how to lead without being in management w/ kelly vaughn, director of eng

full transcript

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Let's dive in. Kelly, let's give the people what they want. Most people know who you are, but let's let's give the people what they want. Who are you? What are you doing with that? Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name's Kelly. I am a director of engineering, a video intelligence article called Spyi. I've been here for almost two years now. So I had up what we call our core experience team. So my team owns the dashboard or customers interact with, our mobile apps, our APIs. And as of last week, I am also heading up into corporate IT organization as well. So I'm now wearing two hats. Kelly.

So Kelly and I are like siblings from another mother, or something like that. Like we're both wired the exact same way. We both take on way too much. And we thrive in chaos. And we love the behavior at the same time. Yep. Yeah. Kelly takes out a lot. So all right. Let's dive in here. Go Wolverine, sweet. I will see you in Austin. Dominick. All right. So Kelly, I'm just pulling up your newsletter. Like as all I'm doing, less than number 26, how to leave without being a manager. Let me explain what the newsletter is first. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. I'm with hopefully, you and two, so people can talk.

Yeah. OK. So I wrote a newsletter called Lessons in Engineering Leadership. It is a weekly newsletter I send out every Tuesday morning, so the new one went out about a little over an hour ago. It's a newsletter you can read in under five minutes, because you're too busy to read along newsletter. And I'm too busy to write along newsletter. So it's perfect. So lots of little nuggets every single week. And I highly recommend you subscribe, because I think it's a great newsletter. I'm also so. Oh, I love it. So what prompted you to write about this? Because content's always interesting, right? We always come from a place.

We've seen something we heard something. We've experienced something. What prompted you write this one? This is a question I get a lot from people who are aspiring to be engineering managers, or they're currently an engineering leader, but they want to scale up. Or they don't have no interest in actually being a manager, but they want to be a leader within the organization. They don't really know how to approach that. This is not something that people are taught either. Like, you know, most companies don't have a management 101 kind of course to work through this. And so I feel like this is an important topic to cover, because this newsletter does not apply to engineering managers or aspiring engineering managers.

This applies to everybody. This is about building influence. And influence in your organization is what drives change within your own career as well. So that was the story behind it. I love that. And I'm much having real quick. Like, I'm really passionate about this. I've tweeted about this a lot, especially during my time at my last company, where it's a bigger company, a bigger organization, and especially to like even small. It goes both ways, like smaller big. But I think a lot of people kind of sit back that have passions about being leadership, but because they don't have a title, they like it's not my job.

And I, and Kelly, you can disagree with me on this if you want to. I think to be a leader, a official leader, you have to show leadership tendencies before you actually have the title. I think that's how a lot of things work in the professional world, whether you're like it or not. You kind of have to exude leadership and show leadership and show that you can do these things before you have the opportunity. Thoughts, agree, disagree? Yeah. It's like the whole, do the job you want. Kind of scenario. And I know, like, yeah, I'm, I'm, whether you like it or not, you know, when I'm looking at who, who is most interested in becoming an engineering manager for the, for the first time, I'm going to look at how you have exemplified leadership skills based on, you know, the kind of things that are right in my newsletter.

So I can help you become an engineering manager, but I need to see that initiative first to know that you're actually interested. I'm not going to just come to you. I do not believe in the whole, you're a great engineer. So therefore you should now be a manager. Yeah, absolutely. So the first bullet point, actually, I want to get to Jason's questions real quick. Five minute read sounds perfect size. How do you refine the content? I'm fascinated with content and how people do content. I think Kelly does an amazing job. What are you, how do you write the newsletter to make it super compact and in?

Yeah. I start with, I start with bullet points. Like I have, I've got the next eight, eight weeks of newsletters actually started as drafts within Sub-Stac, where I'm publishing. I will write up bullet points for each of the things that I want to cover in it. And based on the number of bullet points, I know whether it's going to be too many or not enough content. And from there, I actually, I either just typed really in there or I've been actually opening up my software and dictating and just like saying the, saying what I want to say for each section and then I'll go back and edit it.

But most of these will say, because Sub-Stac has a feature where it shows you how long it takes to read it and how long it takes to speak it. And so I use that as kind of my gauge to say, is it within five minutes? Great. Yeah, I do have to say, Kelly is, I would say, I do read most of Kelly's newsletters because it's short into the point. So, Marie, good to see you. Good morning, Portozona from Disney. I mean that in the least cheesy way, I love it. All right, so first, first lesson here, leaders know how to think about the bigger picture, right?

Understand your impact, your work has on the entire organization is key to those influence in this area. Thoughts on that? Yeah, it's about looking outside of your own purview of what's assigned to you. Yeah. And in the engineering space, we often see this, all right, I'm assigned X project. And so I'm going to be working on X project. What impact is X project going to have on my work or on organization? What goals are we trying to solve here? What problems are we solving? And who is going to be impacted by this? What other cluster or what other people within my organization might be interacting with this?

How might support you? Is it how might stills pitch it? And in be thinking about it more broadly than just, this is the project plan. I'm going to code the things to complete this project plan. Right. Now let me ask you this. I mean, as somebody using leadership role, if you had somebody come to you, right, because I think people hear this. And they're like, I mean, it's great, Kelly. Like, you know, that sounds great. But I don't feel comfortable asking my leadership that question. That makes me feel weird and feels like I'm trying to angle it something. Like, would you appreciate if a developer comes to you on your team and be like, hey, I'm kind of wondering, what's the downstream effect?

What is this effect? Why are we doing this? Like, are you opening those type of things? I mean, first of all, I shouldn't, my engineer shouldn't have to be asking me their question. I should be giving that information. Run. Ah ha. Very good. But second, no, if I did not clearly explain something or if I had to move resources around and I needed a different engineer to work on something, yes, please ask me as many questions as you need because the more knowledge I know you have going into building something, the more intentional I know you're going to be about building it. 100% I love that.

And again, from my experiences too, like you have to think second, third, fourth, like string like ways down, expect like good leaders can see, okay, we do this. How is it going to affect the next six months? Right? Like what does it look like? And so I think learning that big picture and understanding that I think would be incredibly important, especially moaning yourself as a leader. I love this one. And again, for those of you who are tuning Ricardo, it's going to see you set. I'll see you at lunch. We're going to lunch with a few JavaScript engineers and Nashville to start back up the JavaScript user group.

So set, I'll see it lunch today. I love this bullet point, but those of you who are tuning right now, we're going over Kelly's newsletter. Obviously it's linked right here. And we're talking about how to be in management with that or how to lead without being a management. So all right, I love this one. Leaders encourage and amplify others on their team. I could probably talk for 30 minutes on this. General thoughts on this for you. Yeah, I mean, I opened it up at this exact thing. Nobody works in a silo in an organization. As I've stayed in the last one, there are now in street impacts to others who are either working on this project with you or people who are going to be interacting with it within your organization as well.

And I think it's really important to understand, as you're working on something, we often get blocked and we need input or we want somebody to review it or we recognize the strength in somebody else that they can, it's worth getting their take on it, amplifying the voices of others on your team and not taking credit for all the work that you have magically done all by yourself. Everyone gets help from somebody else. I've never actually worked with an engineer who has truly been solely independently working on everything and never has an impact or never actually interact with them, but somebody else. Yep. I'll also tell you this.

What I've realized in my career is that being a cheerleader for other people can catapult you in many different ways throughout your career that you never know that you could get to if that makes sense. So hear me out. Basically, like, I want, like I think everybody can win and you can win and everybody has the same piece of the pie. I feel like everybody thinks like, oh, well, if I support Kelly and she's a director and I wanna be a director, I'm never gonna be a director because if I support Kelly, that's gonna slow down. If I hurt being right, that's the wrong way of thinking, right?

I will tell you this. If you are Kelly's biggest champion, she is gonna advocate for you if you wanna move throughout your career. And that's the same thing with me. I realize that I just wanna be people's champion. A lot of that comes with guidance counselor 2.0 and helping people champion their careers. But like being, like I've realized that my superpower is like cheering others on. And so like I'm really trying to lean into that. And it's helped open doors an amazing way. And again, same thing with Kelly. If you cheerlead her and help her efforts, especially if you're not a leader, what do you think is gonna happen when you wanna become a leader?

Yeah. I don't know. I've got two points to add to this. On, don't make it transactional. Like don't support me just in exchange. I want, I want, yeah, don't really. Yeah, like that, we know that, but it's worth just calling out the second. There's another really important piece to amplifying others on the team. And that is on the flip side of a difficult, negative situation. I think everyone has different levels of comfort in bringing up problems. And especially within like a company culture, like there's a bad conversation or somebody got laid off or somebody got fired. And you know, there's some concern or anxiety around the situation.

If you're somebody who feels comfortable actually going to leadership and being like, hey, the team is concerned about this. It'd be really helpful if you spend some time to talk to them about it. This is a really, really valuable thing that I think others on your team actually really appreciate because they have the same concerns as you, but they're not comfortable voicing those concerns. And so you're helping their team as a whole by getting that addressed. I love that, love that. RJ out here preaching, we're preaching. Anytime killing me, I get together, we go, we just very long, we do it for a long time.

Shabab, it's a scarcity mindset. Yeah, and I understand that. Like, listen, I get that. But if you can get out of that scarcity mindset and like turn the other cheek and like be kind, I think it's going to help everybody. Jason comes in and shows you what I'm doing to and can work well with other team players greater than other guy, 100%. Janet, it's good to see you. And look, your sister chimed in. Well, Katie. Hi Katie. It's good to see you. All right, love that. Any more thoughts on Cheer and Oz on? Or, or, or, or, or, or, okay, come sweet. Uh, leaders understand their personal strengths and work to improve their weaknesses.

Yes. Okay. So, I have none. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. So I, this is another one that's kind of twofold. On, on the individual side of things, as, as individuals growing in our careers, growing in our, our, just growing ourselves, we're constantly learning something. We're constantly looking for opportunities to improve. Even, you know, not every day has to be 1% better every day. I do not believe in that. I'm like, a salad. If you're bringing 60% of the day, and that's all you have, you just brought 100%. It's great. Um, but I, I think it's important to constantly seek feedback, you know, understand how am I performing?

How can I be better? And, and really take that internally as well as like, what do you want? And what you want is going to change over the course of your career based on life events, based on your interests. And it's important to make sure those two things are in sync as well. Um, but you have to constantly be asking for that feedback and, and being okay with getting that constructive feedback. Now, not many people are good at delivering constructive useful feedback. That or, or receiving it to, or receiving. Yes. I want you to give me feedback on this, but I only want to tell you, I only want you to tell me how great I'm doing.

Yes. I'll, I'll, I'll never forget, I don't know if I told you story, Kelly. Uh, when it was, it was at my last company, I was at and, um, uh, we had a can of interview and they were like, I really want feedback. I want to get better. Can you give me feedback and the can of got rejected? We were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go. So we got the feedback and, and it wasn't my camera. Something else can, but they obviously told us what happened. And, and supposedly the can of like, custom out, like, cussed out. I are employee because basically it was like, hey, like, you got defensive in the interview and the guy literally goes, no, I didn't fuck you talking about.

It was like, so again, if you want feedback, take it and just say thank you. Yes. Well, you agree with it or not. Yeah. And that's a very important point because again, especially in an interview, you know, you have 30, 45 minutes, one hour to have a conversation with somebody. Nobody's going to truly learn everything about you in one hour. You could say something that's just kind of weird, not really how you think, but that's, that's going to resonate with that individual. And that's going to be how they think about you, your performance or whatever. They're, you know, that is part of life. But, you know, if you get feedback, you don't agree with it, just graciously say, thanks, appreciate it.

I'll take this into consideration and then set it aside. That's totally acceptable. Yeah. I mean, it's still hard for me. You know, I was, I was having a call with my CEO and, and he, he told me, he goes, you know, my, my biggest advice for you. And I could feel myself like start to go. I'm talking to the fuck you're talking about. And, and he was like, he was like, he didn't say like, you kind of talk a lot, but that's basically what he said. He was like, you need to get to like more actionable items. And it's so funny that Arjuna just commented.

Yep. The way I start feedback is what are the actual items here? Because like, so I think a lot of times, I think people get nervous, right? And like kind of talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and I have a tendency to do it too. Some of it's more excitement, but still nerves. And so again, like giving specific, I think being incredibly direct and specific is going to help you tremendously. And I think that would be my, one of my biggest advice is for me as leader. Like if you asked Taylor like 10 years ago, what would you improve on? Be as direct as possible, but it's kind as possible at the same time.

Yeah. I think actually the very first newsletter I ever sent is called Good Feedback as a gift. Oh, really? We'll have to hunt down that way. The hunt that one. Yeah. Um, let's see here, uh, take it as opinion. It is less, that is less confronting. Yeah. I like that. It's, yeah. If yeah, opinion, it's opinion. Um, Janet comes in here. That's a great way to apply to work feedback. I talk about this in my roller derby. Hey, go where your teammates are always going to give your feedback no matter what just accept the feedback. Yeah, 100%. And listen, like, like all of us want to improve, but we don't want feedback.

I'm sorry, but like, when we improve, it's like people speak truth into you. Um, uh, let's see here. Some people can't give constructive. Yeah. I mean, listen, like I said, I think Kelly could do an entire conference talk on probably how to give constructive feedback. But yeah, 100%. Don't give me ideas. I don't have time. Another. Yeah, seriously, between your side projects and then, uh, uh, let's you're always tweet about and then conference talks. Uh, honestly, honestly without kindness and compassion. Yeah. I mean, listen, yeah, I think being incredibly kind, um, but then it being direct. Right. I've had to give a ton of feedback.

I, uh, to Kant's with being rejected for hiring managers over my career. And so the more, the more direct and understanding you can be the better. Um, so, uh, I love that. Obviously this is hitting a, uh, accord with people right now. Um, any more. Okay. So I have a question. I have a question. Hitting. There's a lot of people out there that like don't worry about your weakness is doubled down in strikes. What are your thoughts on that? What are your weaknesses? If my weakness is that I, uh, run slowly, then sure, maybe I should, you know, focus on something else because running slowly is perfectly acceptable of my feet.

If my weakness is that I'm an asshole, no, I probably should work on that. I've had some people really tell me they're like, I'm an asshole. It's just who I am. That shit drives me bonkers. The like don't, if that's you on this, like check yourself, check yourself. Because no one, no one needs that. I've literally had people tell me that for. I don't do what I've heard. I've heard it too. I've heard. I've heard all the things. It's just who I am. It's my personality. Well, change who you are. They make answers for a reason. Uh, uh, dominant comes in. Have you ever had an instance where you had really poorly formatted a bracelet feedback?

Do you also realize was incredibly valid? Ooh. Yeah. Absolutely. Again, I think this is a, it's a skill to give feedback. It's also a skill to parse feedback and understand the intent behind the feedback. Um, you know, when people are particularly heated or they're just not good with phrasing, they might say something that is frankly very insulting to you. And I've gotten feedback like that. But the, the intent of the feedback was still a very valid piece of feedback. That was worth me receiving. Yeah. 100% we still got comments. We're definitely on something right now. That's just who I am. So saying you can't improve.

Okay. The X. Yes. Seriously. Seriously. Uh, the thing is you can be an arsenal. Still be a good person. I think inherently sometimes people project their own. Oh, yeah. I mean, we all do that. I think too. I think and we'll move on to the next topic. Cause we're almost that time already. So what happened when Kelly and I get in room together? Um, another good skill to work on is not mean defensive. And I'm working on that too. I think if you can, from, if you're in marriage and spouse, it really comes out there, at least for me, um, you know, I constantly joke with my wife.

I was like, I wish I could be like not as defensive at home as I am at work. Like if someone says I suck at work, I'm like, that's fine. I just move on. Jackie tells me I suck at something. I'm like, well, fuck you. Right? So it's like again. Uh, but, well, here's all the things you suck at. Yeah, exactly. So again, like, like, if, if, if, if, if my encouragement to you all today, if you go one thing out of this aside from all of Kelly's great things, one thing for me is just be good at taking feedback. Don't get defensive. Uh, see, you were going into the last.

Yeah. Yeah. But you can introduce now. Oh, sorry. That's your right. Uh, leaders hone their emotional intelligence. Hey Taylor, what is emotional intelligence? Is it in here? Is the ability to understand, manage your emotions? Hey, no, stability to understand and manage your emotions and the emotions of others and be able to act em emphatic em, empathetically. Empathetically, thank you. I want the South Carolina. So I go get it and communicate with others. Yeah, it's so, so good. It's, yeah, he was, it's all about the management of your own emotions and the emotions about theirs. You know, I'm not expecting you to be a mind reader, but people with high, you can tell when you're working with somebody with high EQ, because they're, you can also tell when you're working, when you're working with somebody with low EQ as well.

Like it is very, very obvious. And as we're talking about giving abrasive feedback and things like that, that's when you start to see low EQ. Um, I've also seen it in situations where somebody has given me feedback and at time when it was just extremely inappropriate to be giving me feedback. And it was just like, whoo, right over. Um, and in part of this is, um, you know, in responding to that, that abrasive feedback as well. This is also EQ on your own side. What this is, is how can I manage my emotions appropriately in the situation? I'm in right now. We all get into heated situations.

We all get into very difficult conversations where things are just starting to get really tense. And in being able to take a step back and be like, okay, I'm angry right now. This is not the time for me to be writing that really aggressive slack message or email, I'm going to take notes and come back to this a little bit later. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Joyce, I'm going to get you a question here once you wrap up, um, cause it kind of is a little bit of a pivot. Um, I think Taylor needs, needs to cough it. Yeah. Yeah. I need, I need some kind of, I got, I got 13 more days.

Um, don't know why you're doing this to yourself. I need to, I need to. All right. Let's see here. Cool. I think that's it. All right. Uh, do you want to get the Joyce's question as we wrap up? Uh, kind of pivoting, tell me about yourself question. Glad you asked this. I don't think we can never talk about this enough. What are the key points you're looking for? Kelly go. I want to know where you were born with school. You went to what your social security number is, what your bank account information is. Uh, yeah. When you're born, what was the damage when you were born?

What the damage there was. Yeah. I want to, I like, when I'm asking, tell me about yourself, I actually, I touched on this and the interviews that I do with people. I have your resume. Like I've read your resume actually. Um, and I know the history behind your work, I want to know what led you to where you are today. I want to, like we're still going to summarize, you know, your, your, your experience to a degree in our interview. I want to know who you are, where you're based, you know, what you're, I, we get into interest sometimes. I'm just, it's to a little bit touchy.

I know I'm being very big about this because I think it's, it's different for everybody. And I intentionally leave the question open because in my opinion, there's not really a right or wrong answer to it. I'm seeing how you respond to the question as well, which I think is probably like a psychological game that people probably don't appreciate. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you follow up questions. Like, oh, you're based in, like you, you were born in Michigan. Cool. I was also born in Michigan. That's awesome. I went to UGA. I, you know, I've been working as an engineer for 10 years now.

I've been an engineering leader for eight years. I'm throwing out numbers that don't exist. Those are actual real numbers. Just, they don't apply to me. Um, and, and you know, I've been, I've been really focused like super passionate about engineering leadership and talking through, um, how to grow engineering leaders. And so now, you know, I've been working at spot for X number of years. And now I'm looking for my next opportunity, um, to focus on why area is basically how I would summarize it. Um, if anyone from spot is actually listening to this, I swear I am not actively interviewing elsewhere. Uh, uh, yeah, I can't confirm Kelly's not because I would know if she was.

Uh, absolutely. No. Yeah. Joyce, my big thing, um, keep it short. Almost everybody that we do. So, uh, uh, Joyce, if you go check out unghosted.live, it's, it's another endeavor that I do with Alicia Nove and he's a program manager at, um, Microsoft. We do mock interviews. So if you want to do a mock interview, Joyce, we could try it out. Go to unghosted.live and fill out your form. We'd love to have you. But keep it short. Everyone runs long. Keep it specific around the specific job you're interviewing for in the person you're interviewing with. So if I was interviewing with Kelly, I knew she was at Georgia.

I'd be like my name's Taylor, I grew up in South Carolina. I actually spent a lot of time in Atlanta playing ice hockey at the cooler in Alfa Reda. Um, yes, for both SEC fans. I went to South Carolina, go gang cocks. Um, we beat you that one year, a few years ago and, um, one time. And, uh, and then I'm also passionate about surveillance because in security, because of my dad, you're working restaurant. We got robbed a few times and you know, I'm saying like that, that part isn't true, but just like try, try to try to intertwine it with the position of the person you're interviewing with.

So, um, Kelly, last four questions I always ask. Uh, first off, I've, I had a business you've left spin on. If, if money was the same, what would you do outside of tech? I would travel and I would read all the romance books and just write really terrible reviews for, for romance books and then get paid the same amount. I mean, basically you'd be like an influencer on TikTok, around books. But no, I would read the things that are probably not going to show up on TikTok. Gotcha. Cool. Love that. Love that. Uh, second thing. Um, uh, if, uh, what outside of work brings you joy?

Well, I'm currently training for a year, 2024 Chicago marathon. Yeah. So, uh, I actually, I dreamt that I ran 6.75 hours. I know why I could see that on my watch and my sleep, it was great. Um, and how, how just like comforting that runway is and I'm like, cool. Maybe this is a turning point for me. Um, actually do enjoy running. I love, I love traveling. I love coffee shops, rev coffee. Ice coffee, Taylor. It was exactly what I'm talking about. Um, and I read a lot. I read over 100 books here. There you go. Uh, third question. Tools technologies, trends you're reading up on that you want to share that you're interested in, keep an eye on.

I'm not keeping an eye on much right now. That's fine. You're just trying to run, you're going to team right now. Oh, yeah. Katie, uh, just called it out. I enjoy one on once with my nephew as well. Yes. Your pictures that you post are freaking hilarious. Also, Katie, really cute kid. Uh, last question. What's your biggest piece of advice for young Kelly? Oh, to read advice. Oh, man. I just had a conversation about this with my sister and I don't know how much I want to unpack this. Okay. I, you know what? I, it's so cliche, but like everything that I've done in my past has led me to where I am today.

And obviously there's a lot of highs and lows that came with that journey, which is typical for life. But I think I'm, I think I'm doing okay. I love that. I think that's a rascal flat song by the way. I wouldn't know that. Yeah. Anyways, uh, cool. All right. Well, thank you all for hanging out with us today. Kelly, obviously, stay on the circuit. Say about a UF stage. Uh, go connect with Kelly on Twitter. KBLO, why I'm going to go sign up for a newsletter. Um, and, uh, tomorrow, Paris Chandler basically started Black Tech Twitter. She's going to be on. It's going to be great.

And, uh, go have a good one. Oh, wait. For next time Taylor, I know you'll have her back. How does she read 100 books per year? You took the answer. Yeah. Kelly reads like crazy. Yeah. The reason why I was hanging out with Kelly a lot. So she's just, I know her and, you know, just, uh, just reads, she reads all the time. This is, this is incentive to have me background because I'm not going to answer them this one. Big book nerd. All right. Y'all have a good one. Y'all have a great Tuesday. We'll see y'all tomorrow. This 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 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-Destin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.