leading for engineers w/ kishau rogers

full transcript

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

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me, old fashioned email, social media at T D S and T D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Michelle, who are you? What do you do? I will go from there. Okay. I wrangle complexity. I say that a lot. That's literally what I do. I'm a computer scientist, a tech entrepreneur, currently the CEO at Time Study.

Time Study has an enterprise platform that studies time. It used to be an engineer, so I named things based on how they function. So we actually studied time. We do that for, we almost had 100 hospitals around the US, companies, has offices in New York, Virginia, and I'm so happy to be here. I love it, I love it. So when I message individuals, I always say, hey, listen, there's kind of three main areas I talk about, the job seeker hiring, and then also building culture. And so Sean and I were talking off air, and I wanna dive in to the first thing that we talked about is basically leading in the way you lead, right?

You came from an engineering background. So can you kind of dive into your background as an engineer as you moved into leadership, founder, CEO, and kind of what you've kept in mind through that journey and then leading other people? Got it, yeah. So I started, I've been a tech, gosh, it's been almost 25 years now and at my first role in tech was a programmer. And then I just moved through the organization, and started my first company over 17 years ago. So I've been running tech companies for a while. This is my third one. And I learned a lot from being an engineer but also leading engineers about the day in the life of a person that has to take an idea from conception into the market.

And one of the things that, there are a couple of things that I do as a leader for engineering teams. Success metrics, I make a deliberate effort to define how success is measured to be aligned with the engineering team around that. And our business, when we have our team meetings, we lead the meeting. Everyone leads with metrics. And it keeps us all aligned, is really quick people go through their metrics, and we've all agreed on them. And it allows them to work the way they want to work. So I don't pester people on weekends and bother them because I understand engineering flow state, because I remember it used to be my favorite time when and I used to work at night.

I used to pull all nighters and it wasn't wanted to be up at night. It was because no one else was up at night. And so I would be up for this long stretch of time writing code and it just felt like a really creative exercise and I think a lot of engineers are more creative than we give them credit for. So I make space for that by being a very deliberate leader. So I taught a session metrics in a really deliberate way to to allow people to work the way that they want to work. So we talk about success metrics, right? I mean, because we have engineering leaders.

I also, by the way, y'all engineers, engineering leaders that watch the show aside from Barrett Blake, y'all lurk too much, because I got a bunch of y'all my DMs that say, hey, that's a great show. I'm like, why didn't you say anything? I got this literally text in engineering manager yesterday, he's like, I watch your show all the time. I was like, what, you need to say, hey, once in a while. So that being said, what are some success metrics that you're willing to share? I don't know if you want to share all your secret sauce, but I mean, what are just some things that y'all get key in on?

Yeah, so they're the obvious things. Of course, you're looking at your work items and the percent completed. We also, of course, look at unplanned items. It helps us to understand whether we do a great job of forecasting our sprints. So we're in the agile shop. I take it a step further. I actually measured the customer's input on what we're doing because I think we missed that a lot. A lot of times we can just check boxes and deploy things. But then a lot of things can happen after deployment that isn't documented. So we actually look at whether or not the, of course we look at whether a ticket was reopened, but we actually monitor customer feedback.

And for a couple of reasons, it empowers the engineer to build a portfolio where they can actually explain in a job interview, not only their skills, but also how that impacted the people that they build products for. So I make that one of their success metrics is we get customer feedback. So my team actually partners with our client success team on ensuring that we have customer feedback on our big, big releases. I think that's an important part. The rhythm of the team, of course, again, I think engineering is a lot more creative than we're getting ready for. There is rhythm. So I actually look at the team and their rhythm.

And so I look at when they're like really coding and really in a very productive state. And then you'll notice when teams become, they need rest because they've been pushing so hard. So we actually build rest into the planning. You really? We have to because if you don't build it in, people don't rest anyway. Like seriously, you will see a person really getting burned out, they slow down, they're not as crisp or clear. So we're deliberate in building that into the process. We recognize that it is, it can be really taxing for the brain to be in its constant state of coding and pushing out code.

So rest is a part of it. It's crazy too that you said that because you're not the first individual that has said this on the show. So two things I hear a lot with. One, so Jason Langstorf who's actually speaking, I think, at Render this year, he's VP of Developer Experience, I think, at Netlify. And he was saying that developers need to stare at more walls as in like, that was like my favorite quote out of our talk. basically like trying to give the mental space to solve problems. And then the second thing I'm hearing a lot too is comparing so Michelle and Chris, no Gabe from G2I down in Miami who's hosting React Miami.

They are talking about that they're athletes that like we don't we don't treat our engineers like athletes and really at the end of the day with the amount of workload they have that needs to happen. Yeah, it does. And you know, if you imagine a company actually measures whether someone has taken a break in a while. That's a success metric because it doesn't, it freshes up your brain. So some people, you know, they may go hiking or they may just lay around on their couch, you know. I don't hike. I don't know. What you have to do is that reef charges you, you have to actually measure whether your team is recharging or they will burn out on you.

And I see it a lot with engineers. I think it's brilliant, the concept of staring at walls. I really love it. I started during COVID, like because we were all in our homes working and I had been used to being out more. I actually started working out at 5 a.m. in the morning. And I mentioned that I used to be a night owl. So I'm a morning person now, but it really set the tone for my day. And it gave me a lot of discipline. It cleared my brain up so that I can actually plan my day. No one's up at 5 a.m. except me and the other athletes and engineers, you know, you don't have to be in a gym at 5 a.m.

But I think allowing your team to sort of build these practices into their day actually helps them do better work. I love that. I love that. I want to give a shout out to people I joined in. William Johnson, what's going on? But I'll see you next week in Miami. He's also a very, very big a part of Render ATL. Cody, it's great to see you. Tatiana, it's wonderful to see you. Chris, we got somebody from Texas tuning in. Let's see here also to Brendan coming down here. We've built rest in the planning. Best thing I've heard all week and arguably the rarest of all mindsets.

And that's all I got her on. That's all I got her on. I take a walk. Take a walk. Do something in Erica. It's great to see your girl as always. Mrs. Consistent. So I want to go into a little bit about culture, Because I think, you know, you've already kind of, you're obviously, I can already tell, you're a big proponent of culture and leadership and you understand the mindset. What, why do you think, and this is a broad question, so bear, there's no wrong answers here, why do you think culture and tech can be broken or is broken in certain instances? Like, there's so many reasons, but one, I don't know.

I want a lot of different directions. One I think is this, you know, I think there's this sort of persona of a person that works in tech. And that person, you know, works all day, just cranking away at code. And they can really quickly take, you know, someone else's idea and execute it. And sometimes the way tech actually happens, leaders don't understand what needs to happen to actually execute an idea very well. And you can treat tech workers like robots instead of people. like these are people, you know, like you can, you may be able to write C-sharp code, but can you navigate a dysfunctional leadership team that can't make up their mind about what they want and the scope of work is changing.

So these are the things that actually keep people from building great products. So I think the dysfunction really is in the misalignment of the vision for the future that you're trying to create. Sometimes leaders fail to actually say, this is what we're trying to do. This is what we wanna see happen, help us get there. and sometimes it just sort of is barked from an orchard bark that, you know, at years. And then they may not execute as well, not because they're not talented, but that there are a lot of other moving pieces that they have to navigate. And I think we underestimate that. So I mentioned rest a lot because treating people as people is important.

You have to recognize when they're at their highest, most creative state. I think tech workers should be treated as creators because that's what they're doing. That's because we have to build teams that do that. I also think, in a lot of ways, I think we can train our tech workers to really optimize for communication. Still a lot of younger tech workers. They collect certifications, but you missed some of the stuff that's really important in your development. Like, can you communicate what you've been doing in a way that's very precise, that I can understand your role on the team, what you did, the timeline and the impact of what you did.

And I don't think we don't really train people to do that until they're further in their careers. And I think we should train them much earlier than we did to be able to communicate work in that way. What, so there's so many ways I could take this. I don't want to get off leadership right yet. So what are some other things? Because again, you're just spitting some truth here. So I want to kind of dig into your brain a little bit more. What are some general pillars as well that you just believe in, that you're passionate about? I know we've talked about rest, we've talked about communication, we've talked about leading correctly from the top of there.

Anything else you're super passionate about right now that you may want to share to other leaders? Yes, sandboxes is something I'm passionate about. So I'll talk about rest now. I want to talk about play. So a lot of times when I go speak, people realize that sometimes I don't even talk about tech like at all. I'm talking around tech because I think you know a lot of things around tech that makes the tech not work as well. Play is another one like as a company is there area sandbox that on a regular basis your teams and not just the tech teams your teams can actually play and break things that's so important.

It particularly if you have young workers because gives them an environment to actually some people learn by taking a thing apart and putting it back together. So can they break it? Can they see what happens when I do this? So we make sure we have sandbox area for people. It should be a safe space for people to break things and not be judged because they did something crazy. But it is a good way for people to learn. So professional development through not just coursework, but sandboxes, like build it into your schedule that people are able to play. Another thing is visioning like what you're doing.

I challenge my teams to really mock up what it is you're going to do when we are building a new capability. You can do it on a napkin. I don't care. In Excel, it can be a word. It doesn't even have to. It shouldn't involve code at all. So on paper, just show me what you're trying to accomplish and actually imagine, get someone to help you imagine the customer doing that. And again, a lot of times we treat engineers like robots. don't give them the space to actually think about what it is they're doing before they do it. Sort of mock it up first. So I think design should be a part of a lot of things.

There are a lot of dev op things that don't involve that, but that is really important, at least on my team. So sandboxes and the ability to prototype new ideas on a basis is important. You know, it's funny, right? So talking to you and kind of hearing what you're saying, There's almost this like, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it. There's almost you're kind of like, hey, be cool. Like, let's just be chill. Let's rest. Let's tinker. Let's communicate. Let's get shit done. But like when I talk to you, there's not this like anxious energy right now. You probably been around the block for a bit.

So you probably understand. But like, do you think maybe you're a little different with that because everything you're saying it's not go go go it's almost hey let's let's figure this out on the front end first before we go well I've learned that people move faster when you give them time space to do this because what you learned like I mentioned being an egymic 5 a.m. what I learned when I go and I'm not an athlete but any stretch of the imagination but what I learned is I learned what I'm capable of every morning I'm capable of waking up I'm capable of waking up I'm capable this morning I I did five pull-ups unassisted like that's awesome Build that into my day and I think engineering teams need to be able to do that because that allows them to move quicker when it is Go time.

So when go time. Let's go go time is not the time to like play and Critical mistakes. So you want your team to be high performing you actually have to give them time to train like at. And that's why the rest and the training, the sandbox is important. And for our engineers, like we can't test, I mean, you can test, you know, some basic fundamental programming skills if you're talking about software engineering, but the things you can't test for are all of the other things that that person is going to have to deal with the other people that they have to report to the change in direction, maybe even the change in coding.

So how well does your team adopt a new technology. How do you know that unless you allow them to do that on a regular basis? And if you bring them into a brand new project with a drop dead deadline that's tomorrow, they're going to screw it up. And as I said, bad people, you just didn't give them a chance to like, tinker enough. They don't know what it's going to take, you know? I feel like I feel like leadership, I feel like leading well is not hard, but it's hard to execute. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Because everything you're saying, I'm like, why doesn't everybody do this?

But then I realized that like we're all broken people and, you know, we're, but, but I think obviously that what that's what makes you special. But I don't know everything that you're saying everything that I've had leaders on this show. They're all it's all consistent. And they're all doing it. But there's a lot of leaders out there not doing it. I think too culturally, we almost have this belief that once you reach a certain point in leadership, and maybe it's a title or the number of people that report to you, it's almost like you don't have to grow anymore. But one of the things that I take responsibility for the people I lead, so if people are burning out under my leadership, then it's not their problem.

I need to look at why are they burning out this environment. And if that means that I need to go out and build more runway for my company so that we can hire more people and and and they can work better than that is my growth that I have to grow up to be able to do that and I think a lot of leaders just missed the part about their responsibility which is your responsibility to create an environment that's conducive to people doing great work and if people are burning out consistently there's a pattern of burnout it's not people it's your environment your policies procedures and maybe even your leadership that's going to burn out.

So good. Ali, I get, I hit 33 and it hurts the sneeze. I wake out of bed sore. And then when when somebody speaks the truth, I get goosebumps now. So I'm having goosebumps this entire session. So I love this so much. So so you mentioned hiring. So let's go into hiring, hiring retention. We'll kind of wrap up the last half of this with this topic. Companies are struggling to hire companies are struggling to keep talent. Let's let's about hiring first. General tips, tricks that you learned over the years because everyone's trying the best they can. And so I would love to hear what you're doing.

Yeah, it's rough. I mean, it's rough out there and I run a startup. So I'm just not like I'm running Google like some of the big companies they have the brand behind them. But it is it is one of the things that I do I tell you what I do that works for me is transparent hiring procedures is really important. So we have a very clear process and I articulate that when I first meet the candidate. Hey, this is the way we are. This is what we're doing next. This is what you can expect. And again, about alignment, you know, is this aligned with your career goals and your job search goals?

Does this timeline work for you? So I think that's number one, transparency, sourcing talent, you know, there's a whole lot in the space around diversity and making sure that you're diversifying your talent pool. So I can be sure that I'm sourcing talent from different sources and just being really clear on how I'm evaluating the role. So I put more work on the front end when I think about the role. I'm actually thinking about how this person's performance will be measured and structure my interview around that. And then, you know, the rest of it is just, can we vibe? Do they seem like like their good team dynamic, the rest of it.

But if I can get on the same page with them about how much we're paying, you know, what our timeline is, what we do, you know, I do my work initially. This is what we do, this is who we serve. I'm just interested in you know, and this alignment, your goals. And I have this, my philosophy is that, you know, I don't want to waste people's time and I don't want them to waste mine. So I actually start the interview with the success metrics of the hiring process so that the candidate can tell me, ah, that's not for me, or yes, great, I'm really interested in this.

Okay, this is what I'm looking for. Really quickly let's evaluate whether or not you fit. So that's my hiring, I could go in a lot of different directions with hiring. Yeah, what, what's, so walk me through, because I'm always fascinated with like the specific steps. So like how do you have things, how do you have the steps set up? So I always do an introductory before we do an interview. There's like a 30 minute intro call, whenever the person can do it. I actually speak to them whether someone else on my team is hiring them. And that's so that I can introduce myself and the company.

So again, I'm treating them like a human, not like a candidate in a big pool. It's like, hey, I just want to meet you and find out who you are and why you're looking. And this is who I am and this is what we're doing and this is why we're hiring for this role. And I think it really sets the tone for more of a conversational interview. So that, you know, if their first impression is that me, I'm interrogating them. Do you know this? Do you know this? Take this test. Then it's not really a good interview. It's just like- Hold on, hold on. Hiring managers, did you hear that?

Did you hear that? Did you hear that? I mean, like the real session doesn't make you feel like, I know it's been a while since I've been. Oh my. But I remember applying for roles And the ones that I did not want to have a second interview with were the ones that treated me like just a face in the crowd. Yeah, just a number. So that first step is a 30-minute intro. That's what I do. You know them. The second one is the actual interview and the relevant person on my team is there. And that's where we actually talk about what we're doing and what would you do if you were in this role.

So it's really situational. And we tell them that before they get to the interview. We don't like to surprise people with stressful interviews because I don't think it leads to great performance. And then the third step is the if it's an executive role, then they meet the people that I have to report to. Our investors may be key advisors. But you use the two-step process and then we make a decision and we go from there. That's awesome. So you're only the second manager leader that I've spoken to on the show, Ashley Hunt. from Raleigh, she is a manager of DevOps. She and you are the only two individuals that have talked about prepping candidates before they interview.

Yeah, why wouldn't you? Like, why would you set someone up? Like, I mean, unless they're like going to be, you know, climbing Everest and you want to test their ability to not die. Like, why would you actually put someone in a situation to fail? Because there's some really good, really talented people people that in the right environment are superb. And so I just want to set the environment for success, you know, and if you are going to go work with your questions, then people can't Google the answers if you're really doing your work because no one knows your company like you do. So we like present our unique use cases to the can and they can't know this ahead of the interview.

And we just but we tell them this is what we're going to talk about. These are this is what we're with measuring, make sure you have these stories ready before you get there. More goosebumps, more goosebumps. All right, so last like a few minutes, I wanna talk retention, right? Now, I think everything you've said is retention, right? From like the moment they get on the phone with you, it's an intro, you're kind, you're giving them space, all that's retention. Is there anything that maybe you struggled with recently, maybe the last two years from retention that you've had to fix or that maybe something you've implemented new by chance?

Yeah, I can tell you what I've done new. So I've met tech time studies to start up. I've run three companies, but this one is a startup and we didn't have clear pathways to growth. And so it wasn't like a real, you know, we didn't lose any one time study. We have really good employee retention, but we had a few employees that really have very clear career goals and they wanted to see what their opportunities were. So one of the The other things I've done is I've been very deliberate about, hey, if you want to grow in this way, this is what is required, this is the range for that.

And the transparency in that has really, like I've seen my team actually be more empowered and they've been more like very deliberate about their work, their monitoring, their progress in a way that I generally don't see when people don't know what their promotion opportunities are. That's been great for me also because you get teams that are really performing at the level that you want them to perform because they understand that if I get to this level, this is next and this is the salary that's attached to that. So again, transparency requires a lot of preliminary work. The career of professional growth opportunities is another thing that you know, been handling on a case-by-case basis, but I think it warrants a lot of thought.

like how are you offering your team the ability to learn new things. So as a part of our like, we do one-on-one. So instead of like a big annual like performance review, I don't do the like surprise at the end of the year. I talk to people on a regular basis. So I speak to them one one-on-one on once a month. And that's where feedback is exchanged. And it's never a surprise because we speak on a frequent basis, because we leave our metrics. I don't blindside people with criticism. So that's another thing that I learned in my career over time is that evaluating people on a regular basis and allowing them to give you feedback is a part of the process that needs to happen more often, not just once.

Wait a minute, you allow your people to give feedback? Yes, they do. And they'll tell me, but I've set up our communication so that they do. And it's not like they treat me the way that, I treat them the way I want to be treated. So it's not me to say, I didn't like it when you did this, but the team will say, could Shaw be you give me an idea that it would help if you could blah, blah, blah. And I'm listening. I'm like, oh, I should probably do that. Like I'm gonna, I heard you when you say that. And a lot of times if a team member is giving me feedback, I'll, during our team member meetings, I'll talk about it.

I'll be like, so last time I did this, it occurs to me that if I do this, it'll actually help you more. So going forward as a team, you know, I spoke with whoever about this. And again, it creates an open culture and people feel heard. If I don't agree with the feedback, again, it's we're having a conversation. The goal is not for me to control them. The goal is for me to set an environment that allows them to perform well. I love that. So last few minutes here, any advice to job seekers right now? Also to mail company here goes, I didn't have you with your company just for the interview experience.

Dude, same. Same. So, and Brandon comes in literally, you know, not liking a surprise people during interviews, also demonstratively rare mindset. I don't know anyone who likes to be surprised in interviews, but sure seems to happen a lot. And then Brandon comes in again, the best managers and management teams I've worked with always have regular touch points with the direct. It's one of my favorites you to say, if you're surprised by anything in your reviews, what we're required to do, I'm not doing my job properly. Yes, Brandon, yes. And the one thing I wanted to know also, If someone made a comment and just left, I'm old, I'm getting old.

Is that your? But I had a thought about another thing that came up at Time City recently around retaining employees. I'll mention it in my next comment. OK, cool. That can be it. Job seekers, any tips for them right now? Obviously, you're in hiring. You see resumes. You see inner people interviewing. Any general tips for job seekers right now? Yep, it just came back. So as a leader, another thing I think that's important is being allowing people to articulate if their career goal is not with your company, which is another unique thing. I've actually- Say one more time. Say one more time. Well, I've actually spoken to employees as like my ultimate job is to start my own business doing this and this and that.

And then performance goal at time study is like, okay, if you want to be here in this amount of time, I think you need to focus on this skill and that skill. A lot of leaders are afraid to do that because we have this mindset that when we acquire talent that they should never leave. And that's not a mindset that I take. Sometimes people are there with you for season. So they have their their goal and it's a line with where you are. But when the company grows and when they grow they may not be a fit and that's not a bad thing. So putting that on the table.

In terms of job seekers, I'm going to go back to communication, be able to communicate not just the check boxes, like I know this and I know this thing and I took that class, try to communicate how the so what, how did that impact the people that you were building for, who did you work with on the team and try to communicate it in that way. And if you can't like really ask your former supervisors, like when we deployed that, like how many customers use it, did anyone give feedback? You want to start putting things like that in your interviews when you're introducing yourself because that's going to set you apart from most of the candidates that I see.

If you can articulate your work in that way. I love it. Any last thoughts? So we're done. Time flies when we're having fun. Any last general thoughts, things that maybe, you know, any last words of wisdom? And if not, no worries. I just always leave the mic open to the. I have a lot of things. So the one thing I'm going to leave with, because I know we don't have a lot of time, is I'm hiring. So we're going to be doing a lot of hiring. We have a head of technology role open. We have a senior software engineer role that's open. What's our tech stack?

So we have a big platform. We've dot net, SQL and C-sharp, but also the main stack for a model. We also have a USU eye roll that will be opening in May. We have a lot of tech things happening. If you're just like kicking the tires to see what's out there and you wanna meet me and talk about what your career goals are, just reach out to me on LinkedIn. You heard it here first. Her DMs are open, friends. My DMs are open. I love it. I love it. It wasn't made ready so I can know what you're doing. So, and I'll come with my information, okay?

I love it. I love it so much. Well, thanks y'all for hanging out with us today. Ka-shah, thank you so much. Stay on real quick before we, as we end, because I have another question for y'all for air. But y'all, thank you so much. Go Connect with Ka-shah. Hopefully y'all enjoyed this episode this morning. Also come to render because we're both gonna be there and it's gonna be awesome. And y'all have a great one. Have a wonderful weekend and we will see y'all Monday. Take it easy. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode And I am very grateful because you know why?

There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at Tdaston on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.