management talks w/ jem young, eng leader @ netflix

full transcript

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

alrighty what's up everybody happy hump day uh we made it halfway through the week you're probably like Taylor I saw you this morning yeah you saw this is my second stream of the day went live on tor's uh site um and uh and and so now we are going live on my side to talk about all things uh leadership with the great gem Young Jim is good to see you brother L you hear me yeah okay all right good the way you said that I was like did I cut out so just a very methodical hello um so I pump for this you know gem

so I I I don't plan anything like literally everything is fly by the seat of their pants so Lally gem got on this backstage with me literally um eight minutes ago and we were like what do we talk about and so uh we're g to talk about leadership today which which which I is near and dear to my heart um and you know I I've kind of gone through I I was managing a team then didn't then was an individual contributor for a year now I'm back to managing the team and I'll telling Jim backstage now it's fully remote uh or not fully remote mostly

remote I have a few people in the US so that's kind of a new thing too so we're gonna talk about leadership today tactics um some things Gem's dealing with some things I'm seeing we're GNA talk about job search we kind of be all over the place as always um but just have a good conversation for youall so again if you are tuning in this morning welcome or this afternoon or morning wherever you're tuning in from please say hey we' love to hear from you you're probably wondering like what is guidance CER 2.0 Taylor guidance CER 2.0 uh is something I was telling Jen backstage

five years this year folks five years half of a decade um of me yapping online and and and the whole goal of this is just to give back to the engineering community um and just some nuggets some tips and so today we're going to talk about engineering leadership or just management tips in general um that that that we're seeing that we're using uh and so but again I I I I want to be have this live show as a way to build community so again if you're in the comments please say hey would love to hear from you but before we dive in today Jim

I want to give the people what they want man who are you what do you do uh and then we'll go from there uh my name is Jim young I live in I'm here working from home today heading into the office shortly here in California take my long drive down to closer to San Jose to the Netflix office uh I'm an engineering manager at Netflix I lead two teams in the product platform space and I've been at Netflix uh nine years it was nine years last J or last week so yeah started as a UI engineer working on H the website netflix.com kind of always

leading full stack which is you know some some of my interests there I do teach a course on frontend Masters called Full stack for front end I think we're on the third version now and a couple other courses there including a course on Engineering Management so you can tell my passions are leadership full stack engineering um definitely Drive scripts and Noe and and all that fun stuff uh yeah let's see what else do you want to know yeah I think it's a good start also talk about you know private burst public school you know that's kind of an interesting topic we don't have to dive

into that but I think that's a fascinating thing that kids that we're talking about as dads now you and you have kid how many kids you have two kids two boys two kids that's awesome that's awesome um uh so yeah I think that's an interesting topic interesting if you're a parent of young kids what are you doing like what what conversations are you having I was telling JY backstage that we we moved to a different part of Nashville um just for the school system but I tell you what schools and kids that is a a whole other topic I told J and he's come on

my dad's in Tech and we just talk about that um all right so Jim I I want to dive in man I mean obviously you know we talked backstage you we're kind of talking about some ideas but let's talk about leadership man what have you been doing lately that's working what have you been doing that's not working I'm kind of curious uh let's see I'm very critical of myself so most of what I do doesn't work but the things I do I love that well what makes you a good manager let's be honest I think you should be like uh if you ever like things

are things are great swimmingly the team loves me and all that then you're probably not trying hard enough I don't know um yeah yeah so I've been a manager coming up on four years now which is you know every year I I think a little bit differently about people leadership I think a little bit differently about myself kind of like being a parent there's a lot of overlap between being a parent being a manager leader of people um yeah and I I want to be like maybe delicate on this one because I'm not comparing adults to children it's more like humans in General trying to

lead them stage um the I think when I first became a parent and then became an engineering manager pretty close to each other the thing I realized most in the lesson I took is you can't make make people do anything you can't make a person do anything whether that's much I want my four-year-old daughter to to listen just sleep just go to sleep it's better for you you'll be happy I'll be happy get some sleep exactly and same same for anybody you can't make people do anything you can convince them you can threaten you can cajo you can bribe you can do whatever but at

the at the end of the day like what you really want to build up is like the good process and thinking and good decision making and yeah I say that for for children because like that's what I want my my son I won't be there all the time so I want him to have good decision making but in same for my team I say this all the time is I'm not standing over your shoulder looking at you code I'm not in those meetings so what I really want you to do is make good decisi ons um and that's like yeah there's there's so many good

overlap with parenting and and management that I've learned I know there is what I'm kind of curious like if we could summarize like what are Gem's three like Gem's three essential guides to leadership like what like like like if you could condense down and like give me like a these are the three things practical things that like I believe in or that I do or that you know I'm passionate about that I think makes a really good engineering team from a leadership perspective what would they be I'm put you on the spot so like if we need to work through this like outwardly we can

uh I'm gonna say one is and I know this to my core is I I have a fundamental belief in the power of the individual and the the impact that one person can make on like a company or a team or an organization or even just each other is is not to be underrated and that's something I I I like to invest in if you had to say like which side do I lean on leadership Spectrum definitely more on the people's side being making those connections empowering people watching them grow so yeah believing the power of the individual and the impact they can have is

definitely a core ten of my leadership philosophy um I think on that one it'll be interesting to see how that scales because you know as you move up you become a little more disconnected from people especially when you get to like VP level you know you're not really working with ic's anymore at that point so yeah I I'm interesting though to watch myself evolve and grow that philosophy and see you know how do I maintain that over time and say true to the things that I find important but how do you how do you Empower I want to break this down a little bit because

I think that I think it's such an important topic also give you another second or two to marinate on maybe topic two and 3 to but basically like when it comes to empowering the individual being individual based how what do you look for when y ou hire for that what are what are just some indicators when you talk to somebody like yeah this person is g to be able to like do this on their own almost yeah the the number one trade I look for in in individuals when I'm you know looking to higher expand the team is curiosity and that that to me is

the most durable one of the most durable skills you can have in engineering like why is why is this this way um why is this team doing this uh why is the company focus on on this goal and not the other um why did this person choose to write the code in this style and not this style just many aspects of just being curious wanting to know more and wanting to learn says a lot about the individual so you know the opposite of curiosity someone who's just more task focused they're like yeah give me a jira I will close a jir I will go home

do that do that do that do that right right right that that's fine maybe there are some companies that are structured in that way it's very top down but you know that that doesn't there's no empowerment there so someone who's curious is gonna say is going to be the one who identifies the problems proactively and says hey Jam I talked to Taylor I I talked to this person over there and we actually came with a solution I was like I didn't know that was a problem they're like it is and we've solved it already and like that's what you can do when you make that

investment and you find the people who are curious you know it's interesting you brought up being curious because this morning when I I caught up with our head of product and we talked about what we're doing and you know he's really big on AI and that's why we hired him to imp AI within obviously our platform and he talked about being curious this morning like that's a literally he talked about this morning I this was not prompted by any means but like that like I was like well so you know cu looking to hire some AI engineers and it's like you know what does he

look for and he goes you kno w I want you to be curious I want you to be able to chase things down and Tinker with things I I I'm just trying to figure out how how do people become curious like because I will say I did not become curious until later in my life and trying to figure out that right I was I I was brought up whether right or wrong very structured like you do this this this and this right I came from kind of like my parents were both military brats like very military mil mil militaristic household so like that Curiosity wasn't

really there until recently so like what what's some encouraging words if you were talking to younger Taylor where I wasn't curious I like no I got to do this this this this what would you tell me make mistakes uh try try see I I never felt like I could make mistakes yeah yeah that that's important though I mean take take any great success you've ever had is it due to is it due to uh you got it right the first time or is it you failed a bunch of times and you learned all from all those failures and now you're successful and it's always the

failures we learn so much more from failures but as a generally as a society it's not something we reward No One's Gonna Be Like good job you started a business 10 times and a failed 10 times no one's gonna be like you're doing well but you know the the truth is the failures have always taught me way way more than my successes by by a wide margin it made me appreciate success so yeah being making it okay to fail and I think for for us as parents and and us as people leaders as well like making that space to be like try new things if

you're if you're not failing you're not trying hard enough and 100% it's something uh you know last night I was actually playing with my my son and he was trying to jump and do a 360 in the air which as we as adults it's pretty tricky maybe I'm getting too old to try that but don't ask me my my knees may go out now about do that but he kept trying it he couldn't get it so you know I laid out some cushions on the floor and I was like just try it and if you fall like what's the worst is gonna happen nothing I

love that and like we we don't keep that in mind we always think like success is the goal versus let's iterate towards end and build more so yeah that that to me that's how you get curious is like being willing to to fail to put yourself out there and be like you know I learned something from that let's try see what else works I love that yeah and managing my team I mean I tell my team that too like just try things I mean especially with Community with Community kind of being like there's no there's no like set way to do community right I mean

there's kind of a framework but like there's really no set way so like I tell my team like let's do ju let's do something weird like I'm being told from my managers my bosses like just just be weird like go experiment and and and and and and I think like having that sense of experimentation and allowing your team you know I always compare you know leading teams Deo and now leading team here at torque I always compare to football I'm a big college football fan go game Cox South con game Cox and um uh we had some bad offensive coordinators in the past and I

think and and one of the things I've heard is that our poor performing offenses in the past at South Carolina I've been I've heard through podcasts that they were very tight and very nervous because they didn't want to mess up the play because the offensive coordinator was like very micromanaged it needs to be this way you needs we run this way so like like we did so so our current coach took over halfway through the season calling plays and he like only called like six plays he was like you know what just go out and ball out and then of course like we took off

and like you know we we beat a bunch of ranked opponents and I kind of compare that to business like you kind of just gotta let your team just play loose thoughts yeah it's so like we're we're all we're all different I think that's a fair fair thing to say very accurate I mean uh platitudes that's the way to go for for leadership uh we all have our individual strengths and things we're not so good at so how do you how do you like maximize that how do you get someone's strength is it by putting everybody in a box and saying like these are the

boundaries of that box even though like sometimes you're going to dip outside the box because your strength is here and sometimes your opportunities are you know outside the box as well or is it saying here's here's the maybe the lanes of we should think about but anywhere in here go nuts like yeah maximize your whatever you're good at you're good at drawing or poetry or I don't know getting really gnarly and kernel debugging like whatever that is what what can we do as Leaders to like maximize that and that's kind of the what I'm hearing from your story is just like yeah be yourself let

him cook let him cook as the kid say let him cook let him cook there you go um I I see some comments here EMT I think the wise miss a lot of engineering I mean shoot you could talk about parenting too right I mean I grew up in I was like why do I do this because I said so right and and at Veo I remember putting out a lot of content that there's a lot of I Told You So leadership or because I said so leadership and I I I I do feel like I think the key essential one of the key Essentials

to being a good leader is understanding the why and communicating that to your team yeah it's like why why are we doing it otherwise yeah yeah yeah like yeah it's so basic it's so basic yeah it's so basic Christina comes in here we have we have to be willing to learn from screwing up of doubling down on our position the lesson is totally worth 100% 100 100% um and then emic talks about cooking with his kids uh has given the com yeah you talking about messing up I'm an awful cook you talking about messing up definitely cooking 100% nothing little salt pepper and allil hot

sauce won't fix at the end of the day um all right so first so first U uh of you know gems essential leadership powering the individual do you have number two do do you have a do you have a number two um I feel like number two changes probably two and three I haven't even thought of three yet um I'd say right now top of mind for two is and I'm paraphrasing somebody in some way but uh culture culture beats execution but execution beats beats Vision um who okay break that down love that so if it goes back to kind of what we were saying

about curiosity empowering the individual if we're all focused on just one goal and we're all saying like this is the only thing we can do don't do anything else behind this behind this boundary you're G to execute well but if you build this culture of Hey Taylor I have this problem to solve and you have these skill sets that I think could be valuable how do you think we can solve it collectively uh that's gives you way more freedom in in way to develop solution and will you get to the solution at the end yeah definitely but will it be a better solution than just

do it because I said so absolutely so that's what you need to build a strong culture and that that beats execution any day it's going to get you much much stronger execution but it's so I think it's hard especially for senior leaders to to see that because they're like all I care about is this number moving this number up in some way versus let me invest in my culture let me build an inclusive environment let me allow people to to make mistakes and have freedom in in what they say and and do and that's much harder because it's a longer term investment that takes you

know a longer time from the payoff so that's why culture always eats execution but execution eats Vision uh it's fine to have a vision it's it's fine to say you know here's what we want to build Pie in the Sky uh and everybody's like yeah yeah yeah this is great whoo I'm I'm pumped and you get back to your Des l ike all right so what do we what do yeah like but the vision we got we have branding and and all this but you know at the end of the day get stuff done like that I'm always a bias towards action maybe sometimes too

much but it's just like cool great discussion what are we gonna do like let's not just talk about let's let's do something yeah and you know again kind of pulling pulling from my background is I mean I'm the same way you know when I interviewed when I interviewed at torque I interviewed with our head of sales and our head of sales he was kind of like digging in and I called him on it I was like I feel like you just think I'm just some influencer that like just yaps on the internet all day and doesn't build and know how to build and I told

him I went in like you know at v i LED multiple recruiting teams I I I led the most successful recruiting team from the top down um that's ever been in vco Nashville I built a sales division from Z million to two million in a year and a half in Revenue so it's like like I told him I was like I can do the damn thing and then and even right now um when I went to Boston last week with torque I had like 90 seconds you know when you're getting up from dinner with leadership and you like you know you're catching up with people

and like our CE I I went to CEO and I was like hey man I just want to check in how I'm doing and he was like he was like man I'm loving he goes he goes you just don't ask for permission he goes I love it and I'm like okay good thank goodness but like but I I think like it's what he said he was like he goes for too long we've had people just just visioned and know execution um and and and I think that goes to here where it's like listen like I I I told my team that I would rather get

our hand slap consistently for doing more work and putting things out into the into the into The Ether than never getting in trouble thoughts on that yeah it it's it goes back to like if you're not if you're not failing you'r e not trying hard enough and like I I do firmly believe that if you're like we were successful we had all of our objectives and key results for the quarter and nailed those kpis whatever it is it's like you you weren't trying very hard um you should be failing some of the time because that indicates you're going you know a little bit outside the

box yeah yeah I love that also I didn't realize this on reim in Three Gems finally get it now that that was good I like that gems gems gems gems leadership gems anyway I really gems gem gems uh all talk about man let's talk we're getting the last 10 minutes of the show Tom flows me having fun with friends um what's kind of the third thing at least right now right I mean you've been in leadership for a few years now I know it's obviously pivots what's kind of top of your mind kind of essential so we got empowering the individual go with the individual

talk about obviously your badass saying that you just said um culture beats execution but execution beats vision talk about maybe a third thing you're passionate about right now for your team in leadership thinking more keep thinking I I I I'm gonna say something that I'm learning in my role um also Dan Dan's in the next room right now so um he's just he just hazing me um is upward commun like as a manager your number one of my number one priorities right now is upward communicating and communicating in general I don't think people communicate at an organizational level as much as they think they do

and even if they think they do they're not yeah so that's kind of one of the things I've been learning lately it's it said our a job a Leader's job is to communicate over and over and over again the same thing until it's boring um and I I do believe that to a certain extent it it sounds repetitious but again you think back to what we do for me software engineering but at the end of the day it's people sitting at desks making independently making decisions you're not there with them t hey can't ping you every time and they're like hey what should I do

here so like you really want to encourage good decision- making towards some end goal so your goal is to your your job as a manager is to repeat that goal over and over and over again so all these millions thoughts and decisions that add up in in a week or a month or a year or Orient towards here's the thing I need to solve at the end of the day here's what's most important right now and you know that's boring that's not some great cool new advice but it's kind of what we have to do I don't follow it a lot of times it's right

I don't know it's a mental thing but that is one of the most important things you do yeah yeah uh anything else that pops into your head while was he yaen um when one thing while there your previous story on uh you know how you you drove the most recruiting for for that company in the history yeah and someone was like yeah but you're you're an influencer like what do you what do you care it made me think about great versus good uh great people don't stay in the lines they don't do what other people have done before just a little bit better it's always

some brand new approach and you know pick your sport pick your hobby pick whatever it is the people who are the greats of all time and the people you recognize and know are the people that did things differently and push the envelope not just here's the rules of whatever I'm gonna do this and and stay in line and man I really hope I get lucky and that that's the path for being good but if you want to be great you have to do things differently you have to think differently yeah no and I agree I mean and and you know I made a I made

a newsletter post about this two weeks ago um you know and I've talked about a little bit I mean I I was the last four years I've dealt with more impostor syndrome than that I ever have my entire career um you know arguably I've I've career transitioned I've gone from recruiter to whatever I do now right and it's one of these things where um even my wife the other day we were in the car and she's like it's kind of wild how you like pivoted your entire career without ever having to start over in a way and but like I've had so many people over

the last four years basically tell me like what I was doing was wrong and I've had Chief marketing officers try to shut me down I've had I I've I've notably had people talk behind my back they've come out lately and apologize to me like face to face about it um I've had people tell me that like what I'm doing is selfish and all the and and like I I was about to hang it up and like I I I texted you know I texted friends like Kelly vau and and a few other engineering friends in the community I was like do I just need to

go back to being a recruiter it's like do I just need to hang this up and and all the people who I texted I would text you I don't have your number but like I I literally was like everybody was like no don't do it don't do it and so like my encouragement to everybody is if if you have haters that's a good thing yeah it's one one one piece of advice I I try to follow related is like I won't say be yourself because that's such a platitude but I know I'll say be be consistently authentic if you believe something is is right um

and you're like this is this is my vision and I I believe this is the right thing to do and it's different of course people are going to hate on you and say like that's not the way things are done before but you know the way things are done before will just end you up with the same problems yeah I think it's some uh some saying of like we we can't solve the problems of today with the same thinking that got us here and like that is true so I think your your career is a testment to that of people saying like yeah but that's

just not the way things are done that'll never work look at you now you yeah you just keep pressing on but yeah having that kind of inner belief in yourself is really hard and as Leaders like that's something we need to Foster in people yeah like this belief of like this is the right idea and I know it um that's how you solve these problems that you didn't even know exist I love that I love that um as we wrap up here you know I kind of do rapid fire um you know but you know but I do want to talk roughly about the job

search you and I talked about this backstage um you you know you talked about recently just hired a little bit uh I mean let's let's call what is Jim how's the market right now uh the Market's not great uh that's that's being generous with it uh yeah you know especially in Tech salaries haven't risen in fact they've Fallen um job job satisfaction in general across in America is at a 10year low um we see these companies kind of you know we we always knew corporations weren't authentic they're they have one purpose that's just make money for the shareholders but to see them roll back these

kind of all these beliefs they rolled out in 2020 um isn't surprising but it's also I think it's pulled maybe some of the wool from from people's eyes where it's like no this company's good and they believe in this and they they do all these things these causes I support but I'm like it's a corporation they do it because it's good business for now and they'll always do good business I that's always been my understanding of Corporation so like none of these things are shocking to me but I think seeing that is has made people question their careers where they're working all these things but

they're also stuck because the market just is not great right now so you have all these factors that you know I what I really want people to carry in 2025 is like you know be optimistic challenge yourself in in new ways you're not who your job is you're not who you work for um yeah you know you're more than that because the job market it sucks right now if I'm being honest yeah I mean I I was gonna make this a social media post but I do think right now and Dan I love this kind of go back to our last conversation doubt kills more

dreams than failure everywhere someone smarter than me said it I don't know who yeah yeah uh uh for sure um I think too I think there's just general Trend and I know we can kind of dive into a whole other thing and I know we're at time but like I do think right now in this market you almost had to have done the job before you get the job yeah I think we're not in this boom right now where it's like sure we'll take a we'll take a risk like why not like you haven't you haven't you don't know how to code react like that's

fine we'll figure it out we're not there anymore and and so like my biggest advice if for folks who are really having problems finding a job like you got to build something on your own like you got to go volunteer you got to take on work you gotta do something and show something because guys like Jim unfortunately not even GNA look at you because Gem's already looking at hundreds of rums if people have already done it h thousands thousands and thousands thousands yeah I mean a little more yeah yeah go ahead I you know people will ping me for job advice all the time and

they always like how can I get a job Etc you know variations of that as I know for fact I I've seen you answer those questions all the time on on Twitter yeah and the the fact is like what we were saying earlier on you know if you want to stand out you have to be different and that's the same advice I'd give to everybody is you may have a great resume a great col letter you know all all that stuff but so do hundreds and thousands of other people you want to get that role do something different I couldn't say what that is but

you got to approach it differently don't complain why I I mean I won't say don't complain because the job market does suck and you have every right yeah like I get complain for sure yeah but it's also if you're doing things the exact same way as everybody else then how not you know you're just rolling the dice there versus saying like let me try something way outside the band and you know if it works it it works if it doesn't no harm you know I'm back to back to where everybody else is yeah um so we always wrap up with kind of of your biggest

career advice or piece of advice I think you gave some good advice I want to take a p take a page out of the front end happy hour book you got a Content recommendation you got anything to recommend right now uh that you're watching reading tinkering with maybe from a technical framework perspective I don't know um so I'm I'm Different I I don't read leadership books generally I sometimes I do pretty pretty rare um yeah sometimes people read so many books I was like you don't read those there's no way you're you're Ching there's no yeah like how do you read that many books like

pass uh I read a lot of books but it's like I read the disconnect from I don't read to pull myself more into it uh because I think about it enough uh recommendations you know I just finished squid game season two I know this seems self- serving because I work for Netflix but I mean everybody watches on Netflix so is what it is oh I'm gonna save space okay uh I thought game season two was way better than season one season one I thought was slow season two I gotta keep watching this I'm way more characters so that would be my recommendation I just finished

it I'm a little slow because I have kids but yeah solid solid show I love it that's awesome uh so I I watched a show called Dark Matter on Apple TV and it kept me hooked it it basically it's like a Sci-Fi jamanji it's like a modern day just watch it I don't watch a lot of TV kids right you I mean you just you just don't have time but I actually like any moment I had to myself instead of like going to YouTube and watching like you know business creators Vlogs like I do which is my hobby um I turned on dark matter and

it was amazing so highly recommend Dark Matter on Apple TV so um well Jim than k you again for hanging buddy I appreciate it stay on real quick sex by to you backstage but again thank You' all for hanging out yes this was a lunchtime Edition I saw I saw some comments like what's going on I always do a special West Coast time uh so this was guidance concert 2.0 lunch hour um and then uh we are off tomorrow I actually had somebody but to reschedule um and then we have uh Josh uh Josh KO comeo uh I I don't I think to get his

last name right um uh uh fantastic individual obviously does a lot of react courses CSS courses um so he's going to come on Friday um so pumps hang out with him so y'all have a great one Jem thank you my friends um and we'll see youall Friday definitely watch Josh Josh is like an excellent human being yeah Josh is Josh is amazing Josh is awesome so I'm pump to hang out with him all right