball fan And a lot about the Orioles.

Yes. You're an Orioles fan? Is that a game? Yeah, so I grew up in Maryland some of you who follow baseball may know that Washington DC has a baseball team for the Washington Nationals, but they didn't show up until I was you know kind of had gotten older as a kid. And so I grew up in Maryland and the only team that was close was the Baltimore Orioles. And so I just I would like listen to them on the radio because my parents would let us have cable. And so like I was like a kid in 1930s Brooklyn. I literally would be sitting on my stoop with like on my glove in my hand just throwing the ball into my glove.

Let's see the radio. You just have a lot type of vibe. Yeah, it's exactly awesome. Yeah. Totally a stand-out vibe. I just like listen on the radio and the team was bad in those days, but it didn't matter because that's how you sort of build that love for a team. And now this year, they have the best record in the American League. And they're kind of like ahead of schedule. Like they were really bad for like 2015 on. They sort of like reshuffle the deck, got some new people in. They started drafting really good young players and all these young players have all sort of come together at the same time.

And so they're surprising everyone. Like no one thought they would be this good this quickly, but they are. And I, yeah, so it's just, it's great to have a team that's good again. You know, for the record, this is why I really encourage everybody to post non work stuff a lot because like I'm like, I now keep up with the oils a little bit because of Neil, right? really have any connections to the Orioles, but because Neil posts on my, I should maybe like be knowledgeable of it. So again, most like we got a Philly span in here as well. Okay. It's good to see you.

So Neil, we, we, we weren't going to talk about this specifically, but I do want to ask, I feel like there's a mentality shift from kind of working a nine to five to going out and starting your own thing, which you have done. And ultimately, that could be its own episode in and of itself. But can you talk about the transition? If there are developers who want to go out on their own, what are things to be mindful of and does everyone need to start a company or can they just kind of do their own thing like freelance? Yeah, so by the way, I apologize for the work that's being done outside if you can hear that.

Honestly, you're really quiet. I can't hear a thing. Okay, good. That's good. I don't want everyone to think I'm like running intelligence on my laptop and that's why it's just like getting really... Is that a tech joke? That was a tech joke. Yes. Some of you might think that was fun. One or two of you might think that's But yeah, so for me, now everyone's journey is going to be different. Sure. And there are a lot of hard choices you have to make about your family. That's good, Nick. I've been different ways to about your family and your situation and how you'll get health care.

So for me, I was single. It was around 2014 when like the Affordable Care Act, the market started to come alive. And I was like, you know, I think I can afford healthcare on my own now. And I had a bunch of certifications. I had like a P&P and like agile and all that stuff. And I felt like I had the kinds of things where if I couldn't eat anymore, I could always go back to having a real job. So I felt confident that like, okay, let's just try and see what it takes. And, and I think the key thing is if you've built the relationships, and this is where Taylor is an expert, if you've built the relationships.

If you have enough confidence in your skill set, if you think you can support yourself and your family, whoever you need to support in terms of health care, retirement, disability, all those kinds of things that you sort of don't think about and take for granted when you have an employer, I feel like you can handle all those things. And that if things go wrong, you can always fall back. Then I definitely suggest going forward. There are some annoying things about having your own business like the accounting, just having to keep track of your balance sheet and all those kinds of things. When you start to hire, then there's like, well, I feel really responsible for the health care and support for my employees and giving them the right kind of culture and support that they deserve.

Those kinds of things you have to think about, and they're challenging, and they're outside of the realm of just like delivering hardcore tech. But in the end, like I said earlier, you get to pick you on work, you get to be customers, you get to really drive a lot of things that are pretty important. When, when, what made you take that shit, like what made you take that shift or have that shift? Because you're going to see something different for yourself. I know same that I over over not saying that. I was like, oh, okay. What? Yeah. Tell me when you never mind. Anyways, yeah.

What? Yeah, what's snap? Like what click for you? So I've always been an independent sort of person. Really? And I've always had a desire to kind of do my own thing always. It was the confidence that I was lacking. And then I was on, I was employed with a defense contractor. again, this typical DC kind of work. And I was on working on teams with people that weren't, that didn't feel great to me. I was doing work that wasn't really satisfying to me. And I was looking at all these, I had kind of FOMO for all this other work and all these other opportunities of what's happening around me.

And I was like, I think I can do this. And like I said, I had the safety net of the certifications, other things that where I felt like I could always jump back in if I had to. Right. Right. So it wasn't completely without a net, but I think it was just the combination of wanting to do new things, having that safety net, having the chance for healthcare and because those things matter, those are very important. How hard was it to get healthcare for you? Because I thought it was going to be hard for me. And I mean, honestly, the benefits I have right now, I think are, we're better even than at Bay Co that I was at.

and then they're just doing like a third party at this point. Yeah, yeah. So when you're on the Affordable Care Act, it'll depend on things like who the president is and what the laws they pass are and those kinds of things. But in general, I'm very happy. Like I've definitely found my premiums to be affordable. And of course, if you can get a lot of subsidy to like cut into your premiums even more, depending on how much you make in your situation with your family and on all those sorts of things. So it's definitely something that's accessible for most people, I would say. It's a pretty, obviously any law can be better.

Sure, sure. But yeah, it's definitely a good start. It's not as daunting as I think a lot of people make it out to me, at least that's just not happening. Oh yeah, I think so too, yeah. All right, so really honestly, the main reason why we're here is to talk about tech interviewing is broken and just productivity and stuff. I mean, kind of the, you know, we were Neil and I were chatting backstage and he was like, there's too much PowerPoint and not enough code. And I was like, that's, that's, that's the perfect title for the show. So Neil just started off man. I mean, what do you see in, let's, let's kind of talk more towards developer productivity first and we can end with tech interviewing.

So developer productivity, I mentioned to Neil, if you don't follow him, the pragmatic engineer, I'm not even going to try to pronounce his name, um, Gargley. Goodly. Or rose or something like that. And I don't think it's even gurgling. I think it's gurr. I don't know. I don't think it's even that. But he posted. I'm not sure if you can. Yeah, I know. Well, I did a video and he kind of called me out on Twitter. I'm not a bad dog. Anyways, all being said, he put out a letter or an email last week about developer productivity. That was a big report that Mackenzie did.

And I didn't get through all of it. But Neil saw it too. So let's talk about that. What are your thoughts on developer productivity in today's world? So I think it's a very, very difficult thing to measure, almost impossible, because we work in teams and it's very hard to quantify how much a developer can offer a team. Plus, I also think a lot of the, the onus is really on the organization leadership and the culture to sort of create an environment with that fosters the kind of productivity gains and creativity that you want. And so when you focus on developer productivity, A, it's hard to measure.

B, I think it shifts the burden from where it should be, which is on the organization and the leadership to create flow state, which is something that Sarah Drasner, who is my idol and a genius, has written about, the idea that basically, that it's not about, and we have this argument on tech Twitter every two weeks, do you have to be passionate to be good at tech or can you just do it for a paycheck? And the answer is the latter. you can do it for paycheck if the leadership has created the opportunity for flow state, meaning that they've given you the kind of support such that you feel satisfaction from the work you do, that you feel the goals are achievable, you achieve them, and you're happy.

Maybe it doesn't drive you super passionately, and you could take it or leave it if you wanted and just end up selling fish on a beach somewhere. selling fish on a beach somewhere. But like, but in the end, if you have this flow state, that's what matters. And the thing that really bothered me about the productivity report from McKinsey is that it tried to use actual research from a genius, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, to sort of give the fake academic and intellectual of an year of a research based approach to things, when really all it was in my view is a bad faith rationalization for taxios to lay off people.

That's all it was. It was just a lot of these big tech companies, they wanted to maximize their stock price and Wall Street, I'm a big investor. Wall Street loves layoffs. They love layoffs and stock buybacks. And now you've given them this framework to say, hey, we does this because of of this like academic rigorous framework. And I feel like it's bad faith. It feels gross to me. When you say flow state, what is flow state just for people who may not know that term? Yeah, so Sarah has written about it. I definitely suggest going to her blog. But basically it's this idea that you create an environment that everyone, for example, has good training, that there's teamwork and support.

You have all the right tools you need that the challenges that you're facing are not insurmountable, that they're beatable, they might be hard, but you can get there, those kinds of factors that create an environment such that you get satisfaction out of the work and that you feel like you're contributing to something that you're delivering. And you don't need to be super passionate to deliver as long as you have this flow state to deliver. And so you can go home and leave work at work, which is probably should do anyway, and not even think about it, because you did a good job. And that was it.

And now with that I'm home, I can think of things I really am passionate about, like, you know, fishing or bicycling or baseball or whatever, or the Orioles, yeah. And so that's basically what flow state is about. And that's a responsibility of leadership of the organization and putting them in the developer I think isn't correct. What do you, what are your thoughts? So I did an unofficial poll like, I think it was a year ago at this point, and I posted it on Twitter and LinkedIn and I said, hey, Devs, on average, I want to know if this is slow, say or not, on average, hands on the keys, what percentage of your day is actual coding?

And the average answer was 25%. And so for me, when I think of flow state, this could be wrong and that's okay. I just think like when developers can get into the actual work of things without being distracted and out being pulled in different directions. And the fact of the matter is that 25% in a 40 hour week is eight hours, nine hours ish. The hell are you doing the 31 other hours? Well, some of that may not be the developers fault. Sure. be a lot of meetings, a lot of wasted ceremony, like a lot of the agile consultants will force you to do. And I'm a big agile guy, by the way.

Shots fired. Shots fired. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the agile industrial complex I have issues with, but that's another story from the other day. But yeah, so there is that part of it. But even still, like you're saying, you want that opportunity to get in the zone. And how do you do that? I mentioned, you know, it's funny in the post I wrote about tech interviews. I said that one of the big innovations that people really got into was the open office idea that, oh, well, you know, these cubicles are drab and the carpets beige and the lights are fluorescent and this sucks and it's sort of stymies are creativity and what if everyone sort of got out there and just let everything flow and let just all have this energy happen and turn out the desk and nobody has their things.

Yeah, and we all have foosball tables and curings and it's gonna be awesome. Well, the thing is, what do people end up doing? They sort of fashion their own mental cubicles. They created, you know, they just put their headphones on, put the brim of their hat low, they just wanted that privacy. And sure, you know, beige carpet socks, fluorescent light sock, but the ability to sort of work how you want to work in private and then go out to talk to people either socially or to get answers on your work to do that at your own leisure as opposed to like just being out in the open all the time like you're on Celebrity Big Brother.

Like that's just not really do you do you think we're getting some comments here I'm gonna get these comments here in a second do you think we're heading back to the Cuba I think Ken Wheeler posted it last week about like doesn't this look amazing it was like cubicle farms I know he was being funny but also So I mean, I'm gonna tell you this, I would probably go into office more. Now, my company's fully remote and we have a small office here in Nashville, but like, let's say even at my previous company, Vaco, like with this open office thing, if we actually had like cubicles where I could get my own place and have my own area, I'd be probably more willing to go in because the biggest thing I continue to hear is people get distracted and talk too much.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah. So I feel like, cubicle or not, it's more about what's the goal? The goal is giving developers the ability to have privacy when they want and to interact socially when they want. And how do you do that? Well, I feel like that's a conversation that should be had among the whole team, among the team and the leadership and just have a collaborative, because I feel like it's culture by culture and org by org. And so you can't have a one-size-fits-all like the McKinsey's triangle. No, no. Yeah. And so you just basically want to figure out how can devs have the privacy that they need?

And if it's cubicles, like old school, like office space cubicles, fine, okay. But one way or another, I think it's less about the implementation and more about like what's the goal and the goal is privacy when I want and communication social behavior when I want. Yeah, Nick comes in and he goes, what what could companies do better to balance opportunities for flow state at the same time, inviting collaboration? So, so the two things are definitely, I think, related in fact, they're probably directly related. So you want to basically, and again, this is I'm sorry to have to say it depends in its culture by culture.

No, I get it. I mean, it's so true though. It's so true. Yeah, Yeah, but I think it's a matter of training that developers feel that they have the knowledge that they need to build the software and you're asking them to build and deliver for the customers you want them to deliver for. It's also creating camaraderie and this is something that Taylor Ryan of Excel is at. Because when you're hiring in tech, it's not just about how well do they and no user-factor react. It's about like, how do they fit in the culture? Like, how do they, are they people you can trust? Are they people who can take the reins and lead when the team needs them to?

Are they people who are just good people? Are they nice? Do they write good documentation and help you when you're having a problem? Those kinds of things are really important. And so that gets to how you hire, how you evaluate talent. beyond just the tech stuff. Yeah. And I think when you build that culture, hire the right people, then you start to build opportunities for flow state and invite collaboration. Yeah, and Ryan comes here. I feel like Pear Program is a big thing for collaboration. Okay, so that is definitely one of those controversial ones that'll be one of those tech Twitter arguments that you'll have every two weeks.

Which, you know, we have a whole list of those, you know, two and a bad or good. But anyway, pair programming. So yeah, no question, it can be a great thing for people who are cool with it. The problem is not everyone's cool with it. They're not comfortable with the approach because it could be a lot of reasons. The person you're pairing with sucks, they're condescending, they're not great. But then it goes back to hiring. Yeah, yeah. It always comes back. I feel like it always comes back to leadership. And I think a lot of the things you talk about in tech, writ large, are really about leadership priorities that somehow people put on the developer to try to figure out, but that's another story.

Yeah. But yeah, so, yeah, so pair programming can definitely be a great thing. It can even eliminate the need for code reviews and like formal like pull request and code reviews because you're doing that review as you build. Yeah, real time and you don't have to wait for someone to review and just like, because it actually is faster in that sense. But you need to have the right culture, the right personalities, people who are happy pairing. And maybe you don't even do it in a formal way, like everyone's gonna pair a program. Like maybe it's just something that you just sort of, someone shows up to your office and you look confused and they just, hey, you mind if I pull up a chair and you just sort of like look at it together.

And that's not officially a pair of programming, but like you're collaborating in pairs. So yeah, exactly. Let's see here. Fritz is good to see. I'll shout Fritz in for just landing the job. Rebecca's good to see you. Oh, congratulations. Let's see, I want to get back a few comments ago. RJ, this goes a little bit different what we're talking about. But I still want to get to it before we forget. The tech market seems like it's starting to come back. So that kind of lends itself to being able to start your own thing and fall back if necessary. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know.

I don't know. I just don't. Neil thought so I feel like so it's the problem I think is that a lot of people use big tech as a proxy for tech jobs you writ long and you can't do that you can't do that. Yeah, it's it's funny like one of those arguments we have on tech twitter every two weeks is like microservices or monolith and like what that argument really is is about like do I look at Netflix as a model for how to solve my own problems when I don't have nearly the scale. Yeah, that's a really the problem, right? So like, it's a similar thing here.

Like, you shouldn't always use big tech as your proxy for how tech is doing, right? Like, so there are a ton of jobs out there in, in, you know, finance and government and, you know, health care and all these other areas where they're desperate for, and by the way, they have like challenging work, competitive pay, often like really great benefits. Like, I know a lot of kids come through the ranks in college and they sort of look at working for Facebook or anybody else in big tech, Netflix as like, you know, working, you know, playing for the Yankees. It's like the big dream for them.

But I feel like you can and still make good money, do great work, satisfying work, challenging work, and all these other companies. Every company is really a tech company to some degree now. So yeah, that whole market is there, RJ, and it's definitely like, I don't think it ever left, but it's back. Yeah, and it's big tech, that's the issue. Sorry. Yeah, it just, I don't think we're ever going to get back to the rampant hiring that occurred because it got us in trouble. And I think now do I think we could get back there in 10, 15 years after everybody just have got have got has forgotten what happened?

Maybe I don't think we're ever going to see the clip. Like I don't think you ever be able to sleep walk through an interview again and get five offers. But I do have to say, you know, I do think, especially with gun, I mean, again, right, we get requests from all over the world for developers and needs and stuff. And we're seeing a little bit of an uptick right now. So, but anyways, thanks for that question, RJ. I want to get to a few more here. See here, Eva comes in here. Part of the problem is that managers think of meetings as delivering value, which not at 10 times, they're only valuable for managers.

Developers shouldn't be expected to get involved in too many meetings or extraneous corporate culture events that take up the company side. Yeah, I mean, this is the ongoing thing, right? So I think this whole going on site thing is fascinating in these meetings because I follow a shout out group chat podcast. I listen to those guys, three guys out in LA, very, very in the tech scene and culture. They're so fucking networked. I don't know how they do it. But basically, one of them runs a clothing company, it's a small clothing company like Streetwear Brands. And the other two run a company too. And they kind of got into this debate-ish about coming on site and they're older guys and they're a little bit more big on people coming on site.

But then one of the guys is like, I don't, but the general consensus is we like on site, but we now see on site every day is actually a hindrance. And so kind of finding that medium is something that they've been talking about, but also going into meetings too, right? Like if you're bringing people in to sit in meetings on Zoom calls, then there's no need to bring them in. And that's what I was really big on, especially at Vaco, when we were trying to figure out where a remote company or a remote division, but we're in Nashville. So why do we need to come in?

Again, we can talk about this forever, but you know, I want to see be any more thoughts on this. Yeah. So I have a lot of thoughts on all these questions. These are all great questions by the way. So I feel like part of the challenge is you're, you're not a monolith, even as one company. So like a junior who's just been hired is probably going to want more support and maybe actually be more willing to come on site than others who are more established. Then there's the fact that maybe women or neurodivergent people or others may be less comfortable being on site. You know, women have the burden of childcare way more than men.

Neurodivergent people will feel a lot of pressure, especially in that open office setting, if you have one. Like there's just, it's very hard to sort of think about how to accommodate everyone. But I think that's a big part of it, is that even as one organization, you need to understand that you're not one monolith, that everyone's gonna have their own needs and the way you provide flow state essentially. And so that's something you have to consider as leaders. Right, yep, 100%. Let's see here far too many unnecessary meetings. Yeah, absolutely. That's your Ken's book. One quick thing on meetings, by the way. Yep. Just, I feel like one of the best ways to handle meetings is to make them unnecessary.

Mary and Tom Poppendy, who are these famous agile authors, they wrote Lean Software Development. They talk about this concept called simple rules. And basically the idea is that what if leadership defined certain priorities and very simple rules of thumb for how you want to handle any concern? And so if that's filtered down throughout the organization, You don't need to have a meeting to make a decision. You just know that what does the simple rule tell me? And then, okay, we're just gonna do it that way. And like just find ways to try to eliminate the need for meetings altogether through better communication, simple rules, things like that.

Yep, exactly. I think one of the biggest things that I've been a, so I'm a big football guy, big South Carolina football. We just got beat by North Carolina. I don't wanna talk about it. We looked terrible. A bunch of our guys got injured. I feel like the Orioles in 2015 right now. But all that being said, one of the things I talk about, this is the first time in 12 years I have a manager team. And it's really nice to have a break. I'm not gonna lie. But when I was managing teams, I really compare it to offensive play calling in college football. In a sense of the best offenses keep it relatively unstructured.

They just go out and play ball. There's not a lot of pressure. When South Carolina was really good on a Steve Spurrier, he was known for kind of like everything being loose and not a lot of stress. And you just go out and play the game. I think when it comes to developer productivity, I think there needs to be that. I think it needs to be a very much of a, hey, we're gonna put defined rules in place. Otherwise just go play the game. Just go play the game. Yeah, I mean to you, okay, I am all about football too. So you can have the playbook, right?

You can have the, you can even like, the coach can signal the plays in and the quarterback can have three plays in mind. But then based off the read, yeah, you come to the line, you look at where everyone's matched up, you look at the read, you look at, oh, okay, that guy's going to blitz off the left end. And so I'm going to have to throw like a hot route. And like, you know, and of course the whole team, you just look at your receiver and they know exactly what you're going to do. And so how do you, of course, that doesn't just happen by accident.

That's practice. That's watching the guys consistently, gelling. Yeah, watching a lot of film, doing a lot of talking, practicing. And then yeah, you can then be flexible once you get up to the line just to say like okay given the situation I was prepared for one thing But I can adjust it the new thing because circumstances coming my way have caused me to pivot Absolutely, it's so funny. We're not even gonna get to really talk about interviewing so we're gonna have to come back to have you back on again Mary comes in here a lot of great questions. I love when you ask questions. How about having remote teams with people around the globe?

So should all companies be open to hiring globally? Is this good? This is actually a really interesting question. It's a question that like, it's been going back for quite a few years now, even before COVID. And there's been a lot of research on this that I can definitely point you to. But I would say this, the latest research that I've seen is that when you work with companies that are in a different time zone than you, then it gets more and more harder. So like, so if you're Eastern and someone else is central, okay, that's fine. But if you're Eastern and Eastern United States and the team is in Mumbai, it can be very difficult in terms of disseminating information, you know, shared values, understanding where they're at, those kinds of things.

And of course, there's like language and cultural barriers as well. You have to think about, you know, what if there are Hindu, really just holidays that where everyone's off and you didn't fit that into your schedule. There are just lots of things like that that make it difficult. That doesn't mean it's impossible or that you shouldn't try it. I think it goes back to being intentional when it comes to why are you doing what you're doing. Like so, for example, I helped staff up a company, me and my team two years ago, they they got their series B and they're growing like crazy, we placed like 25 engineers with them.

And they finally, they stopped using us because of budget and stuff, but they went international because most of their code base was in a Lixer. And it was very difficult to find a Lixer people in the US. That's true, yeah. They would rather pay the extra fees associated with getting a developer overseas with taxes and stuff, then it was still came out cheaper than using a vendor like us. And so again, I don't think it's a bad thing, but I think if you're just, if you're a pretty standard like dot net shop, or, you know, or your tech stack is relatively common, I just don't think there's a need to go global unless it's a very niche, like, you know, you know, Ethereum, Web three, these very niche skill sets.

Yeah, that's a really good point, Taylor. So like, certainly around the world, there's lots of different focus on tech. So like obviously for a lot of us, we have a very Western and American centric view, but like Android developers are way more plentiful overseas than the American. Yeah, I can't find anybody that even can spell Android in the US. So yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's, so those, those are good reasons right to go remote, Mary. So I think that's the kind of thing you should think about too. And you know, sort of niche languages like Elixir or Scala, where they're big in Europe, but maybe they're not so big in America.

And for whatever reason, you feel like you have to use that text app. Okay, yeah. I mean, there are definitely good reasons. You just have to think about, again, the language, the culture, however you're making sure that they understand your values, that they're building in the right security and things like that, because if you incorporate their stuff into your stuff, and they have security vulnerabilities, then you now have security vulnerabilities. So there's all these kinds of things you have to think about that just saying that it's not impossible, but there's a lot of stuff on your list you have to check out. Absolutely. All right.

So we're going to wrap up here. We got to have Neil on again for part two. There's a bunch of comments still coming in. I see y'all. Thank you so much for commenting. It means a ton. Neil, as we wrap up here, last two questions for you. One, what tools, technologies, trends, topics, are you tinkering with, experimenting with within the tech space? Yeah. So obviously like everyone else. I'm gonna say AI, yeah. AI, but here's a thing, like also AI, but from the perspective of, is I'm a big follower and adherent to like Dr. Timna Gebru and Dr. Joy Guillamini. Yeah, people who are all about the ethical AI and responsible AI and explainable AI, making sure that AI is not harming people of color, that it's not just punishing people for things that they can control.

And so from that perspective of like, how can we do AI the right way? That's super important to me. So yeah, it's the AI and just the cool, like innovative part of it, but also the responsible part of it that's super important to me. I love that. I love that. Last question, the shows called guidance counselor 2.0. And again, thank y'all for hanging out with us this morning. Go connect with Neil. This call, the shows called guidance counselor 2.0 because the guidance counselor is a middle school, high school college, but now as adults, we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Neil?

Okay, biggest piece of career advice for young Neil. I would say it would be to focus more on my skills in building relationships than on my skills of being a good dev. And so like, because I feel like the dev thing is cool and intellectual challenge and interesting and I love it, it certainly comes naturally to do that. But I've always been sort of introverted, always been sort of shy and you know, just little things with my like upbringing. Like I was the one brown kid in a class of rich white kids and I always didn't feel super comfortable. Right. And you know, people didn't always welcome my like different culture or things like that.

So like because of all these things, they're not to like tell your name, you're not my therapist. But like. That's fine. Trust me. more people open up to me than that. So I appreciate that. But like, you know, you're gonna start charging it. That's the problem. But yeah, so because of all these factors, right, I grew up kind of shy and insecure and all these things. And I wish I was better at building the relationships going to more and in, you know, in today's era, you know, doing better with LinkedIn, getting out to meetups, interacting with the nice people on tech Twitter. You know, those kinds of things just sort of build friendships and relationships, going to conferences, maybe even working on trying to speak at one.

It's not as intimidating as you all would think. Although it is kind of intimidating, especially when your speaker line up involves people like Taylor. But regardless, regardless, like build those relationships, be comfortable around people. Don't just focus on the tech. The tech will come. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Cool. All right, y'all. We'll hope you guys enjoyed this. Hope you all enjoyed this today. Go connect with Neil. Tomorrow, who I have on the show tomorrow, is Tiffany. I'm not even your pronounceer last, Jacha. She's going to probably correct me, but basically Tiffany is an engineering manager and she was recommended to me. And she also has her master's from Georgia Tech, extremely smart.

We're going to talk about getting noticed in the workplace and how to do that. So very important, especially from a career growth perspective. So we'll see you on tomorrow morning, 9.30 AM Central. Neil, stay on real quick, so I can see about you off stage. But y'all have a good one. Peace. Thank you all. Bye. 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 at T.S. and on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.