feeling demotivated in your career and how to fix it w/ emma bostian

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i got that we'll show comments in the chat okay and then we'll do this and this and then we'll do this alerting the troops all righty sweet awesome all right good morning y'all we're starting a little early i feel like today's gonna be a great conversation i finally um shout out to naz in the tort community she was like oh you know she she's been a big fan of ladybug podcast and And she was like, Hey, you should, I don't know if you know Emma, but you should get Emma on the show. I was like, you know what? I haven't, I haven't asked Emma to come on the show for like two or three years.

So thank you again for coming on. I appreciate it. It means the world to me. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So a pump for this episode, you know, we're, we're, so we're taking a break. So I've been working through, I've been, for those of you kind of tune in and obviously we got to let the interwebs kind of do its thing. So, you know, we're still early, but, For those of you who are tuning in or listening in the future, I admittedly have not asked people. I've been so busy in what we're doing at Torque that I just haven't asked guests to come on. I've been working through a job search series, which you can go check out on Torque YouTube, how to write a resume, how to write a LinkedIn, how to navigate job boards.

I'm going through everything right now. emma booked this uh so pumped to have emma on so we're taking a little break from the job search we'll still talk about job search stuff today kind of career stuff uh with emma but taking a break from that and i have one more guest coming on ray gaswaldo he's a staff engineer um and so he's going to come on i think in like two weeks but aside from that it's solo shows but not today today we have the wonderful emma live from emma where are you tuning in from I was like, are you waiting for me? I'm in Stockholm, Sweden.

I love it. I love it. Stockholm. Been there. It's great. Bakeries are top notch. Coffee is top notch. I mean, really, like if there's a city for me, it's really Stockholm. So welcome from Stockholm. So what time is it out there right now? It's four thirty, but it's been dark as heck since two thirty. so i just bought so we had our torque uh kind of community all hands this morning every monday and uh i told the team i bought a happy light bought a happy light because I desperately need to, uh, be happy and it does not get dark as early as two thirty.

Um, but, uh, it still gets dark pretty early here. So, uh, I went out and bought a light that mimics the sun so I can continue to stay happy through the winter months. Um, so, uh, Emma, uh, but well, before we, before we dive in and again, for those of you tuned in, welcome. Good morning. I see people chatting in again. Shout, shout to Naz for, um, brokering this conversation again i listen to everybody in the community um so again thank you for brokering this i appreciate it want to give kind of some some housekeeping things real quick first and foremost i'm an upright hero um basically what that means is i am saying that you should go check out app right even though i don't code So I always tell people I'm probably one of the only non-technical heroes on a technical program.

But love the DevRel team out there. Love the crew. Jason Torres is also an upright hero. So if you go check them out, tell them the Torque Boy sent you. Also, too, want to give some Torque community announcements, kind of what's going on. So we got... Uh, so we go to torque.community again, kind of a brand new refresh webpage situation we got going on. It looks pretty. Um, and, uh, and kind of two announcements. First off, um, the, uh, ambassador signups and mentor mentee signups end December fifth. Right. So December fifth, we got two more weeks on those. And again, mentor the ambassador program we've had.

Last time I checked, seventy six people signed up to be a tour ambassador, which we're obviously super thrilled about that. We will not be accepting everybody. I just want to go and say that we're trying to keep this depth. is kind of the theme for twenty twenty six right twenty twenty five was width uh twenty twenty six is depth and so uh we're really going to uh lean into our uh community um in our ambassador program so go sign up if you're interested in that um and then our mentor mentee program last time i checked we had Fourteen mentors sign up to be a part of the mentor program to mentor some mentees.

We have about twenty five mentees that have signed up. So that's our second cohort. That also ends December fifth. So if you are a individual who wants a mentor, please go sign up. And if you are a somebody who's senior in your career and you've always had the the desire to mentor somebody but don't have time or, you know, because it's kind of being a mentor, you kind of have to have some. you have to put a little bit of oomph into it. We are providing that oomph to you. So Jason is kind of helping head up that mentor program. We're going to provide you resources.

We're going to connect you with people. We're going to kind of kind of move along the, uh, program for you. Um, so, uh, so really you can just slot in and show up and mentor some folks. So again, that, that ends December fifth. Um, and again, this last cohort, um, we had, uh, what do we have? Like ten mentors and fifty mentees. So it was a great program. Also, finally, enough of, uh, I'm about to be done yapping. I promise. Um, Text live. This is U.S. only, obviously, so people in Stockholm can't be a part of this. But text live to six one five two three five five six five zero.

If you want to be updated when I go live with amazing guests like Emma. All right, Emma, enough with me yapping again. Everybody who showed up so far. Thank you. Continue to comment. Give a quick introduction about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Oh, what an existential question. I'm still trying to figure that out. I am, I don't even know. How do I start this without telling you what I do for a living? Okay. I am an engineering manager at Spotify in Stockholm and I've been here five and a half years now. So it's gone pretty quickly. That's awesome.

I'm also a mom of two. I just had my second child about seven months ago. Yeah. You look great. You look great. You look great. Thank you. Oh, that's ironic because I was up twelve times last night. Bless your heart. Yeah. But, um, other than that, I mean, I love reading books. I love cooking and baking. So I'm into like being outside and lots of hobbies nowadays. Um, so you might not see me as active on the internet, but yeah. Yeah. I love it. What, what's a, what are you good at baking? Do you have like, like if I'm inviting you over to Thanksgiving in the U S what are you bringing me?

Uh, from Stockholm? Like, like have you have anything locked down? i've i've gotten really good at pizza dough and bread but honestly anything from that yeah sally's baking addiction i just bought her cookbook and oh my gosh anything out of there please so good i love it i love it that's awesome have you picked up any like local things that you bake Not so much that I bake, but I've gotten decent at Swedish meatballs. There you go. Love that. Love that. Awesome. All right. So again, for those of you who listen to this in the future and obviously now, I don't really come up with questions, right?

I think one of the things I really try to do is have a really organic. Oh, Sebastian comes in. Emma, what's your favorite dish from Sweden? I love that. Do you have a go-to? Is it the meatballs? Do I have a go-to? I love meatballs. I've gotten really into like Turkish pizzas. Like anything with like kebab is fantastic. I know. Not something I was exposed to in upstate New York. But yeah, those are some of my favorites. I love it. I love it. Kelly comes in here. I expect some sort of treat. What up, Kelly? Do you want to plug Ladybug Podcast real quick since Kelly's not here, but you are?

Yeah, we just finished our seventh season, I believe. It was all about engineering leadership. And it kind of sparked from this idea that Kelly has kind of been my engineering manager mentor for the past two and a half years that I've been doing this role. So yeah, authentic conversations about engineering leadership. I love it. I love it. Check it out. Check it out. All right. So going back to so I don't I don't really come up with questions. But, you know, one of the things that Emma said, I do like to prompt people and see kind of what they're mulling over right now. And one of the things that the thing that Emma said was really trying to get up off the mat.

If you're feeling overwhelmed or down in your career. We are obviously entering at the end of the year. Emma and I were chatting backstage. I was like, where did this kind of come from? So, you know, Emma, I just kind of want to start out kind of some general thoughts on this. I know the general sentiment of the job search is in a state of the market is pretty down. Right. Just general. What what's just some words of encouragement right now that you can give people? Then we'll navigate this conversation. Words of encouragement. Yeah, it's I would say this isn't necessarily the first time that we've seen the industry kind of take enter this transition phase.

Right. Where what does it mean to be? I'm seeing at least a shift in what does it mean to be a senior engineer, at least right across the board, making it a bit more. I don't want to say more difficult, but we're redefining the boundaries of what it means to go up the engineering career ladder. And I think we're seeing a shift more perhaps into career maps as opposed to career ladders. Um, words of encouragement. Yeah. Um, Everything that feels very scary and insurmountable now, I would hope that things equal out long term, right? I mean, I think about this like when the stock market dips, like the first thing you're taught not to do is to pull your money out.

You're taught to kind of like wait it out and things will level out. And I would hope that the tech industry gets to a new normal and things are a bit more stable and we see more job openings and all of that. Yep. I love that. What, what are you seeing? Right. I mean, obviously, you know, one of the reasons why I love pulling on engineering leaders like yourself is you kind of have more of a holistic view of the market. Right. And, and I mean, what, what, what type of conversations, uh, are you having with people and, or, um, when it let's, let's start there.

Like, have you had any conversations recently, words of encouragement you've told some folks just even in your immediate network? I think I'm kind of trying to challenge this mindset of I always need to get to the next level. I'm always striving for the next highest promotion. And my question to many folks, including myself, is, well, why? Why do you want this promotion? Is it something you've always told yourself that you need to achieve and then at that point you'll be happy? Is it for respect from your peers? Do you actually like what the job at the next level is going to entail? So do some deep diving on like, why do I feel this need to achieve the next level?

Because frankly, the grass isn't always greener, right? And then maybe look into opportunities at a more lateral level. Would being an engineer at the same level in a company that maybe aligns more with your interests be a better move for you? Or would product management or engineering management or another tangential role in the tech space be interesting? Or maybe switching into contracting or freelancing? So that's, you know, something that I would encourage people is like, really think about what do you actually want? And something I just was talking to with my team member today is when you think about your yourself six months from now, what, what type of person do you want to be right like for me i'm trying to live a more healthy active lifestyle so for me i'm like i'm i'm going to be a healthy person like go on walks every day with my son uh i want to do strength training things like that okay well how do i align my actions today to be that person in six months right i'm gonna start today with identifying as that person but what action is every action i'm taking today aligning with that future version of myself I love that.

I love that. You mentioned something that I want to go back to real quick from career ladders to career mapping. Can you expound on that? Because I think that's kind of interesting. I don't even know if I can, because this is a concept. To be honest, I was just at Lead Dev in Berlin and I didn't get to listen to the entire talk, but I do remember hearing the phrase career map. And I'm like, huh, that makes a lot more sense. Like historically we've seen, I mean, it used to be back in the day, like your next promotion after senior engineer would be engineering manager.

So like it was actually a promotion. Now we're seeing kind of bilateral tracks where you've got a leadership track and an engineering track or an ic track individual contributor now we're seeing just like to go up the chain is getting harder and harder right so you have to develop this map of like skills or hats that you want to wear throughout your career that might not be the next level in a ladder but it's uh it's more of a graph data structure than like a stack or a queue. I don't know if those are right, but you know, yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting you brought up too.

So one of the, one of the things we do in the Torque Discord is we bring in, various individuals to just talk about, uh, basically around this conversation around job search and career. And we had James Perkins founder of unkey and Raleigh, uh, last week in, in, in our laid off lounge series. And we really started to get into, which it's funny, you know, I always look at themes and what people are talking about. And he brought up specifically on the lines of like, Really, what you said, grass is not always greener. And then also specifically around why you want to either make a move, leave your job, have specific reasons.

I feel like a lot of people, and which is fine, is chasing the money. And I get that, right? Life's expensive. I am not going to sit here and disagree with you on that. But I think a lot of people are too focused on chasing money and not trying to think about, hey, what am I actually dealing with right now? I feel like people get too emotional and try to jump at the first sign of tension. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, absolutely. And I'm a self-imposed victim of that. Something that I discovered later in life is that I definitely have ADHD, which has gotten me to where I am in my life.

But it also means it can come across as hyper-productivity, where I would hyper-focus on a project for a couple of weeks, go all in. release it and never touch it again so I was like wow she's pushing out so much work or wow she's jumping from job to job every two years I literally moved countries every two years I say that like I've lived in a ton of countries I was in Austin Texas for two years then I moved to to Karlsruhe Germany for two years and now I'm in Stockholm Sweden this is the longest I've been in one place and I would always switch teams every year and a half always chasing the next best thing um The grass is not always greener.

And I find myself really questioning, like, why do I feel antsy right now? Is it because I'm not feeling challenged in my role? Is it because I don't like my values don't align with the company that I'm at? Like, what is the real reason? Would I be happier somewhere else? For me, the answer is no. Right now, definitely not. Also, what I've realized is sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward. Like when I'm, when I moved from Texas to Germany, I almost took a demotion, not in title, but in salary. Absolutely. I did. Um, I knew that that was going to get me to where I wanted to go longterm.

Uh, so yeah, uh, I had another point. I can't remember at the moment, but yeah, it's, um, the grass is definitely not always greener. Hmm. yeah and kelly kelly brings up uh one thing this is one good question i was asked when job hunting are you running towards something or running away from something that's pretty good that's pretty good how dare how dare she come in and be more insightful than both of us put together i know classic kelly um so yeah i mean for me and and i'll say it here too i said it last week in the discord series but I think you need to differentiate.

Are you dealing with an industry problem or are you dealing with a specific problem as it relates to your organization? Because I think a lot of people are like, oh, I'm going to bounce. And then they get into another opportunity because it's an industry problem. Right. And it's not really specifically an issue like in there. Now, if there's an issue in the organization, you have a terrible manager. There's a lot of organizational stuff, leadership stuff, maybe business direction that you can't control. I think it's absolutely vital. for you to, to, to take notes and make a change. But I think a lot of people are running from one job to another job.

And I think they don't even realize it's more of an industry thing. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah, no, it's totally true. Is it a systemic problem across all of tech, right? Like if I cannot get a senior promotion at my current company, unless I get hired into a senior role elsewhere, which is not impossible, you absolutely could. Um, am I going to have an easier time getting a promotion in another company? I can tell you the answer is no if you got hired into whatever the position is that comes before a senior at the company you would move to.

Then you have to start over, essentially, like building rapport and a backlog of work and all of these things. One thing I will say, as I've gotten older, as I've acclimated to Swedish customs, work-life balance, I have transitioned my thinking from I live to work achieve a high salary to i work to live right i live below my means you know i still you know we're not hurting financially but at the same time salary is not the the most the highest motivator at this time in my life right i would much rather have a really great team who i spend most of my days with honestly that i adore uh with people that i trust who All want to be there.

Great work-life balance so I can leave at three thirty to go pick my kid up from school. That is more important to me than a high salary. And I know that's very privileged to say. I will flat out say that. But at some point, once you hit like a threshold of. um, like income or benefits, like, you know, anything above that they say is almost negligible or it doesn't necessarily serve to make you happier. So if you're constantly chasing, like I want a higher salary, a higher salary, but it comes at the expense of a work life balance or, um, you know, other benefits like a fitness stipend or whatever it is.

Um, that's why you need to really ask yourself what actually motivates me. If it is money, like go chase that salary, like go for it. But a lot of times it's not right. Um, yeah a hundred percent i i think i i want to go into i like this theme that's kind of coming out of this conversation around work-life balance and i think it's something that especially around fitness i mean i know like admittedly it's something that i've let slip i mean with two kids um you know with a third on the way with kind of standing up kind of the, the torque community team from scratch.

It's been, you know, I've definitely led a lot of things slip over the last year. Right. And, and when, when did that mindset shift kind of hit for you? Was it kids? Was it before kids? I mean, I know kids put a lot of things in perspective. Don't get me wrong, but like, when did you go from, I guess chasing the bag to being like, Hey, like, you know what? Like, it's not all about that. Like, is there, is there a time? Is there a moment that you can recall? Yeah. Oh, it was totally kids for me. I mean that you see when I was on parental leave with my daughter in it was also like, Oh, I'm sorry.

I kind of dropped off the internet and you did. Yeah, you did. Part of it was I had postpartum depression and anxiety horribly with her. So I was going through this crisis. Yeah, it was awful. But then I realized I need to just embrace this. And once I embraced it, my whole life changed. And I realized I love my job. Don't get me wrong. It's a dream job. At the same time, it's a job, right? So what's more important to me, and as a manager, this is how I lead, it's like... Hey, family comes first. If you need to go pick your kids up from school, like you don't need to log back on later.

If you're getting your stuff done, you know, spend time with your family or take time for your mental health. If you don't have kids, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, it absolutely for me was having kids because I realized, you know, when I'm eighty five years old and I look back on my life, am I going to think, wow, I really wish that I attended more meetings or open more pull requests? No, like I'm going to I'm going to sit there. Wow. I actually wish I took more time to be present with my children, not just physically, but emotionally. Yeah, it's massive. Yeah. And I think I mean, that's kind of been, you know, I've.

I think I'm kind of going through that right now, right? Where it's like, you know, work is important. You can't discount work. But I do think, I think sometimes, and this dads in tech group I have, I mean, we've had some great closed door kind of conversations and meetups, but it's like there's sometimes I feel like you get so focused on work. It's hard to pull out. Like it's hard to like, like for me, I feel like I'm going through a season of my life right now where I'm trying to earn or unearth myself from work. And, and it's, you know, and to me it's like, Oh, well it's okay that that task isn't done.

Like I've had to learn to be like, Hey, you know what? As long as there's no like, extremely pressing due date it's okay that that task is outstanding um and to me that's been hard for me um because i'm very much you know i i've talked you know i've talked about this in my dad's group where it's like When you're an agency recruiter, it was bred into me. I definitely think I have some ADD, ADHD, because I feel like I can get a lot of things going at one time. I feel like that's one of my strengths. But the problem is my focus into something that's been difficult and trying to unearth myself from that has been really hard.

And it's something that I've had to work on. So it's good to hear you and you kind of figuring that out as well. Do you feel like going dark... on social media help because that's one thing i'm struggling with too is like oh yeah keeping up the rat race of social yes at the same time i had a pretty established career by that point so let's not discount that like i was able to do that right i did use it as a way to build my career but i got to a point where i was like why am i seeking validation from people i've never even met why do i care what people on the I will say something my husband showed me.

He showed me a video yesterday and it was like, yes, you're tired as a new parent. And I was telling Taylor, I woke up like twelve times last night. Right. At the same time, nobody's coming to save me. So I don't prioritize myself no matter how tired I am. Like nobody's going to. Right. So, yes, I'm tired, but I'm still going to try to go on a walk today. I'm still going to read my kid a book. And The other thing with this to-do list, there are always going to be things on your list, right? It's almost a reframing that needs to be done from like, okay, the things that a hundred percent have to get done, put it on a list.

Everything else can be on a wishlist, right? We've got to reframe from like a to-do list. Like I have to do everything on this list to like, okay, here's my wishlist. And here are the things I actually have to get done. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, and that's kind of what I'm trying to do as well as like, Hey, like, what needs to be done this week versus what needs to be done next month and i think i think i'm kind of going through that process of trying to trying to unearth myself so again i love that i love that let me let let's let let's go back to uh some career stuff there there's there's there's a lot of people on the job search right now that are down and it's like i kind of said in in know getting off the mat what are some things if people um feel like they they just keep running to a brick wall with their job search or their career what are some things that you've done um to to really add perspective and or uh you know really kind of get out of a rut Honestly, if you're able to step away from the whole thing, if you have the luxury of being able to do that space and getting outside and literally just taking a break from the whole process is genuinely the best way.

If you're not able to do that. I mean, perhaps having a commiseration partner or an accountability partner to keep you motivated and going is a good way to do it. I mean, so when I was going through recurrent pregnancy loss, because I've had eight miscarriages in the course of, I don't know how many years, five years. Yeah. It was so isolating. I felt like nobody could understand my experience. It was something like only I was going through. And then I realized, well, that's not true. I just haven't found my community of people who are also going through it, right? And so you find even just one person who can somewhat identify with like, hey, I'm not getting any calls back about...

these job interviews or, you know, I keep, you know, getting to like the last stage and then getting, you know, thrown out of the process. Like no one can empathize with this or no one understands. It's like there are people, but maybe you haven't found them. And it's a very vulnerable place to be. I think for me, being transparent about what I was going through connected me with so many people I never would have met who also are going through the same thing. And it's like, OK, well, now I found my community and that for me was very healing and it was motivating to see other people come out the other side.

So if you're in a place where you can be vulnerable with the people around you or, you know, if you use social media as your community, I highly recommend it. yeah i totally agree yeah and and i know i reached out to you i mean we we lost we had a miscarriage as well and i think what's what's crazy about the whole thing is is i agree like i think there's i think we as human beings um immediately go to shame with a lot of things um and you know you know i have a we have a really good like church group dads group right and like just to be able to sit down with these dads here in hendersonville and like I mean, there was somebody else who lost a baby in the third trimester.

And it's like being able to have that group and walk through life together is massive. And I think we as human beings, we are so quick to isolate. And we were so quick to close up. But I think one of the biggest saving graces is having people who can walk alongside of you in life. Yeah, that's a big one. And yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was going to change it. So you continue. Oh, yeah. So again, just like my encouragement to folks, I know we talk about community from a job search side of things. But I mean, I'm with Emma here. I think having somebody to talk with, to go through with, and not your spouse too, right?

I think... that that's a whole nother conversation around marriage that I think having a, having somebody else to go to and not the entire burden on the other significant others is another marriage thing that we can talk about another time, another day. But I think having, you know, a girlfriend or, you know, a guy friend to be able to kind of walk through life with you is just, it's just a game changer. So go ahead. It sure is. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is I, what I realized is every emotion I have, I can just actually make a decision not to feel it if it's not serving me at that time.

You know, I would get so frustrated or like anxious about certain things. Like why haven't I heard back from this person? Or if you're searching for jobs, like why haven't I heard back from these companies? And I would make it all about me. And the thing is, you're not that important. Right. In the sense of like, you should say that. Yeah. If you haven't heard back from someone, very likely it's not about you. Very likely it's everybody's dealing with their own stuff in private. At the same time, I did make an executive decision to say, you know what? I'm actively choosing not to get frustrated over this or anxious about this.

And I'm truly a believer that what is meant for you will be there for you when the time is right. I can't explain it, but that's how I feel. As an example, when I moved to Germany... I had just gotten there. I got married to a really great person and I had started my Twitter career and that blew up really quickly. Well, I heard from an engineering manager at Spotify. Hey, do you want to interview? I went through like the first few rounds and then I realized I just moved to Germany. Like this is definitely not the right time. And I told them that and I pulled out, I said, this is not the right time for me to move to Sweden.

I really appreciate it. Let's keep in touch. Well, of course, um, If you know me from like way back when my marriage fell apart, I ended up getting a divorce and I'm sitting there in Germany. I'm like, well, this is kind of rock bottom for me. Like I am in a foreign country. I have no family. I'm in tons of debt. What am I going to do? Right. Yeah. And that's kind of when COVID hit too. So I was like super isolated. And that's when like my career really took off. Like I turned to social media. I started a side project about the tech interview process.

I dug myself out of debt by selling books for ten dollars about how to interview for engineering jobs. and then i got my dream job at spotify at the right time for me and i moved to sweden right and now look at me um yeah so things can feel really crap in the moment and i just um i have to remind myself like if something's not going your way there's something better coming for you you just don't know what it is yet um yeah so good yeah i mean i i you know and again i mean know of course like it always hasn't been you know roses and sunshines with our marriage right and it's like a lot of times what i've realized is sometimes you learn more in the sufferings than you learn more on the mountaintops and i think i think we is i think we as human beings we always want to be we always want to be on the mountaintops Right.

And because it's good, life's good. Vibes are immaculate. Right. Like I always say. But I think one thing I've realized in life is that when it's when it's real bad, that's when like the care that's that's when you build character. That is when you figure out who you are and you learn a lot about yourself. And I think it takes I think we I think I think taking the bad and and not necessarily going, why am I in this? But what am I learning from it? That's so true. And it can feel so overwhelming. When I'm sitting there in Germany, I had just moved into an apartment by myself.

We had already made the decision, okay, we're going to get divorced. And by the way, I've never spoken publicly about it, but he is such an amazing person that I still keep in touch with him and his wife today. And I can tell you, looking at it from the other side, this is the best possible scenario, right? We're both married to The people we were meant to be and we each have kids now and we stay in touch. It's great. At the time, it felt like the world was ending, right? I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, okay, even after I get this dream job, I've paid off my debt.

Fantastic. Now, during the middle of COVID, I have to figure out how to move myself and two cats to Sweden. I'm like, how the heck am I going to do that? It seems so insurmountable, like everything, even the good things. And then you break it down, you know, like take it one day at a time to get one, you know, like let's say you're, you're job hunting. You finally get a call back, but you haven't had time to prepare for the tech interview. It's like, everything's happening at once. It's like, okay, what do you do? Start with one thing. If you get laid off, what's the first thing you got to do?

Okay. I need a resume. That's step one. Okay. After you create a resume, what would you do? maybe make a spreadsheet and start applying to jobs and keep track from day one of like, this is everywhere I've applied to. This is the recruiter's name. This is where I'm in the process. Take it one step at a time, stay organized and, you know, find your community. Yeah, I think I grew up. Also, this is why I don't ask questions because thank you for being vulnerable. I appreciate it. This is this is this is why I don't ask that questions. But for me, it's it's it's controlling what you can control.

Like my dad has always said growing up, like the circle of influence, right? Draw a circle and like you can only control what's in the circle. Right. And I think a lot of us try to control what's out of the circle. I think it's human nature. Right. And, and, and I think it's like what you said, I think taking it day by day, you know, my, my, my wife and I are, you know, in a season right now. And it's like, we're, we're, we're just, we're just trying to focus on day by day, day by day, because tomorrow's not promised. We can get super, you know, here is super high level theoretical or whatever you want to call it, but tomorrow's not promised.

right? Somebody, somebody told me the other day, they go, all you have is today. Everything else is a fantasy. It's true. The future is a fantasy. Also your past is a fantasy because it's what you remember, right? It's not actually what it was. And so I think a lot of us get really, really caught up and looking, I mean, for me in my career, I mean, I feel like you're wired this way. We're always like, all right, we got to do this. Like, how do we, how do we, how do I position myself for five years? I like, I think the question that really screwed up our entire generation is like the boomers asking, where do you see yourself in ten years?

Hmm. Because it's like, man, I'm just trying to survive today. Like I can't even think about ten years from now. And so being able to focus on that's important. I love that. All right. Let me ask you this. Let's go back to kind of tactical job search stuff. You are in a leadership position at Spotify. Where are you seeing people really miss the mark right now in interviews and or their job search, whether it's them interviewing with you or direct people you're seeing? Where do you still see people missing? I think there is a misconception that you have to know everything to kick ass in an interview.

Like, you have to have the answers. Even if... like confidence over competence almost, right? And that's such a misconception. It's actually, I forget where the study came from, but they've showed that leaders who actively admit that they don't know, but they're willing to learn, they have this growth mindset, are perceived as more competent than their peers who act as if they have all the answers. So when you're interviewing, should you be presented with... a problem or a question that you don't know, be very honest. I have hired people who didn't have all the answers. And I don't expect people to have all the answers. What I would hope is that you have a growth mindset.

You're willing to acknowledge what you don't know and willing to learn. and you're humble about it. That's all I'm asking, right? So having this idea of like, I have to know all the answers. I have to, you know, I have to understand absolutely everything. It's not true, right? I'd rather you just be curious and open and we can work through things together. Now, not all employers have that mindset. So I say that, you know, from my perspective, but if you don't know the answer, it's so much better to just say, you know what? I'm not sure. I'm happy to go like figure that out. Or here's how I would go think.

think through that or look it up or whatever. That's what I think the misconception is. When it comes to, obviously we got to talk about it. It's kind of the elephant in the room. How are you dealing with AI right now in the job, in the interviews? Is it nice to have right now? And I ask these questions to every senior person I ask, engineering leader, because I want to get a beat on the market. So I want to kind of see Is it a must have right now? Is it a nice to have? Where are we at with that? I would say today it is a nice to have.

However, it's very quickly going to be a must have. Like we are getting to that point where you need to know how to use it now. I would caution you to figure out how to use it the correct way. Don't have it regurgitate answers that you don't understand how they got there. Figure out how to use AI to improve your proficiency. As a leader, we don't want to hear that like, I have it just regurgitate code and I throw it in my editor and ship it, right? we want to hear how are you using this to enhance your skillset? Uh, how are you using, uh, like, for example, let's say you join a new company, like, um, there are tools that you can use in your IDE to analyze the history of like, okay, tell me about this, this piece of code.

Why was this written? What's the historical context behind this? Um, like we want to hear how you would use it that way to be more productive and collaborative with your colleagues. Um, we don't want to hear how you're going to like literally have it write code that you don't even review and throw it into a pull request, if that makes sense. Yeah. So really what you're saying is like, use it to better understand what you're walking into, not even necessarily trying to generate code. I think it has a place for generating code a hundred percent. Um, And it can probably solve a lot of problems much quicker than we're able to.

I think it's the danger becomes if you have it generate code and you don't understand what that code is doing and then you ship it, especially if your product is touching anything to deal with like financial issues. like the financial industry or you're dealing with data privacy or things of that nature, right? So I think it's great at generating code to some degree, but you have a responsibility as the person submitting this pull request, right? To understand what the implications of that are. Okay. I love that. I love that. Let me ask you this because this is a conversation and I know naz dropped in right here says figuring out how to use ai the right way is so confusing what would you what would you say to that like what would you say to somebody a hundred percent i agree with you and frankly i i don't feel very proficient in it either and it's something i'm trying to figure out as a leader how do i use it without getting into tricky situations like i know I'm not going to use it to analyze my team members performance.

Like it still has pitfalls right now. I'm not even aware of all the pitfalls of it, which make it a little bit scary to me. I would never put confidential, like personal information into that and use it in that way. Now, what I could do, what I have been using it for maybe as a leader is, okay, I want to have a team ways of working where we're going to cover collaboration and communication and My engineers will be there and my product and design counterparts will be there. Develop like a template that we can use to be the best version of ourselves. That's the kind of thing I'll use it for.

But I would agree. It's super confusing to know which tools are the right tools for the job, what's appropriate and not appropriate to be using it for. Right. Things like that. Okay. I love it. I love it. Is there a specific... Is there a specific AI tool that you guys are using? Like, do you guys use Claude or cursor or anything like that? Is there if someone's looking to use one of those? Do you have any recommendations? Or is it kind of all up in the air still? I don't know if I'm allowed to actually speak to the internals. I will say, though, I am familiar with Cloud and Cursor.

And in my free time, I've tried out both just for fun. I haven't used them extensively. But Cursor seems super cool just right off the bat. I would say look into that one. Cloud Code also looks really cool, although admittedly, I don't code so much anymore. So I couldn't tell you all the ins and outs of what it would be useful for. But both of those I've definitely heard floating around. So if you're going to get in... you're a developer and you're looking to get into ai tooling start with those because they seem very popular yeah um there's another one i i've heard of as well is it notebook lm or llm yeah yeah i've heard of that too yeah and that one is super cool because you can go dump a bunch of different types of files and docs and conversations in there and it can generate things and what i'm interested in is like oh it can make a video it can make a podcast it can make a quiz out of it for me That seems cool too, but I haven't actually used any of this in my job yet.

I've only been back on the job for like two weeks. There you go. There you go. I love it. Let me ask you this. We'll kind of start wrapping up for rapid fire here. So if anybody has any questions, please ask them. But one of the things we keep hearing right now is, man, I've gone through – Three, four rounds and then I don't hear anything back. And, you know, I've kind of I've seen I've seen the word the great the great hesitation that's happening right now. Can you give just some thoughts as an engineering leader just about that? kind of the and i've kind of voiced to it too i mean there's been times at torque where i've gotten sign off from one person but then it goes up to finance and it's like no we can't do it yet so i mean i'm i'm even struggling with it do you have any thoughts on just kind of peel behind the onion of what you have to deal with from a leadership perspective obviously not giving too much away but just kind of tell folks like sometimes it's just out of people's control i don't know if you have any thoughts on that I've heard of situations where the ball just gets dropped.

Let's say somebody goes on a long-term leave unexpectedly or they leave the company unexpectedly and the ball just gets dropped and unfortunately no one's picked it up and There can be unfortunate – I don't want to say victims but like people who have been in the pipeline who just get dropped as a result and that's super unfortunate. So like logistical issues is one. I assume financial reasons could definitely be another one. Like when I was an engineer interviewing – for a job in Germany. I literally got through the whole entire interview process and they were like, you did great. We'd love to hire you. But also we can't because we don't have the finances to do it.

And I'm like, well, why did you let me go through the entire process? Yeah. I think from my understanding, like, at our company, we're very, we wouldn't put people in the pipeline unless we financially were able to, it's not something that we just pull people in and on like a hope that we could maybe hire them. We're pretty, um, I would say good on that. Um, where we won't waste your time, but if the ball gets dropped, I would assume it's just, uh, like what I had mentioned first, it's just a logistical or a clerical, uh, issue. And, uh, That does happen sometimes, unfortunately, and that's awful.

And if I see that happen, of course, I make an effort to step in and say, hey, we need to pick this back up or talk to the people involved because we're not wasting. These are people's real lives and time on the line here. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think my advice for folks who kind of keep dealing with that, I think one of the questions I would ask immediately is like, is like, is this budget spec'd out? You know, like prime example, I was even helping, I'm helping my dad through the job search, right? He's in the restaurant industry and he was interviewing at a company here in town.

And I was like, it sounded more of like, Hey, we'd love to have you if we have the budget, you know, that type of thing. and i just told him i was like dude you gotta drill into it and and and you gotta ask them about this stuff um and you know ultimately he found out that they don't really have the budget right now right it was more of like uh let's get you in the door and talk to you type of thing and so uh i so like my two biggest piece of advice from this little little converse a little bit of this conversation is when you're interviewing for a role, there's nothing wrong with asking, hey, is this role fully spec'd out?

Is there budgetary approval for this role? There's nothing wrong with asking that. The second thing is, is that I would also be just consistent on follow up. Right. I think a lot of times people like, well, I haven't heard anything. It's like you you need to keep emailing. And again, I tell people multiple emails for follow up is not annoying. Your tone is the thing that is annoying. But you checking in, especially if you're three to four rounds in, there's nothing wrong with you sending an email once or twice a week. Hey, just checking in. Hey, just checking in. Want to see where I'm at?

Hey, let me know. You know, there's nothing wrong with that because I think a lot of times people are just busy and then people forget. So you got to stay on. Totally. And if you find yourself annoyed, which I absolutely do all the time, if stuff like that happens, throw your immediate response into ChatGPT and have it generate a more neutral, friendly version. There you go. This is how you can use AI. I use ChatGPT. I actually used that for an email recently. So yes, because I am sometimes a little terse and short in my emails. Yeah, same. Yeah, and I knew the crowd I was trying to email and I just was like, hey, can you make this friendly?

And it worked, it was great. All right, so rapid fire again, Emma, thank you for coming on. This was great. Just thank you for just being so open. It means so much, but wanna get to obviously the fun question. If you have any questions for Emma, please ask them here as we kind of wrap up. I know there's a little bit of lag on the streams. So first off, what is one tech tool app something? It doesn't have to be like, developer related it could be a mobile app whatever what is one thing that you just can't live without right now this is so stupid to say but it is actually spotify and i would have said that if i didn't work there i swear because i'm not joking every morning i go on a walk with my son for thirty to forty five minutes and i listen to an audiobook or a podcast and i'm not joking listening to something motivational is the only reason i have productive days Yeah, same.

My wife's not that way. I send my wife all this stuff. She never watches it. But me, I'm like, I need all the motivational content I can get. So yeah, I totally agree. What's the very first job you ever got paid to do? I can't remember if it was. Okay. I was going to say I worked at Victoria's Secret as like a cashier, but also I was a beanbag salesman. So one of those two. Beanbag. yeah i love it yeah yeah it was it was fun i was like a model in the photos you could still find it if you know the name of it i'm not going to tell you so i love it i love it uh that should be the cover art for for this podcast is funny um uh let me ask you this um uh what did you want to be when you were younger like what did you want to grow up to be to to be like like og emma in like elementary school obstetrician gynecologist.

Isn't that so ironic? That was my dream job. I was the ten-year-old kid watching birthing videos for fun. I thought it was so intriguing and I wanted to deliver babies for a living and that's fascinating given my fertility history. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I haven't, haven't had somebody ask that answer that. So there you go. That's, that's why. Let me ask you this and you may, you may be alluded to it. But what's, what's maybe one career mistake you're oddly grateful for? Hmm. I don't want to call it a mistake, but I would say getting too antsy and switching teams or jobs every year and a half.

Like I was never in a position long enough to build a solid like backlog of work to get a promotion. And at the time I'm like, well, I'm never going to get promoted at the same time. It really did get me to where I am today. So I would say, yeah, it's this really pause and ask yourself, are you running away from something or are you running towards something, to Kelly's point? Because if you're running away from something, that's not going to be good for you long term. And that was actually a mistake I did make. I didn't get a promotion for the first like ten years of my career.

It took a long time. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you this. Let's say I were to tell you tomorrow, Emma, that when you wake up, you can't do anything more in tech anymore. Amazing. Okay. Yeah, I figured you'd say that. And then money's the same, but I'd still pay you what you're making now. What hobby would you pursue for a living? I would read books for a living. I would be in book publishing or own a library, wine bar, coffee shop. Do you know what? We're going to Italy to go to cooking school in Tuscany and we're going to drink wine and read books together in Tuscany.

Y'all should do some. Y'all should post because content would go crazy on that trip. That's great. I love that. Drink a little wine, read a little book. That's great. That sounds like the wine sounds great. Reading books sounds like my nightmare. I can't sit still. But shout out to you all to be able to do that. um uh all right last oh no second last question um I know you're in Sweden right so it's not Thanksgiving but what's like what's like the one dish you have to have for it to be Thanksgiving if you were to do Thanksgiving stuffing or pumpkin pie but they're in two separate categories so i feel like i'm allowed they are i love it i will be making stuffing okay yeah so it's a homemade stuffing oh yeah well yeah that's the thing moving abroad to a different continent i've had to learn how to make everything from scratch but we will get a rotisserie chicken i am not doing a turkey I love it.

I love it. I love it. Um, all right. Last question. Uh, the show's called guidance counselor two point Oh, cause we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have them. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Emma? Stop worrying so much about stuff you can't control. Really? Yeah. I love that. Yep. I need that too. I need that too. What is your favorite nonfiction book, Emma? It was the culture map for a long time. For productivity, I'd say Atomic Habits. Okay. I love it. I've heard of the book. Sounds great. Yeah, it's great.

And for leadership, Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. Fantastic. I love it. I love how you had those ready to go. If you asked me that, I don't know the coloring book. Although I'm into nonfiction that's more interesting. Educated by Tara Westover is really interesting. She grew up... I don't know if her parents were like doomsday preparers, but they, she like grew up outside the education system. And then when she was an adult, she like got into formal education and had to teach herself a lot of different things. Anything about space? Like, yeah. So I have a lot of fun. Yeah. Like the challenger space explosion or things like that.

There you go again. Sounds great. Sounds great. See, I just make friends with people like Kelly or Emma. They can just tell me the book so I don't have to read them. Um, all right, cool. Well, again, thanks y'all for tuning in. Appreciate it. Uh, go connect with Emma, uh, message her, tell her it was good to see her on guidance counselor today, but y'all have a great one. Emma, stay on. So I can say bye to you backstage. Um, but you guys have a great week. I'm going to be live tomorrow, um, to discuss, uh, interview prep one-on-one. It's kind of some basic blocking and tackling things that a lot of people miss out on.

So I'm going to be live tomorrow morning at three AM central. Y'all have a good one. Thank you, Emma. I appreciate you. Bye.