so you think you're a senior engineer w/ andrew wyborski

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And 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. Andrew, let's dive into it, man. It's good to people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And then we'll dive in. Yeah. Android Boroski, I'm an engineering manager.

I had to tilt the camera to get the Kroger Digital in. One of my teammates called me out this morning because I had one shirt on and one stand up. And by the time the second stand up rolled around, I'd throw in this on because I was like, oh, wait, I got to stay on brand, man. So yeah, engineering manager here with Kroger for approaching our fourth year. Actually, since I last talked to you, I've shifted. So I'm now in our merchandising space. So merchandising experience, left customer experience to go work in kind of the engine that drives all the things and get some exposure to new areas of our business.

But just I've had a background in technology for too long. I'm gonna feel old if I actually count, but just have a passion for software and seeing how it can kind of improve society and improve our day to day, but also advocate for what developers need because you're right, man, Stail pizza ain't no fun, but at the same time, if there's free sale pizza, I'm gonna be there. So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's see. Let me ask you this. What's the best pizza spot in Cinci? So next time I'm up there, like what's, is there any place in Cinci? Just pop top your head. There is.

And so the local spots, probably the rosas, that's like the traditional whatever. What is it called? La Rosa, so L-A-R-O-S-A. Okay. Okay. But like my go to would be Lucy blue pizza and it's like super greasy New York style. They used to have a lunch buffet downtown since he got. Oh yeah, dude. Like it was it was epic. I think that unfortunately they sense clothes because the foot traffic isn't there. But I'm trying to think if they still have their one location open, but they may be all right. Next time off there we're grabbing pizza. Yeah. So Andrew, you obviously. Oh, and real quick, can you give the people about how big Kroger is?

Cause I didn't realize like how much business you all do. How big Kroger is. Yeah. So we've got, yeah, half a million associates across the country. And so that's in store, digital, whatever merchant it's everybody. Um, we are a 11. Well, last year, I think we posted a $10.2 billion revenue in the e-commerce space. Um, that's just e-com. As far as grocery, we are America's grocer. We're the only national grocer. I think sometimes we suffer for lack of a better term that we actually have 14 separate brands that we operate under Because each one of those brands is like a regional one. So like down in like the Carolina areas Harris teeter is really big and people There you go.

Yeah, so Harris teeter is a crugger Brand if you will but you know you keep the Harris teeter branding people are very loyal to that and you know So I think we lose a little name recognition that way, but then you throw it out there like Harris teeter or like a Ralph's or whatever Like oh, yeah, I know exactly we're talking about so Yeah, we're a big deal. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, I totally did not realize that Alright, so I want to go in today and kind of dive in So we're talking about two topics and we had a few more people tuned in this morning as well Trey Lisa Nicole Yolanda on Carly, another Cincinnati person on the call today.

I love it. And then again, Twitter space is great to see all this morning. If you do have questions, please throw up an emoji on Twitter spaces and I'll try to get to it. So Andrew, I wanna dive into what makes a senior engineer. And so I think this is a fascinating question. So I messaged Andrew, like, Hey man, do you have any topics you wanna talk about? And he was like, yeah, I do actually. Like what makes a senior engineer? So, Andrew, what kind of prompted you messaging me that and then we can kind of break it down? Yeah, so it's been a hot topic and this kind of blew up when the developer round table came out.

I would highly recommend people go and take a look at the whole thing because it was a great conversation, very well shot and produced by the way. Like I gotta be honest, next time I'm like, man, I need to get some more foundation or something, sort that out, but it was fantastic to participate and even better to kind of watch it back. But again, candidly, we're talking about it. The market's still nuts as far as developer careers and postings and things like that. And I think a lot of times people want to talk about becoming more senior or moving up the ladder. And I think there's really two facets of that that really we need to make sure we separate out.

So I think the first one is, what are you as a skillset? Who are you as an actual engineer? And then there's the whole like, okay, but how do you get paid, what salary band you goin'? What title do they give you? Some companies, it's senior developer three and other companies, it's like chief fun-hever in the pricing. And like another one's like senior program or analyst. Yeah, exactly. And like, everywhere's different, everywhere is different interpretations of whatever the title is, but I think the key at the end of the day is as an individual, again, as president and CEO of your own company, you got to know where your skill set is.

And I always want to advocate that people push themselves and shoot their shot, take that reach. And I think it's important to be aware of what your skills are and how you get to become a senior engineer, because really, all it means is you become more seasoned and experienced in your problem solving techniques are much more advanced and sophisticated than they would be for a mid-level or a junior. And so I think that's really what people need to be aware of. And I would say when you're going out there and positioning yourself in the market, obviously years of experience is kind of the first thing that recruiters go to, right?

That's the easiest way to kind of translate that technical into something more like, oh, if I'm trying to fit people in slots to see where I should interview, that's a starting point. But I think for individuals in the market going through interviews, the key is to really be open and honest about what your competencies are. And it doesn't necessarily mean you know every programming language, but you need to be able to be prepared and pitch yourself in the way of, I can pick up a new programming language in X amount of time, and I've proven that because I did this thing. Or, you know, I'm someone who can really take in all the different layers of a technological problem at an enterprise scale and build you out of solution.

And so I think too many times it gets looked at as just how many years have you been slinging code? and people who have been doing that for less, but solve things more sophisticated, sell them so short. And then the inverse of that happens where it's like, yeah, you've been coding for 10 years, but you just take requirements, write code and generate output. And then you know, a lot different. And so I think it's something that's important to understand what you wanna be and how your company sees that and also how to get to the next level up. Well, I'm interested too, because I want to get a little practical here.

And I don't know if you can share. What do y'all doing at Kroger to kind of separate junior mid seniors? Do you guys have benchmarks? And again, if you don't want to share all of it, totally get it. But I just didn't know how y'all are trying to, because here's the deal, right? I mean, as a recruiter in the recruiting, I mean, engineering industry for the last seven years, I find a developer who's a architect level at one company and they're like a developer to potentially another company, right? And so then that gets weird as well. because, and then egos are over inflated, which I think we're gonna dive into here as well.

But yeah. What are you all doing at Kroger to really kind of separate all that out? Yeah, and that's a great question, because that's when I get a lot even from my director ports of like, what is a senior look like, or how do I get to the next level? And for one shameless plug, we publish all of that stuff on our internal portal folks, so you should read your documentation. But too, the way that I break it down, and I stole this straight out of our Kroger leadership model. It is in three tiers. And really it's more from like a junior mid-level senior. Once you get at that senior market, it gets a little bit more murky, but for the most part, I'd say 90% of our workforces in those three bands, right?

As a junior, I expect you to deliver for yourself. I expect you to deliver your piece. I expect you to be a good teammate. I expect you to impact yourself in your area, right? And then the next step up would be as a mid-level. That's one where I expect you to be impacting your team. So again, you're delivering your work, but you're also ensuring that your team is evolving and growing and delivering and you're impacting your team and setting standards there. And then as you get to the senior, that's then where you're impacting your group. So again, I'll use our customer experience space, for example, where you may have cart, checkout, wallet, a little crypto will throw it on there just as a fourth.

Whatever. You gotta say the word crypto at least once. You gotta say the word crypto. The coin crashes under 25,000 today. No big deal. But as a senior, you should be impacting that group of those four teams, right? So that you're probably gonna sit over one of them as a lead, but really you should be setting direction and impacting all four of those teams, even if it's not necessarily in your day-to-day job description responsibilities, because as a senior, you've been around, you know how to do things correctly. You've really been through some of those battles where you should be stepping up and leading and impacting that wider of a group.

And I think that's the way that it should be looked at in terms of what your title is, because really what we're doing is we're trying to quantify the impact that that person has and how they help the organization generate value. I love that, I love that. So what's your biggest advice for somebody? Also, by the way, I love James's comment. I like to say I brought down production in almost a dozen languages. That's fantastic. What's your biggest encouragement to people who are like, I'm a senior right now, I don't wanna take the step back, but I want another gig or I want this gig, but they're not gonna call me a senior.

What's your advice to them? Because I think we're gonna transition a little bit, I don't wanna get off of this yet, I think we're going to transition a little bit on kind of the ego and what the last two years have done. So what's your piece of advice for developers right now who maybe feel like they're senior and then just don't want to take a step back? Why are you a senior? Like, just start there. Like, and you can do it internally. Just, you know, ask yourself that question and then start trying to bullet point things out because again, very much so in previous times.

and I don't know how far back I'd want to go here, but a lot of senior, junior, whatever, was strictly tied to years experience. Yeah. And that kind of made sense because, you know, back in the day when we had punch cards, like if you'd punch 10,000 cards, then like you probably know a couple things and can help others learn, but like that's not the climate we're in anymore. So, you know, how have you adapted, how have you learned a new technology, how have your helped your team become more efficient, how have you made sure that, you know, when you break production in dozen languages, you can also bring it right back up.

Like what are the other things you're doing, but besides just generating code? Because really that's the key is that, whether you're a junior, mid-level, or senior, there's also another difference between engineer, someone who solves problems, and developer. Melper is just right code. And I'll be very honest and very candid, a lot of places hire engineers, but really they just have them do developer work. And I think a lot of times, if you are an engineer coming in into a situation where they're tasking you with developer things, you're gonna get very dissatisfied and that's gonna create friction because you want more, you're in to solve the bigger problem.

And so I think that's the key is focusing in on how are you truly living that engineered lifestyle? And what are the things that you're doing on a day to day basis where, you know, again, don't talk to me about, you know, the number of story points you've passed through or anything else like that. Talk to me about how you help that teammate through something very difficult, but in the way that they learn from it. Or talk to me about, you know, processes you put in place to make sure there is appropriate time for technical debt in your sprints. Those are the things that set senior apart from more or less experienced positions, because as a senior, that's you growing a team.

You are now in a leadership position, and I want to see you lead. I don't want to see you just write really elegant, sexy code, where you know your code golfing every single Jira story. That doesn't generate value more than just getting the ticket done. I love that. I love that. And again, I'm gonna take a second too. For those of you who are on Twitter spaces, what's going on, Dan, I just saw you join. It's good to see you buddy. If you have any questions on Twitter spaces, try to throw up an emoji and I'll try to get it. But Andrew, I want to go in kind of the next step here and I'm gonna throw this at you because it just popped into my head because we started to talk about it on the round table I thought was so valuable and I think it still ties into it is our developers overvalued right now right the value of developers so I want to hit this too so don't forget so the value developers also want to talk about investing your resources in your in your folks right because we're talking about kind of budget cuts and things kind of happening right really checking that and then we'll also kind of round out the session with obviously the market so first and foremost our developers overrated underrated talk me through kind of your thoughts because you had some pretty, you got some really higher comments in that round table.

Yeah. And, you know, even came back around where people like, I can't believe you would say that. It's like, well, you clearly didn't listen to me then, but that's fine. You know, I'll go ahead and explain it again. I love it. But I think developers are overvalued. Um, I think true engineers are probably undervalued, but I think the biggest problem. You know, you're in your title. I think it's exactly it's that key because again, a developer is going to get you through a six month project, but an engineer is are going to be able to stick around long after that. Like if you have a pivot in technology that developers not going to be as effective, an engineer will be able to adapt and change and even identify if you're doing your work in the right approach with the right tools.

The reason I say that right now, it feels like we'll just call it coders for lack of a, because again, trying to remove the inviguation of a developer versus other. I think there is a huge over-evaluation in the market that now we're starting to see corrected in terms of staffing. because if you're just throwing money out there to get people into your organization so you can build that thing that you promised investors you were gonna build and that's what led to your unicorn valuation, you're not hiring problem solvers, you're staff log. And I think that's the problem is a lot of times and most recently you had these just absolutely moonshot growth firms who were buying any and all talent that they could because that's what was needed to make them that next thing.

And I think it's very intriguing to see how some of this reflected early on. So if you want to think when Uber was really starting to experience explosive growth prior to the pandemic, they were willing to overplay for talent because they were like, look, we've got a roadmap and people are used to us losing money. So we're not super worried about that. But we need people to continue to level us up and expand us out where it drives me nuts. But every time I go into Uber eats now, it's like, hey, did you want something from the grocery store or the convenience store? I'm like, no, dude, just bring my Chinese food.

like, come on. But that shows how that platform has started to grow beyond just what it started at. And so again, bringing in engineering staff there and kind of throwing whatever money at them is needed makes sense. But when you look at a lot of these other companies now that are either shuttering or having to sort of spin down those efforts, you have to ask yourself the question, are you paying for talent because that's what's necessary to deliver value on your product line? Or are you paying for talent just because you're like, man, we got to turn more stuff out. Like we had our big moment, we had our big pop, where we got that investment of the EC cache.

Now we need to find the next big thing. That's where the overvaluation's coming from, because if I'm coming in and I'm saying, I'm going to 10x your salary, how is that person going to justify that expense internally when you look at it? And typically, unless you're a startup, you're probably better off investing that money internally and growing your own talent so that when someone with half the experience or maybe half of the evolution of an engineer starts to take over, you're getting again more value out of that because they came up the Kroger way or the Netflix way or whomever. And we're starting to see that market correct because a lot of the things that really got pulled forward in terms of digitization and the rise of e-commerce are now starting to cool down and starting to wind down and companies are going, wow, We actually have to make wise investments and truly evaluate the talent we have internal and then how we bring in the external and what is needed.

And that's what I was saying when I said that it's overvalued because if you're coming out with a couple years experience, you've written code in one environment and now you're going and doubling your salary, the company at some point, shareholders are gonna ask that they justify that to X salary. And if you can't show it or if the results your labor don't show off that way, then that's when you're gonna start to see these layoffs and these down rounds and stuff. And it's hitting every single aspect of the e-comm space. I mean, Carvana, Microsoft, Netflix. It's all over the place. We're now you're seeing that value proposition and evaluation that had taken place in years prior and older industries.

Now finally start to settle in here with tech because people are going, okay, Apple, Google, You guys have had this explosive 10X growth year over year. Is that going to continue to be sustainable? And how are you going to justify that? Yeah. Yeah. So I know I like, I like, I want to ask about this too. Because this just popped in my head. I think one thing that I'm hearing kind of a reoccurring theme this morning is knowing kind of what you provide. Knowing what you bring to the table. Would you say, and I don't know if you do this, and maybe if you don't, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, let me know, but it sounds like engineer or developers coders that were using in this sake should actually be keeping almost like either a journal or a mental note of all the things they've done.

So when the review comes around, they'll be like, Hey, listen, I'm delivered on these things. Is that, I mean, is that something that you would recommend to to to developers right now? Yeah, I would actually recommend that to frankly anyone who gets paid to do anything, whether you're walking dogs or writing code, like, because that's how you get paid, man. Make sure people understand your value and your worth. But I think if anything, the piece of advice I would give from an engineering perspective is you need to start to translate and put these things in more tangible framing. So if you say, well, yeah, this last quarter, I closed out like 100 story points and whatever It wasn't me anything to me.

Yeah, who cares? Everybody knows story points are worthless. It's the whole point of story points, right? But if you can become more comfortable with the business speak or what is seen as the more traditional type of vernacular, that's where you're really going to see the benefit. Saying, I helped our team by offboarding this process that was costing us this many hours to somebody else that then has increased our efficiency. Those are the things you should be annotating and doing on a weekly basis. just so that you know where you're going and have better understanding of what it is that you're doing for your career development.

Because then that becomes a very easy conversation when we have to actually attribute value add to your, I don't say resource burn down, but that's what it comes down to. Well, and to be honest with y'all, so my content mindset, so if we wanna talk like how this all applies, so if you're writing and you're journaling, even on a monthly basis of what you're doing, you take that information and you take your most successful stories and you put it in your cover letter. Hell yeah, absolutely. It's like that's how it works, right? So you're journaling, hey listen, I delivered on this value, hey we did X, hey I did Y, and then when you're looking again, you kind of flip through notion or whatever you use, and you're like all right, here are my top five achievements that I've done at Kroger or Vaco, And that goes on your cover letter.

Yes. And that's how you repurpose that information to help you on the job. Yeah, and I pushed it go even a little bit farther with that too, because I think one of the things that is right for an overhaul is how we process and manage resumes in IT. Oh, don't give me start on that. Right. So I'd say, have your block of just buzz words that you need to put on there to get recognized. Like, all right, cool, you're going to make it through the automated filter. But then I would say, pull that stuff here, saying pull that out of the cover letter, distill it down a little bit into tight sentences.

but that's what I want to see as I review a resume. Under a job. I was here and here's the things I actually functionally did. Just give me your languages. I'm going to assume that you delivered and you were able to write good code and whatever else because they didn't fire you to my best of my knowledge. But what did you actually do on that team to contribute at a higher level and helped me understand why you should stand out from the rest of the herd? Yep, absolutely. I like Ben right here. Cause action result. I like to use cause action result on my career highlight slash journal results.

Try to some kind of number deliverable. Yeah, absolutely results should go back to some sort of number. And this one I'm talking about going over your resume. Like a lot of y'all write resumes. I don't want to talk about resume right here because that'll start World War I because so many people have thoughts on that. But for me, you know, the list of the list and bullet points of general tasks that you did does not give me any bit of information, right? But Ben, for example, hey, listen, problem, right? Kroger had this issue. I did this, the result was this. If Andrew's looking at your resume, he's gonna be like, ah, this is very easy to understand what this individual did, instead of just going like, deploy this on AWS, did this, it just, it's a whole different experience for the hiring manager.

And honestly, this is again, where you can leverage and tie these two threads together, because if you're going through this thing and using a solid, I think there's another one, but this was like a PNG thing, cause action result, PNG or GE, I think first came up with it. And it's a great way to frame what's happening. But if you're sitting there you're trying to journal on a monthly or weekly basis and you realize like, shit, what was the number attached to that sprint we just did? Like why did we build that ability? Then that you can turn back internal to your team and go, are we properly tracking the value created through our sprints or like how are we measuring the impact of this capability we just built?

Because again, I think it's one of those things where it's important to be able to be that leader. And that gives you an opportunity to say, hey, I'm a senior engineer because I looked at this and realize we're delivering code, but we're really not sure why, or we're not tracking the value attributed after the fact. And it's definitely stepping out of the more developer lane, but that's what engineers should be doing. Because at the end of the day, I think the greatest way to put it is as a consultant, the best consultants come in and embed themselves in the space and understand the problem. The list in the client, they'll nod their head, and they'll give them the patent to back, but like listen, we'll solve this together.

but they're not gonna go solve the problem the client told them to solve. Cause they're going to look at the holistic 360 view and go, what's really going on here and where we really make the best impact. And like that's the same thing that engineers need to be able to do. I'm not saying be disrespectful to your PM, your PO or anything else like that. All right. It's another area where you can manage upward or, you know, put your thumb print on stuff and help drive that true engineering problem solving mindset that will then eventually make its way back to your journal because you'll have actual numbers on it.

Yeah. You noticed. James comes in and I keep spreadsheet with multiple tabs like business results, speaking, writing, etc. mentoring and some are, yeah, again, I mean, I just think documented at all. Also too, if we want to talk about content, that's why I preach content. You know why? Because if you post what you're doing in public, one, you're journaling real time to other hiring managers across the internet and multiverse can see it. And three, you become a better speaker, writer, et cetera. So that's why content works. Like maybe James, if I were you, I would take all this stuff on a spreadsheet and start posting about it.

Just, just a thought. You know, Darren chestnut checkers. Yeah, literally Robert, what's up, buddy? It's good to see you. Languages don't matter. Attitude and passion for learning is a key for seniors. You know, love mentoring will gladly work with someone if they have the base foundation, have the passion to learn and have to drive higher for tomorrow, not for today and best in the people. Robert, great last sentence. Cause I want to talk about that too. You know, obviously Andrew, you know, move over the next few months. It's going to be a little weird, right? A hiring is still going on. My team is still growing, still exploding.

So we're just, I don't think we're going to see him hiring at the mass scale anymore, the hundreds of 200 people. I think we're seeing the fives, the twos, the threes, which is fine. What Robert said right here, hire for tomorrow, not for today and best than the people. We talked about this brief at the roundtable. I truly think and I saw a post. It was the chief revenue officer of Divi. He posted it this weekend and it was so good about emphasizing investing in your best people and not letting your best people walk out the door right now. Yeah and again that's why I'd said engineering felt so overvalued because people were much more willing to pay astronomical salaries for someone who was completely unproven and I can say that in full confidence because again until you're in the organization and living a day to day, what you did elsewhere is great, but it just is a potential future indicator of what you could do for that firm.

Because again, everywhere you go, you know, the way the operates different. And I think you're absolutely right that, you know, things are slowing down because all of those organizations that were throwing piles of cash at people without putting a whole lot of due diligence in, they were hiring for, well, frankly, yesterday. And That's not, again, we're seeing how that's not become sustainable and look at the organizations that we're paying handover fist that aren't in the Fortune 10. And let me know how that's working out for them because I really think that shows and speaks to a very weak staffing strategy. And look, I'm not going to fault anyone for grabbing the bag of money.

I mean, shoot, I would do a lot of stuff. It just interviews a lot of work and I got no time for that. But the key there is, again, Understanding who you've got and what's available is so crucial. And the problem is many places might have a hiring strategy, but they have no retention nor a nutrition strategy. And so, you know, when people walk out the door, because here's the thing, you could be the best freaking company ever. You could be, I don't know, I don't even know who I want to put up as like utopia, but utopia incorporated and people are still going to leave.

And that's got to be okay because it might be that they came and they did their best for your organization and now it's time for them to, you know, walk off into sunset and retire. Or maybe they took what they did there and they realized, okay, I can finally strike out on my own and do my passion project. Right. Whatever it is, people leave and that's where you really need to understand how you're going to get yourself set up to absorb those kind of losses. because to an extent those losses should almost maybe be celebrated. Because if you have a healthy organization, you're not going to have people leaving because they have a shitty manager.

Or you're not going to have people leaving because they're so underpaid for their actual market value. And I'm not talking about again, give me the last 10 salaries people are hired. I'm talking about the overall broad market value. You did something wrong there. And if people are leaving for other reasons, that's probably a good thing because now you you are doing things to set people up for the next step in their career. And it may not be with your organization and that needs to be okay. Yep, absolutely. I love that. So we're going to wrap up here. Dev comes in. How do we effectively communicate these things to managers or encourage them to look at more than just the resume greetings from the University of Cinci?

So I think for, if you are an internal person with those managers, that's where you're going to affect the change. And I think that's where again, you have to prove it out. As much as you can, bring in folks, bring in candidates that maybe don't fit that quote unquote cookie cutter that those managers would look for and show them just how much they're able to succeed. I think the other part is, you know, if you're able to ask those hiring managers why five times and you know, I'm getting into this practice and we're digging in a little bit internally here of like, why do you need someone with a four year degree?

And it can't be just to check a box, because if it's just to check a box, then that's a really short conversation. But if there is something specific, or is there some kind of intangible, or there is some kind of training, or whatever, that you're expecting them to get out of a four-year university, one, we got to know that so we can validate it, two, we have to know that so that we can go and check other areas or other avenues where people might get that exposure, that wouldn't be a four-year university. And three, you need to be able to understand, how does that fit into, again, your overall staffing strategy?

Because that's what's critical, because I think one of the things I had noted that we haven't even touched on was, what is a senior engineer and how does it relate to team composition? Because the other part of the new engineer should be one that is growing two mid-level engineers, which themselves then are growing two junior engineers. So that one senior should be affecting change and growth on that whole team so that everyone is growing and moving up. And so if you're saying I need some of the four year degree just to balance out, you know, other roles, but why? What are you expecting from that person?

Because when they come in the doors, we need to hold them accountable for that so we can see if our assumptions are right. Or if we maybe need to recalibrate sort of who or how we fill that leadership role or the technical role or the one that is very good at talking to the business side. Like, teams are more than just one senior to mid and for junior. should be a specific expectation for each person on a team if you want it to be a positively delivering team. I love that. I love that. Yeah. Well, there's so much. Hey, I tell you what, I think you and I could sit down at the table and maybe talk for nine hours on this stuff.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Over pizza. All right. So Andrew, so last question, we'll wrap it up here. Yeah. Again, for those of you who are tuned in, go connect with Andrew. He is a wealth of knowledge and information. Probably one of my favorite hiring managers, again, like I said, he just, it's just no bullshit. I mean, totally honestly. A long time for me. Exactly. Yeah, right. So I started asking guests this question recently. And because this guidance counts for 2.0, given advice to people, what advice would you have given to your younger self? Like knowing where you're at now, coming out of college, first job out of college as a developer, first developer job, what piece of advice or what words of encouragement would you have for younger Andrew?

Yeah, it's a good one. I think the best way to distill it down is, so what are you going to do about it? Like, I feel like my older self would be that that jerky older brother to me and be like, okay, that sounds tough. That sounds like a problem. What are you going to do about it? And I think that that may seem callous or short or a kurt maybe, but I think it applies in a lot of different situations because again, as engineers, we solve problems and we solve them once and we repeat the solutions. And so every time you find yourself running into a wall, whether it's I can't figure out this code or this coworker just does not wanna play nicely or I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up or I don't think this organization is right for my career path.

So what are you gonna do about it? Yeah. What are you gonna do about it? Put the impetus on yourself and own it because at the end of the day, you're going to be much happier with any result that comes out of that good or bad. It's going to be one that you can own and then that means it's one that you can affect. I think that's something that's really important, especially in today's day and age where I think we have a lot more ability for autonomy and authority within our careers. It's very important that this layers onto the year the president, the CEO, but this is the college self go do something about it.

If you feel like you're stuck in a shit job, what are you going to do about it? It's pretty straightforward. I love it. I love it. All right, y'all. Well, thanks for hanging out. Andrew, stay on. I'm sorry to end it. But again, thank y'all for hanging out. With say, Twitter spaces, thank you. Had a full room, Andrew, just to let you know. Y'all have a great rest of your Monday. So real quick calendar for this week. So tomorrow, I'm interviewed a guy named Matthew Rucker. He is a senior cloud engineer here in Nashville. He had a great thought on a few of my posts.

I was like, Matthew, let's chat it up. And then Wednesday, I'm really excited. Speaking with the ABP at one of the large healthcare companies here at Nashville, I've been following his journey for a long time. He has some wonderful thoughts on engineering leadership as well. And then Thursday's unicorn finers, and I'm in Chicago from Friday through Monday with my dad for like a Father's Day trip with me and my brother. So it's gonna be a blast. But you all have a great one. Go to their manager, Andrew, thank you again, buddy. I appreciate it. Anytime, man. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why?

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