how to land your next promotion w/ kelly vaughn, sr. eng mgr

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All righty. Hold on. I got to alert the troops. Good. All right. Good morning, everybody. Kelly and I are both fresh off. We have conference brain. Yes. I think that's the best way to say it. Conference brain. Conference brain is a good way to put it. Yeah. I know we talked about it backstage, but as people are trickling in here, do you want to talk about where you just came from? Yeah, yeah. So I flew home from New York yesterday. I spoke at Lead Dev, which is a fantastic conference for engineering managers and up or anyone who is aspiring to become an engineering manager. It's really, really good, really, really good content there.

The other half of Lead Dev is staff plus. So if you're going the higher up the IC route, also really great content on that side too. I love it. And then what did you give your talk on? I gave my talk on how to identify different types of performers on your team and how to best support them when you can't give them promotions or raises. Like how to keep them motivated. I love that. I love that. I love that. Good morning, everybody. So I got to shout out Michael Raymond for a second. So Michael Raymond. So this is, I love the power of community. And Danny, it's good to see you, buddy.

Thanks for tuning in. Pat, Pat was also, also shout out Pat. Pat worked our booth. Okay. So like that, there was so cool having our team, just having the community there. So I couldn't get to the booth immediately to resume reviews and Pat like jumped in and was doing resume reviews with Jason. So like shout out to our community. It was, it was cool. It was cool. But I want to go back to Michael. So if, if you go to this, Kelly, have you ever heard of bingo? Heard of bingo? Yeah. Yes. The name of the game. Yes. Yes. Michael has created a bingo game called Tago.

Oh, supposedly I say the same things over and over. And so it is now a thing to whenever I talk, you can now log into Tago dot Netlify dot app and you can. Play bingo whenever I speak. You don't win anything, but supposedly I say the same things over and over and over again. Having been friends with you for several years. Yes, you do. Shout out to Michael Raymond. And shout out to the community. Yeah, absolutely. But again, it's good to see y'all this morning. Patrick, got to catch up with Patrick and Raleigh. Emmett, it's good to see you. Like I said, Danny, it's great to see you.

Katie, it's great to see you. Danny, your headshot is amazing. Yeah, yeah. That's a great headshot. Looks uber professional. Yes. Danny looks like a mob king in the best way possible. Naz, it's good to see you. Chris, it's good to see you. Colin, Amelia, Chris, Naz, it's good to see you all this morning. Yeah. Have you heard of bingo? It's a wild question. Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Devon, it's good to see you as well. All right. uh it's good to see y'all uh quick kind of announcements real quick uh before we dive in as always first and foremost want to give a shout out to upright i'm part of the heroes program you should go check them out good crew um and uh also too we uh we've updated our community site and it's now it's now within tort.dev um and so go check it out it's got all the ways to get plugged in i do have to say two quick announcements we've opened up our ambassador program again um So so for all the fifty people that were at our private dinner, I need you to go and apply to be ambassador.

If you are an ambassador now, you have to reapply. We are dwindling the list. We are kind of changing up how we're doing ambassadors. So not everybody is going to be an ambassador next year. And so, you know, again, really want to make the ambassador program kind of the the. You know, really good. Really good. I think it's decent right now. I think we can do a lot more. So please join. Also, if you kind of scroll down a little bit more, we've we've officially reopened the mentor program. Right. So we started our first cohort the second half of this year. To be honest with you, we kind of shit the bed.

Right. We didn't do as good as we needed to. We didn't prepare on some things. We've dialed it in. We've dialed it in. We're going to make it good. We're going to have a career track and we're going to have a technical track. And so if you want to learn about... MCPs, we're going to try to have an AI mentor, right? If you want to learn about Python, we're going to try to do that. I would say a lot of the needs and the questions is that I just realized they're both streaming and I didn't know why. And so basically with the mentor program, again, we want to do better at that.

One of the biggest questions we got at the booth at All Things Open is like, what is the time commitment? Honestly, the mentor is going to decide it, but just off the rip, two thirty minute meetings a month. I think that's I think that's plenty. And so we'd love to have you there. Also, I'm doing I'm using my texting community a lot more. So basically, I do. this is my number if you need help with the job search or have any questions uh please um obviously uh text me um but uh you know uh would love to have you if you want to know when i go live i always texas cities if you want free tickets to events i send those out as well through this so definitely join if you have not already all right so uh enough of me yapping Kelly, a lot of people know who you are, but let's just, let's give a quick refresh.

Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. That's a great question. And especially after conference brain, like I'm deeply struggling today, but it's fine. Hi, I am Kelly. I am currently senior engineering manager at Zapier. I've been here just about six months now. I got the, you've been here for six months notification this morning. So I have another survey to fill out. Thank you. It's technically next week, so I guess it's just a little early, but it's fine. We're making it work. But prior to Zapier, I was director of engineering at an AI startup. And prior to that, I was an entrepreneur for too long.

So I'm a recovering entrepreneur at this point. And my most interesting fact about myself that people are like, what, how, is that I'm a trained therapist. And I don't mean in a way that like, I ask my direct reports and how does that make you feel? More in the way that I let it slip in meetings sometimes where we're like, we're having this post-mortem review and we're nearing the end of the meeting. And so I'm like, so do we feel like we have closure over this incident at this point? And I'm like, oh God, I really sound like a therapist now. So- Yeah, I live in Atlanta.

I like running. I was supposed to run the Detroit Marathon this weekend, and I am getting surgery next year instead. And I am currently in my fall vibes mode with my pumpkin candle. I was burning like a summer grapefruit situation yesterday. I was like, this isn't quite hitting, so I need to get a pumpkin candle. I need to get a pumpkin candle. All right, so... Again, I never tell my guest a schedule, questions, especially Kelly. We've also had to reschedule this two or three times because Kelly's a super busy person. If you have not seen her tweet about her calendar, it's nuts. But... One of the things I texted her, I was like, hey, what do you wanna talk about this week?

And talked about promotion. I know you talked about at your conference about supporting people if you can't give them a promotion. I think right now, I think I wanna talk about how to just even get a promotion, right? You're a manager, I'm a manager. We have two managers on the line here. I think we can give some really good practical, tactical, actionable items for people. So what are some things that you think about just off the rip that people can do right now to really position themselves for a promotion? Yeah, I think the most important thing to kind of kick things off is there are two components to getting a promotion.

One, you have to be ready for that role, whatever that promotion is for you. And two, there has to be a business case to have that role be available. If you want to move from IC to manager, there has to be a manager role available. If you want to move from senior to staff engineer, there has to be a business case for that particular staff role. You can control one of these two things. And so understand that I'm kind of like prefacing anything else we say today with that because you can be entirely ready for the role and ready for a promotion. But if the opportunity is not there, you're not obviously going to be able to get one right now.

So we'll start there. Any feelings on that? Yeah. I mean, listen, I think – yeah, I think that's good. I think – There's so many ways I want to take this. Yeah, I think that's good. There's got to be a business case to it, right? I think, and you kind of can't control that. What would you say... Do people... Do you think people deserve... How do you do raises? So this kind of goes into the same thing. What are your thoughts on that? Is it automatic every year, do you think? Do you think it only applies to people who are overly, overly achieving, kind of achieving?

Because I think this is something on my mind as well, and I'm just trying to learn from you to be just totally clear. Yeah. You know, my opinion, and I'd call this a spicy take, but it's literally like a green pepper, like the pepper is in the room and that's about it. I think there should be like a cost of living raise. I think that is a necessary thing. Are you... immediately obligated to receive a raise every single year because you exist at a company? I don't think so. I think the cost of living raise is important. As somebody who got a single raise over three years at my previous company, a cost of living raise is important.

But now that I'm at Zapier, they do handle raises differently. I don't know how yet because I haven't gotten to that part of the cycle. But I do believe that If we're going to be doing cost of living raises, we should then think about how much does that have to increase or how much should that increase? And that's when performance really comes into the question. So if you're a really high performer and you're exceeding expectations, you should, in theory, then get a higher raise compared to those who are meeting expectations. But it's never that simple. Yeah. Yeah. It's never that simple. I think it's, I think it's interesting too, because it's like also from a budget perspective, where are those things coming from?

Right. I think a lot of times too, is that you have to understand some of your managers want to keep you happy, but also to your managers are probably trying to figure out. where those numbers are coming from where that budget's coming from right and I think that's incredibly important as well um what do you what are your thoughts on let me ask you this what well I'm just going to say this I think the biggest thing to land a promotion right now for me is I have a lot of thoughts I'm all over the place this morning is um I think the biggest thing that I want to I want to iterate this across the board is you got to upward communicate.

Yes. Like I, like I do not know what my team does every moment of every day. I need to be told I need, I need information, right? I need. And when we're trying to work on that, we're trying to put in more, you know, standups and trying to get tighter. And I've talked about that in my daily journal. If you For me, I think upward communicating is the biggest issue and one of the reasons why you do not get a promotion. Yeah. No, I would second that. I think we tend to overestimate how much people are paying attention to our work. That's so good. And you are never going to – nobody is going to advocate for you better than yourself.

Yeah. And I was speaking with somebody a couple weeks ago and – They were talking about how they were interested in getting a promotion, but they hate selling themselves. They hate talking about all their accomplishments all the time. It feels just icky to them. And I basically told them, if you want this promotion, you have to talk about your accomplishments because I know what your accomplishments are if you're directly reporting to me, but I also have a lot of other direct reports. Those who are above me don't know all of the differences that are happening, all the changes that you're making and all the contributions you're making.

Also, hi, John. Love you. That was a little distracting, but I love to see it. I love it. No, like all this to say, like you have to continue to advocate for yourself or else that raises never that promotion is never going to happen. And you have to bring it up. Like I'm talking about my future plans and Zapier. I just joined six months ago. So I'm not like I'm ready for a promotion. Yeah. Read the room a little bit. Exactly. But I'm like, I'm making my intentions known that this is the next step I want to reach. And I'm going to start charting the path towards that next step and trying to figure out what does that actually look like?

What do I need to prove to senior leadership, to the executives to say, hey, I am ready for this role. And when it opens, I want to be first top of mind for you to say, oh, yeah, Kelly's the right person for this. That means I'm talking about myself and selling the work that I'm doing a lot. Yeah, like – and there was – I admittedly can't get into the Torque Discord as much as I can anymore just with how I'm caught up in meetings and stuff. But like there's – we have like where you can like work on your pitch, right? You can like write it out.

You can like work on your about me statement, right? And somebody – I was looking through it late last night before I was going to bed. And somebody was like, why is it so hard to talk about myself? Yeah. And it's like, for me, I think the people who are getting the raises, getting the promotions, standing out are the ones that are completely unashamed. Yeah. And are completely out there just saying what they did. Right. Like, like for me, I think the excuse of like, I get it. We are all, most of us are millennials, right? Most of us, we grew up in a time where I don't know about you, but it was don't talk about yourself.

Uh-huh. I mean, my parents were like, hey, you sit there as a kid and you talk about others, you don't talk about yourself. Right? And so I would encourage you, if you get anything out of this, the excuse of I have a problem talking about myself, that cannot be in your vocabulary anymore. It just can't. Yep. And you know how to fix that? You practice. Like if you want to fix that, you have to practice. And yeah, it feels super uncomfortable at first to be like, I think I'm deserving of a promotion and here's why. Honestly, this is the kind of thing, like we talk about this a lot for interviewing.

You need to practice interviewing. You need to practice the responses to like common questions you might get. You record yourself and then you listen back to yourself. Do the same thing for this kind of thing. It is like an interpersonal skill that you have to build. You have to build that confidence and that comes through practice or how you go. I mean for me, like I have – so I'm trying to – so I'm trying to think when I was in IC – was a little easier because i was on the sales side or like i was i was being driven by revenue so like the one thing that you're consistently judged on is like the revenue you bring in so we had a scorecard and then your revenue was posted to five hundred producers every single week so people could always see where you are that did not develop any sort of unhealthy habits on my end um but for me it's like listen if you are not emailing your manager Once a month, I'd say.

I'm curious your thoughts on this. This is my thoughts. If you're not emailing your manager once a month, hey, just heads up. Here's kind of some things. I just wanted you to know. You don't have to reply back to email. Here's some things that I've been able to do this month. I think that's massive, right? Because here's the deal. There are things that are part of your job that you have to do that are in the job description. And there are things that you need to achieve to do That are not in your job description. I think most of us think we are exceeding by just doing our job description.

That is not how you get a substantial raise. That is not how you get a promotion. If I hired you to do the job you do, you're going to stay in the shadows for a longer time than if you are overachieving. Again, I've talked about this a lot in a lot of my talks lately. You have to do the job before you get the job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the hardest part of this is a lot of companies have career ladders that line up. What does it mean to be a mid-level engineer? What does it mean to be a senior engineer? What does it mean to be a staff engineer?

Or you have multiple levels in there. And then these are necessary. These are absolutely necessary to be able to check yourself against the performance that you're doing right now, as well as what am I missing for that next level? The problem is people treat it as a checklist. that they're saying if i'm just hitting these things i therefore immediately qualify for a promotion and that is just not the case it's supposed to be a guide you have to you have to prove okay you're doing these things but how does it tie back to the business how are you advocating for that how are you mentoring others how are you actually pulling in you know timelines and delivering more value and i that's such a buzzword but like it's it's necessary for these kinds of things for especially trying to get a raise for a promotion Yeah, and I think, too, like writing your resume, right?

Jason and I are in major resume review season right now. I think we're going to move the resume review session to every week in the Discord because there's just such a push to it. I think you just need to bring in Pat to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, listen, we're going to have to do something because if I can't hire enough people, we're going to have to start bringing in some of our community members to help because I can only be in so many of them. When you write your job description, I talk about this all the time. If you say, I fixed this, I did this, I coded this, I did this.

Okay. That's what everybody else is saying. Cool. But if you go, I did this, which then resulted in this, or I did this because this happened and I fixed it and then this happened. getting so close i i i think is the same in one-on-ones like one-on-ones like i like what pat said if you're quiet don't bring up things in one-on-one with your manager not advocating for yourself that is one of the first places to start beyond those emails yeah it's like listen i try to have one-on-ones with most people on my team right now right for me If you are not coming to the table and saying, hey, here's what we've done.

Here's what I think we should do. Also, I would love... I would love in general for people to go, hey, this is what I think we should do. Take ownership. I don't know. Maybe that's, I don't know if that works. Again, I'm non-technical. Like everything we do is like events and partnerships. And so it's a little bit qualitative. I don't know if you like that, but based off all of the interviews I've had lately with tech people, pushing back and giving suggestions is actually, it sounds like a good idea. What are your thoughts on that? Yes, with one caveat. And that is if you're going to give suggestions and you're going to give multiple options, I then want you to say, here's why I think option B is best.

I want you to not just present, here are your possibilities of how you can handle the situation. Here are the possibilities of what I've been thinking about. And this is why I think we should go with option B. This shows me that you're also taking ownership and you're presenting yourself more as a thought leader for this particular task at hand. And this is one thing I actually expect out of my senior engineers, especially at the staff level, but seniors as well. I want to see them take that ownership. Yep, absolutely. All right, so we've talked about Upward communicating. We've touched on raises a little bit.

Cost of living, I think, needs to happen. I think across the board. Yeah. Mind you, raises. So I think, okay, I want to see if this is right. Cost of living means you're doing your job. Raises and or promotions are going above and beyond your job. Yes. Is that statement accurate? I think it's a, it's a gross oversimplification of it. Like obviously everything's nuanced, but yes, generally speaking, cost of living raises. If you're doing your job, you actually should, you absolutely should be getting that. And you might see like a little bump here and there, obviously just to keep up with like, you're doing more, but like you should absolutely be getting a larger raise if you're going above and beyond.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Upward communicating, talked about raises, uh, What else are we missing here? Anything else? One thing that I will also add is if your company has some sort of structured process to submit for promotion, which a lot of larger companies do, there's some sort of document you fill out, for example, of like, here is the promotion I'm going for. Here are our company values. And here is how I'm representing these company values through the work that I'm doing. if you're looking to get a promotion say in the next year you better be starting to fill out that document now reason being is it's going to immediately identify the gaps you currently have and you're working with your manager to say i want this promotion i'm letting you know that i want this promotion i don't have this experience what do you what would you like to see over the next year to prove that i have this experience And then you also have a documentation trail of all the work that you've been doing.

And if for whatever reason, like you end up not at that company, you have this really fantastic document to align with your resume as well, because it shows your best accomplishments. I love that. If somebody doesn't know if they have that, who should they ask? Their manager. And perhaps the people team, like your HR team, might have some guidance on that too. Interesting. Does Zapier have that? Zapier does have that. Yeah, I've gone through the process a few times. Oh, we have a Tago. This is absolutely unhinged. I love that. All right. So talked about person. Any questions about promotion? I saw Roxy say earlier, the comments have been coming quick.

I saw Roxy say something like about how this is helping her for her interview. So shout out Roxy for your next meeting. Yeah. Meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything, let me ask you this. Is there anything, is there any questions about, employees could ask their managers. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this. I'm just gonna say statement and then I need you to unpack it. Talking about raises and promotions is not weird. Correct. Don't let that hold you back. Yeah. So one of the things that I teach in my course on management fundamentals is these different types of performers. It's the same half, like first two thirds of the talk I gave yesterday at Lead Dev that you can range from low performer to high performer.

There's two different types of high performers. And to focus on that for a second, you've got rock stars and superstars. There are your superstars that are very much steady, stable growth. They're going deeper in their skill set, but they're not necessarily striving for that next level. They're absolutely necessary for your team because they provide stability. Rock stars, on the other hand, are those who are always striving for that next level. They're much more in tune with the gaps that they currently have in their skill set, whether it's technical or interpersonal, and they're actively seeking opportunities to push outside their comfort zone to improve. get that next promotion.

You typically see those who are seeking a promotion are going to be rock stars. They're the ones who are performing at a high level at their organization, and they're seeking those opportunities to continue to grow. If you're not at that level, you're going to find it very, very hard to get that next promotion. Because if you're like a medium performer, that means you're doing your job and medium performers also provide stability for a team. And that's great. But the medium performers are not going to be taken into consideration for promotions because they're not pushing outside of those boundaries. So kind of looping back to your question about like, it's not weird to talk about promotions or not talk or it's not weird to talk about raises with your manager as well.

I guarantee you, like your manager is also probably thinking about it from themselves, too. Yeah. Yeah. We have this this weird kind of mentality and especially in like the Western world to like shy away from talking about money, shy away from. Also, I was raised I was raised Southern Baptist. So I think I was told to not talk about people's salaries. And then my first job is recruiting like, hey, how much do you make? Exactly. Talk about exposure therapy. So it's not weird. It's necessary to have these conversations. And again, this is where that icky feeling you have to overcome that through practice. And that's when you can practice with your manager to say, I'm interested in understanding.

If you don't want to talk like, I want more money and this is how much I want, a great way to start kind of opening the door to this is like, I am curious of what the next level looks like for me. In your opinion, where should I be focusing my efforts on to continue to improve both my skill set and the skill set for the company? Yeah, I think too. I think one of these markets, good to see you, by the way, jumping in. It's been a while. I think. So, so one thing I do with my boss, we, I have a new boss mess.

I miss you. If you ever watch this, I got your watching mess. Mess is now just owning product and engineering because bless his heart. He had too much on his plate trying to deal with me as well. Yeah. One thing I always ask is what do you want to see more of me? Like, like how, what do you want? What do you want more out of me? What am I missing? Yeah. Am I missing anything? Am I lacking anything? I think we, I think we want the raises, but we shy away from feedback. Yes. I think we want the raises, but we shy away from honest, truthful feedback.

Yes. We all say we love feedback, but we really want you to tell me I'm doing a great job. Yeah. And here's the deal. I'm not great with it either. I'm just going to say it right. Like there have been times where I'm like, I'm like, By the way, we get some questions. We'll get to that in a second. Pat, I saw your one question and Trey's last question. Like there have been times where I want feedback and then my manager tells me feedback, whether it's a mess or my new manager, Griff, I'm like, ooh, things, right? You know what I'm saying? So it's like, it's hard to do, but I would say it's another touch point to see where you're lacking.

If you are never asking your boss, where am I lacking? you are missing out on the opportunity for you to improve yourself and then potentially know why you're not getting the race. Because I will also tell you this, a lot of managers are probably nervous to give you the feedback. Yeah. And so if you are the one, say what? Giving feedback is a skill. Speaking of things you have to practice. People are really bad at giving constructive feedback, especially again, in certain cultures, they're really, really nervous about saying something critical to you because they don't want to hurt your feelings. Yes, absolutely. So again, like if you can drive that conversation, that would be huge, huge.

All right. Let me get to questions. Let me get to questions and comments here. There's the other side where there's do not give the feedback. So it's actually a feedback. Well, that, yeah, that is what you define as a bad lead. Those are the people who should take my course. i teach a course on management fundamentals yeah i was i was waiting for you i was like and go i know it's there yeah uh i can if you go to my website kvlly.com uh you can find a link to it you can also find it modernleader.is because i maintain two websites because why not is that it yep yeah i think it's linked to the top uh trey Pat, you may have already said this, but how do you go about increasing your workload and responsibilities to demonstrate your abilities, who to talk to, what kind of work should you look to do?

That's a very good question. Starting with the second question, I mean, what are you looking to achieve? That's a very important question to answer first. You want your work to, one, be interesting to you, two, continue to build a skill set you don't currently have or you want to improve upon, and three, make a difference in a business. What business value is this opportunity going to provide? As far as going about increasing your workload and responsibilities, ask for it. And also, you sometimes need to acknowledge and be like, look, I know I have a lot on my plate, but I'm really, really interested in doing this thing.

And I want to do both of these things concurrently. Yeah. For me, you know, Trey, if you were on my team, you'd be like, I want more work. I'd be like, cool. What do you want to do? And I would be like, go do it. Also, don't wait for your manager to tell you what to do. And that's the thing. I have so much going on in my head at any given time, especially with the number of direct reports I have right now. How many direct reports do you have now? I think I'm at twelve at the moment, or thirteen. It's temporary. I'm interim EMing for another team right now, but I do have two additional engineers starting on Monday, which I'm super excited about.

That's crazy. Yeah, so anyways, just ask. Again, I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineering manager. What we do is a little bit more qualitative, a little bit more soft skills, so it's a little easier to say just go. But to me, I think, yeah, driving conversation. If you – like every one-on-one I have with my upper leadership, I have at least – Two to three bullet points I want to talk about every time. If you are walking into a meeting with your leader and do not have stuff written down to talk about, you are missing out tremendously. Literally, I have a call today with the head of recruiting for Ronstadt.

You best believe I got some things I want to talk about. You should be driving those meetings. The way I start out every meeting with my leaders that are above me, I go, hey, What do you have? What do you have for me right now? Let's start with you. You know what everybody typically says. I got nothing. What do you got? Yep. Right. So the more you can do, like that is valuable time with your manager. And like, you should absolutely take full advantage of that. And especially if you're doing like a skip level one-on-one, like if you can have an opportunity to meet with your boss's boss, like you better come prepared for that.

Technically. Technically. Yeah. Yep. Um, quite other quite a few other questions if you're at a small company small if you're at a small company startup without that process aka torque how can you advocate for a position that doesn't exist or isn't at a company yet so this is definitely from a leadership perspective i'm curious to hear your thoughts i obviously have been actively doing this myself so If the job description doesn't exist, you get to write the job description and explain the value that it brings to the business. And then explain how the skills you have mapped to this and why you would like to do this.

I've done this before. I've made this pitch before. It did not go well, which is fine. Like the opportunity wasn't there, but I learned a ton from that opportunity, especially to say like, okay, this actually makes me also realize I'm not happy in my current role and something needs to change. So if the role does not exist or that structure does not exist, you take ownership of that. And the thing that I look for in an exceptional employee versus a good employee is what are you doing that's proactive? What are you proactively pushing towards to elevate the business, to elevate your own career? And this is the type of thing you should be doing.

So I can't believe I'm going to say this. This is where I'm at in my career. PowerPoints. I, okay. Okay. Are you creating the PowerPoint or is somebody creating it for you? You should create it as a leader to get buy-in. So I've had to create buy-in being at Torque, right? Like community is a vague thing. And everybody views community differently. So I have all of these PowerPoint presentations on like what is community? What does community look like for what we're trying to do? How does community affect upstream? How does community affect? I have all. And also shout out AccelaDraw. I'm not sponsored. If you want to sponsor, let me know.

I use it. I draw things now. Like graphs. Right. It's how I brain dump. Yes. It's crazy. Yeah. Same. I got a bunch of like sketch use Excel draw too. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I've done like, I will, I will be like, this is why my role doesn't make sense within the org. And this is how I think we should reorg. And now I'm going to copy paste what you have and just like read reorg everybody and be like, this is why I think this is what we should aim towards. Totally. yeah yeah team google slides nick popped in team google slides yeah i i think and so he so i so at vaco we never did slides i even asked i had lunch with jake shepherd by the way or breakfast before i left raleigh and i was like dude are y'all using slides at vaco he's like not really what i've realized is i i chat gpt i was like why why Do people like slides?

Why can't we just vibe out on a call? And here's what ChatGPT said that put everything in perspective. If it's on the slide, you own the idea. If it's on the slide, it's yours. It is your idea. You own it. You claim it. And I think that is incredibly important. Now, I'm not saying that every one-on-one like what, like, again, this is coming from a leadership perspective. This question, if you are trying to create buy-in reminder, I've gotten a new boss recently. I have this long PowerPoint and literally he was like, this is great. This is great. He had no questions. Great. Yeah. Like if it's not in a PowerPoint, a half page document.

Yes. It has to be written down also because like, yeah, when we're in a meeting, it's going in one ear and out the other. And that's by nature of who I am as a person. And I do have like my AI note takers and everything, which are super helpful. By the way, I use granola. I use granola. I love granola. I love granola so much. Now, hashtag not sponsored as well, but I use this for everything. I think they could do a lot more if they sponsored us. I was just going to say, there was a small chance that this was actively recording right now, but it is not.

What if you can't provide the promotion or raise as a manager, but you want to keep the staff? Emmett, thank you for literally asking the question. That is Kelly's talk. That is literally the second half of the talk I gave yesterday. Yes. So there are certain motivational levers you have to start to pull when you're working with folks that you want to keep, but you can't provide the promotion. And honestly, one of the first things that you should really do here is be entirely honest about why you can't provide that promotion. I've been in situations where they're like, well, you don't technically qualify for the raise due to your timing, but I also want you to double your workload.

Both things can't be true. So find what motivates them. Is that... um giving them bigger better opportunities that push them outside of their comfort zone is that acknowledgement and celebration of their milestones is that you know like finding an opportunity for them to pair with somebody else to teach them what they know like you have to figure out what what drives them and what motivates them because a lot of times people also just expect that The promotion is that next step. This is a conversation I have a lot with people, especially when they're going from senior to staff engineer. The staff engineering role is fundamentally different from a senior engineer.

It is fundamentally different. And I think there are times when people don't realize that a promotion changes the work expectations of you. And like, is this actually the work that you're looking to do? Or are you looking for a raise and you want to continue to grow at that level? There are people who are terminal senior engineers, and that's fantastic. Like if you really enjoy hands on the keyboard, you want to get deep into the code, but you want to be really good at that. You're not necessarily going to seek a staff engineering role if that staff engineer at your company is focused more on system design and cross team collaboration and like thinking through the gnarlier projects where you're not really writing much code.

It's a very different role. And so it's important to understand why are you seeking that promotion? I understand why you're seeking a race. Like, I think we all want more money that's not always available. And also, like, the more you can be honest about the timing, like, let's say we're actively fundraising right now. And so we just we cannot give raises at this moment. If you're honest about that, then great. If you're kind of coming up with some like lukewarm, you know, reason as to why somebody is not eligible for a raise, it breaks the trust with it, with that team member. So at least be honest with them as much as you can.

I have, I would say one of my weaknesses as a boss is probably oversharing details that I probably shouldn't share. I mean, shocker. But I would say one thing that has allowed me to do is my teams have – and this is at Vaco. I wasn't managing anybody at Gun. I was at IC. But at Vaco, it created buy-in. like like if i was open to everybody all the time and then i say hey i we can't work on raises during this time because of so and so then like i got way more buy-in and so i think from a leadership perspective you do you on how you want to communicate yeah but to me i've always i've i've been under so many managers not at torque that have never communicate to me what's happening up top.

And I felt so lost and I never want that for my team, teams ever. So. Completely agree. Completely agree. I've heard one-on-one should be more of a brag sheet and how to discuss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Like if I, depending on how often you have your one-on-ones, how often do you have your one-on-ones Kelly? Right now I'm bi-weekly and then I'm weekly with my manager. I'm bi-weekly with my direct reports because I have so many of them and I meet weekly with my manager. You like alternate, right? So like one group one week, the other group the other week. Exactly. And I tell them like on your quote unquote off week, if you need to meet with me, please put time on my calendar.

Like that doesn't mean that you can't meet with me. Sure. But this is just to make it so I'm not in one-on-ones for, you know, twenty-five percent of my entire work week. Yeah. Also, I love how we've already been on this thing for forty five minutes. What in the world? Actually, Kelly, Kelly texted me at night. She goes, you want to get on? Yeah, early. So we've actually been going out for an hour and fifteen together. I was doing I was doing. Hold on. Taylor said this a lot later. You have to do the job before you get it. I've done that. Kelly's describing it right now.

And then he goes, true, I was doing DevRel in full-time engineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have been doing social media and recruiting full-time for the longest time. And then I was able to transition into this, right? So... Hold on. I'm just kind of getting through here. All right, cool. Um... Let's talk. We got to talk job search real quick because it's me and you and that's what we do. Always. Always. Where are people missing the mark right now? Just like with what you're seeing, resumes, interviews. Yeah. Is there any consistent themes? I think that I've been doing a lot more job fit interviews, like hiring manager interviews.

And we do things a little bit different at Zapier because we're hiring for so many roles. So you might be interviewing somebody who's not going to end up on your team, which is totally fine. Again, larger company, this is pretty typical. One of the things that I think I've been seeing lately of where folks are missing the mark is that you can tell there's a lack of practice or refinement in their answers. And we've already talked about this. This is one of those things where you have to practice interviewing to get better at it. And the problem is, and I do the same thing. When I'm nervous, when I'm anxious about something, I hyper focus on one example or one word and I keep on saying it.

And if this was like a drink every time I say this word, you'd be dead kind of situation. The way you get out of that is to practice your interviewing skills more and more. And yes, part of the interviewing process is... It is, interviewing sucks. I did it six months ago. It's not fun. I understand. I've been on both sides of that. You've been on both sides of that as well. The more you can practice, the more refined you're going to come across in your answers. And when there are so many applicants and only so many jobs, you have to find a way to stand out.

Yeah, I think – yeah, I mean, listen, I want to tell this story real fast. So I interviewed at Shopify because they were looking for like kind of a director of recruiting, which I could have easily slid into. But I guess literally the guy goes, you gave all the wrong answers. Okay. Okay. And he was like, I was like, all right, sounds good. Like, and the reason why I say that is because like, even I like literally by definition shit the bed, like literally he goes, you answered everything the complete opposite I would, but all of your reasoning was great. Yeah. And so for me, it's like I want to say that because even, you know, I know people look at me with all this streaming and the social media and a lot like it still sucks.

Like interviewing still sucks. Right. I want to tell you to encourage you that that no, I mean, I'm sure Kelly has gotten rejected a lot. Right. And it's just never, ever. I've gotten every single job I've interviewed for in my life. But you're making a really important point there. It does not matter how much you prepare for these things sometimes. You can't know exactly what they're going to ask, and you can't know exactly what they're looking for in those answers all the time. And you can over-prepare for an interview. There is such thing as preparing for an interview. Because what happens, yeah. And what happens is like you over-prepare in a way that you're like, this is what they're going to ask me.

And I like totally know how to answer these questions. You get in there and they throw some left field question and you just freeze out because you're like, I didn't practice this one question. If you've ever done public speaking, it's the same thing. If you try to practice a talk verbatim, you're going to trip up when you miss one of those words or you miss a sentence or you miss a cue. And then you're like, I don't know where I left off because I lost track of my script. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. I had another thought too. Oh, Naz. So listen. Oh, no. Naz. Like I had a major stuttering problem growing up.

Major. And I will say this. I think first off, Like my biggest advice is just slow down. Yep. right, slow down as somebody who had a stutter, slow down. You know, I talk really fast. I did not get to this point overnight, right? Like TikTok does this thing where it pushes all this stuff you posted like over the years. Even my stuff five years ago was not near as good as it is now. It's just gonna take time. I will also tell you this, and I like what Naz is doing. I actually shouted her out in my keynote in Raleigh. She's a part of the Torque community.

one of the biggest things i keep seeing and keep hearing from devs is getting good at talking while coding interesting and so so even if it's just getting on twitch or nasa's doing youtube like just get comfortable talking about why you're doing things when you're doing it right i think that is the um i i think that's the big unlock right now for interviews i feel like It's fair. I will say that. I will say multitasking is a very difficult thing and nobody is actually a really good multitasker. Your attention is, you only have so much attention. Yeah. My wife would agree with you on that for me.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm, I'm same way. Like reading the comments that are coming in and also squirrel. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. uh anything else anything else you're seeing uh for interviewing right now do people know what zapier do at least do at least they're doing research on the company are you still getting people who don't know what um no i'm definitely getting people who are you know exploring what zapier does um which is great it's it's one of those things where like i understand that you're interviewing with a bunch of a bunch of different companies fingers crossed you have a bunch of interviews and so you might not be going super deep into any particular thing but like If you have a general idea of who Zapier is as a company and you don't completely give the wrong company description, then great.

I'm glad you did some research, but I also feel like things happen. The other thing I will mention as we're just kind of looping things around both to hiring and also to promotions, a no now is not a no forever. Yes, totally agree. This goes for in a couple of directions. If you get a rejection on a promotion, find out why. Work towards filling those gaps and go for it the next time. I know rejection sucks. Same thing with hiring and interviewing. If you get rejected for a particular role at a company that you really want to join, there are more roles at that company.

That one might have just not been the right fit for you. And don't completely write off a company because you got rejected one time. To be honest, most of us, especially at larger companies, now that I've actually been at a larger company, we don't really remember every single thing or different people are interviewing. And so we're looking for different things. And so don't let one rejection kind of push you off and be like, oh, this company will never hire me because I didn't do well in this interview. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. Let me ask you this then. How should people follow up? Because I think that's the hardest part.

So let's say I interview with your team. You don't like me. You reject me. Yeah, you would you would never do that. What how how should I how should I approach following up? So fun fact, that is actually how I got the job at Zapier. No way. I didn't know that. Yeah, I interviewed at Zapier a few years ago for a director of director of engineering role for an org that no longer exists at the company. And at the time, like I wasn't a good fit for it. And I understand why. Sure. I have two more years of experience on top of that. And then I saw this opportunity open up and I'm like, oh, this is definitely on my alley.

I reached right out to the same person I interviewed last time. And I was like, hey, I know it wasn't the right time, but I was really, really interested in the company. Been a fan of the company, been a customer for a decade. Would love to have another conversation with you. Here's my updated resume. Yep. Yep. And here I am six months later employed. Crazy. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, same thing with me with all things open. I got rejected for five years in a row. And literally last year I was like, I'm not going to submit a stupid. I was like, well, it's just going to take two seconds.

So I did it, got accepted, crushed it when, I mean, it just, I was talking to, I was talking to Jason about it, like in the hotel room. I was like, what if I never applied? None of this would have happened. Yeah. So like, just keep trying, keep trying. All right. Do you want to plug Ladybug real quick? Yes. So I have been co-hosting a podcast for several years now. But Ladybug Podcast is back this season. It's Emma and myself talking all things engineering management. We think we've released six or seven episodes already for the season, which is super exciting. You can find it at ladybug.dev.

We are about to pass the one million streams mark. We are really, really, really close to it. And I cannot wait to see us kind of take over. That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. So highly, highly recommend giving it a listen. So we're focusing on engineering management right now, but we have like six or seven other seasons of highly like technical, like tech career and code. Oh, for real? Like just like in the back burner? Things that we've already released. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of it is, of course, outdated anytime you talk tech. I connected our RSS feed for the podcast into YouTube because people were asking for the podcast there.

And what it ended up doing is re-uploading all of the audio with new dates. And somebody commented being like, we did an intro to React four years ago, and we're talking about Create React. And now it just pushed. Exactly. And they're like, oh, wow, Create Reactive is really ancient. I'm like, yes, it is. It's also a very old episode. That's great. I love that. That's awesome. All right. So rapid fire here. And again, for those of you who tune in, thank you so much. I always appreciate everybody tuning in. If you have any questions, please ask them as we kind of wrap up here. This is the one chance where you can get Kelly focused and ask some questions.

This is it. What's one tech tool or app that you can't live without right now? Ooh, you know, I already mentioned it, but right now it's granola. I literally cannot live without granola. I'm in so many meetings right now that there have been times when I'm in a meeting and I'm like, I know I talked about this somewhere. I can pull up the search. It's going to search through all my transcripts and summarize what it was I talked about. What did I say I was going to do? Yeah, I still think. Maybe you and I talk like, like offline. I still, I'm not using, I feel like I need to, they just added like recipes where you can like, like, but like, I still feel like I'm, I'm not using it correctly.

So maybe I need to talk with you about it anyways. So Grinnell, love it. Love it. What's the very first job? I don't think I've ever asked you these questions since I did it since I created these. So it's gonna be fun. What's the very first job you ever got paid to do? not counting like babysitting. Yeah. Not babysitting. Okay. Uh, so my first job then would have been, uh, a part-time employee over the summer at my dad's office where I was digitizing documents. Oh, so if we could go through an audit and I did not understand how to work, it was great. I was like, can I leave?

Like I'm done with my work. That's crazy. Right. Um, Let me ask you this. As a manager, I was going to sunset this question because it didn't quite make sense, but I think it makes sense talking to you because you're a manager. If you could have it your way, not to be confused with, is that Burger King or McDonald's? If you could have it your way, what type of cadence would you like for people in the office remote? Do you want to go back into the office? Do you like being fully remote? What's kind of your thoughts on just in-person versus remote right now? If I had it my way, I would have an office to go to if I wanted to go to it, but I don't have to go to it.

There are no fixed dates. I'm surprised Zapier doesn't have anything in Atlanta, to be honest with you. Everybody else does. Technically, there was a co-working space that came in, like an office inside a co-working space that came in through an acquisition. It is the only office that Zapier is actively paying for. Oh, wow. The largest office at Zapier is like it holds three people. It's a co-working spot. Exactly. I love having a remote job, but I miss people. I do too. I do too. I also think if you got me, Jason and Brianna together consistently, no work would get done ever. No work. Yeah. You think like we're going to be so efficient.

No, no, not at all. Yeah. I do miss it. I think, um, I think if I were to set my schedule, I think I'd probably like two days in person, um, The problem is, is that, you know, and I've talked about this. Was that talking with this with Nick Taylor and Raleigh was like, because I stream so much, like I would need an office. Like I'm just constantly streaming and meeting. So like I couldn't like be in an open workplace. So anyways, when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? Grew up. Grew up. When I grew up. When you grew up.

Ooh, that's a good question. And my sister's in here. So Katie, if you have an answer for me that I'm not thinking about, please tell me. So I don't know. It's hard to say. I always was interested in the medical field. But my whole career has been stemmed from the fact that I never wanted to code for a living, which is why it's ironic that I'm now- Yeah, you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like my that's why my my degrees are in public health, social work, psychology, because that was originally my my plan. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What's a career mistake you're oddly grateful for?

This kind of gets some people, but. Yeah. Oh, yes. Easy. Have you ever tried to run two companies at the same time? You can imagine. What was that? Taproom and what else? The other startup that I co-founded, Cavallo. Yeah. Yeah. I had this dream of moving into a product company, and I was really tired of agency life, but I didn't want to shut it down. And the biggest regret I have of this is if I had let it go earlier, even six months prior, I could have sold the company for seven figures. Instead, I ended up in six figures of debt. So it's gone. That's gone.

Like, but, but that always sits in the back of my mind. But like, did you have a buyer come by and you were like, no, I'm going to keep trying to do it. Were you a little hardheaded? I had multiple people being like, we're super interested in buying your agency. That's crazy. And tap room was what again? Remind me. It's been a minute. Yeah. It's a Shopify plus agency. So focus on development of like custom themes and apps. Yeah, yeah. How do you handle a team saying collaboration, but when you come into the... I mean... Depends what that collaboration is. What kind of collaboration are you looking for?

Yeah, yeah. Is it sitting on Zoom meetings together? Yeah, because that's... Yeah, I know. That's the biggest problem I have with like people going on site where it's like... you're just wanting to justify your rent. Let's just call it what it is. Um, and everybody's either not there in zoom calls. So yeah, that's a, yeah, that's, it's tough. Um, uh, next question. If you weren't in tech right now, but the money would be the same, what would you be doing? I would be, uh, a travel influencer. I could see that a hundred percent. I can see that. Yep. Uh, and then the second last question, I know the answer to this.

Coffee or tea? There's a little bit left, but it's coffee. Hot or iced? Iced. Always. I'm like iced in the wintertime. There you go. There you go. Kelly and I definitely bonded over that. All right. Last question. The show is called Guidance Counselor. Guidance Counselor. Guidance Counselor. Guidance Counselor. Guidance Counselor. Um, if I were to go back in time, I would say like, trust your, trust your gut on your ability to, to, to lead early. Um, I got ahead of, like, I started because I was a leader at a young age and I let my age kind of take over my idea of like the imposter syndrome was really strong.

Like I don't deserve to be here because I'm so young. And I had people telling me that, well, you're still in college, so I don't have to pay you as much. And I'm like, it doesn't matter what, you know, that I'm still in college. And it was a, it was a hard thing that I had to learn early on. Yeah. I love it. I love it. All right, y'all. Well, again, thank y'all so much for hanging out with us today. I always love Friday sessions. I don't do them a ton, but I feel like the engagement's through the roof, and it was. So thank y'all so much.

Next week, we got one on the docket. Next week, I'm going live with Matt Stauffer. He's CEO, hiring manager with the Laravel Consulting Company. Met him at Denver with Laracon, so that's going to be a great conversation. He recently did a laid-off lounge in our Discord. It went over great. go connect with kelly kvly.com join her uh leadership thing class thing you do i have a newsletter modernleader.is yeah yeah i'm a fan ladybug podcast just check it all out kvly.com y'all have a good one have a good weekend we'll see you next week peace