it's okay to stay somewhere w/my dear friend stacey smith who is a sr. principal developer

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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.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at t 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. you enjoy the episode. Give the people what they want why they're here for who are you and what do you do. Start from the beginning. I was born back in 19. Yeah born raised Oklahoma. My mom is a native of the island of Guam.

I know that. Yeah She's a Chamorro. So I want Chamorro. Went to college in Nashville and then went to law school back in Oklahoma. And while there started coding, so this was the late 90s.coms happening. This whole internet thing is becoming something. I graduated from law school but didn't want to do law. So .com and Dallas said, hey, they flew me down. I had a 20-minute interview. I wrote about 10 lines of HTML and they gave me a job. Just like that, a very high-paying job with lots of fun stuff because, man, they spent money back in those days. had the latest and greatest of everything.

Yeah. And then the bubble crashed and had our first kid and we moved to Nashville. And I joined a company here. And then, and this is some of the stuff we'll get into is soon after coming here again, the economy was kind of going down and I got laid off by this company. And I went to practice law for about 10 years. And then I was finally done with that. And this company came back to me and I was like, man, I haven't coded in 10 years. I mean, I have not coded in 10 years. And this is one of my big things is never Burm Bridges is the my former manager who was now a director.

He said, hey, we know you can code, but the more important thing is we know what kind of employee you are. And so he's like, we'll bring you on. It took me six months to get back on that horse though. I mean, I was drowning, but I eventually got there and now I've been back for 10 years last month. Yeah, so Stacy and I were chatting off air. We were kind of talking about what we want to talk about and Stacy said something. He goes, it's okay to stay somewhere. And I was like, that's the title of the show. And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to kind of little juxtaposition here where we're going to talk about Stacy's longevity with his current job. We don't see that that often. I want to talk about, especially the mental side of things of that. We're also going to talk about Stacy's daughter who just got a job in tech. We're going to talk about being a father, being a two and a half year old myself, baby girl who I have. How do you encourage, especially from a career perspective? I want to start out with the main title. It's okay to stay somewhere. been your motive for staying at the same place for the last 10 years.

Because that mean really now more than ever it's a little unheard of. Yeah. Yeah. What's crazy is where I'm at. I'm actually, there's folks have been there twice as long as I have. Some of them close to 30 years. And these are developers. These are these are coders. These are, and I mean you take on different roles when you go that long. Sure. And you know, there's always kind of a fork in the road. You want to start doing management or not. Most of us choose not. It's usually someone's falling on their sword if they choose management. But you take on DevOps roles, they come and ask you, I need you to work on this for three months.

What you eventually learn, everyone on like Tech Twitter, it's always worried about, well, what about this stack? What about this language? What about that? Honestly, after a while programming language is a programming language. It doesn't take you long to figure out the syntax and it's a bunch of conditional statements and you can fall through and you can figure it out. So when we were there, we've always been at this building since the 90s, even before I was there, like in 93 our company went in this building, had the whole building at one point. And then when I came back, eventually this company named Vaco showed up at the building and man, would they throw these big parties and whatnot.

And being anywhere, any tech, just like we're all going through right now, we're seeing layoffs and my companies had layoffs and everybody's had layoffs. And so you get a little jittery and you sometimes wonder, should I jump or not? And I remember going to a career panel at like, I think it was the .NET group or something. And Scott was there, you know, big VP in your project. And everyone said, everybody who's anybody who wants a job who has a job, no Scott. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna meet Scott. So I met Scott and Scott's like, you know what? I don't really do that anymore.

He's like, I have advanced to the point that I don't do those kind of things. But hey, meet my buddy Taylor. And that's when I met Taylor and that was, that was right at the beginning of 2017. And pretty much been at it since. Um, but what, what keeps me, you know, it's, it's the work. And quite honestly, it's the people I work with. Um, if that were miserable, I think I would leave. Yeah. I think I would. But what is it? I'm curious though, right? I mean, yeah, the people I get for sure, but like what is the company done, right? Cause I'm kind of thinking that from the other side, right?

Like if some hire major sees this now or in the future and goes, man, Stacy, like what, we want a company like you're at where we have our employees stay for 10 years. Like can you list some things out specifically that your company you work for is done? And then what does it call now? Alvaria. Okay, okay. Yeah, we do call center software. Yeah. You know, and the amazing thing is you run across lots of long-term employees at this company. And it's everybody loves working together. Is the pay the best? But I have a feeling a lot of people will say that. The hours are for the most part really great.

The vacation time is amazing. And one of the things that I've always run across is they want you to take your vacation. What does a PTO policy look like with where you're at right now? Well, so they did the whole unlimited thing. Sure, okay. Which I mean, I can get into why that's a good and bad thing. Well, why it's a bad thing for the employees. But why do you think it's a bad thing for you? It's all just a money thing, right? So they can get the debt off their books. Because before when you earn PTO, you accrued it. And if they laid you off, if you left or whatever, they owed you that money.

So on the accounting, it was always a debt. And so now there's no longer a debt that accrues there. Not sure. So, but I had already gotten a bunch of seniority. So, I mean, I get like five weeks off or something here. And they want you, it's like, hey, you haven't been taking your time, you need to take your time. So I just follow my previous PTO, but that's a lot of PTO that if I go anywhere else, I'm not going, no one's gonna match that. How does your company encourage you, because I'm always interested on what managers do, right? on a manager level to encourage the folks to take time off.

You know, so the director that brought me back, he ended up retiring. That's the thing, I've seen a lot of people retire. I mean, listen, that is a... That's a rare thing in the day. Yeah. And that was back in the day, which wasn't that many years ago, but you would accrue and they would actually sit there and look at it and you'd get an email and they'd be like, hey, you got this many day, come November or October, they'd be like, you have this many days left. You need to make sure you slot that somewhere. And it's like, that's... I like that. Yeah. Making sure that you use your days.

Yeah. So, and now it's more of a feel thing and we'll even look out for each other. Like I'll be like, hey, you know, I'll end my one on one with my manager. be like, you know, dude over here, he haven't been taking his time. Like, we need to make sure he's taking his time because we don't want each other to leave. I love that. I love that. What? Let me ask you this. Talk about, so obviously, the PTO, the people, is there anything else kind of interesting that that y'all's company have has done maybe even since the pandemic to pivot to give more, I guess, stability to developers to keep you all there?

Well, we're all work from home now because you were all on site, right? We were on site, but here's the interesting thing is I work for my scrum team. And we're about like, I guess, 13 total and that includes dev and quality assurance. and we're international. And so a lot of my team is in Ireland. I have a, I have a, and I call them friends because that's what they are. I mean, we've been working together for 10 years. You know, I got a friend in Greece. We kind of have some folks come and go from India. I think our document guy right now is from India, but we had some for quality assurance for a while.

And then we had some for Dev, that was quite a while ago. And so that's an interesting aspect because we kind of do that whole chase the sun while we develop. So we have our stand up in the morning and it's their afternoon. And so we collaborate a lot in our morning. And by doing that, by my afternoon, they've gone to bed or whatever, they're doing their evening activities and they've signed off. And then I make sure all my stuff is kind of put away by the end of my day so that they can pick it up in the morning. Oh, okay. And so, but we've been doing that.

I mean, since the beginning, last 10 years, I mean, it's been a global type team. It's pretty neat. I love that. Well, let's pivot a little bit into, so obviously that's what's kept you there and the longevity that you've been there. Well, let me ask you this, before you pivot, before you pivot, what's your biggest advice for folks in their career, especially around tenure and all that stuff? Yeah, everyone's kind of afraid, it's okay to stay. Folks get afraid that, well, if I don't leave after three years, then it looks like I've been there too long. You know, as long as you're learning, as long as you're enjoying your job, you know, you had some of my interview recently where they said they were marking off days on a physical calendar.

And when it went beyond, when they marked off the days, they didn't like, went beyond the days that they did, it was time to start looking. And quite honestly, I don't mark any days off. That meant a lot. And that advice I've given to a lot of people since I watched that interview you did. But yeah, you don't have to jump. You can learn within your own, you can be active, you can say, well, I wanna take more leadership role, or this project comes up. So you take on that project. Like coming up, they're about to have me do something firebase. I don't know what firebase is, but they need me to do something in it.

It's, you know, I guess a newer technology. So, you know, there's always things to learn from. As you get older things change as well. So, when I talked to my daughter who's gonna just be entering the tech world, one of my things is she's worried sometimes about pay. Oh, well, they don't, they pay this or they don't pay that. And I'm like, don't worry about pay. I said, you need to learn learn, you need to worry about learning. And once you're not learning at that, you know, kind of early stage, well, then you might need to move on. Right. But as long as you're learning, and the other thing is, I tell her, go in the office, she said, they kind of do a little bit of a hybrid.

I said, well, you go in the office, even on the hybrid days, and if there's nobody there, then that's fine to stay home. But otherwise, you kind of need to build a relationship. Why do you think it's important, especially starting your career to be in the office? Because I know there's been different takes on this for sure. Yeah. You know, we, I mean, we've built our relationships and I've built the relationships with the folks in Ireland and, you know, obviously that is not in person. But you know, lots of pair programming happens in the office. And I find that important. Now again, if work from home, you can do that.

You just have to make sure your seniors are willing to kind of step up and reach out to the people learning and be like, let's pair program on this issue, on this bug. Let's work through this. Yeah, as I've gotten older, my priorities have changed. Number one priority is now work from home. My number two priority share. In this, yes, in my Costco reclining chair, there's another ad right there. My number two's vacation, number three would be the team, and number four would finally be pay. So I'm gonna interrupt you here. a few things, right? A few things. One, you know exactly your priority list.

Yes. Right, and so I've talked to a lot of folks, a lot of folks lately, I'm unhappy, right? And I'm gonna kind of like pivot a little bit, right? So you know you're forward to keep you there, and I'm gonna go with Anna's comment too. I talked to a lot of people. I tell them, are the issues you're experiencing an industry issue or an organizational issue? Right? So your manager's quitting. Great. That shit happens all the time. That is an industry issue. That's not an organizational issue. Oh, well, so and so like, well, we can't get the budget to do this. That's an organizational issue, but that's also an industry issue.

Right? Budget is a thing that everyone deals with. And my thing is, is if, if you have more organizational issues, then industrial issues, industry issues, then maybe look to leave. but I think a lot of times so many people are in a good spot and They they don't understand the things they deal with you're gonna deal with anywhere Right, you're you're gonna have managers leave after two years. You're you're you're gonna get bounced around on projects You may not be working on the sexies thing right now You're probably not gonna work on the sexiest thing if you go to another company immediately, right? And so it's knowing those things so I want to give you props and I want to overemphasize that That now here's deal Stacy said himself.

He says I'm at a different you said I don't know if he said season, but you're at a different point in my life right now He's at a different season right where he Stacy would rather sit in his his comfy chair with his with his slippers and And work with good people and that's wonderful Now you're probably thinking well, I don't need the comfy chair and I don't need to work Then that's that that's great right you need to know what you want before you go out looking for a job. So I didn't know if you had any more thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole grass isn't greener, right?

I mean, that's the old saying grass in greener. And I think that just, that always holds true. And I think you have to have that priority list. I mean, is there some org stuff that I could dirty laundry of course, but I'm not gonna put that out on the line. especially in a public forum. But, you know, but does it affect me all that much? No, it's just something around water cooler talk that I might complain about. But my everyday work environment, no. You know, I have my task on the board and I work them and I have my teammates that help me out if I need it or I help them out.

And, you know, a lot of those org things really don't affect you. they affect you in the way that like Twitter issues affect you. Correct. You get worked up. And at the end of the day, did it really affect what you did from nine to five? No, it didn't. I want to go. I want to go as a question real quick from Alex. Alex goes, are there any signs you can look for to find companies with staying power? So obviously, any companies out there that you could stay at, or are there some key indicators, Stacy, that you think on like an interview stage you could look in, you could look at.

I mean, I would think tenure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you just ask, like, you know, I kind of have the viewpoint of coming onto a scrum team. And that's what I've been working on for for 10 years. But how long have the members been on there? How long has the manager been there. I mean, for me, it's anything, anything, anything more than two years, things great. I mean, yeah, I could pick, you know, very quickly, five people just in this Nashville area. And my out of my office that have been there for over 20 years. Crazy. You know, and so it's, it's amazing.

Yeah. And then, yeah, Emmett comes in here and goes, asked during the interview, asked about how long employees stay. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that. I think this LinkedIn user says, Jonathan, is this you again? Only reason I've ever left a role is that I'm not contributing more than I take from the role. That's from a management point of view. Yeah, 100%. Again, totally agree. I think you got to find your truth. But at the end of the day, I still go back to it. Is it an industry issue? Will this happen to me in any company I'm at? If the answer is yes, then you don't need a leave for that issue.

If there is an issue that happens currently in your organization that will not fix no matter how hard you try, then that is something that you need to look at to go out. Yeah. This is the other thing. I wouldn't look for your job to fulfill your life. You really need to do things outside it. Because the second or third developer I've had on vid in the last week that has said something like that Yes, and and here's the thing like i've done some you know, I mean right now right on I mean The software we work on is very important. It's very important to our customers You know there it's pretty much gosh three quarters of the fortune 50 every company you've ever heard of every tech company you've ever heard of Are pretty much our customers But, you know, I always say, you know, it's just if people are getting upset, I'm like, it's call center software, it'll be okay.

We'll figure this out. You know, and I've worked like when I did law stuff, you know, I started, I was purely representing indigent folks that were dealing with domestic violence. You know, that's very much like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of saving the world. But after a while, even that becomes, you know, I don't want to say a job, but it does become a job. And then I was a prosecutor for a long time. So it's like, you know, you're kind of wearing this cape. But after a while, that becomes a job. And, and I think at those times, I was kind of using my job to fulfill my life and give it purpose.

And then I started to realize everything I went to, you know, I'm not saying don't go do those things. I'm not saying those things aren't important. I'm not saying don't go join the Peace Corps. I think that would be awesome. But after a while, even at the Peace Corps, you're probably going to be like, this is a job and I need to have life outside of that. 100%. But don't quiet quit. Don't quiet quit. Whatever that quiet quit thing is, that you're being paid to do a job and you do that job. That's my thing. They're always like, well, why do you, well, you know, I have a relationship with my company, I show up and I do hard work because they pay me money to do it.

They don't have to like give me ping pong and free coffee for me to do it. They get every two weeks, they give me my incentives to do it. Yeah, absolutely. So as we wrap up here, because I have a hard stop here in five minutes. You want to talk about your daughter real quick and just some advice that you've given her throughout her job search kind of breaking into tech? Yes, well one of them was For the interview so I I haven't ever had to do a tech interview and they terrify me And she has and she's done the Amazon thing and one of the things the best things I did was I Hired somebody to help her do interview prep and that hire was Taylor So this is like the third ad we did She had light rings and Costco recliner and interview prep.

Taylor does interview prep and it was awesome. And she said it made the biggest difference. And she knocked it out of the park on where she's going. And you know, and I appreciate those kind words. But the one thing we worked on the most out of the hour we had, I think like 40 minutes of it was just her telling me about herself and figuring that out. Yes. Because I was like, I was like, tell me about yourself. And she couldn't, she couldn't. And that is what we worked on. She literally says she goes, she messaged me after one of her interviews. I don't know if there was Cap One or was another one.

And she goes literally, she goes, I had so much more confidence because I nailed the about me question where the rest of the interview I felt right. There you go. Which was awesome. Which was awesome. So, and I, okay, so before we go, because I have some questions. I don't, one of them is your new role, it kind of confused me, worried me that you wouldn't be there for me when, hopefully I never need your services. Right, right. And I've always said that. I'm very, yeah, I'm very hands-on still. So yeah, for those of you who know or don't know, so I moved into kind of a new position start of the year.

I'm heading up our entire Global Solutions technology division. And basically the way it works is, is, is, if, you know, Stacy, if you and I were to work together, what I'd do is I'd get you connected with somebody on my team and so that we can be your eyes and ears. I am just not in the day to day anymore in terms of like sending job descriptions out. But, but for me, if you work with me, if you want to work with me, you work with my team and I'm going to be there along the way, of like a 30,000 foot view making sure that you're getting taken care of.

All right. Now more fun stuff. How many horses do you have and are they all your horses or do you stable and close? I've never asked somebody to be on my podcast and me finish out the interview. So my wife grew up riding and she has about at home, I think like in Bowling Green like 10 or so And then we have four on our property right now and then another two in training. So we yeah, we have a lot of And then the other thing if you could have your your real dream job I know this is your dream job, but your real dream job would it be a rock star or a professional hockey player that's a great question I'm gonna be honest with you.

I I think I think, man, you know what? I'm actually, I'm actually hesitate on that because I've never had somebody ask me those two options. You did music. I did. You're a starving artist. I was a starving artist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I honestly, the, the alert of, I love traveling and both have a travel component. If I were to pick, I'd probably say a tour musician because that's just, that's just what I was really good at. I was always really, really good at playing the drums and so that's what I would do. All right, last question I wanna ask you, that was great.

But last question I wanna ask you, and we'll wrap up. The show's called Guidance Council 2.0 for a reason, right? We had Guidance Councilor's in high school, middle school and college, but now as adults, not so much. What would be your biggest piece of career advice for your younger self or even just your daughter too? Yeah, and I think I kind of covered it a little bit. And I kind of prepped this one. And that's to not look for work to fulfill you. You know that being wealthy, having money, there's a wealth of wealth to life. And if all it is is money, then so be it.

But here's my thing, be in contact with family and friends, go visit them. Sometimes they're not gonna visit you. Sometimes they're not gonna reach out to you. I put my friends' birthdays on my calendar, and that's always an excuse, at least once a year, to text them, say what's going on, send them a picture of my family. I make the effort to go visit them. Do that, just stay in contact with family and friends, especially the close ones, because in the end, that's what will matter. It really will as you get older. I love that. I love that. All right, y'all. Stacy never hoard knowledge.

Whatever knowledge you have pass it on. You're you we're all expendable. We are. I've seen I've seen our biggest architects retire. And we thought, Oh my gosh, what will we do? And you know, Monday came and we just moved on. So so share your knowledge with your teammates really do. I love that. All right, y'all. Well, Stacy, thank you. Stay on real quick as I end it so I can say bye to you. But thank y'all for hanging out with us this morning. We appreciate it. Go connect with Stacy on LinkedIn. He's also on Twitter. And tomorrow I will be live with my team. So tomorrow I'm on a I'll be live with my two managers, Nate and Joseph.

They're amazing individuals. And you'll get to see and hear a little bit about what we're doing with my team. So again, you all have a great one. Stacy, thank you again, my friend. I appreciate you a ton. And we'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listen 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, at Vaco.com or at T-Dastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.