Latest / The Laravel Podcast / Leading Engineering Teams with Empathy

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Leading Engineering Teams with Empathy · The Laravel Podcast

• Matt Stauffer: Hey everybody and welcome back to Laravel podcast season seven. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer, CEO of Tighten. And in this season, I'll be joined every episode by a member of the Laravel team. And today I'm talking to Andre Valentin, the director of engineering at Laravel. He's kind of a big deal. Andre, can you say hi to everybody and share a little bit about what you do at Laravel? André Valentin: Yeah, hi everybody. Yeah, so I basically help unblock, I think is a good word, unblock all the engineering teams that we have here at Laravel, as well as try to put in process and think about leadership, strategy, all these kinds of things, security, even IT, all the things that other people also don't wanna do, yeah. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, the buck stops with you when it comes to technology, basically. André Valentin: Basically, yes. Matt Stauffer: Okay, got it. I love that. So you know that one of the first things I like to ask everybody is kind of what were you doing before Laravel, whether, you know, 10 years ago or two years ago, and what was the process of coming to Laravel like for you? What, you know, who connected you and, know, just kind of, was that experience like? André Valentin: Yeah, I think this is a great question because everybody has such a fun answer. I think for me personally, the Jess and Tim one is my all-time favorite. I remember when I had my first one-on-one with Jess, she basically told me the story and I was like, how is this real life? I've never heard about anything like that before. But that was so much fun. Yeah, so my story is not quite as intense, I would say, but I think it's also somewhat interesting. Matt Stauffer: It's amazing. André Valentin: But yeah, let's go back a little bit. I my entry to PHP and Laravel, I think, I feel like most people say this. I don't know why, but it must have been a popular release, but around like 4.1, 4.2, thereabouts, that's sort of when I entered the Laravel space. And the reason why I did that was because I was working on a small sort of startup at the time. I was home rolling like my own Laravel framework, not my own PHP framework, because I thought, you know, there's nothing out there that... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah. André Valentin: kind of suits my needs. Of course you gotta build your own. There's no other way around it. So I was doing that and actually thought that was quite fun, but it was slow. And you know you hit every single pain point that you could possibly hit. So one day actually my front end developer on the project, it was basically just the two of us. He said, if I'd like seen this thing Laravel and you know, I hadn't. So he sent me some links to Reddit. And it looked really, really cool. I think sort of like everyone else, most people, I think they go to the documentation first and it was just so well thought through, like well laid out. It was clear. It was beautiful. So yeah, that was sort of like the very early days of me and Laravel, I would say. And it sort of stuck actually, even though my professional career and background is a little bit zigzag. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: I kind of started out doing customer support actually. That's how I got into, like that's how, that was my first job. It was like customer support at a sort of a telecom company, the biggest one in Denmark. And yeah, since then I tried to get into code but without doing any sort of traditional schooling. So I'm self-taught and you know, people... Matt Stauffer: Okay. André Valentin: don't necessarily wanna pay you to code if they don't know that you can do it. So it's like, you you get in somewhere and you try to, can I build this internal tool? Which I can recommend anyone who wants to try to get into code. I think that's a great way. And yeah, I of worked my way up, honestly. And one day I was fortunate enough, and this is a little bit of a wild story. I was fortunate enough to interview at a company called TradeShift. I joined TradeShift as a integration engineer, which is sort of like a hybrid support and sort of a dev, but like you're working, connecting sort of business systems. So like, know, EDI files, if that, you know, says anything to you, which is like, you know, business, electronic business documents, invoices and stuff like that. Matt Stauffer: Nothing to me. Got it, okay. André Valentin: Pretty dry, but anyways, it was a job and it was the first one that would pay me to code. So I was not too unhappy about that.My manager at the time and the person who actually hired me was Feri, who is now the head of support at Laravel. Yeah, small world, but obviously, if you know good people, you kind of try to tend to take them with you. Matt Stauffer: customer support, right? Yeah, that's amazing. André Valentin: But anyways, yeah, so he hired me and gave me a shot and he's actually like the first one who I would say really believed in me and kind of gave me a shot at also managing a team because Trade Shift was a hyper growth company. You know, we came in as an engineer, did Laravel again, built all our internal tooling for support and stuff like that. And eventually, you know, we grew and grew and grew and it was like, okay, we need more people that do what you do. Can you please hire them? And I'm like, oh yeah, I know this guy who I used to do the startup with. So then I hired that guy from before. I mentioned before the front end engineer. And we became a small team after a while. And then after some more years, we ended up being not so small of a team. And I had a team in Romania and some people in Denmark and worked a lot in the US and flew to China for work every few weeks as well. It was a wild time. It was a hyper growth is no joke in any company, especially back in those days. I don't know if it's quite the same anymore, but it was wild. And yeah, so that was sort of how I got into management that somebody gave me like said, okay, you seem to be doing this well. Can you please make sure other people also do it well? And that's, ya know, and I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, let's go. Turns out it's not super easy and it's also not... Matt Stauffer: It's not the same skill set, right? André Valentin: let's say that, no, it's not at all the same skill set. So there's like this typical mistake I think people make at these companies where they just promote the best person on the team and then go like, you can be the manager now and that person doesn't necessarily want to be a manager, but it's like the only way to like progress your career or something like that. So yeah, it's not great, but you know, kind of stuck with it, tried to get better, read a lot of books. Yeah. And yeah, kind of did that for a while until Matt Stauffer: Yep. Yep. André Valentin: about just about before COVID, I think then, then we had big layoffs. It was poorly timed by the company because everybody was laying a few love during COVID. My company decided to lay people off just before COVID. So they were really looked like the bad guys. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: And yeah, essentially we laid a bunch of people off. I was still left, but with fewer people and like motivation wasn't really there. Plus I'd been there for over five years at that point in time. So kind of while I was on vacation with my now wife, actually, I received a recruiter call from a smaller company called Worksome in Denmark, and they were looking for a VP of engineering for a Laravel shop. And I was like, holy moly, that is a dream opportunity. And I get watered time because we were just going through all of these layoffs and restructurings and... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: you know, the morale was kind of down for everyone, even the ones who didn't get laid off. So, you know, I was like, this sounds like kind of a dream opportunity, you know, big step up career-wise, at least on paper, which is important to note, I think. But yeah, definitely, you know, something fun and new to try and, you know, we went through the interviews and I ended up joining. You know, I was VP of engineering of two people, three people, I think, in the beginning. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: So ya know, title, titling is always funny, I think. You know, that's another story for a different day, but the titling is always funny. But we did grow and, you know, the idea was that I would scale the team and take my experience from TradeShift, scale it up to Worksome. Doing that for quite a long time as well until we were about 100 plus people, which was around the time where I had my first daughter. So that's a big change in your life. As I'm sure you know, so that led me to reflect on kind of what I wanted and you know, should I try something new? And yeah, there were lots of reasons to be honest. There are always lots of reasons to make changes. And then I tried to, then I joined Unity and kind of got referred by an old colleague and did, yeah, I worked on a very strange project where we did sort of like international sort of compliance. Yeah... sort of intellectual property stuff between the US and China, you know, have to, you know, can't export all code from the US to China if it has cryptography and all these kinds of things. Very hairy, very technical, but it turned out Unity also kind of hit the SERP bubble and, you know, my literal first week at the job, they fired like a thousand people or something like that. Matt Stauffer: Hmm interesting Matt Stauffer: Very hairy, very technical, but it turned out Unity also kind of hit the SERP bubble and, you know, my literal first week at the job, they fired like a thousand people or something like that. André Valentin: But I was, I don't know how they didn't lay me off because I had just joined. Like, why wouldn't you get rid of me? I don't know. But they thought my project was important. And so instead what they did was they took away all the headcount I was supposed to hire and just left me there. So I was there as a kind of senior manager at the company with like one person on my team. And I was supposed to, I think hire 10 or 12 or something to do this more like, you know, many millions of dollar project. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: Yeah, anyways, that didn't really turn out. I stayed for about a year, gave it a shot. Also like, some good people there, did the learnings. I took the learnings I could. And one day, and I went back today to look at what day this actually was because I thought it was interesting, but it was the 22nd of January, 2024. Taylor Otwell tweeted, sorry, this is a very long story. Matt Stauffer: It's great. André Valentin: He tweeted and said, hey, we are doing something ambitious this year and coming years, does anybody want to be head of engineering for Laravel? And I was like, that's a funny coincidence, but also how am I ever gonna get that job? So I think we've heard that story before from other people who have been on this podcast. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: And yeah, it's a funny one because I came home that day from work because I think I saw it at work, the tweet, and I was talking to my wife who kind of knows what Laravel is, but like, maybe not deeply... Matt Stauffer: Right, yeah. André Valentin: But she knows I've worked with it for years and kind of like, you know, what it is brought in broad strokes. And my wife was saying, you know, we were talking about the tweet and stuff, and I was like, that's so interesting, you know, what a dream job. And she's like, so did you apply? And I was like, no, there's like, you know, basically no shot and like, do they need someone like me who's kind of taking a little bit more of the corporate route and stuff like that, because I knew also the team was kind of small. And I was like, I don't think that it makes any sense really, even though the job description sounded perfect. And she's like, you are an idiot, please go and apply to this job right now. You just got to, like what do you have to lose basically? And my wife is quite right. She often is quite right. Yeah, so basically I sat down and... Matt Stauffer: Uh huh. André Valentin: and wrote an application, sent it over, and I don't think it took that many hours. And then I had an email back from Taylor Otwell saying, hey, love your resume, I offer talking. I'm like, holy moly. First of all, that was really fast. I mean, he must have been waiting for my application, I can only imagine. But at the same time... Yeah, I don't know, it felt a little bit surreal because I've also been to Laracons before, I've done the whole thing and you can't help but faint by a little bit. So yeah, I was obviously accepted and the day after we were on a Google Meet and yeah, chatted for, I don't know, half an hour maybe about just kind of what I'd done and my view on leadership and hiring and these kind of things and kind of also what their plans were because that's the only thing I didn't really know. I had no idea about Accel or any of these things. But I was kind of let in on that and that kind of struck a chord with me because I've definitely done that before. I've done the whole we get investment, we hire a bunch of people, we got to execute on this big vision. That was right up my alley. So all of a sudden I went from, I don't know if they can use someone like me to, yeah I'm definitely the right person for this. Yeah, I've done that before. And then some, plus all of the compliance aspects and stuff like that that they wanted someone to own as well. I had kind of done that in most companies I've worked at honestly beforehand. So yeah, I thought to myself, you know, after the call, I think I sent him an email first and was like, I thought it went really well. You know, I can see that Laracon EU is coming up in. Matt Stauffer: Done that before, yeah. André Valentin: think it was like two or three weeks from that time. Amsterdam is not so far from Copenhagen. I can just fly over and meet you if you want to meet me in person. And yeah, and he immediately accepted, was like, that's a great idea. Let's get that booked right away. I was talking to my wife, I was like, my God, I gotta take some days off work and fly to Amsterdam. My biggest problem with doing all of that, it was really exciting, but my biggest problem with doing all of that was I knew quite a lot of people in the Laravel community and people knew that I was working at Unity and Unity has nothing to do with Laravel. So it's like, I know some people go to Laracons, you know, on their own money and like kind of are there for the vibes. But I mean, I think I would imagine most people get like, ya know, tickets purchased by the company and these kinds of things. Yeah, so I ran into like... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: former colleagues and they're like, what are you doing here? And I was like, yeah, ya know, I was just, you know, look, seeing friends like, hi, how are you doing? Just like all for the vibes and for the talks and you know, whatever, grab a beer later and whatnot. And yeah, in reality, I was, you know, first meeting with Tom, I think, and then I was meeting with Taylor and I was, obviously I actually met the investors there as well. They were both, both the people on the team at back then were there. So yeah, I kind of went through the system, you could say, and left the conference the day after, flew home, and was like, okay, I definitely need to get this job. Yeah, and then, know, I feel like a few days later, I forget who it was, but I think Tom or Taylor, one of them reached out and was like, you know, we would like to talk again and stuff like that. And then, you know, we had some more conversations. Yeah, and here we are. Then we agreed that that was a good fit and got everything to work and yeah, then I started. That was, yeah, sorry, that was a very long story, Matt Stauffer: love that. That's okay. André Valentin: but yeah, that's definitely how I got into PHP, how got into leadership and how I joined Laravel. Matt Stauffer: I love it. And you knocked out some of my questions. So I'm like, you know, thank you for that. You know, I appreciate that. So, you got into Laravel, you show up on day one and Laravel at this point is an open source, you know, project with, you know, I don't know, dozens of individual teams to get together with our individual projects together with also a software as a service, ya know, several softwares of services, paid things. Where do you start at that point? Are you primarily focused on the paid stuff? where do you even, how do you even, because that's, you know, prior to you, your role was the founder, you know, who also wrote half the stuff. So you were kind of creating something that didn't exist. André Valentin: Yeah, exactly. And we talked a lot about that in the beginning, kind of how do I fit in? Because the team also didn't know, you know, kind of who I was. And that was also a very intimidating thing for me, you know, weirdly maybe, but like, yeah, coming in and it's like, it's James and it's Joe and it's Nuno and it's Jess. Matt Stauffer: You know these people, right? André Valentin: And it's like, okay, you know, how am I, why would they listen to me? I think that was like my first thought is like, why would they listen to me? I'm coming in as the new boss and it's like, it feels a bit weird, but I had kind of experienced it before, I guess, but the people I was then managing were like kind of rock stars in their community. So that was a little bit more intimidating, I would say. But I tried to kind of do what I do, I think, which I think I'm good at. So like, know, having a lot of empathy for people, really listening, trying to level with people, like kind of... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: I scheduled one-on-ones with everyone. was really trying to, that was not my first week, but sort of like week two maybe, I think that's when we started talking to everyone, being like, okay, what do you want? There are so many changes coming. I mean, I can tell you that change is coming that I don't think you are prepared for. And like, how can we make this better for you? Like, how can I help you achieve your goals? So the beginning days were really important. Imean, lots of listening, lots of learning. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: But also kind of seeing, what kind of potential do we have in the current group? What do we need to hire for? You know, all of these things, but to maybe get back to your question a little bit on like, what did day one look like? I did this thing where I pushed pretty hard to meet Taylor in person. For me, this is actually my first ever remote job, which is, I'm sure we can come back to that, but that was like, Matt Stauffer: Wow. André Valentin: Not something I knew I was sure about I would like. I knew I wanted to work at Laravel and I wanted to have this job. But the one thing I was really unsure about was the remote thing because I love spending time with people in person. But it turns out this is actually quite great, especially when you have a young family and you are a little bit more flexible with your time. I work lots of nights after the kids are in bed, but then I can... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: do all the drop-offs and the pick-ups and all of this kind of stuff and I can be there for all the dinners, or like most of the dinners. But yeah, it's such a difference. But because it was remote and I only basically know in person, I was like, I want my onboarding to be in person. I was like, was telling Taylor, I think we should meet in person, like for my first week. What do you say? And he was like, yeah, let's go. So I took four flights to get to Little Rock from Copenhagen. Matt Stauffer: Oh my god. André Valentin: It was, I don't even remember the route anymore, it was a nightmare because I think all, you can get there faster by the way, it's just, it was very expensive because it was kind of last minute. But yeah, eventually got there, had to sleep in Washington because I missed a late connection somewhere, but that's also an adventure. You know, got picked up in Little Rock Airport again, a surreal moment by Taylor and we drove back to Little Rock and sat at a co-working space basically for a week. So I was staying at a hotel and he even had me over for dinner one night with the family and they are so sweet. So amazing family that he has. So that was amazing to get to know him as a person a little bit, which was kind of my goal, I think, because he was such a mystical creature. It's like, how do you actually... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: Yeah, connect to Taylor and like do a good job and all these kinds of things. Find out like what does he actually want from you? And I thought the best way was to get to know him in person a little bit and you know, I think that was a great trip and I would have definitely done that again if I could. Matt Stauffer: That's a very cool idea. André Valentin: Yeah, so that was my first week and we were literally setting up, you know, Google workspace. I think I set up like Google workspace for the company on my first day. So asking about what I did on my first, it was a lot of IT infrastructure that we didn't have. We didn't have a password manager, know, bought that. It was like, okay, I think I just kind of need your credit card and then I'm gonna set up some things. And then, you know, he was giving me all the passwords and was like, you own all of this now. And I'm like, great, I know what to do with this. So that was, it felt very at home with all of those kinds of tasks and all that. Like weirdly, I'm like super into the admin stuff as well. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: Yeah, I don't know if that's like a weird fetish or something, but I know some people hate it, but I quite like it. But also I like automating. Yeah, I also like automating all these things. So that's kind of the stage we're at right now, which is like a year and some months later is that we're starting to slowly get like single sign on in place and all of these things. So yeah, but other than that, the main focus for me has always been and is I think mainly gonna continue on the commercial side of the company. That was kind of part of your question is like open source versus commercial, how do you, what do you actually work on? And I mean, for me, it's mostly commercial. I mean, I would say that in spirit, I'm also Joe T's manager, but that's more like, again, in spirit or in the org chart. He's definitely directed by Taylor. Taylor is, ya know, Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Okay. André Valentin: demand when it comes to open source at Laravel and will always be, I think, unless something drastic happens. yeah, I think that's the case. other than that, I see myself most valuable with all the commercial teams and kind of helping with structuring and hiring and strategy, performance, all the typical things, I would say. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it's interesting because people often when we think about a directive of engineering because it's such a technical name and it's a leadership position in a technical place, we think very much about, so you're hands on in the code and you're actually involved in every project. What's your level? Like what's the deepest you go into any one project? André Valentin: It depends actually a little bit on the project. Matt Stauffer: Okay. André Valentin: So I see myself and I try to be as useful as I can anywhere. I think that's basically, that has to be the starting point. And also I don't wanna be a blocker. I wanna be, I don't wanna be like, you have to go through me to make these decisions or anything like that. Matt Stauffer: Right. André Valentin: I mean, I'm never gonna do that unless it's like super critical for some reason, then maybe, but other than that, not really. I don't go super deep. So for Laravel Cloud, I think I helped a little bit. I had built sort of a platform as a service before, but internally at a company. that was kind of my, I took a lot of inspiration actually from that and it was like kind of the process, the pain points and also knowing that this would be a very valuable product to the right teams out there because... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: I went into that project very naive and was like, yeah, we'll just hire a DevOps person, we'll throw out some like YAML, whatever they do. And then we create some stuff on Amazon and Bob's your uncle and people can like submit a PR and then there's another service. Yeah, turns out it's a little bit more involved than that. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, bing bang boom, there you go, yeah. André Valentin: Well, it's basically that, but doing that is very complicated and doing it at scale is even harder and sort of achieving any kind of flexibility within it. So, you know, kind of taking the learnings from that, you know, helping make the decision around should we go kind of serverless fully, should we go something more serverful, you know, all of this that we did early on, like just being part of those conversations on how to architect the system, what kind of tools should we use? Basically, yeah, and also what kind of people should we hire to actually build this thing? And getting involved a little bit on the AWS side. So I have always had a fondness from early on in my career on servers and infra. So even though I'm not specifically head of infra or anything like that, that's always where I kind of lean to be involved myself more than other places. You always try to work with the stuff that you actually know you're good at. Matt Stauffer: Got it. André Valentin: So I try to help a little bit more on the info side than on the App side because the AppSight people are here very good and don't need my help. So yeah, that's basically it. And on Nightwatch, haven't really been super involved, I would say again, I help with all the compliance things. I help organize certain things, but yeah, I don't get deep into the projects or into the code. It's all about people, expectation setting, communicating between teams, yeah, that kind of stuff. Matt Stauffer: Okay. So do you like, how much are you defining? So let's, we've kind of said like how much you were involved in any individual project, but are you involved in defining how we code or how we work or how we communicate? Or is that very much kind of like each team brings their own kind of style to it? André Valentin: That's a really good question because it's something that we've spent quite a bit of time talking about internally. So I guess that means I am a little bit involved in that as well. Matt Stauffer: Got it. André Valentin: We tried to figure out actually because we went from being like one team, everybody's kind of doing their own thing. So, okay, now we we set down some product teams. There are some people on those teams, like how should they actually work? And in the beginning, because we were building a brand new thing for Cloud and Nightwatch, They were just like, you know, they were running at a million miles an hour sprinting, sprinting and like, well, I say sprinting, but I don't mean agile sprinting. Yeah, they were running very fast and kind of like really getting things done without much process. Let's put it like that. The process was we meet once in a while, like once a week, maybe, and we talk about kind of how we're doing. Do we have any blockers? So it was, you know, it was, it was really magical to be honest. It still is, but you know, that time was special. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: And on the core services team, which is, you know, Forge, Envoyer and Vapor, we were trying some different things. We relatively early on decided to use Linear as a tool. I might be one of the only people in the world that like Jira. Matt Stauffer: You might be. André Valentin: Yeah, I might be. I quite like Jira and I don't know what that says about me, but people don't usually say nice things when they hear that. Yeah, so I asked people, what tool would you like to work with? Because I knew I was not gonna, like I knew if I like just went in there and pressed purchase on the Atlassian Jira license, then people would be like, who is this guy? And how do we get rid of him? So yeah, I was trying to be a little bit more diplomatic, which led to Linear being the tool of choice. And it's honestly been quite good. I still miss. Matt Stauffer: Yep André Valentin: some of the flexibility that Jira gives you. It's a very mature product that can do basically anything you want, which is part of the problem, I think. But yeah, so they were trying a little bit more and adding some process around like how they were working because they were not building a brand new project. They were like kind of figuring out, okay, we have this new team. How do we actually structure and work with that? So they were kind of the testing ground for a lot of these things. But then after Cloud launched, Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah. André Valentin: it became apparent that we needed process and that we needed to figure out how to actually work more co-herently across the company and create some sort of unity, even though we have people in Australia and some people in US and some people in Europe and all over the place. And we decided together with, have to give Calvin from the Cloud team a lot of credit here because he... He led, let's say, the discovery. I think he took input from other people, but then, you know, he led the discovery and like kind of came up with a suggestion saying, shouldn't we all just try basically shape up? So that's, you know, I don't know if that's like a niche way of working, but it's a little bit less well known than Scrum and Kanban and other ways. And we adapted it to our own, let's say, unique structure as well, which I think is fine. I am a big fan of that. So we're doing kind of a hybrid shape up and trying to, let's say, tell teams this is the general idea that we want you to report in when reporting progress and all these kinds of things. Here are like the, like you put your projects here, here's where you should put the progress, but then kind of how you connect that to how you work on a day to day, completely up to you. Matt Stauffer: Okay, very cool. André Valentin: because in Australia or like the APAC team, should not say Australia, but the APAC team, they are doing things a little bit different than anywhere else. They sit on tuple most days and work together and everything goes like say, it's quite synchronous actually. And other teams are very asynchronous and report on status and projects in a different way. But we knew that from a, let's say high level leadership perspective, we wanted the same level of visibility into all of the projects. So we're trying to architect that in a way and kind of set that up in linear. And that's sort of the approach we've gone with. I'm a very strong believer in teams should be able to choose the way they want to work as long as it doesn't mess up, let's say, the information flow. And I think we've landed on a pretty good spot. Definitely always room for improvement, but yeah. Matt Stauffer: That's awesome. I mean, I love that we it's very similar to my experience kind of bringing our team into larger organizations, which we do very often, which is we want to make sure that you have access to the information that you need. And also our team is now not all of a sudden, you know, five to 10 percent slower because we're building in processes that don't make sense for us. And our project managers are trying to do that same adaptation that you're doing. André Valentin: No. Matt Stauffer: We have some teams that have used linear. We have some teams that have used shape up. I personally am old and I'm the CEO now, so I'm not on projects day to day. So I'm still in Trello. I'm just like, look, Kanban is the dream for me, but I recognize that you can do Kanban esque work in other tools. So. André Valentin: Yeah. And as a worker, I also think Kanban is the way to go. I would never, I think estimation, generally speaking, is a waste of time. I mean, you can do it, you know, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. think, you know, that's, oh, that's on a whole other podcast, but yeah. But yeah, I think estimation and like all the meetings. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: What are you trying to achieve here? think you should like, everybody should take a hard look at themselves and saying, why are we doing these things? And then try to maybe start fresh and like, okay, let's build up to something rather than have all this process and then like, try to follow some book that somebody else wrote 20 years ago. That's, Yeah, that doesn't apply anymore. Different industries. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, in a completely different setting. Yeah. my God. You and I could talk so long about this. We're going to have to do that. Yeah. I keep telling everyone I'm like, I'm to have to have you back on. And what I need is for my VA to go through all the times where we say, we'll talk about that later and queue them up. And that'll be our agenda for next time. Okay. So because we're actually coming close to time, I want to make sure I knock out a couple of the other questions we had. André Valentin: Yeah. Good stuff. Matt Stauffer: So one of the things that I was really curious about is obviously we all grow as managers over time and we grow in any roles that we have. So I imagine that in some ways you're just like, look, I'm better at this than I was yesterday. then, but, but I also imagine there's probably some explicit ways that you notice your experience of management at Laravel being different. Cause you've been managing since 2017, you're almost up on a decade of being an engineering manager. Are there ways in which your experience of doing it today are notably different, whether it's because of the culture of the company. André Valentin: Wow. Matt Stauffer: Or because things you've said, you know what, I used to do that and I just, I realized that's not actually how I want to run a company. André Valentin: Yeah, let's try to keep this one brief, I guess. Matt Stauffer: Ehhh. André Valentin: I think, as I said in the beginning, I read a lot of books and that's like sort of how I figured I'd learn about management. And it's true, you can actually pick up a lot of great things. There a lot of tips, but you know, if you read like 300 pages, I don't know if you get 300 pages worth of material out of that. There are maybe like, Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah. André Valentin: three to five maybe takeaways per book or something like that that are actually super valuable. And some of them also kind of, you learn them over time. And I think management is a skill that you learn by doing it, but you do have to kind of have some people skills inherently available to you, I think. And you have to want to do it. I think that's another thing. Like there lots of people in management that I think are doing it. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, yeah. André Valentin: for the wrong reasons, like they are seeing it as the only career path up, where I'm like a very big fan of the IC track actually going quite parallel with M track, if those abbreviations make sense to people. And yeah, my point is that you need to kind of make up your own style a little bit, and that comes by kind of years of experience, as you were saying. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: I try to be, and I hope that comes across, I don't know, but I try to be fairly down to earth. Like I'm not like very corporate or anything like that. I think people can like have real conversations with me. My number one goal coming in anywhere is really just building trust. I think that if you don't have trust, you don't get anything done. And building trust with your peers is super important. Building trust with your team is even more important. But like, yeah, the people that you manage should trust you 100%. I mean, I've had famously had like people, ya know, tell me before they were like looking for new job or even while they were interviewing at other companies and they were still working for me, they were like, I trust you. I'm just gonna tell you that I'm looking for something else right now. And to me, that's like the ultimate level of trust is like, you know, I'm not just gonna turn around and like punish you for that or whatever. I'm actually, you know, here to help you. Like, how can I actually help you get that job or like? Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: Is there some way that we can resolve this or like, why are you leaving? How can we do better in the future? All these kinds of things. like, know, servant leadership is also a topic in itself. Like I'm here to help people. I'm here to help you. Sometimes I'm helping the company. Sometimes I'm helping, know, individuals on the team. But I'm like really here to like act as the great unblocker. And that's a learned skill, I think, to see it that way. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it's fun because I mean you mentioned a lot about you have to have these people skills and stuff like that. I gotta say when I you know so when when they were first building out the the leadership team at Laravel I would you know I'd see somebody get hired and say I want to you know meet them I want to connect with them. When I saw apologies but a burly bearded Scandinavian programmer who had worked at places like Unity I'm I was so intimidated right I'm like this guy is gonna be some freaking code giant. You know, Viking brilliant guy who's going to come in and he's going to say, this is how we do things, whatever. And then I met you and I was like, he's a teddy bear. He's a sweet, you know, and it has been such a delight getting to know you as a friend and just kind of seeing how much you care for people. Because that's when someone says we've got a director of engineering and a, you know, very, very successful software company with VC backing or private equity backing, you know, like none of these things coming from corporate, you know, whatever. None of these things line up to all the words you just said. Servant leadership, know, caring more about the people. Even just this recognition of management as a separate set of skills from IC, from individual contributing work. There's so many things that you just said that are very soft and empathetic and caring and people focused. And I don't think that's a soft thing, right? I think it's a, know how to build teams and manage teams. But you're a little bit of an anomaly. André Valentin: Maybe, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Matt Stauffer: And I just want to name that, that it's a great, you're a great anomaly, like I'm very grateful for you, you know? So, there's so many things I want to ask you from there, but I do want to ask, you mentioned books and folks so often ask for books that help with learning how to be a manager, because there's books on books on books about how to be a programmer, right? But there's so few books that are really powerful in terms of managing. And I totally hear you, know, most of these books are André Valentin: Yeah. Matt Stauffer: 300 pages of fluff with five to 10 really good nuggets in them. But if you had a couple books that you would recommend that have been valuable for you, do you have any you you'd shout out? André Valentin: Yeah, I can. It's actually been a while since I picked up one because I kind of, not because I don't believe in them anymore, it was a little bit of an early career thing for me. mean, but there are definitely some good ones. I mean, Radical Candor, I think that's one of the all time favorites. You know, kind of being straight with people, that is, I don't know, that's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, 100%. Matt Stauffer: Yes! Fantastic. Yeah. André Valentin: But that is also a skill that I feel I kind of need to have as a leader. Because if you don't take action early when there are problems or get into feedback often, that can lead to problems. So I think keeping in touch with people and doing it in a real way, connecting in real way is important. And Radical Candor at least gives you some tools and some tips and tricks and cool stories as well on that. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. On the Business of Laravel I want I want you to keep answering my just for saying the business of Laravel podcast there was probably four or five interviews in a row where every single person not having heard the previous one said Radical Candor and I was like this book I and I love the book and each time I was like, yes. Yes. Yes. And now I'm like, no, this book has really Shaped a lot of the ways a lot of us are leading. But sorry were there any other books that you wanted to share? André Valentin: There are others. I don't know if they're like so critical as this one. I I think what was the first one I ever read? It was like a little yellow book. I don't know that doesn't help you. It was sort of like, called something like, now you're a manager, what now? Like it was like almost like management for dummies. And I thought there some good nuggets in there around. Yeah, like... Matt Stauffer: Okay. André Valentin: importance of one-to-ones and kind of like gaining trust and all again kind of the things that we like a little bit talked about but there are some books out there that if you are aspiring to be an engineering manager or leader in any way there are some really good resources that can be recommended. I have like a good reads list that I haven't opened in a million years that probably has all these in them so if you're anybody ever wants that list let me know. Matt Stauffer: Got it. André Valentin: But otherwise, I wanna shout out one thing and it's kind of the pragmatic engineer newsletter. I don't know if people talk about that one a lot, but this is, I think it's like a half free, half paid, premium type thing newsletter. It's definitely worth paying for if you can, but yeah, it's this guy who worked in like big tech and he shares both kinds of stories, but also like news about what's happening in tech and hiring. Matt Stauffer: No. André Valentin: And, you know, everything from like, how does, you know, Meta do engineering, how does Google do on call? Like, you just learn, I know these are not like universal standards that people should follow, but you just learn a lot in a very like digestible format. And he's a great writer. He also has a podcast, but I would more so recommend the newsletter because it like, it has some great stories in there on, on like kind of both from the engineering side, but also on the engineering leadership side. Worth a read. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, and I don't subscribe to it, but I just went and I was like, that guy, I don't know how to say his name, so I'm not going to butcher it. André Valentin: Yeah, gurgle-y, something, yeah. Matt Stauffer: Yes, or else, but I have seen so I've seen articles of his linked so often, and I've also shared them with other people. I'm like, everything from this guy is good. So thank you for the tip. That's awesome. André Valentin: Exactly. Matt Stauffer: OK, so I'm trying to think if I can fit, I think I can fit one or two more. So you mentioned this was your first time doing remote. And but not only is it your first time doing remote. But you're also leading a remote team. I had kind of written down the phrase async engineering management, but remote and async aren't exactly the same thing. And as you pointed out, ya know, and I've said on lots of podcasts, like Tighten is very synchronous in our remote, whereas 37 Signals is very asynchronous in the remote and they're both remote. For you, you know, are there any ways where you can point to, you know, these are ways where managing a remote team or managing asynchronous or asynchronous teams are... Man, this is things that people don't often think about that you need to be considering and managing in order to help the team be healthy. André Valentin: Yeah, so it's not the first time that I'm managing a remote team, I wanna say. Matt Stauffer: Okay. André Valentin: So I did that at TradeShift even in the very beginning and I did made horrible mistakes. I mean, there were some expensive learnings, let me tell you. Yeah, hiring the right people to be managed by a remote manager is also ultra key. Matt Stauffer: Hahaha. André Valentin: So finding people who don't need the constant supervision and all this kind of stuff that remote work entails, that is so important. I mean I think it all starts with the people and the team. And if you have the right people and people that are both used to and kind of know and like working remote, I'm not saying that does the job for you, but it gets close. And I say that because here at Laravel, I don't think I do a whole lot different than I would normally do. I get more time to myself now, because I'm remote obviously and sitting at home, to reflect and think and also do work, which you shouldn't say that as a manager, because obviously thinking and all these things also work, but I think you know what I mean. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. André Valentin: Yeah, so finding the right people is important. Again, one really good example I have from earlier on in my career was like I hired some junior developers, you know, somewhere to sit and run this project. first of all, I was a relatively new engineer. I didn't have like all the budget, sorry, engineering manager. I didn't have all the budget so I could like get one senior engineer or two juniors or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I'll hire two juniors. This makes perfect sense. And boy, was that the biggest mistake of my, probably my entire career because nothing got done for months. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: And it's not because they weren't like trying, it was just like they needed so much more help than I could give them remotely. And the team was then, know, like caught in just like sitting on calls all day with them, trying to help them, let's say get up to speed, but that's just like, that's not the environment that, you know, produces good work or efficiency for that matter. But like, I would say remote work, the things to do is like obviously have... Matt Stauffer: Yeah. André Valentin: Great tools, think tools are more important in remote work than not. Slack, we use Slack so much every day. It's a great remote work enabler. Other communication tools are available. Yeah, share status often with each other. Share demos internally. In Laravel, we have this demo channel where people can share small Loom videos of what they've worked on that day or that week. Matt Stauffer: Oh cool. André Valentin: Again, it doesn't have to be like, get on a meeting every day because we try really not to do that. We don't wanna kill the productivity, but we want people to be able to be proud of what they do, share what they do, still share updates so management is calm and everything. But kind of at their own time, their own flow, what fits their process. Yeah, so there are some things that you need to consider doing this remotely, but yeah, I think it comes down to like really good communication, really good people and leadership that also understands how to do remote, I think is also important. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Um, I know we got to wrap, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate the idea that hiring the right people is so important. Um, I think that's true for so many things. Cause I see, right. André Valentin: It always is. Matt Stauffer: And I just see so many problems that people have that they try to solve with process or they try to solve with bringing, mean, bringing us in at times and, and more times than not, I'm just like, well, I mean, you, you have a whole bunch of juniors with no leadership and the problem is not going to be solved by agile. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sorry, scrums aren't going to fix that problem. André Valentin: Probably gonna make it worse, to be honest. Matt Stauffer: So yeah, yeah, it always makes it worse, but it just means it takes longer for you to suss out that it makes it worse because obviously you gotta, well, it's only the first couple of months. So anyway, I love you acknowledging the fact that building the right team is such a foundational aspect of this and of so many other aspects of leadership. So we both said there's a million other things we can talk about today, but we are at time. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you really wish we'd be able to cover on any of these topics before we wrap for the day? André Valentin: I mean, I think that I think I want to, you know, plug hiring a little bit. So, I mean, as I think people know, Laravel is growing and we are hiring a lot of people from all around the world for, you know, not just engineering, all, but, know, I guess I am mostly involved in the engineering part of this. And like, you know, if people are kind of discouraged or like how hard it is to get a job here and these kinds of things, I would say. You know, try to reach out, like, you know, connect on LinkedIn. If you have like a really burning desire to come work here you feel like you are the perfect fit and all these kinds of things, like, I know this is probably not the channel that most people find interesting, but like, I'm like a LinkedIn guy, which I know is maybe weird, but like, yeah, I've like built everything on LinkedIn. So yeah, you know, find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to even just chat about like what, you know, what does working here mean and like how does one... Get a shot and even just kind of like register your interest. I mean, the amount of people we have hired, not because they applied for a job, but because we knew they wanted a job here and we're like, oh yeah, this person would actually be perfect. It's not insignificant. So yeah, I would say like kind of making yourself known also to the other team leads and stuff doesn't have to be me. But yeah, that I would like to say. And again, keep an eye on laravel.com/careers. Yeah, lots of interesting. stuff there now and coming up in the future. So yeah. Matt Stauffer: I love that. It's so funny because I mean, I say our generation, I know we're the same generation, but a lot of listeners are from different generations for the same way. There's not a lot of people who love LinkedIn other than really businessy business people. But every time I've interacted with LinkedIn, I've been like, you know what? I don't know if I enjoy this, but it was valuable. And so I'm just like, just, I just got to get comfortable with it because it's a good tool. It's a useful network. So. André Valentin: Yeah, it's good. André Valentin: is a very useful network if you want to professionals. Yeah, I would say it is the network. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. That's where they hang out. Yeah. André Valentin: There are lots of developers on Twitter and whatnot, but yeah, I don't know. I just really like LinkedIn for some reason. Maybe I'm strange again. Yeah. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. It's okay to each their own, you know? Andre, thank you so much for hanging out today. Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge and some of your stories. And again, thank you for sharing a leadership model of empathy and care and thinking about people so much. I think it's a really beautiful and valuable role model to have people to look towards. I really appreciate you being who you are. André Valentin: Of course, thank you so much for having me on. Matt Stauffer: Of course. And to the rest of you we will see you all next time.