fun fri-tays w/kelly vaughn, director of eng at spotai

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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, social media at tdsintdessey. And then 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. I hope you enjoy the episode. Alright, alright, we are back. We are back after a week hiatus with me being at that conference. And what better way to end the week than to be with my BFF, Kelly. Hey Kelly, it's good to see you. Hi. How is that conference? How is your first keynote? It was awesome. It was awesome.

Keynote was great. Very blessed. I tell you what, I've never been. I mean, full transparency. I was nervous as hell. I was about to have a complete come apart in my hotel room the day before because this talk was like very high level, very like more just kind of in the clouds. When like all my talks are very like here's 10 ways to do this. Yeah. And so it's very different for me, but it went really well. I want to give a shout out to that conference and and also too if you haven't heard Kelly. He's going to be key noting. I am. One. I do have to like interrupt this moment to call out Richie for calling Atlanta, hot Atlanta.

As somebody who lives in Atlanta, did you know we don't call it hot Atlanta? I know it is miserable here. Richie, Richie just moved to Atlanta. But yeah. It's I I landed last night. I landed last night at nine o'clock. It was 90 degrees. It was 90 degrees last night. I was like, can we please restart the earth turn it off turn it back on. Um, but yes, that conference also I tell you what that conference in Austin in January between you, Danny Thompson and Sean day. Holy shit. It is a dream line of the. Oh, I'm so excited. Unbelievable. So for those of you go check out that conference.

It's that dot us. Kelly is Kelly is key noting. Um, the, uh, that that that conference in January. So tacos and tech. That really should be his tagline for Austin. Like my two favorite things. I know. So there's an coffee. There's so many good coffee spots. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. A lot of people tune in Edward Richie, Mark, Mohammed Eugene, Jordan. It's good to see y'all Katie Chad, Brady, Chris. Oh, Richie. It's so hot though. Yeah. I know. I'm melting this week. Uh, congrats. Kelly. Uh, Mississippi is a furnace right now. Morning from Boston. It's good to see you. Scott. Uh, another from Atlanta.

I love it. Uh, hello, Wisconsin. Um, hey, Eric, it's good to see you. Man, it's good to see hope you have a red Friday as well. Um, Kelly is queen. Yeah, I agree. I love it. We need to get wine again. I was going to tell you this morning. I got to get wine with kill us. So he is always one of my, uh, she's one of my former, uh, employees at the top room. And we're neighbors. Yes. We live in the same city. That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm going to shout out to, uh, the official coffee sponsor of guidance counselor to point out that conference.

Yes. It is the only coffee is the only tech conference that I know that has a coffee. And it's incredible. I'm drinking it right now. Check it out. Use a code GC2 to do a few bucks off your coffee beans. He just roasted some brand new ones. I got some bags. I brought home. I feel like I was carrying illegal drugs, but I did not. It's just coffee beans. So go check those out. Um, Kelly, uh, a few more people to men here and it's good to see you. My guy. It's wonderful to see. Uh, alright, Kelly, that's good to people. What they want? Who are you?

What do you do just super high level for those who do not know you, which everybody knows you, but just give a quick background. Yeah. If you don't know me, I'm Kelly. Uh, I am an engineer of more engineering. We're than engineer these days. Uh, been, uh, I told myself how to code when I was 11. So I've been in the field for a little bit, uh, a little long, little long. But those are the words we're working with this little, little, little long week. Um, I live in Atlanta. I'm director of engineering at a video intelligence startup called Spidei. Awesome. So Kelly and I, we can pretty much talk about anything, but I do like Friday's a little bit more open-ended.

So if you have questions for Kelly around hiring the job search, what she looks for when she hires, please ask questions. I do, I do want, no, Eric, I did not get cheese curds in Wisconsin. I've had him before, I think there's just rubbery as hell, man. I'm not made currently. I just, well, that was my first experience I've never happened again. So Kelly, let's talk, I want to talk about your newsletter this week. So talk about what your newsletter is and then what the topic was, I think it's very, very pertinent to people, both in leadership and not non-leadership too. Yeah, so I run a newsletter called Lessons in Engineering Leadership.

You can access it at njleadership. x, y, z. There's e-njleadership. So I do basically a biweekly newsletter that takes less than five minutes to read because I'm too busy to write along newsletter, you're too busy to read along newsletter. And just cover various topics that are involved in engineering leadership, anything from giving feedback to how to say no to people to how you're dealing with hiring and firing and all the different things they have to deal with as a leader. But also it gives you insight into if you're not a leader and you're interested in being in a managerial position, there's a lot you can learn just by acting as a leader within your role that you have.

Talk and then today's talk, or not today's talk. This week's topic was what exactly? It was called the Sunwell Rising and Tomorrow, which basically stemmed from a conversation I have as somebody at my company. And, you know, we're at the end of the quarter at Spot, because our fiscal year shifted by one month, like a lot of B2B sass, C-A-B-B sass. And as a result, there's a lot of things that need to get done at the end of a quarter in order to ship everything in time. And we often get into these situations where you have to balance, you know, I have tech that I need to address.

I have these features I need to get out. But also there's this deal that needs to get over the finish line and we need to build something or, you know, promise something or fix something, whatever, in order to get that over. And so there's a lot of balancing of how am I actually going to spend my time and how is my team going to spend the time to really leverage their skills and get things over the finish line as much as you can. And so we're really understanding that you can't do everything. And that's where the idea of the subtle rise against tomorrow comes from is that, you know, the sun will literally rise again tomorrow.

Hopefully. Things can wait. Fires can burn. You can have this fire kind of like sitting and smoldering, doing its thing and pick it back up when you actually have time to do it. Talk about, I mean, obviously the importance of that because I think early on in my career as a recruiter and trying to talk to everybody and definitely definitely prioritizing. Talk about the power of no and maybe maybe what that's done in your career. And then again, for those of you watching if you have questions for Kelly Friday, this is kind of a grab bag. So if you have any specific questions, fill them up in the chat.

We'll get to them. But what is what is saying no done in your career? I think to flip it around a little bit, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. You are saying no to another opportunity. You're saying no to your time. You're saying no to your freedom. Every time you say no, you might be, you know, you're putting what's most most important at the forefront. You can't say no to, you can't say yes to absolutely everything. So being comfortable with saying no, or, you know, I often recommend the both the power of a positive no, because there's a way that you can say no without coming across.

It's like, absolutely not. We're not going to talk about this. You can turn it a little bit more into like a negotiation of like, I can't give you all of this, but we can can descope this particular project or we can rescope this ask. And I can give you this by this date. 100%. And I think too, for me, I think let's talk some time management here because I think it kind of all goes hand in hand. I mean, time management is huge. And one thing that I really try to do is I try to have more than a certain amount of meetings today. Because I think I think what I've realized is, is from a mental side of things not being so exhausted by the end of the day, like I got to have some stuff left in the tank to be able to just like get through daily life after work.

Yes. But also too, to just get work done. And I just feel like a lot of us just over schedule ourselves. Yeah. And it wears us out. So do you have any tips for scheduling and again, like I know a lot of people love productivity hacks. I'm kind of curious if you have anything like that. Yeah. So prior to about March of this year, April of this year, I forget when I was managing 17 people. And that's a lot of direct reports plus the additional people have to meet with plus the projects that have to manage. There's a lot of work that had to be done.

And so I ended up in a lot of meetings. And so I was, you know, people looked at my calendar and they were like, Kelly, you have absolutely no availability. I'm like, yeah, find some time next week because it's going to fill up as well. And I'm not a comfortable way to live your life and work. You will burn yourself out purely just because you're talking to people all day. I spend a lot of time, you know, my, my team get ends up in the same situation sometimes where some of them will end up with a lot of meetings and like I have no time to do my work or I'm interrupted too often because context switching every single time you have to jump in a meeting and jump out and you know, deep reef and get back to it and then pick it up and oh, now you have another meeting to go to.

And so I'm not very conducive to actually actually getting work done. So, you know, the game of how can I move my meetings around to better, you know, think about when you're most productive during the day, you know, for me. I do my best work in the morning. And so I'm going to push my meetings towards the afternoon, which works well for me because often, you know, my team is based on the West Coast. So a lot of them have to be in the afternoon. So, so that was one of the, one of the tricks I've gotten and also, you know, look at your meetings.

Are these actually important? Are they actually a value? If you, if you have multiple people are going to this, let's say you're an engineering manager and you have a product manager, do both of you need to be present for this meeting? Can you trade off? Can one of you go and in, in catch up the other one on notes instead of both of you taking that time. So one of you can focus. Do you, do you, and then Scott, I see your question. We'll get to it in a second. Do you use, have you used Loom? Shout out Gabe Greenberg for G2i. He, he turned me on to Loom.

You know, it's, I think it's a decent way to replace some just meetings that is like a one way meeting. Like you're just talking at somebody. I think it's a really good way. Do you use that at all? Yeah. Yeah. I use it less at spot, but definitely in my freelance world. Yeah. You know, I'm still, I still have freelance clients on the side and it's so much easier, especially since I do have a full time job. I can't sit there and continuously, I mean, as a unique explanation of how to do this. Yeah. I will record a quick loom and walk you through this process and then you can do it.

I love that. Do you use Calimly? Yes. Do you have your meetings capped? Because I know I do. I sure do. I think I actually changed it to only one a day. Whoa. This is no, no, no. Like I don't use Calimly for spot. So that's a whole different story for my personal like my personal Calimly that I use for consulting for meeting with various people. I think I have that capped at one a day because I have so many other meetings I need to do. Yeah. I do, I do three meetings a day. That, that seems to be, I had seven meetings last Friday and I didn't have anything left in the tank for anybody for the rest of the day.

I don't recommend that. We're actually starting to get questions again. Those are questions if you have stuff especially wrong product to me. I know a lot of people always interest in kind of hacking their day. Scott comes in. I'm working on a primarily back end portfolio project that's a first document in my learning along the way. I'm trying to follow what I know for delivering this project in a simulated professional environment document and get up. Is my attempt to manage this project in that matter manner going to matter for employers beyond the data. It will allow me to gather and showcase in my resume bullet points.

I think it's good practice. I think as an employer who has a lot of resumes to review and a lot of things to talk about. It's a good talking point during an interview. I don't think this particular thing is going to be the driving factor to say this is why I want to interview you. Yeah, absolutely. Let's see here. Scott comes in again. I love the idea of saying yes to one thing. I mean saying no to something else. Mohammed comes in. I've heard from multiple developers that communication skill which you can really can get you really far besides the technical skills. What are some advice tips you can give to improve one's communication.

I love this topic. So let's start with a little book called crucial conversations. I absolutely love this book. I recommend this book to everybody. Actually, my sister who popped in here earlier saying hi Katie. I told her to read the book and she got a lot of value out of it as well. So it's, you know, crucial conversations are really powerful book for absolutely anybody for communicating during your work day, during your personal life. It applies to everything. Also, if you work on an international like it did remotely distribute a team with a bunch of different cultures which I really hope you do because, well, obviously.

culture map is also a really good book for understanding how different cultures think and communicate and respond to. Oh, that's awesome. I'm not a reader. Kelly is a big reader. I'm a big reader. She is a what we call a voracious reader. That's my triple letter. I'm more behind this year than I was last year. I think I read 153 books last year and I'm sitting at like 67 or something. Oh, I just scroll through TikTok until my eyes bleed. Mohammed. I mean, listen, I think this is a great, I think it's a great, great question. I think for me. I think there are two things that have helped me a lot.

One is tweeting. So, and if you're like, why don't want to do that then writing because here, here's what I've realized what I would do if I were you, Mohammed. And let's say you don't have a Twitter. Let's say you don't want to really use social. media. So, I would, I would Google engineering questions. I would literally just Google like top engineering question interviews questions. Brains not working too well today. And what I would do is I would like look at them. And then I would, I would take the time to either record yourself on your phone. I would actually do that. That would be my first thing.

So like get on the internet. Google most commonly asked engineering questions. Open your phone, read the question, answer it and film yourself and then watch yourself. It is going to be fucking painful. However, it is going to help tremendously. So yeah, do that. If you don't want to record yourself, write and make it as clear and concise as possible. Maybe put like a word limit on yourself. That's what Twitter's done. If you communicate in like 240 characters or less and be really efficient. It really helps your public speaking. And it comes in here. How do you practically organize your day. Do you write things down, create a checklist or another tool to organize yourself.

I again, I love all these like hack your routine things. So y'all keep coming. I use the things app pretty religiously across things. Is that a word? Yes. It's a checklist app that you can categorize your your to do's. You can set them as recurring. You can set them as priority. You can tag things. You can sort them. I have different sections, not just for work, but also for personal life or travel. So like packing lists end up on there as well. Every time I go on another trips or so. I can make sure I have everything on there. But one thing I've found that's really, really helpful is I actually have a newsletter on this on my on the lessons and Angel leadership as well about basically thinking what is one thing I absolutely have to get done today.

What are the things I would like to get done today. And if I have extra time or I need a brain break from heavy thinking, what are three other things that I can just like things like I just need to catch up on my email or I need to respond to this one person or you know, smaller tasks to just break up your day a little bit. So I kind of take that one, two, three approach. But one thing really, really important that I've been doing for the past six or so months that's helped me frame my day and also helping with communicating with others for expectations is what am I not going to work on this week?

What are these are just not going to get touched this week because you only have so much time in a day. You have only so much time in a week. So you have to prioritize what's going to be most important. And this gets back to saying no, we comfortable with saying this is just not going to get done this week. And if you really want this to get done, which of these things is quite a fall off the list because one of them has to fall off the list. I'm going to I'm going to give everybody permission on this on this live right now. It's okay to reschedule meetings.

The person on the other end is probably going to be very happy use. I know. I've never heard anybody go on it. I really want to have a meeting. Katie, do you have to remember to drink your coffee on your day? No, I probably should, but instead I just drink my cold coffee with sister. That's my sister. Yeah. I love it. Katie more hazing, please. So I think also nothing to go back to the question. How do you prioritize your day? So, and I'm a big fan. So this is what I trained when I managed a team of recruiters for a few years. I sat down with them and I said, talk to me hour by hour throughout your work day.

What you do. Nobody on my team could. I think because they would be like, well, from eight to eight 30 I do this. And then from eight 30 nine I do this and then nine to 10 I 11. They couldn't. They couldn't do it. It's a wonderful exercise. Yeah. So thank you. Kelly. Yeah. No, that's actually I've done that with some of my team as well. They're like, I don't know why I'm not getting anything done. I'm like, all right. Are wildly inefficient. Yeah. Like we are wildly inefficient. And so like if you ask me that question, like I can like literally tell you 30 minutes by 30 minutes.

But I will tell you this. I so we used outlook at Vaco my previous company. And we use Gmail now praise the Lord. I love how you can create a task like inside Google calendar. And it's not an invite. It's just kind of a thing. And I can almost fill up my entire day with task to get things done. That's been that's been a game changer for me last week. Absolutely. So use that. I love what Kelly said. Use your like more thinking brain. Um, it first in the morning. And because I know meetings can be long, but I feel like there's just a different mentality shift from like doing your deep state work and like your problem solving versus just being in the meeting and being present.

Absolutely. It does vary from person to person though when you're most productive for some people it's later in the like later in the afternoon when they're like, yeah, this is like my focus time. They're really slow to wake up but there are night owls and so they start getting their energy towards the end of the day. So load your meetings up at the beginning of the day help you kind of like get through the morning and then you have that focus time in the afternoon. Absolutely. Let's see here. How can you just have fewer meetings because a lot of meetings are just folks BS and rather than accomplishing how can you just have fewer means.

Kelly, I'm going to show you your thoughts. I have a few things up on my head. But. Yeah. No, I'm a, I'm a big fan of when I'm sitting in a meeting and I'm like, what's the point of this? I will literally ask that. Is this our, are we getting are we still getting value out of this meeting? Is this something we should shorten? Should we change the cadence of it? Should we change this to async? I am absolutely totally okay with being like is this actually a use of like a good use of my time and I'm okay with just saying, okay, well, I'm not going to like if you're getting value out of this, I'm not getting value out of it anymore.

So I'm not going to attend this, but if you need me for a particular reason, I will jump into a future one. One thing I've wanted us to do is if I'm not setting the meetings, if somebody reached out to me and it's vague, it's like, hey, can we meet? I ask them about what. Yes, right. That is one of my biggest pet peeves is like if you're saying, hey, can we talk? Hey, can I put some time in your calendar? Tell me why? Tell me if it's like at least prepare me a little bit. Correct. Especially if you're like, and this is just common courtesy, especially if you're going to be giving somebody like bad news or constructive criticism or some sort of feedback.

Like, give them the space to prepare for that like mentally prepare for that before just like, hey, can we talk because how often does somebody said, hey, can we talk and they're like, oh, what's your favorite color? Or what are you making for dinner tonight? I got down for that. I'm going out for dinner. Thanks for asking. Let's see here, Rishi. I read on LinkedIn to increase product TV at the wake of a 3 a.m. and do a cold lunch and things. Don't forget about the marathon. There you go. Yes, I'll have to run your marathon. And read six books. Let's see here. Yeah, I use Google account to play my day.

Roberto, it's good to see you buddy. It's been a minute. Hope you're doing well. Let's see here Jordan. Yes, I want to give Jordan credit. I can verify that making update videos of yourself can be painful, but already such a difference. Yeah, enjoy. I want to give a shout out. I'm going to give you a shout out to the audience. Last few years, I've been very good. Let's see here. Going through here. So Jordan comes in. I've had to put an emphasis on finishing one task before going to the next. Yeah, I think it's important too. Right. I think it's Kelly said, like pick something that you absolutely have to get done.

And maybe second or third if you have time. We're all very, we get very excited to work on something new when we struggle with the ball. Um, team afternoon productivity agreed. Uh, hey, can I ask you a question? Yeah, exactly. So, uh, it goes. We wrap up here because Kelly's got a hard stop in seven minutes. Um, what, uh, what are just some other things that you're observing right now that you want to talk about briefly tech trends, new tools, new technology? Is there anything kind of in your peripherals that you're tinkering with? I think I'm just mostly annoyed with the shiny object syndrome, which always happens.

Like, oh, new tool. Hey, we need to find a reason to use this. No. Not everything needs to be using AI. Not everybody. Like, if I hear the word generative AI again, I'm going to bomb it. I don't know what that means, but I'm tired of hearing it. I literally work at a company called Spadaia. So like, I understand the value of using AI in your everyday, but also it doesn't need to be used for literally everything. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Um, let's see here. And then, um, the next question I always ask. Um, oh, let's do this. Uh, any, any favorite coffee, your, your big coffee fan like I am.

Any coffee shops in Atlanta, you've been too recently that are good. Any coffee beans you recently had that you want to give a shout to? I'm always down to talk coffee. Yeah. Uh, so I'm really excited that Chaudahucci coffee company has their key shigan because I was really sad when they got rid of it like four years ago. You're not telling me coffee. It's always a trusty one. Um, I'm also going to give a shout out to not a company coffee, or a coffee company, but Zama for their salsa because Taylor and I absolutely love it. You're a good. Fun little fact. Fun little fact.

Um, Kelly and I are actually going to be speaking together in Atlanta in September and October. Um, so September is Atlanta developer day. If you're in Atlanta area, um, go check that out to Saturday. Um, and then, uh, connect tech is going to be in the middle of the week. I think it's Tuesday, Wednesday. So go check that out as well. But Kelly now we're both beginning a joint talk on hiring. I've always wanted to give a joint talk. And so I'm excited. It's with Kelly. Um, so check that out. But yes, we will be having a lot of Zama. Also too. By the way, that burrito had was wonderful.

Did it make me feel better and drive home last time? Yeah. Big fan of their burritos. I mean, you're the one who chose to eat this massive burrito. Yeah. Five, four and a half hours. Yeah. Five, four and a half hours. So, um, uh, richy good. It'll be good to see him. We need to have a little bit of a hang richy. Um, last thing that we always in the show with biggest piece of career advice that you would give your younger self or just in general. Find a mentor. Find one sooner. How's a part of my keynote? Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. Uh, we, you really should not go this alone.

Like you should not find your, your way alone. I know it's a, you know, finding a mentor is very difficult. Uh, it could be a little awkward. Like finding that person. Um, it's taken me a long time to actually find that mentor as well. And your mentor is also going to change over time. It's not going to be the same person as you as you move through different faces of your career and faces of your life. And so you're going to have to adapt. But I mean, the way you can find that mentor is by networking. And you and I talk a whole lot about networking and the, the reason why, you know, we do things like this.

Absolutely. Oh, I'm getting a call from somebody. All right. All right. All right. Awesome. All right. Well, that is that wraps up today. Go follow Kelly on Twitter mainly. She's wonderful on Twitter, KV, L. L. Y. And, uh, yeah. Check out my newsletter. Oh, yeah. Subscribe to the newsletter and you'll have a great Friday and a great weekend and we'll see you back on Monday. Yes. Hey, you did it. You'll 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 T-Dasten on all social media handles and I hope you have a fantastic day.