why do people suck w/my dear friend andrew wyborski

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. 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.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint 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. that's the only guess that's been on three times. Oh, three times you were the only guests that's been off. I've had a few doubles, but you're the first person to do a triple. So Andrew, give a quick background about yourself.

Yeah, for sure, man. And you know, we'll, I don't know. Do we want to do we want to throw the deck up there now? Cause it might make it a little. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So this is perfect. I know what, what more do you need as an engineering centric deck and So, what more do you need as an engineering centric deck and apologies for the PowerPoint wrapper. I couldn't get stream here to cooperate, but this will work just as fine. So title, Andrew, education background. So graduated from high school in 05. That's right. You now know who old I am. Thanks for sharing. Just two years older than I am.

Here's the thing, man. I feel I feel old. Great skin, clear routine. Your face looks great. I don't see really a lot of wrinkles. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. And because I do literally nothing. Ross, a skincare routine. I think it's what everybody says. That's the key, right? Drop the skincare routine, shower occasionally. You know, it's fine. We all work occasionally. Yeah, I came down here to Cincinnati, got my back or got my BS in computer science. Xavier, which while hammer on that, pretty hard coming up. I didn't even know Xavier was in Cincinnati. Never knew. Never knew. It's a whole I started going up there for our office.

Never knew. Yeah. The thing is nobody knows about us until March Madness, and that's even occasionally. So again, we like to fly under the radar, but we're turning up great scientists. Not engineers scientists, there is a difference. And then I, you know, because I stuck around, I figured, you know, get me some letters after my name, so the fancy jeans and the corporate offices know I know what I'm talking about, you know, that always helps. And then this is my professional journey. And I think this is where we started, you know, we were riffing this more in. And I think you said the title is going to be, you know, why do people suck, right?

And the conversation turned to, I think, a lot of times people think that you have to put a lot more effort into things to achieve or even differentiate your state yourself from good to great. And we started talking about this, and I'll use this to basically put a networking job-seeking lens on exactly that topic. So the first thing up there outlier technology is that was my first job out of school. Candelium, I'm not even really sure how I found them. I think it was like a cold call situation where they came to the department and I. Yeah, real quick, real quick. Before you run down this, like I want to tell people, so I actually, so Andrew pulled this slide up or his PowerPoint before he went live.

And he was like, hey, what about this? Let's go over it. So before we jump into why people saw it, Andrew, can you, yeah, go through line by line and tell the folks how you found each job. Cause I think a lot of times, I think a lot of times, especially juniors, see folks like yourself that's a manager, senior engineer, architect, principal, staff, whatever. And they're like, oh my gosh, they never had promise finding a job. But the end of the day, everyone started at zero. Like everyone started as a junior. So, so yeah, walk through kind of your history and, and, and how you found each job to give people hope and maybe an idea of where to turn to.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's, you know, like I told you before, if I, if I had spent the time to workshop this, it might look a little bit better to call that out. But first job was just straight up cold calls found it. Hey, you're like, you just cold called into like the front desk. I think they showed up at campus maybe, or maybe they're emailed between the department head. I don't know. The fact that I can't remember kind of tells you, you know, all you need to know, right? So first job out of school is like, all right, great, I got somewhere to get experience now.

And, you know, again, you can sense a lot about a company by the way they source their talent. And so after some time I realized that you can tell a lot about a company by how they source their talent. Yeah, so second job. I got into sojettie USA, huge, huge consulting firm here in Cincinnati, but hasn't reached nationally. They're part of Cap Gemini, which folks might know because they're an international consulting firm, which I only highlight that that point out that it might sound like a really impressive gig to land after being out of school for two years. My aunt worked there. That's how I got in.

She knew someone who then was able to come in and connect me and they'll be great. We'll get you in. Next role was with software information systems, same kind of deal, they were a Microsoft shop, but focused on services. I ran into their department head at a meetup group, just randomly. And it was one that I was going to, because like here's the God's honest truth, if you've got free food, I'm there. Doesn't matter what it is. So again, yeah, exactly. That's how Andrew and I are friends. Exactly. And so this meetup group met at the Sojetti offices, and there was free pizza. So naturally, I hung out afterward.

Oh, no shit. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. And so that's how I met the guy from SIS. So again, barely put in any effort. I mean, I got to eat dinner somewhere. And so I took care of that. I think. Hey, recruiters. Hey, all right. So I'm going to say this real quick. Hot take. I'm going to remove this just so hot take. I'll pull back up. I think if a so this is the I just came up with this idea. If a recruiter opened up free food for an hour, every Wednesday at the local spot, can you imagine the community that person would build? Yeah.

And that goes to the thing. I don't do pizza. Just don't do it. Recruiters just don't do it. Just don't do the pizza. Don't do it. Unless it's really good pizza. But just don't do it. Yeah, as I'm gonna say pizza, you get shit. Taco bar, you know, that's just- I did. So when I managed the .NET user group in Nashville three years, I went taco bar and Chick-fil-A alternating. See, that's good to call. Because I said, you know, you said Nashville and I was like, you know, that Nashville hot chicken though. Yeah, bro, people would like, when he would stay through the whole thing, I would have to go to the bathroom.

Anyways, all right, let's go back to this. So SIS to Fox Sports. But yeah, and so what's great about this one is, so them, I actually met, they had a relationship with Zaver's Computer Science Department. I actually interviewed with them before I went to Sajeti and they were startup-ish phase then and I'm like, you know what, man, I need a bigger place. I need a place that can teach me the right way to do stuff. It's just not the right time. Things weren't going great with SAS. I was looking for more, wanted to grow and I got an email just randomly from my former boss going like, hey, Manny in the market.

I was like, you know what, the stars have aligned. Yeah, I'm looking, and let's talk. Got in there, spent a lot of time there, had a great experience, grew a lot. And the last job, you know, Kroger where I'm at now, guy I worked with at Fox Sports, knew someone at Kroger, went to Kroger because of that referral, and then he referred me to Kroger. So again, like if you look at this story, there's probably a majority, like all of these five gigs over a decade plus, all of them came to light probably because of one, four connections. My entire career is built off the back of Fort Knees.

Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. And that's, and so that's what I say. I, you know, I'm like, you have to approach each conversation with every single person as a potential job. Like you are one conversation away from a new job. Yeah. From potentially your dream job. And I think keeping that mindset's huge. I want to give a shout out to some more people tuning in, just give them some love. Ricardo, fellow introvert in the house. I love it. Trey, it's great to see you. Reginald, Kevin loves the title. Yeah. I love really crass titles. Chris Morgan comes in and Arbem not too far away from me too.

I love it. Michael, my guy, what's up? Annie affirming your quote about hiring, which I love. Chris goes feed the devs, just feed the beast. It's great to see you. Michael goes, they don't have to go that far, just sponsor me to, yeah, I mean, 100%. I will say though, don't just sponsor the media, we got to show up there too. Stay the whole damn time. Like literally I tweeted the other day, I said, I said, you know, the good recruiters when they stay the whole time. Yeah. And they don't talk actually either. Like, just hang out. You're getting blown up by teams inside. Probably like, yeah, I'm.

It's probably my opinion already now either. It's actually because you're live and they're like, Oh, my God. Oh, he's on, he's on available. Like great software test engineer, AKA, here in Nashville International team. I got my job through networking while in college recruiters came to us on campus with food. There you go. Listen, Southern Baptist got it, got it right. The closest way to someone's heart is through their stomach. All right. So people suck, right? So, so again, wanting to give us what I wanted to highlight, obviously, Andrew throughout his career has found people, has found jobs because of people. Let's, let's kind of go into the people sucks out of things.

Why, why did, why did you want to bring this up? Dude, it just, it's just been like a frustration that's been eaten at me over the last like six months in general. Like not even in just my career, but just like outside of that. You know, it's, it's, it's, we say make the extra effort, but I think what people very typically don't respect or understand is you're probably not given to the effort to begin with, you know what I mean? And, you know, and there's also a vein of like, you have to advocate for yourself and you have to be that president and CEO of Angela Barsky LLC that we talked about.

But it just, it's, I think that it would be very difficult for me even though the market's starting to adjust a little bit. It's cooling down, but even there, I don't think it's truly cooling off. It's weird right now. It was literally texting with my guys at Unicorn Finders last night and we were like, the market is weird right now. It just doesn't make any sense. It's a weird face and it's like strange too because especially within tech, you're seeing some of these bigger firms or these massive layoffs, but you still can't find anyone. You know what I mean? Yeah, like where is everybody going?

Right. And I know that. Hey, you know what my theory is? And I actually just came up with this. I'm gonna share with my recruiting team after this live. I think I've talked to a few devs that are still getting pretty solid severances. Like if you heard about DocuSign's layoff, like they like paid out on stock vestigers, I think people are going to sit tight through the end of the year. I think the reason why we can't find people is I think people are sitting on their severance for three months and I think they're going to start looking at the end of the year, beginning of the year Q1.

So this is my... I mean, fair. I'm not going to fall down for that. I just, to me, it's still just one of those things where you put in a little bit more, you go a little bit further, you care a little bit more and you're going to see the fruits of your labor. What does that look like? And real quick, I want to go quick question here. Arthur comes in and goes good morning thanks to Andrew for being on and putting it down for Cincinnati. I love it. So, Sean, I want to get to your question in a second on breaking into a leadership role.

So, let's put that on pause real quick or something. I'll get back to that. Why do you think people don't put in the extra effort? And what are just some tangible things, man? Like can you give like one or two things that you like to see from your people when they go? Because I think we sit here and I feel like people suck, ha ha ha, very like meta up in the clouds. Like can we give some tactical things on like, you know, Andrew's top three things to not suck at your job? I will go further and don't suck at life. Like, and it's come to share problems with answers.

I always told me, is it coming to me with a solution not a problem? Yep. Yeah. And that's it. And that's that me. And I think part of what I feel like is what makes, why I'm saying people suck is because they don't even put the effort into think of what a solution could be, or they boil down and why we can't or why this is an issue or, Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening again. But like, I actually just got into with my sister the other day. And I was like, look, yeah, this didn't work out. This didn't work out. This didn't go great for you.

But you know what's not going to change? The fact that that's life, man. Like, life is always going to be throwing challenges at you. So in that circumstance, she was going through some things at her job and basically broke her ankle. She didn't actually break it, but she sprained it so bad it should have been broken. And she's like, man, this is tough. I'm going through things at work. You know, our dogs having some allergy things. I've got this busted ankle. Like boyfriend's on the road. He's got travel for some stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's called life. And maybe that's what it is, you know, that whole maturity or being an adult or whatever is really recognized to suck.

But like, you can't wait for time to settle down or you can't wait for things to ramp down. You have to just accept this is the reality and just go do something about it. And that's the problem. Maybe not even the solution, but just what are you doing about it? And that's where... So that's one. What would be two? Like, what are some tactical things people can do either at a job? You do number one again. I mean seriously though, because I do want to go back to Sean's question about breaking to a leadership role. Sean, why aren't you leading right now? What can you do?

Where do you see a fast? He is. Oh, he is. Well, that's fair. But even there, it's again, I think that things are a lot different today. There's a lot more theory why a lot less theory X management and companies have changed dramatically where you do not see the chain of command, the old school. You know, you can look at some other countries with their work culture, where you go to India, you go to Japan, it's very much you do what you're told by your manager, Sean, backing up, he isn't a leadership role. Yes, you should. I'll take, I'll go put my foot in my mouth a little bit later.

But you have the ability to affect change. And if you don't have the ability to affect change at whatever group you're in, whether it's a company or a user group or a conference or a friendship group. If you do not have the ability to affect change there, why are you still there? Cause you can always change your participation and presence there. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear thoughts and all I can hear is these pinging is like Michael Richardson. I literally see Michael Richardson blowing you up just to mess with you. So, so let me ask you this and I'm seeing this a lot, right?

I've talked to a lot of people lately that a lot of companies are making people do the job before they have the job Now there are two thoughts on this right so Sean so what I would tell you even though you're not asking the question I can get why you're not asking the question But what I would tell you and want to tell everybody is like listen I'm the type of guy who I'm willing to do the job without the job title Mm-hmm, right like like I'm that type of guy now Now, there are some people at Vaco that I know that I'm good friends with that are like, no, fuck that.

I'm only gonna do the job when it's given to me. I've talked with other people in tech that say the same thing. They are literally, I had somebody call me up the other day. And the manager goes, we need you to basically do the job for six months before we can promote you because of HR. And this other person told me they go, yeah, the problem is I'm getting called for this other job by other companies right now. So what are your thoughts on kind of that leadership and like taking stuff on maybe before the titles there? What do you wanna do? Like what do you wanna do with that position or that organization or when you're in that scenario, right?

You know, cause again, it could be something where, I can't believe I'm gonna go to this, but like in college football, like you gotta take your lumps. You know, oh my God, right? Thank God, I'm so happy it's fall. But anyways, there's a lot of scenarios like look at Alabama, right? And I know people have their opinions about them, but as far as a system, as far as a program, they bring in freshmen, they sit them down, they wait their turn in line, but then they always seem to succeed, find themselves in the playoff hunt, and then go on the NFL. So clearly something's working there.

However, if you're not one that wants to sit around and go through all of that, then you don't go to Alabama. You need to be going somewhere else to start. And so I think, again, that's where it's important to have, and this is what I originally ping-dew about way back in the day was an engineer is having emotional intelligence because I think there's a lot of areas where again that gets overstated of I have to be very touchy feely when really a lot of it can be very simple when you're on that bridge call or when people are pinging you in the background of you doing a live podcast you don't start flipping things over and custom-lefting right.

You have to have emotional intelligence to recognize what's happening. You have to also have self-awareness to understand this is what this organization is about. am I willing to put that time in to get to that next level? Or do I really just want that title and go somewhere else? And that's exactly what I told this person that called me. I told this person, I said, you have to find your why. Because, and I tell us all the time, and I think we've already talked about this too, is over inflation of titles and salaries in today's workforce. But listen, if you want the title, and you want to be an engineering manager early in your career, great, go do it, but you're there, so then what?

Yeah, so then what? Because there's a reality that, you know, the higher up you get, the less openings there are, the less availability there. Sure, very, very true. Even if you're in a scenario, like let's extrapolate it further, let's say you're a director, and now you're going for a VP slot. Well, if you haven't started doing the VP job already, but someone else on the other side has, that's gonna be a really hard sell for them when they want to go with you instead of the other person. And so I just, I think there's a nature of, if you're asking yourself that question of, why would I do the job for free?

You really need to ask, who am I as an individual and what does that look like? 100% 100%. Is there anything else? And don't say go back to number one we've already talked about. Is there anything else that you would want to see from either individuals on your team or others in the organization to give more to do more and maybe another piece of advice? I take advantage of the background thread. And so again, the background thread. So again, that's highly nerdy, highly geeky, but people should get it if they're in tech. Your operating system has threads that do all kinds of stuff. There's one that's processed.

This is like a tech thing. Yeah, I didn't understand that, but no, okay, that's my sense. That's nag nerds, right? But there's always gonna be a background thread running taking care of just the day to day, making sure that the clock on the computer moving forward and rolling forward. And so again, I think that even if there's things like a great example, and I'm going to throw this out here, I was really hoping I could come on and give the whole, this is our official kickoff, but I still don't have branding right, but we're going to be doing a developer relations group here at Acrover.

The merchandising group is basically taking it on for the whole of the organization saying we need something like this, you know, one, to serve our own purposes of getting great talent in the door, but two, it just that's part of being a tech company. And, you know, that was something that I was tasked with a couple of weeks ago. And I was like, all right, I got some ideas. But like, it just sat there in the background in my head. It was just running constantly. And it was just there. And it might sound like, you know, a workaholic or, you know, some addictive personality type things.

But really, it's just, it's that hashtag shower thoughts. If you're on Reddit, you know what I'm saying. Keep that stuff in the background. And you don't have to put a lot of effort into it. But just being aware that that's a thing you're you're working on, when then you go and you sit down Sunday to just quickly throw together a deck and you look up four hours later and realize you've blown out entire project plan, that's how you get there. And I think that's what a lot of folks aren't willing or they just really aren't quite sure how to approach those things, but you have to approach it.

Have a background thread because maybe you're different than me. Maybe you do need structured work. Where your background thread is that hour before everyone else signs online in the morning or maybe it's Saturday mornings before you know the kids get up or whatever. Right. You're a background thread and just let things run so that you're continually making progress, but you're not taking it for granted either. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, you know, kind of going after the people having the show and some of my friends I know that I'm taking are succeeding, you know, I think the biggest thing on how to not suck in the workplace is take initiative.

And I know that says all the time, but like upward communicate, right? Yeah. I love it when my team texts me out of the blue or slacks me. It's like, hey, listen, like just want to give you an update here where we're at. I love that shit. We'll never get tired of it, right? So, you know, I always talk all the time back to sports analogy. I'm going to go to hockey this time because our club team just not our 100th win last night and three years. So, but we, but I say all the time the best hockey teams, which actually the hockey team one now is the best hockey team I've ever played on.

We actually went toe to toe with a bunch of semi professionals in a tournament and lost in the championship and overtime. But what we have is we talk all the time. Like my line partner in that tournament, we would get off the ice and we'd go, all right, what went well? Every single shift, every 90 second shift, we would get off the ice and go, what went well? What are we doing wrong? We're always talking. And I tried to never sit in silence to a game. I'm like, what are we doing wrong? Let's fix this last night, for example, me and my line partner, we gave up three goals in the first period.

a great job. Yeah, not good. Two of those one one of those was not our fault. We really are led into the goal should have had another one but he missed it with gloves side. But all that being said, like we were on the bench. Hey, I think we're good, right? We're good. Hey, and we were pinching too much, right? So our D guys, so me and my D guy, we were pinching in front of the blue line a little too much and we were getting burned back, right? And so what what so literally we made it we made a pact after the first period, like none of us is pinching anymore.

We're gonna let them come to us ever since that, they didn't score any more goals for us again. And so again, it's that constant communication and constant refinement. I think that's what you need as an individual in a company is to give that to your manager, is to give that to your organization. Right. Because here's the other part about it is that your manager will not always be your manager and not to like whatever, but your line mate's probably not always going to be your line mate. Yeah, I really have a new line mate this season compared to last season. See, there you go. But I'm going to reckon that you probably function the exact same way with that guy last year is the way you are with this guy this year.

And so again, I think that's always going to be the consistency there. So it goes back to that. You're the president, the CEO, control your desk in need, take it by the horns man and like, you're it's going to work out better. I just, it's so cliche, but it's just it is going to work out. If you put in the work, you'll get lucky, which what I said before at the show, luck is with opportunity meeting preparation. Yep, I love that did is there anything else we got five minutes left. I do have a call on five So we can't go long. So maybe we'll just have a drone for the fourth time Is there anything else you want to talk about in this by chance?

I'm gonna quickly highlight what I have is my what do you call it my my major topics sure computer scientists are lazy Stop solving problems stop solving the same problem multiple ways because you like to really over-engineer stuff So Albert once reuse it move on to the next challenge. I love it That's a key one. I try to hammer and then the other one else give forward to good computer scientists borrow great one steel and Again, I'm not advocating for you know plagiarism or anything else like that But the example I give here, you know VPNs torrenting cryptography all of it It's all stolen technology because it's literally the exact same thing We just keep reapplying it elsewhere and to make things more secure we just do what we did and then we add like one more loop, right?

You know, we went from 8-bit to 16-bit encryption. The fundamentals didn't change. We just like threw more numbers on top. So again, don't work too hard and steal from what works so that you can keep moving forward. Everyone knows you're smart, but if you can do these things, you don't have to prove it. And so again, that's just why I want to make sure that folks understand the true nature of being a computer scientist or or an engineer is these two key points. And like that's what's gonna help you be very successful because if you're lazy and you solve a prop, if you reuse solutions and you steal from other areas that you can then leverage later, you're gonna waste a lot less time dealing with crap that doesn't add value.

And that's the stuff that companies, leaders, other people look for, they want people who add value to their lives. So be one of those people. I love it. All right, so last question as I wrap up, I think I asked you this last time, but it never gets old. Because we had guidance counselors in middle school and high school, we don't really have them now in our career, obviously they're called therapists now. What piece of advice would you give to your younger self or to anybody right now that's navigating their careers? Well, and you said specifically my younger self, like I would just boil it down and this is your problem.

This is your problem. Nobody else cares about it but you. This is your problem. You don't like what you're doing right now. Okay, well then do something about it. You don't think you're getting paid fairly then do something about it. Like there is so much empowerment and we are again lucky enough to work in a world now where we're able to actually mold our own careers directly. You said it earlier that you think a lot of people are taking those severance and just sitting on the cash. Well, I can almost guarantee you that they're not just sitting there sleeping in every morning, going and playing golf and then playing video games so the wife gets home.

Like they're out there doing something, whether it's gardening, which is actually probably making him better at resource allocation and pre-planning, or maybe it is they're working on their golf game, but that's them being able to take live time feedback and incorporate it back into the next swing. They are always going, they are doing stuff. They are taking their problem, they're taking ownership of it and they're growing. You can do that more now than ever before in history. I mean, for Christ's sake, you look back and a 150 years ago, I mean, we had sharecroppers. Still out there in this world, but even 150 years ago in the States, we had that.

Imagine being born into that and basically being like, this is your entire life and you can't change it. No. It's your problem. Go solve it. I love it. I love it. Well, y'all, thanks for hanging out with Andrew and I. This morning, I appreciate Andrew. The sessions go by so fast. I can't wait to hang out with you in person. Yeah, what are you gonna be that we're gonna see each other in person? Is there anything coming up? Momentum dev conference. So shout out momentum dev conference. Obviously Michael and Amy are on the chat here. It's gonna be great. I will tell you this. If you can drive to Cincinnati, I would drive to Cincinnati.

Not just cause I'm there, but Michael and his crew have put together an amazing conference. I think it's only gonna get bigger. And I think to be a part of a conference that's newer on the circuit can be pretty special because you can be one of like the OG people and really get ingrained with a lot of people before it kind of blows up. And based off what Michael's doing, the passion that he has for the community of Cincinnati and then also from a national perspective, I think, oh man, I'm just gonna continue to grow. So if you can make it, drive, I'll see you there along with some amazing other guests.

And I will be throwing a guidance counselor 2.0 meetup in Cincinnati, so I'm gonna get a place book and details coming soon. And one last thing, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this. Shout out, Sierra. Girl, we know one went down, but you don't need titles to be recognized for the awesome woman you are. So keep pushing, keep growing. And everyone will find her on LinkedIn. She's doing some great stuff these day, her permanent tech. So if you're looking at Cincinnati Market, or you're just interested in development, I think she got a new gig at a national company that does social media type stuff, I don't know.

We'll just leave it there and see if you find her and figure it out. But shout out to her and celebrate her. And hopefully we see y'all in Cincinnati, a few short weeks. Awesome. Thanks, y'all. Y'all have a good one. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause 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, tayloratvaco.com or at T-dastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.