new responsibilities w/ taylor poindexter, eng manager at spotify

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

Enough of me running my mouth. Let's go ahead and get rolling. Taylor's got a hard stop at 10 central. So we're going to get into it. So Taylor, give the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. All right. Hello. My name is Taylor Poindexter. I am an engineering manager to at Spotify. I work in the advertising self-serve part of the company. And I run a team of about at this point, I think 10 folks. We just added another change. So yeah, now we're up to 10, but that's what I do. I love that. That's awesome. So and bourbon whiskey connoisseur.

Right. Let's talk about that for a second. Talk about it. Talk about the whiskey thing. So I need to get you connected with my friend. My friend's a project manager and Nashville. And he's known as like the bourbon whiskey guy in Nashville. Oh, no. I love it. His house is very flammable. Yeah. Obviously my condo is too. I was thinking about that. We got to burn through some whiskey in this house. I love it. Yeah, talk about it. Yeah, I thought about bringing that up in my intro, but I was like, I don't know. So basically, I am a connoisseur in all types of whiskey.

So I remember whiskey's the top tier category. We got Scotch, we got bourbon, we got rye whiskey. I drink it all. I know a lot about it all. And honestly, my career is what led me to be a whiskey lover. So that's a good one fact. Yeah, like an old manager of mine invited me to his house. He was having a whiskey party. I hate it whiskey at the time. He's like, just come. There's going to be a ton of bottles. We'll taste a ton. And I ended up finding four whiskeys that night that I loved and became very curious about the science behind the whiskey.

Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. Kind of my story. I grew up drinking really terrible California caps and chardonnays for y'all with wine people. Cause that's all my parents drank. Cause like this is awful. There's got to do better wine out there. And then my wife at the time we were dating, she bought me like a $6 bottle of wine from Trader Joe's that like just was cheap, but it was good. It wasn't California Cabber. Charles was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And then that catapulted my fascinating with shit with wine and all the reading and all that stuff. So yes, I love it. Wanna give a shot, Louie shot real quick.

A good raise after my six month review, my first dev roll. Proud of you buddy. That's awesome. Happy money from a now snowy, Massachusetts. Damn, I want snow. So y'all getting a snow with this Arctic thing going on? Now we get a ton of rain. Ton of rain, sand. Rain, which is worse to me. I'd rather get the snow at this point. Yeah, 100%. So your end of the year I had post selected for top seven of the week selected by Dev staff. I love that. Congratulations, Chris. Love that. Jason, way too much awesome one space right now. I can't handle it on the Monday morning.

Deep breaths, Jason. It's okay. You'll be okay. Morning from Nashville just followed on Insta for the whiskey. Huge fan as well. 50% done with the entire Kentucky bourbon and Kentucky craft bourbon trail. Heck yeah. Good work. the only people who hate whiskey have never had good whiskey, in my opinion. So listen, here's the deal. I'm not getting into my story too much, but I went to jail if that whiskey. So we'll, we'll get into that later. Brian, it's good to see you Brandon. It's great to see you. I've grown to enjoy old fashions last couple of years. Uh, Taylor, what, is there any good whiskey bourbon that you had recently?

Like I just got share real quick. Oh, I really like this one called Field and Sound. It hasn't gotten big, big yet. Field and Sound, but the bottle was like $40. So it's a good bottle that I could use in a cocktail, but it's also an easy sipper that I can have And it's readily available at least in my area. So Field and Sound Burpen. I love that. I love that Dominic Every morning the crew is showing out. Yeah, we got a lot of folks here. It's good to be alright Taylor. Let's dive in A lot going on. Obviously you sent me kind of some some some topics to talk about which I love I want to get into helping people find jobs right now, you know, I think that's the most top of everybody's brain, people get rejected, you know, it's just, it's just been a little bit of a mess to say the least of the last year.

You said you've been really passionate about getting your friends jobs. What are some things that you're seeing, maybe some tricks that you have that you impart on your friends to help them find a job that you want to share? So I know some of these will be ones you've already heard, but I think it doesn't hurt to repeat them. It never hurts. It never hurts. It never hurts. One is definitely use your network because there are so many people in the market right now and having that introduction get you to the front of the line sometimes. But two, yeah, Fang is awesome. And I know I work at a big company.

It's not Fang, but remember that there are so many other companies that aren't tech companies that are hiring software engineers and tech related roles. So don't forget to look at those and also try to think of places that you've always enjoyed their product. I tweeted about this the other day, but I saw I love that. I think I retweeted. I love that. Yeah. So if there's a product you love, it was this HR tool that I used at my last company called gusto that I absolutely loved using a strange that is to say we use it now. I've never used it. It's great. It's great.

So like whenever a friend is looking for a job, I always send them to gusto to check them out there. So think about those products, but then also look at their competitors. If you just love that field, there's a site that somebody showed me the other day called g2.com and you can look in like put in gusto and it'll show you all the competitors if you want to continue to work in the HR field, or maybe you want work at Spotify's competitors. And so that is another way if you want to stand in industry to keep in that industry. Yep, that bad boy right there.

So you can find some roles that maybe you hadn't thought of. So the and also like another one I know it may not help you find the job because everybody's always go go go. But remember to be gentle with yourself like job hunting is exhausting. And I find some people feel like they can't take a break and I understand it because you need to find more money. But sometimes you'll interview better if you just give yourself a little bit of breathing room if you're a little bit downtrodden after a rejection. So I wanna talk about this for a second because I think this is something I talk a lot about and I feel like all these LinkedIn gurus, I mean, even myself, we always talk the tactical stuff, I understand we don't talk about the mental stuff as much.

So talk about the important, like, talk about why people, because I feel like, listen, like I was laid off for the first time in my entire career in July of this past year. And I was like, oh, I mean, like, it just is, it riddles you with so many emotions. Some of it's good emotions, like you're happy you're done, but then a lot of it's just negative emotions. Talk about the importance of why you should maybe slow down before you speed up here. Yeah, because think about like my first example that came to my mind, if you're just like trying to drive while you're tired or you're trying to do a bunch of stuff while you're tired, you're just not going to do it as well.

And like I said, I know you have to have a balance because you have bills to pay, you have things that need to be taken care of. But when you interview for these jobs, you want to make sure that you're able to show your best self. And sometimes the best way to do that is to be able to take time and rest and recuperate. And people feel like they're losing ground, but I like to think of it as like a slingshot. So yeah, you're slowing down a little bit, you're taking time to take care of your mental space, but that's likely going to catapult you further than you would have gone if you just kept trudging through and exhausting yourself even further to potentially a full out.

What does it burn out? Burn out. Yeah. Well, because let me ask you this, Taylor, I'm sure I mean, have you interviewed people who maybe should have taken some some more time off before they spoke to you. I'm through interviews and you're like, yeah, I have. It's just a memory. It's like, don't do that. Don't bash. Don't bash on people. Don't it's just all. No, no, no, no, not to bash on people, but you know, sometimes you can just tell it's like, okay, you're not saying sometimes interviewers bash on like their old employers or stuff like don't do that. Yeah, no, don't do that. But I'm sure as an interviewer, it's weird.

It's awkward, like when you're talking to somebody who's just angry. And are angry, but then also potentially like, you can tell that they need a break. It's like, all right, I know you could probably give me better than this, but I can tell that you're also probably potentially very anxious. And that's like a hard thing too. Yeah. How do you, let me ask you this. So this week I'm super blessed. I have you on today, I have Kelly Vaughn on tomorrow, and then I have Paris on Wednesday. And so, I know, I know, I'm super pumped. I asked Kelly this question a lot, and I wanna ask you, how do you like to be approached when it comes to networking and maybe trying to get into the top of the pile resumes?

Like, do you have a specific suggestion with this? Like for a role that I have open? Yeah, for a role you have open. Yeah, like how do you like to be approached? That's a good question. Because I was originally telling everybody like, this was a while, this was like a few months ago, I was like message every manager said, you have like 11 minutes, seven minutes to talk, have a Zoom, have a call. Like I was talking to Kelly and Kelly just like, I ain't got time for that. And so I was like, I was like, well then what would you like? And she said like she likes messages, Questions about the role or kind of slow drip, questions about things maybe she's posted and then that helps name Brandon.

How do you like to be approached? If I don't already have a connection through the person, like through my network, the second best way I would tell them is I get a ton of DMs on Twitter. So a good way to make sure that you're not lost in the sauce is to point me to the role that you think that you would be a good fit for and then tell me exactly why you think you would be a good fit for it. And like the skills you think you could be like. Be like a good fit. Yeah, especially if I feel like a cold email where I know nothing about you.

And like you said, maybe ask and follow up questions. Seem engaging, seem genuinely interested. Not like you're just spraying and praying and hoping that I put you at the top of the pile with like minimal effort. So those two things can go a long way with me. But so, but those help though, if somebody is consistently engaging, let's say for three months asking you questions and then you post a role, then they submit and they message you immediately, that helps. Yes, absolutely. Like sometimes because I have like a decent sized Twitter following, like sometimes people with smaller accounts will be like, I can't believe you followed me back.

I'm like, dude, we've been talking right here for months. Why would not? Like you're like my friend. Well, so, okay, so talk about this for a second, right? I talk about this all the time about chatting, tweeting, how it builds relationships. you just said right there, we've been tweeting back and forth and now we're friends. Yeah. Can you just talk about how the psyche works with this? Cause I talk about all the time, but I just don't think people realize that like, like that's like I told you that that's in DC. His name's Carl Nard on Instagram, Carl Nard one word. Okay. He and I like in the DMS with each other all the time.

I come on his stuff. He comments on my stuff. He's a great creator. Yeah. I'm I just saw his I don't know. I'm gonna come fly out to DC and hang out with you this year. He goes, come on. Yeah, that's a friendship. So like, and even sometimes I probably didn't even realize this was happening until the last like year or so, but you know, it's human nature's to want to like find connections with folks. And so if I'm tweeting out stuff, they're tweeting out stuff and we're finding ways that we agree or maybe we have a debate, but we can do it respectfully. And that type of thing is kind of like, you know what?

This seems like a person that like, I enjoy their company, I enjoy their conversation. And I would like to keep connected. So I was like, oh, just follow. And the awkward part is sometimes I may only remember their profile picture. So it's harder for me to recognize them in person. And then you get a conference and you're like, Hey, you're like, who's this? And you're like, Oh, right. Show me your Twitter profile image. That's happened a ton. But I do think that those small touch points, especially if it's consistently akin, I think they said, I think there's a word called friend. It's basically friend without the eye.

It's like an internet friend. Somebody that you met or the internet. And I think that's becoming more common. Yeah, 100% I mean, I mean, take take our instance, for example, right? I mean, like, I've followed you for a while and I feel like I know you, even though we haven't really met before. So, I mean, there's just, there's power in connecting with people online, even if you can't meet with them face to face. I do want to get to, uh, to D here, D before I landed my first position, I was very anxious in interviews. Taylor, let me ask you this. would be some reassurance, some encouragement, especially for folks in their first job in tech trying to get an interview.

And as a hiring manager, like, what would you want them to know before stepping into an interview? I think one, we want to hire you. Like as a hiring manager, I want to find my person as soon as possible so I can stop interviewing. So I try to remind people like we are on your side and two, it's okay to admit in an interview that you're nervous. And because we've also had to go through interviews and I'm nervous to say when I have to go through interviews So it's like I can have some empathy for you there and maybe I even I've had interviews when we should do interviews in person Where I could tell the guy was nervous and I was like how about we leave this conference room And we just walk around the block and we'll have the interview like that Oh, wow, and he performed so much better and he still jokes with me about it today He's like I can't believe you just took me outside.

I was like didn't you need it? He's like yeah So like open it up that Yeah, of course, open it up that dialogue and like just being forward about it. If you have a good interview, I'm not saying all the interviewers are good. They should be able to reciprocate and give you some space and some comfort in some type of way. It'd be confident. I mean, I know I say that, but if the company takes time to review your profile and reaches out to you, they are very interested in you. It's not one of those things where like you walked into an interview. So those are you still, I'm working through Taylor.

Have you ever watched suits before the TV show on Netflix suits? All right, incredible. It's basically like house. Remember the show house, the house, right? It's basically house but for lawyers and attorneys. And I'm not a lawyer attorney, but it's fascinating. So like, this isn't ruined anything. This is like one of the beginning scenes. Like Mike, Mike Ross is running from the cops because they busted him with weed. And like he like runs in a hotel and like runs into an interview room of Harvey Spector trying to find his next associate and sits down to hide from the cops. And he's all nervous, right? Listen, you're not running from the cops because of weed.

Now, if you are that, listen, you do your thing, girl, but at the end of the day, you are there because they want you there. And so you need to come with confidence. Come with confidence. Let's see here, let's see here, I'm very, Taylor, my friend. Yeah, friend. All right, so anything else that you've been telling your friends lately about job searching that you want to share at all? I think those are the main things that come to mind for the job searches. Okay, awesome. Shabab comes anywhere with the question for Taylor P. I love it, thank you, thank you for saying which Taylor. Taylor P, Taylor P.

I'd love to know what would be the best process for applying for a job in your opinion. Apply on a company website, then DM the hiring manager would email me better. I'd hate to be like, hey, I applied to this position, FYI. I personally always like to go directly on the company website. I don't have any like statistics. I don't know how companies filter through those, but like people always that's like, what's your data points? It's like, I don't know. It's just my career as career. Yeah. So I personally always like to go through the website and then usually it's been a while, it's been years since I've like interviewed, but, you know, usually you get the email saying that they've received your application.

And if I don't hear something in two weeks, three weeks, sometimes I'll just respond to that message like, Hey, just want to follow up. Any updates here are estimated for estimated times for updates. Yeah, yeah, love that love that. Want to go into obviously the next part of the interview focused around your growth, right? And I think this is pretty applicable to a lot of people moving into tech leadership. What 2024 looks like? What are some things on your mind moving into leaders? as you continue to move into leadership and grow in, what are some things that are kind of on your brain right now that you wanted to share?

So when I joined Spotify, I told my manager within like probably an hour of her being my manager that I wanted to be a director in five years, director of engineering. Oh yeah. And so she had been helping me like gun towards that. Like I was full steam ahead, but as I get closer to that, now I don't know if I want to be a director of engineering, at least at a company the size of Spotify. So I always was at a small company before I got to Spotify. And I had to realize that like a director of engineering at Spotify is basically equivalent to be in a VP at a smaller company or can be equivalent for being a VP at a smaller company.

So constantly reassessing those things as I progressed through the ladder or whatnot. And then like obviously with the layoffs of last year, my org looks a lot different. And so I have been saying I wanna gun forward and go for that director of engineering role. And I see some openings that I could like absorb responsibility and progress for, but also trying to stay in tune with myself with if this is indeed where I want to take my career. But luckily, as I progress, I do also have a good support system. It's also staying in constant connection with them to make sure that I'm doing everything that I need to as I have these big stretch goals.

But what's turning you away a little bit from climbing that? Or that you can share, you know, there's politics everywhere, right? So like... It's not even politics for me. Just sometimes I think, I guess every job has crap. And I'm like, what flavor of crap am I willing to eat? You know, like, engineering manager too. I love my role. Maybe senior EM, which is my next promotion, is exactly where I will be happy at. And I just don't know, I think being friends with some directors of engineering, when I talk to them, I'm like, cool, this sounds heavy. But then they also remind me that in my current role, I deal with stuff too.

But for right now, I just don't know if that's a flavor of blah. I want to continue. Well, and this leads to a bigger conversation. I've had this with multiple engineering leaders, the conversations on the show and various to shape ways and forms, that it's not always, you don't always have to keep the next title. Like you don't, and I feel like in today's culture, like that's, you gotta get the bag, like you gotta make, you gotta get the title. And like here's a deal, like, I mean, in a nutshell, for the most part, unless you can get in a fang, and that's a whole nother in big companies, like money kind of gets to a certain point where it doesn't stop, but like you kind of get to it a certain point, right?

And it's like, what do you actually want to do? Yep. Cause I feel like you like chase this stuff and then you get to the mountaintop, you're like, well, what's next? So I can, can you talk about that a little bit, especially I'm sure you've seen it with peers in your life as well. Oh, absolutely. And that's the other thing. I also want to retire as soon as possible. So part of me is trying to go back to go back to get that whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. So that's part of the reason why I I want to climb just to amass as much money as I humanly possibly can as soon as possible to invest it and then retire early but I do think that there should be more of an emphasis on like At one guy that I manage he once he got to senior software engineer.

He told me he was like I never want to progress past this title for real Yeah, like this is it and he was like are you okay with that? And I'm like yeah, dude like you kick butt in that title. So there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because again And sometimes when you progress to a certain level, it's like a completely different set of skills. Like, you know, what got me to be in a senior software engineer was my technical acumen. But then when I went to engineering manager leading a team, my technical acumen was cool, but then I needed to learn how to manage people.

And kind of the same thing if I were to become a director. And sometimes it's like, you know what? I enjoy these skills. I want to stay here and there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, absolutely. You heard it here first, folks. Maybe not first. But it's OK to stay where you're at. It's okay. It's not being lazy. If you find in your vibe and there's no need to, no need to change it. No need to change it. Um, I want to get to a few comments here. Then we'll wrap up. Like I said, I want to respect for for Taylor P's time. She's got a meeting here in nine minutes.

Uh, let's see here. Um, yeah. Ryan comes in here. Definitely understand once you get closer to what you want, you get to see and reevaluate once you get a clear picture, 100%. Um, for a newcomer, do you think it's best to start out with a smaller company, a larger company? Oh, Interesting. I could be a bit biased, but I actually think a smaller company I think that me starting to see I think me starting my career in a smaller company One I got to try a whole bunch of stuff like I'm not saying you can't try a lot at a big company But small companies usually have a bit less Yeah, you have to do a lot of stuff So if you want to try something you usually can and like at my smaller company basically everyone knew me and like really wanted to like see me succeed.

So I had a lot of people pouring to me at that company. That could happen at a big company too, but I feel like it's easier at a smaller company. Like even my CEO was bought into my success at my last company, which is like pretty awesome. Yeah, I worked at a billion dollar company and I'm currently working at a 15 million dollar company. I will tell you this, I will never work for a big company again. I am definitely in my bag as they say when it comes to where I'm at. So I love it. I love it. But again, try both. I wouldn't say small company though.

Let's see here. Yes, yes, yes. I reassess goals, incredibly important 100%. Enoch, thank you for joining us from Ghana. That means a ton. Marie, it's great to see you. Yeah, new roles, new problems, 100%. Mark, my guy, what's up, buddy? It's good to see you. Love you, man. Hope you're doing well. Best CIO for start up before years, best job ever had. Yeah, I've no doubt, I have no doubt. Garrett, there will be a time when you have to decide the increase in title is worth the stress. Yep, and I've had multiple conversations with that with my wife. So thank you, absolutely. All right, so let's do rapid fire here.

Oh, also last thing. What do you want to tell you real quick? What do you want to say about taking time off? Because you like brought it up there right before we went live and you're like, I want to share this. So talk about that real quick. So for folks that don't know, I have taken an eight months sabbatical before. If you can take a sabbatical, I 100% support it. It was a great way. Like a guru like extended. Yeah, it was unpaid, but it was a great way for me to fully recover after an almost burnout and reassess where I wanted to take my career, ended up at Spotify in this role.

But two, I know when things get very chaotic at work, like they've been at me for me the past couple of months, you don't want to take PTO. and I'm usually the PTO queen, but I've even found myself like, oh no, don't leave. Like, okay, just push it to next year, don't do this, don't do that, but don't do that. Like you deserve your PTO, genuinely disconnect. So I just kind of wanted to give like a plus one in reinforcement there. You deserve your PTO, take it. Yeah, absolutely. Wendy comes in here real quick. What are each of you seen in terms of how positions or how positions are failure?

Can't find in the positions more from networking or organically applying? I mean, it's kind of a crapshoot. I'm hearing a little bit more like I applied to roles, but I'm such a big networker and I'm passionate about that. I would say that's where you start. It's all tools in a toolbox, right? You don't build a house with just a screwdriver. What's that I don't think you do? So you have to diversify. So that's that's kind of you have to do it all. But in my perspective, I think I'm seeing a little bit more getting it from randomly online, which is good, but I'd always geared towards more networking.

Taylor. I was gonna say for my end, I've been seeing a lot of people get their roles through networking. but that could just be, I'm not a recruiter, but it could just be my friend group or something. It changes, all right, last four questions. First off, if money was the same, what would you do outside of tech? I would do some kind of like adventure work. Like I don't know if I'd wanna be like a rock climber or a scuba dive instructor, something like that, but I would do something adventurous and like athletic. Yeah, outdoors in a beautiful place. That's what I would do. beautiful place any idea on the beautiful place.

I'm like New Zealand, Australia. I'm a Costa Rica girl. I love me. Some Costa Rica. I'm never been. It's great. It's phenomenal. OK, book you my next trip. Because of you. Second thing, what brings you joy outside of work? My people. So not only my family, but my close friends. Some good whiskey. If you combine them both, that's even great. I love some good travel and weightlifting. Oh, here we go. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's awesome. Third question. Any tools, technologies, trends you're reading up on that you're interested in that you want to share? So with the expansion of my responsibilities, I've been learning more about project management.

So that's something I know I was not tech heavy, but it's something that I think is going to help me make my career better going for it. So that's what I've been focusing on and also trying to get back to some of my like technical acumen because like over indexing on the leadership haven't been doing as many technical things, but that's the pendulum of life. It is. It is. Last question as we have up here and again, Taylor, thank you again for coming on. I appreciate it. Again, for those of you who have watched, go check out Rendery to you. Taylor is going to be there.

I will be there telling jokes. But so shows called guidance counselor 2.0 for a reason. We have guidance counselors in middle school high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have them like we should. What would be your biggest piece of career advice that you would tell younger Taylor and I would both of them. I'm kidding. I would tell myself like don't sell myself short. Take all the shots you can and you will always surprise yourself. I feel like I played small when I was younger and I wish I hadn't and so definitely take more of those risk of four of front and give a mail.

I love that. Cool. All right, y'all. Thank y'all for hanging out with us today. We appreciate Taylor stay on real quick sex anybody off air tick Talk Twitter Facebook LinkedIn appreciate y'all y'all have a good one tomorrow morning kelly Vaughn another render 2024 speaker It's gonna be a good one and then Wednesday. We have Paris Chandler With a black tech Twitter, which I'm super super pumped about so y'all have a great one. It's gonna be a good one Bye 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 Tdaston on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.