Latest / The Pragmatic Engineer / How to work better with Product, as an Engineer with Ebi Atawodi

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How to work better with Product, as an Engineer with Ebi Atawodi · The Pragmatic Engineer

0:00
SPEAKER_00: So you worked at Uber for a long time.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: You worked at Netflix.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: You're now working at Google.
0:04
What are patterns you've seen truly standout software engineers
0:08
be like across these companies?
0:10
SPEAKER_03: So they are, one, students, they always be learning.
0:13
SPEAKER_03: Two, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands in it.
0:16
And then this final piece,
0:17
which is that the conviction,
0:18
like they have a strong opinion.
0:20
SPEAKER_03: They have convictions where they say like, this is the way.
0:22
SPEAKER_03: They're not like wobbly, like, maybe whatever.
0:24
SPEAKER_03: They're willing to have skin in the game,
0:26
SPEAKER_03: but they're also willing to be wrong and be like,
0:27
SPEAKER_03: you know what?
0:28
actually i take it back actually i didn't realize and then of
0:31
course there's some
0:32
other tactical things like they're actually able to communicate
0:34
i don't mean you
0:35
need to be able to go on stage and present or whatever but you
0:37
can just talk human
0:38
to human you can have a conversation and because it's so
0:41
important even if you're
0:42
like shy or test turn you're able to kind of distill what
0:45
you're saying into simple
0:46
terms and the ones i love the most are the engineers that don't
0:49
make you feel
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Like an idiot.
0:50
Do not be afraid to get your hands dirty and code because there
0:53
are things that
0:53
SPEAKER_00: apply to everyone.
0:54
But the people who I've seen fail at teams who look good as
0:56
they just talk the talk,
0:57
SPEAKER_00: but they don't get involved for whatever reason.
1:00
How do you get product and engineering to work really well
1:02
together as one team?
1:04
Ebi Attawodi is the director of product at YouTube and
1:06
previously worked at Netflix and at Uber.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: As it happened at Uber,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: when I became an engineering manager,
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Ebi was the first product manager I worked with.
1:14
And we learned a lot from each other as our team went through
1:16
the stages of forming,
1:17
SPEAKER_00: storming and performing.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: In today's episode,
1:20
we cover how introducing things like a business scorecard and
1:23
doing a state of the
1:24
SPEAKER_00: union helped the engineering team take more ownership of the product,
1:26
how it was surprisingly helpful for us to get to know each
1:29
other outside of work,
1:30
SPEAKER_00: and how this personal connection helped us work better together,
1:33
SPEAKER_00: especially as team leads.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: getting funding for engineering projects by secretly bootstrapping these,
1:39
SPEAKER_00: then showing to the business how much value they were already generating,
1:42
SPEAKER_00: patterns and anti-patterns of standout software engineers,
1:45
SPEAKER_00: and many more.
1:47
This episode is different from most podcast episodes in how
1:49
you'll hear both Aby
1:50
and myself talk a lot about our experiences and observations as
1:53
we got better
1:54
SPEAKER_00: working together.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: And this episode is really about the learnings that both of us had.
1:59
If you're an engineering leader or a product leader and want to
2:01
hear about tactics
2:02
SPEAKER_00: on how to better work with your other counterpart,
2:04
SPEAKER_00: this episode is for you.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy the show,
2:07
please do subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform and
2:10
on YouTube.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
2:14
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
2:15
SPEAKER_03: Welcome too.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: We did end up working really, really well together.
2:19
I think it was the most productive working relationship that I
2:24
had in my professional career.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And also, it's just very rare to see.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: So we turned this small site in Amsterdam
2:32
SPEAKER_00: We kept growing,
2:33
SPEAKER_00: we kept getting more headcount,
2:34
SPEAKER_00: and we did that because we kept delivering results.
2:37
We had just outstanding business results in terms of how much
2:40
additional money we
2:41
SPEAKER_00: generated for the business.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Two years before, you just came to Amsterdam.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: You joined as a new PM.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: We didn't really know you.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Or trust me.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: I was a new EM and my team was a bit burned from this massive project.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: And we had a large backlog in front of us and it was just all messy.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: We just had to build.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: So our team, during Helix, the rewrite, we had a clear vision.
3:07
But before that,
3:08
most of my team,
3:09
it was a new team,
3:10
we called it Writer Payments.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: But before it was called APAC Growth.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: And actually,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: in the news that I now have a growth article,
3:18
SPEAKER_00: which we'll link in the notes below,
3:19
SPEAKER_00: but the thing about the growth team is it's not long-lived.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: It was just shipping individual projects.
3:24
And so I had a team that kind of built a bunch of payment
3:26
methods here and there.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Our roadmap was built, like 20 more.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: There was no coherence.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: And then you showed up.
3:34
And then I'll be honest,
3:35
I was a little upset because the first thing you started to do...
3:38
SPEAKER_00: is you came to a meeting,
3:40
SPEAKER_00: and this is just strange because I'm just saying how it was,
3:43
SPEAKER_00: you shared how the product review meeting went really badly.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what are you doing?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: You're demotivating all of the engineers.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: And the engineers were blinking.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: They were like, what's going on?
3:55
SPEAKER_00: You were saying, look, if we don't focus, we might not get headcount.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: They were like, are we going to get fired?
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And I was just sitting in that meeting.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: I was the engineering manager of this team.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Again, a new engineering manager.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: I was like, what is she doing?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: What are you trying to do?
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Are you trying to?
4:12
SPEAKER_00: And that was that.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: That's how it started.
4:16
SPEAKER_03: What product review is this?
4:17
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: I think it was a pretty early one.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: Was it the weekly review meeting that we had?
4:23
SPEAKER_00: So it was the weekly meeting.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: So we had a weekly team meeting and you attended.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know until then,
4:28
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
4:29
that a product review existed because the previous product
4:32
managers never told me
4:33
SPEAKER_00: about this.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: But you told me like, oh, I've just been at this monthly product review.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I presented and here's what I heard.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And you just gave us very wrong to us.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And you told us some kind of bad news about like how it's,
4:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:46
SPEAKER_00: things are not looking good right now.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: Which was a blessing.
4:49
SPEAKER_03: It was always a blessing.
4:50
SPEAKER_03: The candor is always a blessing and a curse.
4:53
We both live in the Netherlands and people sort of say the
4:55
Dutch are very direct.
4:56
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, they haven't met Nigerians.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but this is how it started.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: So I was blinking and I think afterwards I pulled your side.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: I asked you, are we on the same team?
5:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: And I think we kept stepping on each other's toes as well.
5:13
SPEAKER_03: I remember that earlier on because,
5:15
SPEAKER_03: you know,
5:15
SPEAKER_03: I would present something or you would present something and I'm like,
5:18
SPEAKER_03: and because you would also,
5:19
SPEAKER_03: there was,
5:20
SPEAKER_03: as it should be,
5:21
SPEAKER_03: right?
5:21
SPEAKER_03: But there was a gap in product.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: at the time,
5:24
SPEAKER_03: you were stepping in and doing a bunch of things like,
5:27
SPEAKER_03: remember the jelly bean cheat we had with the staffing,
5:31
SPEAKER_03: which at the end we didn't have that,
5:32
but like at the beginning it was so important to have context
5:37
and like who is doing what.
5:38
SPEAKER_03: Like I knew until today,
5:41
SPEAKER_03: I still make a point of like,
5:42
SPEAKER_03: who are the key engineers working on every effort?
5:46
SPEAKER_03: And not just at like the EM, the reports into my director peer,
5:50
SPEAKER_03: But like, who's the TL?
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SPEAKER_03: Who's the person like really under, you understand what I mean?
5:54
SPEAKER_03: I don't feel, I don't hold back like needing to ping.
5:59
SPEAKER_03: In fact,
5:59
SPEAKER_03: We encourage,
6:00
SPEAKER_03: as we used to do,
6:01
putting everybody in the same chat space so that the
6:03
conversation just flows.
6:04
SPEAKER_03: So I'm literally seeing, oh, I'm blocked on the CL.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: Like I can see it, right?
6:09
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's just good practice to have this shared understanding.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: But going back to the directness,
6:16
SPEAKER_03: maybe knowing what I know now,
6:17
SPEAKER_03: I've also tried to refine my approach to onboarding,
6:22
SPEAKER_03: right?
6:22
So there is an element of like,
6:23
yeah,
6:24
okay,
6:24
you can be direct,
6:25
but trust is given.
6:30
SPEAKER_03: And then you earn more of it.
6:32
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SPEAKER_00: What later happened actually turned out to be an amazing thing,
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SPEAKER_00: because before that,
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SPEAKER_00: what happened is none of the engineers,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: and as an engine manager,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: neither did I.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know a monthly product review existed,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: that product managers went there and they presented their teams.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Also at Uber, product gave us headcount.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: which was unusual, I think.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some companies worked like this.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: So we were always dependent on product.
7:49
And because of this,
7:50
in hindsight,
7:51
it would have been really important to know that it exists.
7:53
SPEAKER_03: What's the perception?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: What's product happening?
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And you start to do this every month or so.
8:00
You share it,
8:01
and we start to understand,
8:03
oh,
8:04
what does product care about?
8:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: The product team is the combination of all the differences.
8:13
SPEAKER_03: It's the edge.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: Like when you say product, product is you too.
8:18
SPEAKER_03: And that was something we really made a culture in our team.
8:22
SPEAKER_03: Like product is all of us combined.
8:24
SPEAKER_03: There's no, I am waiting for the PRD.
8:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm blocked on product said this.
8:29
And it's almost like a product said this and we think it's too
8:32
much scope.
8:33
SPEAKER_03: And that's not, you know, that is not a cohesive product team actually.
8:38
Because again,
8:38
if we were a startup,
8:39
you would not be using that language.
8:41
SPEAKER_03: You would not be saying, oh, product said.
8:42
SPEAKER_03: You'd be going, wait, hold on, why are we doing that?
8:44
SPEAKER_03: We have, you know, you would have skin in the game.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: And so I think what it came down,
8:49
SPEAKER_03: comes down to actually is,
8:52
SPEAKER_03: one is there's this,
8:53
SPEAKER_03: I think in big tech over time,
8:55
SPEAKER_03: this belief that engineers,
8:57
SPEAKER_03: some engineers want that,
8:59
SPEAKER_03: but that engineers want to be shielded.
9:01
SPEAKER_03: from the reality of what's going on.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: But actually,
9:04
if those engineers quit and went to a startup tomorrow to build something,
9:07
they would want to look at the dashboards and see what was
9:09
going on and how the
9:10
SPEAKER_03: numbers were going.
9:11
SPEAKER_03: They would want to know how much runway we have.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: They would want to know if we're hitting the growth numbers.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: They would want to know which round.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: You would be as involved.
9:21
SPEAKER_03: So why is it any different?
9:22
SPEAKER_03: And so I think a couple of things happened that we were able to come to.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: One is a fundamental belief, and it took us a while to get there,
9:30
SPEAKER_03: but that actually we want the same thing.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: And it,
9:33
SPEAKER_03: It sounds obvious we're on the same team,
9:35
SPEAKER_03: but actually sometimes I've seen product leaders and engineering leaders,
9:40
SPEAKER_03: like PMs specifically.
9:41
So I consider everybody in that group a product leader,
9:43
the UX,
9:44
UXR,
9:44
data science.
9:45
SPEAKER_03: But I see PMs,
9:46
SPEAKER_03: Eng,
9:47
SPEAKER_03: UX,
9:48
SPEAKER_03: you know,
9:48
SPEAKER_03: you see UX say like,
9:49
SPEAKER_03: oh,
9:50
SPEAKER_03: I would love to have more polish,
9:51
SPEAKER_03: but Eng always cuts my scope.
9:53
SPEAKER_03: Like the moment you start having those,
9:55
does the UX person understand that there is literally a mission
9:59
critical thing that
10:00
SPEAKER_03: needs to ship?
10:01
SPEAKER_03: And actually the polish might add two more sweet quarters.
10:04
And I would actually love for the,
10:06
like my UX partner now at Google is so good at it.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I'm not happy with the way that looks, but let's do that.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: And there'll be a fast follow.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: Because again, if that was a runway and you needed to ship the product,
10:17
you would be like,
10:18
is this good enough to get us customer love and viability and usability?
10:24
SPEAKER_03: And you'd be able to balance that trade-off and you would ship it.
10:27
You wouldn't hold it back because UX believes in Figma should
10:30
look pretty and
10:30
SPEAKER_03: engineering disagrees.
10:31
SPEAKER_03: That's not how it works.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: Same goes for Eng, right?
10:34
SPEAKER_03: You would not say, actually, I want to do...
10:37
SPEAKER_03: the most elegant way to build this thing.
10:39
I know there's tech debt that's gonna come in because you would
10:43
be mindful of the
10:44
SPEAKER_03: fact that actually there's a real business that has implications.
10:47
So I think at the core,
10:49
what we did very well was we also had lots of wins.
10:52
We also had numbers,
10:54
how many people were using payments,
10:55
how many,
10:56
the conversion rate.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: but it's actually having a scorecard.
10:58
We had that scorecard,
11:00
which is a table with our P0 metrics as we would if we were a startup.
11:04
SPEAKER_03: And we had the numbers that we cared about,
11:06
SPEAKER_03: like the gross number,
11:09
SPEAKER_03: the conversion rate,
11:10
SPEAKER_03: the failed payments,
11:10
SPEAKER_03: the cancellations,
11:12
SPEAKER_03: et cetera,
11:12
SPEAKER_03: percentage that was cash,
11:14
SPEAKER_03: et cetera,
11:14
SPEAKER_03: et cetera.
11:15
SPEAKER_03: And so by making it feel more like a business,
11:19
SPEAKER_03: So it's not like, you know, products are showing these bad things.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: Actually, as a collective, we have a perception.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: We have not hit our numbers.
11:30
SPEAKER_03: You create this sort of ownership, going back to skin in the game.
11:34
SPEAKER_03: And now you have engineers even coming up with ideas like,
11:37
SPEAKER_03: we actually should create a web platform
11:40
SPEAKER_03: because it will unlock gross bookings.
11:42
SPEAKER_03: Because if you look at like DoorDash compared to Uber Eats,
11:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
11:45
SPEAKER_03: that came purely from two engineers on the team,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
11:48
Maybe we can describe it because I'm not sure it'll be clear
11:51
for everyone who's not been there.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Before,
11:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:55
like we had engineering and we had product and we would have a
11:58
shared weekly
11:59
SPEAKER_00: meeting and,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: the product manager would be there.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: We would share...
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Here's the progress on these projects, those projects.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that would be it.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: And then we would talk a bunch,
12:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:09
SPEAKER_00: the second half of the meeting will be about tech depth because it was,
12:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:12
SPEAKER_00: it was a team meeting,
12:13
SPEAKER_00: but the team was 10 engineers,
12:14
SPEAKER_00: one product manager,
12:16
SPEAKER_00: and one operations person who was usually quiet.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: This was before.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: This was before you joined.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And at the time,
12:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:24
SPEAKER_00: most engineers on my team,
12:25
SPEAKER_00: they were very,
12:26
very interested and focused on paying down tech debt because we
12:29
had so much.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: It was just so painful.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Developer experience, improvements, etc.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone was busy with that.
12:34
And back then we weren't really cared about promotions because
12:37
it wasn't the thing just yet.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: But then you came in and you started to bring and we started to change.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: So first of all,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: you and me started as I was the engineering manager,
12:45
SPEAKER_00: we started to talk a lot more.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Mm hmm.
12:47
Like we actually had one-on-ones,
12:49
which I never had before with my product manager.
12:52
Like every week we would spend like 30 minutes of,
12:54
you know,
12:54
like what's on your mind?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And I would be like,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: well,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: there's this person on my team who's having,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
13:01
like some trouble and I'm working with them or like this
13:04
person's doing great.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: So like you actually learned like a lot about my team.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: I actually learned a lot about what you were doing.
13:10
Like,
13:10
oh,
13:10
we're having this review about headcount in a month and I don't
13:14
feel we're ready.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, can I?
13:16
SPEAKER_00: help something.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: So suddenly we started to do that.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Then on the team meetings,
13:22
SPEAKER_00: there would be usually a section on product,
13:25
SPEAKER_00: which would either be like,
13:26
SPEAKER_00: all right,
13:27
SPEAKER_00: here's what we're talking about,
13:29
SPEAKER_00: the product side of things.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And initially it would start pretty soft.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: So after that first one, it would just be a bit of introduction.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: But our meetings would usually always start with product.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Like here's
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Here's on the product side of things.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: Here's the wins that we're seeing.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Here's what's working.
13:44
Here's what we're working on with designers,
13:47
any engineer who wants to be involved.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Results, objectives, challenges.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: That was the format.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: That was a great format.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Which is an Uber thing, rock, yeah.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And then an interesting thing started to happen,
13:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:58
SPEAKER_00: engineers eventually would start to chip in,
14:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:01
like usually the schedule would have been like five minutes or
14:04
10 minutes of product,
14:05
SPEAKER_00: five minutes or 10 minutes upgrade.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And often it would just stretch out because,
14:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:09
SPEAKER_00: engineers on the team would be like,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: oh,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: what about that?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: What if we did that?
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Because you're like,
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And then we got to the point where after a few months,
14:17
SPEAKER_00: when the next half's planning was coming from product side of things,
14:22
SPEAKER_00: actually some engineers got involved of like,
14:24
SPEAKER_00: oh,
14:24
SPEAKER_00: let's help define.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I get this project prioritized?
14:29
SPEAKER_00: And it was like,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: well,
14:30
SPEAKER_00: if any project that moves this or this and this impact,
14:34
SPEAKER_00: in our case,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: it was...
14:37
SPEAKER_00: incremental growth bookings, so us making more money.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: At some points,
14:40
SPEAKER_00: we cared about rider growth in certain areas,
14:43
SPEAKER_00: so we can lose money on riders,
14:45
SPEAKER_00: but we just want to grow.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: First riders, trend percentage, etc.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And engineers started to bring some ideas.
14:51
And suddenly,
14:52
it felt a lot less of like,
14:53
oh,
14:53
here's the list we need to take off,
14:55
and let's
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Let's just get through the stuff that we use so we get to the tech dump.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: It was more about,
15:00
SPEAKER_00: okay,
15:00
SPEAKER_00: let's do the important stuff and let's figure out,
15:02
SPEAKER_00: do we need to do this?
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly it just felt a lot more like a startup inside a big company.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: This was a $60 billion company at that point.
15:10
SPEAKER_03: A couple of tactical things that,
15:12
SPEAKER_03: not tactics,
15:13
SPEAKER_03: I think actually strategic things that we did was,
15:15
SPEAKER_03: do you remember State of the Union?
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:19
SPEAKER_03: I think State of the Union.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Can you describe because that's so unique.
15:22
SPEAKER_03: It's funny because I'm about to do one right now at Google.
15:25
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, we're going to do a State of the Union.
15:27
SPEAKER_03: And I think after we had those,
15:31
SPEAKER_03: you know,
15:31
SPEAKER_03: those sessions and you and I met up,
15:34
SPEAKER_03: I came to you and I said,
15:35
SPEAKER_03: listen,
15:35
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to take it.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: I want to take a day off.
15:37
SPEAKER_03: We're going to go into a room together.
15:39
SPEAKER_03: We're going to plan a state of the union.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: And when I had joined the team,
15:44
SPEAKER_03: I'd had one-on-ones with a different...
15:46
SPEAKER_03: So it's part of now my onboarding playbook.
15:48
It was not a playbook then,
15:49
but I call them conversations,
15:51
comprehension,
15:52
conviction.
15:53
So when I joined,
15:54
if you remember,
15:54
I'd met different engineers one-on-one.
15:57
SPEAKER_03: And I asked one of the questions,
15:59
SPEAKER_03: my last question is,
16:01
SPEAKER_03: if you were me just starting in this role,
16:05
SPEAKER_03: what are three things you would focus on in the next 90 days?
16:08
SPEAKER_03: And they, a lot of them came back and they talked about on call.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Remember?
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember?
16:13
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
16:15
SPEAKER_03: They came back and talked and I was like, in my head.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm so embarrassed about on call.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: We had terrible on call.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I have nightmares about it.
16:21
SPEAKER_03: From everything I've read, because I've never been a PM before.
16:23
I was like,
16:24
from everything I've read,
16:25
this did not show up in my how to be a PM manual.
16:29
SPEAKER_03: Like, how is on call happening?
16:32
SPEAKER_03: Why do they expect me as a PM to do that?
16:34
SPEAKER_03: But I recognized, I was like, oh, there's something remiss here.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: So we then met up.
16:40
And I can't remember the exact flow,
16:42
but essentially the State of the Union had one.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: how much we've accomplished.
16:46
SPEAKER_03: And we had this graph where we showed how much incremental payments,
16:50
SPEAKER_03: and it was the equivalent of some country in the Polynesian Islands.
16:55
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
16:56
SPEAKER_00: It was bigger than a country.
16:57
SPEAKER_03: It was bigger than a country.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: And we were like, we've had that much impact.
17:00
SPEAKER_03: That was like the first slide.
17:00
SPEAKER_03: I still remember that.
17:01
SPEAKER_03: It was like green.
17:03
And then we talked about like all the markets we had launched
17:05
and all the payments.
17:06
SPEAKER_03: So there were wins.
17:07
And then we went into like,
17:09
we had a team,
17:11
we went into the dynamics of Uber and the markets.
17:15
And I remember showing like gross bookings depending on market
17:18
and first trips by
17:19
SPEAKER_03: market and like the trends we were seeing that these markets,
17:22
SPEAKER_03: Brazil,
17:22
SPEAKER_03: India,
17:23
SPEAKER_03: Bricks,
17:23
SPEAKER_03: basically were starting to like take off and push.
17:26
Like a lot of first trips were no longer happening in the US or UK,
17:29
et cetera.
17:30
And there were a lot of questions on that because that then
17:33
gave them empathy for
17:34
SPEAKER_03: why all these GMs are like,
17:37
SPEAKER_03: you are holding me back by not allowing me to take payments.
17:41
SPEAKER_03: And we ran some numbers on cash as well.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: It was the first time we actually showed cash as a...
17:47
SPEAKER_03: How much percentage of cash is leading to...
17:50
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
17:52
SPEAKER_03: in that context.
17:53
Here's a fun fact,
17:53
because it's been so many years and the numbers are now clearly
17:57
out of date.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: But I remember,
17:58
SPEAKER_00: this is...
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure people talked about this,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: but when cash hit $1 billion of run rate,
18:03
SPEAKER_00: meaning on an annual basis,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: $1 billion were...
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Flowing.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: We're flowing.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: That team,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: the team building Cash,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: had one full-time engineer,
18:12
SPEAKER_00: a half of data scientists,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: and a half an engineering manager,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: and a lot of operations people,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: obviously.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: But this team was begging to get headcount.
18:20
And with $1 billion of run rate...
18:23
They had to actually beat Uber Eats already,
18:25
yeah.
18:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: They had such a hard time.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Well,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: we had such a hard time,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: because this was a team next to me in Amsterdam,
18:31
SPEAKER_00: getting headcounts.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: So it just blows my mind that this is possible.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: These days,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: I think,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: if a startup hit,
18:36
we're talking about startups who are hitting the AI startups
18:40
$100 million of run rate,
18:41
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
18:42
SPEAKER_00: which is incredible.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And they're valued at a billion, right?
18:44
And obviously,
18:45
they have 10,
18:47
20,
18:49
30,
18:49
40,
18:49
100 people,
18:48
something like that is still amazing.
18:49
But with one full-time engineer,
18:52
we did a billion dollars,
18:53
and we couldn't get headcount.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually we got, but this was just, it showed me two things.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: One, you can do amazing things with a tiny team.
19:03
And sometimes,
19:04
and one of the reasons we couldn't get it,
19:09
we were a distributed site.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: We just,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:11
the engineering manager and the product manager who was there
19:13
couldn't really tell
19:14
SPEAKER_00: a story.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that you help with later as well.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: I think it just comes to show that when you're inside a company,
19:22
especially if you're an entry manager or even a tech lead or a
19:24
product manager,
19:26
SPEAKER_00: you really need to tell the story of why your team exists,
19:29
SPEAKER_00: how you're helping the business.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: If you get more headcount, how can you help them more?
19:33
And just as importantly,
19:34
if they take away your headcount or get rid of a team,
19:36
that can happen.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: What will happen?
19:37
SPEAKER_03: There's something,
19:38
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you remember this,
19:39
SPEAKER_03: and this is one of the things that I think,
19:41
SPEAKER_03: till date,
19:42
SPEAKER_03: I will say,
19:43
SPEAKER_03: is why I have so much respect for you.
19:46
SPEAKER_03: So we didn't have cash, right?
19:48
SPEAKER_03: We had provider payments.
19:50
And,
19:50
you know,
19:50
Charles,
19:51
who,
19:51
by the way,
19:52
deserves his own podcast,
19:53
phenomenal leader.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: It's going to come on here.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: But we had, oh, fantastic.
19:57
I feel like I need to do the,
19:58
you know,
19:59
like on Diary of CEO,
20:00
where you leave a question.
20:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: I feel like I need to leave a question for him.
20:03
But anyway,
20:04
so he had basically that site,
20:07
right,
20:07
from an engineering perspective.
20:09
SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the things we did,
20:10
SPEAKER_03: so I went in,
20:11
SPEAKER_03: like at this time,
20:12
SPEAKER_03: the PM for cash was not reporting into me,
20:14
SPEAKER_03: but we went in a room.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: I remember it was the sleeping room,
20:17
SPEAKER_03: the nap room,
20:18
SPEAKER_03: because it was the only room you could get for that long.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no nap, we used it for meetings.
20:22
SPEAKER_03: Right, for meetings.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: And it was me, him, and the data science lead, also Dutch guy.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: And we just jammed about...
20:30
SPEAKER_03: sort of cash and its problems.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: And we realized, we grouped them into like basically three buckets.
20:36
One was basically do the right thing,
20:37
like trust and safety and the issues.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: The second one was actually,
20:40
there were a bunch of things on cash that actually were because
20:43
of the way the
20:44
SPEAKER_03: system was designed.
20:45
SPEAKER_03: So Uber systems did not have to think about marketplace systems.
20:49
Uber's marketplace systems did not have to think about low
20:52
latency for payments
20:54
SPEAKER_03: because guess what?
20:54
SPEAKER_03: You'd walk out the car and you could afford to have
20:58
SPEAKER_03: two minutes before your payment goes through.
21:01
SPEAKER_03: But with cash, you're sitting in the car.
21:04
And actually,
21:04
the way the business had told the story was,
21:07
there's a problem with cash.
21:08
SPEAKER_03: There are all these issues with cash.
21:09
SPEAKER_03: There are all these whatever.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: But actually, when you broke it down, it wasn't actually cash.
21:12
Cash was just showing an underlying issue of a latency issue
21:16
with the marketplace team.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: So actually,
21:17
SPEAKER_03: that gave us a narrative to say,
21:19
SPEAKER_03: hey,
21:19
SPEAKER_03: there are some P0s that need to be fixed at the business level.
21:22
SPEAKER_03: Upfront pricing was another one, right?
21:25
But then it was the final group of things was actually cash
21:27
itself and improving
21:28
SPEAKER_03: the experience.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: But something you did,
21:30
SPEAKER_03: and you maybe don't remember this,
21:31
SPEAKER_03: was we then put,
21:32
SPEAKER_03: we said,
21:32
SPEAKER_03: let's put all the headcount back into a pot.
21:36
SPEAKER_03: And we all collectively agreed that cash was the number one thing.
21:39
SPEAKER_03: And you actually did.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Charles did that.
21:40
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: But I was there.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: But you didn't fight.
21:44
SPEAKER_03: You were like, I agree and it's the right thing to do.
21:46
And I remember we're sitting in that big room and some of your
21:49
engineers moved over
21:50
SPEAKER_03: to the cash team to fund that effort because we're like,
21:53
we're not going to get the wins and quite the noise until we
21:57
fund this effort
21:59
SPEAKER_03: looking holistically.
22:01
SPEAKER_03: But going back to,
22:02
SPEAKER_03: so yes,
22:02
SPEAKER_03: so going back to State of the Union,
22:04
SPEAKER_03: the other thing that we did was,
22:05
and I still find it hilarious that you agreed to do this at the
22:09
time because I was,
22:11
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I knew what I was doing.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: I was like, so this issue came up in my conversations about on-call.
22:15
SPEAKER_03: Can we tell a story about on-call?
22:17
And do you remember you were like,
22:19
I'm going to go look up some,
22:20
what do you want me to tell?
22:21
SPEAKER_03: And we jammed on the topic and you were like,
22:23
SPEAKER_03: okay,
22:23
SPEAKER_03: I can tell the story around what's the source of the on-call.
22:27
SPEAKER_03: And a big one was like flakiness and regressions, like the two chunks.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: And that's how we prioritize some of that work.
22:34
SPEAKER_03: So we had three things in our planning, in our weekly cadence.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: And I really have become a bit obsessed with rhythms in teams,
22:43
SPEAKER_03: because I think humans are hearts.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: Things work in rhythms.
22:47
And the more you have a rhythm that doesn't break,
22:49
the more people are in a groove.
22:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
22:51
SPEAKER_03: It's like if I start snapping and you can dance to my snapping,
22:53
SPEAKER_03: you can now do funky things in the middle of the snapping.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: But at least you know the steps and we all look like we're.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: You can speed it up.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: You can slow down.
22:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: But still on the beat.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: On the beat.
23:02
And so one of the things we had with our rhythm was we had our
23:06
one on one.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: Then we would have.
23:09
SPEAKER_03: I still have this dynamic, by the way.
23:10
SPEAKER_03: I call it I call it like it's like zoom in, zoom out, zoom in.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: And so I would we would meet you and I would talk.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: We would also talk about personal stuff.
23:20
SPEAKER_03: I remember telling you about my early dates.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: I remember you were telling me about your wife starting to learn HTML.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: We would talk about it before the kids.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: We would talk about personal stuff.
23:29
SPEAKER_03: And we had to also allow space for that.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: Because sometimes it's like, oh, let's... Anyway, moving on to the topic.
23:35
And it's like,
23:35
actually,
23:36
that stuff is important to understand the who behind the role.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there was a point where I felt that we got closer.
23:43
Because,
23:44
look,
23:44
the way I looked at it,
23:45
I'm just going to be honest,
23:46
how I felt like...
23:47
SPEAKER_00: I was there.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: I was in this new manager role.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: I had so many things to do.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: I had stuff to do at work.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: I was in a new country.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: I had to take care of that stuff.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: All the things.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of... I was trying to keep the people happy on my team.
23:59
I was trying to keep my leadership team happy because we had
24:02
engineering managers.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Product was very separate.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: It was a different organization.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And you came in.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: We started to...
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Initially, I was like, okay, what is this person doing?
24:11
SPEAKER_00: And then I started to kind of understand,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: but we kind of kept it at the like,
24:14
SPEAKER_00: okay,
24:15
SPEAKER_00: you're helping us.
24:16
The way I was thinking,
24:17
you're helping my team do better work,
24:19
that's great.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: But one breakthrough was we actually just went and grabbed dinner.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And it was supposed to be, I think, two hours.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I think we saved for a lot longer.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: But I just got to know the person behind the product manager.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Which is my second principle.
24:35
So principle number one is the roles are a construct and
24:40
actually the magic happens.
24:42
SPEAKER_03: Like Laurie,
24:43
SPEAKER_03: a design manager that we got at the end,
24:45
she always used to say the magic happens in the confluence of
24:47
our differences.
24:48
SPEAKER_03: And I've totally stolen that line because it's true.
24:50
SPEAKER_03: Can you repeat that?
24:51
SPEAKER_03: The magic happens in the confluence of our differences.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: I think that's beautiful if you think about it, right?
24:57
SPEAKER_03: Or you think about the Steve Jobs throwing rocks in a washing machine,
25:00
SPEAKER_03: the more we tumble together,
25:02
SPEAKER_03: the more you and I came out as like perfectly polished pebbles.
25:05
SPEAKER_03: And actually,
25:05
SPEAKER_03: if you think about that friction as something that's good,
25:07
then actually we're polishing each other and we're getting
25:09
stronger versus I think
25:11
SPEAKER_03: a lot of people think of the conflict as adversaries,
25:14
SPEAKER_03: which actually it's that tension is an opportunity,
25:17
SPEAKER_03: that friction is an opportunity,
25:19
SPEAKER_03: that pressure is an opportunity to be better,
25:21
SPEAKER_03: to create the diamonds.
25:22
SPEAKER_03: And that's what we did.
25:23
So we had the one-on-one where we would sink and we would go on
25:27
a walk and et cetera.
25:28
And we started making it a thing of having periodic
25:32
out-of-office dinners or I came
25:34
SPEAKER_03: to your house.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: So we made that a conscious thing.
25:37
And that's my second principle,
25:38
which is you really need to know the human behind the role.
25:41
Like I just sent you a message for your birthday because it's
25:45
in my calendar.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: And I actually say this all the time.
25:47
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, do you know your engineering manager's birthday?
25:52
SPEAKER_03: And people literally give me a blank stare.
25:53
And I'm like,
25:54
that is literally the day this human showed up on this planet.
25:59
SPEAKER_03: It is probably the most important day to them.
26:01
SPEAKER_03: And you don't know it?
26:03
SPEAKER_03: So what are we doing?
26:04
How are you going to have a joint vision and goal if you don't
26:07
even know that?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: It's so simple.
26:10
We could generalize that as an engineering manager or as a team lead,
26:12
the people on your team.
26:14
SPEAKER_03: On your team.
26:16
SPEAKER_03: I remember when I became the PM lead,
26:19
SPEAKER_03: I knew when people were thinking of having kids,
26:22
SPEAKER_03: were trying to change mortgages.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: Where,
26:26
SPEAKER_03: you know,
26:27
one of them had just moved a girlfriend from his home country
26:30
and was moving in.
26:32
Because that human is going to bring that into work whether you
26:34
like it or not.
26:35
SPEAKER_03: You can say the whole leave the personal stuff.
26:37
SPEAKER_03: That is not how humans work.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: We're not, you know, confined boxes.
26:41
SPEAKER_03: We don't work that way.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: So that's one of my second principles.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: And the third is this notion of like the rhythm.
26:47
SPEAKER_03: And people take that for granted.
26:49
SPEAKER_03: We never moved our one-on-ones.
26:50
SPEAKER_03: You never randomly canceled one-on-ones with your teams.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: Neither did I, right?
26:55
SPEAKER_03: We had a cadence.
26:57
SPEAKER_03: And I can't stress that enough because humans are creatures of habit.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: So we would have that one-on-one.
27:03
SPEAKER_03: We would talk it out.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: We would then have the team meeting
27:08
then we would have the planning meeting,
27:09
where it would be you,
27:10
me,
27:10
and the other PM,
27:11
remember?
27:12
SPEAKER_03: And we would come in and talk about who's staffing what,
27:14
SPEAKER_03: what are the concerns,
27:15
SPEAKER_03: who's about to roll off a project,
27:17
SPEAKER_03: and do we have enough?
27:18
SPEAKER_03: We would talk about things like,
27:19
SPEAKER_03: oh,
27:19
SPEAKER_03: this person's just been in a slug doing this,
27:21
SPEAKER_03: we need to give them something exciting.
27:23
SPEAKER_03: Remember, we would talk about that as well.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically, it felt to me that after a while,
27:28
SPEAKER_00: I was the engineering manager and,
27:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:29
SPEAKER_00: like in the end,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: it was my responsibility for,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:32
SPEAKER_00: someone to be fired for whatever on the team that would need to be me.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: But it felt to me there was we had like you and then we had another PM.
27:40
But you and me,
27:42
we were kind of like being engineering managers together a
27:44
little bit.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And being PM leaders together.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And being PM leaders together.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And actually, it worked wonderfully.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So,
27:50
SPEAKER_00: for example,
27:50
I would tell you whenever I saw good things or bad things about
27:54
people on my team,
27:55
SPEAKER_00: for example,
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I knew when people were,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: for example,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: looking for a new job outside of work.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Or checking out.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Kind of both checking out or also looking for something new.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I kind of encouraged it.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: I was like, look.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I encourage it till today and I still work at Google.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm like...
28:12
SPEAKER_03: It's so important.
28:14
SPEAKER_03: I actually say at more junior levels,
28:16
you should probably have at least a recruiter conversation once
28:20
every six months.
28:22
SPEAKER_03: Because here are a couple of things.
28:23
SPEAKER_03: And let's just cut the BS and get to it, right?
28:28
SPEAKER_03: I've had to let people go at Uber.
28:31
We've all had to let people have a performance conversation or
28:35
we've had to talk to
28:36
SPEAKER_03: somebody who wanted to go on to something else.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: And for example,
28:38
SPEAKER_03: one of the PMs on my team,
28:39
SPEAKER_03: who you know,
28:42
SPEAKER_03: he came to me a year before he got the role.
28:45
SPEAKER_03: We were literally having conversations about the right role and whether,
28:50
SPEAKER_03: as he's interviewing for those roles,
28:52
SPEAKER_03: is there something in that role where he's like,
28:54
SPEAKER_03: Uber doesn't offer that?
28:55
SPEAKER_03: And after we got that, we're like, OK, I think it's time.
28:58
SPEAKER_03: Actually, we've exhausted everything and it is the right time.
29:01
SPEAKER_03: But also because we've been openly talking about it for a year.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: You genuinely know I care about you.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
29:07
SPEAKER_03: And you you genuinely know that you want to leave this place alone.
29:13
SPEAKER_03: you want to leave your role in a sustainable place.
29:19
SPEAKER_03: So we very nicely set up his dotted line,
29:23
SPEAKER_03: who now stepped up into that role,
29:24
SPEAKER_03: who's now head of product at Booking.com,
29:26
but like who stepped into that role nicely because we already
29:29
knew it was coming.
29:30
So I have this fundamental thing,
29:32
which is like the human transcends the job.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: And so your goal is to help them realize their full potential.
29:42
SPEAKER_03: It's not to realize their full potential in the job,
29:44
SPEAKER_03: because their full potential may not be in the job.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: But actually,
29:47
SPEAKER_03: if you come at it with this altruistic,
29:50
SPEAKER_03: I deeply care about you,
29:51
SPEAKER_03: they will feel that.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: And that actually works in your benefit over time.
29:57
SPEAKER_03: They may leave, they may come back.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And also, one thing that I feel...
30:03
SPEAKER_00: It was an accident, but we got to know each other on a personal level.
30:07
You would often advise me,
30:08
and I would do the same thing on product,
30:11
right?
30:11
SPEAKER_00: I would be like, oh, here's what I think we can do.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Let me take some things on your plate.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: I had some engineers on my team.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: I wrote an article called The Product Mind of Engineer,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: which is,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: I get some good feedback for it,
30:22
SPEAKER_00: but honestly,
30:22
SPEAKER_00: I was describing some engineers on my team.
30:24
Some engineers,
30:25
as soon as we started to do these,
30:26
you know,
30:27
you know their names.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: You start to tell, here's the metrics, here's the business.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Some engineers didn't care that much,
30:34
SPEAKER_00: and that's fine,
30:34
SPEAKER_00: but some were really like,
30:36
SPEAKER_00: oh,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: okay,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: how can we have these wins?
30:39
SPEAKER_00: How can I help the business?
30:40
SPEAKER_00: They love doing this thing.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: And they came with ideas.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: They came with ideas,
30:43
SPEAKER_00: and sometimes when you tell me,
30:44
SPEAKER_00: oh,
30:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of swamped,
30:45
SPEAKER_00: or we need to do this,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: but I don't have time,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
30:47
SPEAKER_00: oh,
30:47
SPEAKER_00: this person,
30:48
SPEAKER_00: this engineer would love to do it.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: So suddenly,
30:51
SPEAKER_00: and a lot of it felt that it was about trust,
30:53
SPEAKER_00: and one thing I see now,
30:54
SPEAKER_00: I think if anyone takes away
30:57
SPEAKER_00: Something if you're an engineering manager,
30:59
SPEAKER_00: a tech lead,
31:00
SPEAKER_00: a senior engineer,
31:01
SPEAKER_00: or even just an engineer,
31:02
SPEAKER_00: try to,
31:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: build,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: like,
31:05
SPEAKER_00: just trust the people around you,
31:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:08
SPEAKER_00: build trust,
31:08
SPEAKER_00: like meet them outside of work,
31:10
SPEAKER_00: your product manager or people on the team,
31:12
SPEAKER_00: because here's the interesting thing,
31:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: the.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: I feel these roles are kind of made up.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to say it.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: What I did as an engineering manager, you would think it's in a box.
31:22
And there were some things that were expected of me,
31:23
but especially a startup,
31:24
it's made up.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And AI will change a lot of this thing.
31:28
But what will not change is if you trust some people,
31:33
you can figure it out.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: So one of the reasons our team works so well,
31:35
SPEAKER_00: and we actually didn't have anyone quit on the team over four years.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: We had no attrition.
31:40
SPEAKER_03: That is crazy.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: We had no attrition.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: I think we should pause and let the saints flow in the room.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the four and a half years I was there.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: So we didn't have anyone leave Uber.
31:50
We did have,
31:51
I think,
31:52
there's two people who the team was just not a good fit for them.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: They weren't meant to do
31:57
product work and once we got that stable team literally it was
32:01
that team for four
32:02
years and it's not like there's some cities where they're like
32:05
no other options
32:06
this was around in a climate where you had like stripe coming
32:09
in you had you know
32:11
flex port you had you know all these these data breaks data
32:15
breaks um so you had a
32:17
number of you had opportunities and i think at a certain point
32:20
then we now got to a
32:21
SPEAKER_03: point where it was like the pandemic especially
32:23
SPEAKER_03: It was like, okay, now it's time.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: People have kind of maxed out.
32:26
SPEAKER_03: And also some of the stuff we wanted to do was scaled back.
32:29
Even I,
32:29
like a year after I made the decision,
32:31
I'm like,
32:32
I have a clear number two.
32:33
SPEAKER_03: And she was brilliant and stepped into the role.
32:37
SPEAKER_03: But it goes back to this thing that I think is at the core of it,
32:42
SPEAKER_03: which is when people love,
32:45
SPEAKER_03: and I like,
32:46
SPEAKER_03: not just...
32:49
So there's a definition of love that I like because I'm about
32:53
to contradict myself
32:54
SPEAKER_03: by saying I like,
32:55
SPEAKER_03: but like,
32:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm not a fan of liking things,
32:58
SPEAKER_03: right?
32:58
SPEAKER_03: Because liking things feels very passive to me.
33:02
SPEAKER_03: And I like things, you know, I like things, but actually even better,
33:07
SPEAKER_03: I love things and I dislike and hate things, right?
33:11
SPEAKER_03: And I think about that.
33:13
It took me a while as a leader to actually accept that about
33:18
myself as well,
33:19
SPEAKER_03: that not everyone's going to love it.
33:21
SPEAKER_03: Some people are not going to love this way of working.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: Some people want...
33:25
SPEAKER_03: to be mentally checked out, just do the bare minimum and work is work.
33:30
SPEAKER_03: And you know, and some people it consumes them.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: And we managed to get a team,
33:34
SPEAKER_03: like most people on that team,
33:36
SPEAKER_03: even those who thought they had started numbing,
33:40
SPEAKER_03: became more product centric because it was just infectious.
33:44
If people around you are like,
33:46
you know,
33:46
so infected with this,
33:47
in love with this problem.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: And love at its core,
33:53
SPEAKER_03: I use a definition by Bell Hooks,
33:56
SPEAKER_03: and she says,
33:57
SPEAKER_03: you know,
33:58
love is the extension of oneself for the spiritual growth of
34:04
another or of oneself.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: So self-love is I'm extending myself.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: I'm going out of my comfort zone.
34:11
I'm reaching and doing more and being compassionate so that I
34:15
can realize the full
34:18
SPEAKER_03: growth of myself.
34:19
SPEAKER_03: That's self-love.
34:20
SPEAKER_03: Or I care so much about Gergay.
34:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm extending myself because I feel...
34:26
SPEAKER_03: Like,
34:26
I love this person and I want him to reach the attainment of
34:30
what engineering
34:30
SPEAKER_03: manager means and vice versa.
34:32
SPEAKER_03: And I genuinely felt that.
34:34
SPEAKER_03: And I feel like we had that in the team.
34:36
To the extent that I did the,
34:40
I officiated one of our engineers' marriages.
34:42
SPEAKER_03: You know this.
34:44
SPEAKER_03: Like, are you kidding me?
34:46
SPEAKER_03: You know,
34:46
SPEAKER_03: that's the height of my,
34:48
SPEAKER_03: like,
34:48
you're such a friend and the love is so strong that I literally
34:53
read the vows of
34:55
SPEAKER_03: you and your,
34:55
SPEAKER_03: like,
34:55
SPEAKER_03: that is,
34:57
SPEAKER_03: you can't,
34:58
SPEAKER_03: there is no price.
34:59
There's no,
35:00
you can't,
35:00
like,
35:01
there are no words to describe how you attain that.
35:03
SPEAKER_03: And that's all from this team, right?
35:05
SPEAKER_03: So I do think that there's this element of like,
35:09
SPEAKER_03: You know,
35:09
SPEAKER_03: when you have the right people,
35:10
even when it's a small group of people who are willing to put
35:14
skin in the game
35:14
SPEAKER_03: because they love a problem and love each other,
35:18
SPEAKER_03: there's so much magic.
35:19
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, we have a whole roster of things to show for that.
35:23
SPEAKER_03: Do you know how many, like when I think back,
35:26
SPEAKER_03: The amount of vision stuff that we...
35:28
SPEAKER_03: The API that now processes over a billion dollars,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: you know this,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: by the way?
35:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: UberPay.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: UberPay, which for multiple years everyone said would never work.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
35:38
The web payment flow,
35:39
which at the time were like only 2% of traffic was going
35:43
through web.
35:44
And these two engineers...
35:45
That was two engineers coming up with the idea and the business plan.
35:49
SPEAKER_03: And we kind of ring-fenced them and let them build it up.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: So what happened is I tried to...
35:55
I asked for headcount to get web payments because it was really,
35:58
really good.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: They brought it.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: They actually put a business plan together.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they wrote the doc.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: They had monks.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: You said it's great.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I said it's great.
36:04
I asked for headcount from my management chain or from product,
36:09
whichever it was.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And they said, that sounds great, but no.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: And so what...
36:14
what i did with with your support because you know we just
36:16
trusted each other and
36:17
we're like i mean we did so we just did it we we hit the two
36:21
people we still
36:22
shipped every one of our product and then we came back in six
36:24
months saying like oh
36:25
so we've now built this we have this many customers uh we now
36:30
like this many extra
36:30
headcanon and and here's the business that we're driving now
36:33
and if we you know if
36:34
we don't get it like we have to just shut it down and they're
36:36
like well okay i
36:37
SPEAKER_00: guess that makes sense yeah that's a no-brainer
36:39
SPEAKER_03: There was another policy thing that came up.
36:41
SPEAKER_03: It started to become a bigger and bigger company.
36:44
SPEAKER_03: Especially the EU, a lot of policies.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: There was a policy that was coming up in France.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
36:57
And we were like,
36:58
holy cow,
36:59
how the hell are we going to add this to our road?
37:01
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
37:02
SPEAKER_03: And nevermind,
37:03
SPEAKER_03: we won't talk about the comment the PM left,
37:06
SPEAKER_03: who I will stand by till today for craftsmanship.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: Like this team came and said, you have to build this thing.
37:14
SPEAKER_03: It's a directive from Dara.
37:16
SPEAKER_03: And the PM said, they edited the comment later on.
37:18
SPEAKER_03: I saw it was edited.
37:19
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to screenshot it and save it.
37:21
SPEAKER_03: And he said, I don't care who came up with this.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: It is a bad user experience.
37:26
SPEAKER_03: And I don't care if you give me Dara's name signed in blood.
37:29
SPEAKER_03: I am not approving this.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: And I was like,
37:33
Do you know how much skin,
37:35
how much guts you have to have in your decision to do that?
37:37
SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so he did that.
37:39
It just showed you the kind of love we had for shipping the
37:42
right product.
37:44
SPEAKER_03: But maybe don't say CEO's name in blood next time.
37:46
SPEAKER_03: But anyway,
37:47
SPEAKER_03: these two engineers then came up and suggested building instead of,
37:51
SPEAKER_03: because Uber Eats had built their own,
37:52
SPEAKER_03: like a flow,
37:53
SPEAKER_03: which didn't have the policy stuff that we needed.
37:56
SPEAKER_03: And they were like, okay, we're actually going to build this and use it
38:00
as the web platform that everybody can use across the different
38:04
web products.
38:05
SPEAKER_03: So they actually used a real problem,
38:07
which I think is a very important thing that people miss when
38:10
it comes to vision
38:11
SPEAKER_03: setting and getting a win,
38:13
SPEAKER_03: is that it's very hard actually,
38:15
SPEAKER_03: even at my level,
38:16
SPEAKER_03: to come up with something that is novel,
38:20
SPEAKER_03: right,
38:21
SPEAKER_03: that no one can see,
38:23
And somehow magically,
38:24
miraculously get the blessing to just go off and do it.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: So you're specifically talking about getting headcount for a team,
38:32
SPEAKER_00: may that be a platform or a product?
38:34
SPEAKER_03: Even at my level, it is so hard to pull that off.
38:37
SPEAKER_03: What you do, I'm a director of product.
38:39
SPEAKER_03: Like my skip level, sorry, my manager is a VP.
38:44
SPEAKER_03: That's like into big tech.
38:45
SPEAKER_03: That's the height of it, right?
38:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
38:47
SPEAKER_03: They're only like five SVPs at Google or something.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: So that's the height of your career.
38:51
SPEAKER_03: So even at that,
38:52
SPEAKER_03: it is so hard to say,
38:53
I'm going to ring fence five people to go play around with this
38:56
new thing with no
38:57
SPEAKER_03: direct core problem.
39:00
The best ways,
39:01
you and I always got visions off the ground,
39:04
was we took a problem.
39:05
SPEAKER_03: So in the case of UberPay, they needed us to integrate a payment method.
39:09
SPEAKER_03: And instead of just building that integration,
39:11
SPEAKER_03: which we would have done,
39:12
SPEAKER_03: which took,
39:12
SPEAKER_03: I still remember till today,
39:13
SPEAKER_03: 14 weeks of engineering.
39:15
SPEAKER_03: We had the lingo.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: We said,
39:17
SPEAKER_03: actually,
39:18
SPEAKER_03: we're going to use it to bootstrap this API,
39:21
SPEAKER_03: integrate this partner in Latin America.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: We'll still give you the thing you want,
39:26
but use this slightly longer to get you something that actually
39:30
unlocks many more
39:31
SPEAKER_03: payment methods.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: And we did that every single time.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Before we jump back into the episode,
39:35
I want to let you know that the audiobook version of my
39:37
best-selling book,
39:38
SPEAKER_00: The Software Engineer's Guidebook,
39:40
SPEAKER_00: is out now.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: You can get it on all major audiobook platforms like Spotify,
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Audible,
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Liberal.fm,
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Apple Books,
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Google Play,
39:47
SPEAKER_00: and also DRM3 MP3 files.
39:49
I started writing this book after a decade of working as a
39:52
software engineer when I
39:53
SPEAKER_00: was working as an engineering manager for a few years already at Uber.
39:57
Here's a review from the book from senior principal engineer
39:59
Tanya Reilly,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: who is the author of The Staff Engineer's Path.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: From performance reviews to P95 latency,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: from team dynamics to testing,
40:07
SPEAKER_00: Gary Gary diversifies all aspects of a software career.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: This book is well-named.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: It really does feel like the missing guidebook for the whole industry.
40:15
You can get the book at engguidebook.com or search for the
40:18
Software Engineering
40:19
SPEAKER_00: Guidebook on your favorite audiobook platform.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll enjoy it.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a tactic.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a lot of questions,
40:26
SPEAKER_00: especially since I wrote the book,
40:27
SPEAKER_00: Building Mobile Apps at Scale,
40:28
SPEAKER_00: about how to fund a platform team.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of engineering managers ask this.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm now growing.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: I would like a platform team.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: How can I fund it?
40:34
SPEAKER_00: How can I make a business case?
40:35
SPEAKER_00: And there's a template.
40:36
But I think the secret to funding any engineering team is build
40:41
something without
40:42
SPEAKER_00: funding and then show it.
40:44
May that be a prototype or something,
40:46
but show that it's going to make money.
40:48
If it makes money for the business or it saves money for the business,
40:51
you should have a case.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Or growth or whatever.
40:54
And if it doesn't do either that they care about,
40:56
then what's the point,
40:57
right?
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Especially these days now that companies are paying about efficiency.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: There's a clear value add in doing it once.
41:03
SPEAKER_03: And yes,
41:04
SPEAKER_03: you always have to trade off like our design,
41:06
SPEAKER_03: you're always trading off relevance versus consistency.
41:10
You may not get the 100% optimized version for your specific
41:14
use case because
41:15
SPEAKER_03: ultimately what is platform
41:16
SPEAKER_03: A platform is a stage that allows multiple teams dance on it.
41:20
SPEAKER_03: So each person isn't building their own podium, right?
41:23
SPEAKER_03: Like that's really how I like to think about it.
41:26
If no one is dancing on your platform and you can't,
41:29
you know,
41:30
then why do you exist?
41:31
I might as well go build my own stage or if I don't need one,
41:34
right,
41:34
then actually
41:35
SPEAKER_03: we don't do platform for platform's sake.
41:37
But in this case,
41:38
we're like,
41:38
we're going to give you a stage,
41:40
this web platform thing.
41:42
SPEAKER_03: It works.
41:42
SPEAKER_03: We have a proven case.
41:44
And it means that you don't have to waste your resources
41:46
building that platform again.
41:47
SPEAKER_03: Just dance on it.
41:49
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, you know what?
41:50
SPEAKER_03: Maybe I need to share it with other people.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's not exactly what I wanted,
41:53
SPEAKER_03: but actually I can go use that extra resource to put more lights on
41:56
SPEAKER_03: or change the outfit or whatever.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I like using human analogies for these things.
42:00
But I think that's such a crucial thing because when we go back
42:03
and look at all
42:04
SPEAKER_03: these things that we bootstrapped,
42:05
we always used a very small example of a problem and turned it
42:10
into something that
42:11
SPEAKER_03: we actually wanted to realize in our vision.
42:14
And so in a way,
42:18
at the worst case,
42:19
if you think about it,
42:20
you've solved the problem still.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:23
Best case,
42:24
you've actually built something that creates a billion dollars.
42:26
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of win-win.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
42:31
and I think it's good to remind anyone working in engineering
42:35
that it's not
42:35
SPEAKER_00: supposed to be easy.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: It's not supposed to be easy to get headcount or do a new initiative.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like getting a startup.
42:42
SPEAKER_03: You have to show, if I went and said, it's a very different game.
42:47
SPEAKER_03: So when you're raising pre-seed,
42:48
SPEAKER_03: so I do a lot of angel investing,
42:50
SPEAKER_03: and I actually do it,
42:51
SPEAKER_03: honestly,
42:51
SPEAKER_03: I've lost way more money than I've gained,
42:52
SPEAKER_03: which is part of the thing.
42:54
But actually I do these things because I like to see what parts
43:00
of something I've
43:01
SPEAKER_03: learned a skill or,
43:02
SPEAKER_03: you know,
43:03
SPEAKER_03: like knowledge.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: I like to figure out how much of this is a pattern that is reusable.
43:09
Like I can reuse it versus how much of this is something that's
43:12
just contained in
43:14
SPEAKER_03: what I'm doing.
43:15
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:16
SPEAKER_03: And so my onboarding flow, like, you know, conversations,
43:23
comprehension conviction i have used that to onboard into many
43:26
roles i've used it
43:27
my my board position i've used it um at lego that lego i used
43:31
the same framework
43:33
i've used you know like i i even i remember sitting with the
43:35
chairman of the lego
43:36
board the fourth generation i was like for the first month or
43:40
so or two it's good
43:41
i'm gonna look dumb because i'm just gonna be listening and
43:44
tell me who i need to
43:44
SPEAKER_03: talk to and i asked all of them similar questions same playbook
43:48
SPEAKER_03: Then I came back and was like, here's what I understand.
43:50
And then I came back and said,
43:51
here's what I fundamentally think we should be doing.
43:53
SPEAKER_03: Even though,
43:54
SPEAKER_03: you know,
43:54
SPEAKER_03: as a board,
43:54
SPEAKER_03: you can have conviction,
43:55
SPEAKER_03: but ultimately the exec team is the exec team.
43:59
SPEAKER_03: But I've used that.
43:59
SPEAKER_03: I also used it when I took on my ERG chairmanship within Google.
44:04
SPEAKER_03: Same playbook, different people, nothing to do with tech.
44:07
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, oh, this thing is a rinse and repeat.
44:09
SPEAKER_03: So now I can teach someone.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: that playbook and stand in it.
44:12
SPEAKER_03: Same goes for like vision setting.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: I did vision setting in my GM role.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: I did it again with our state of the union, right?
44:19
SPEAKER_03: I did it again when I joined Netflix.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: I did it again when I joined Google.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: Now it's worked so many times.
44:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, this is a playbook.
44:26
Like I know I have a playbook here and I know what doesn't work
44:29
and what knobs I need to twist.
44:32
Same goes for like fundraising and what I call perception shifting,
44:36
which we had to do.
44:37
SPEAKER_03: So I had to do a lot of that within,
44:39
SPEAKER_03: like when I joined Google,
44:40
SPEAKER_03: the team I inherited,
44:41
SPEAKER_03: there was a lot of perception shifting.
44:44
Some of it was reality,
44:45
but a lot of it was perception within the organization.
44:48
SPEAKER_03: They're difficult to work with.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: We had very similar things at Amsterdam.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, they're difficult.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: They're blocking.
44:55
SPEAKER_03: They're this.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: And it's the same playbook.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: I've used it again.
44:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, quick wins.
45:00
SPEAKER_03: Go and tell a story.
45:02
SPEAKER_03: Consistent monthly updates.
45:04
We had that,
45:04
the Amsterdam newsletter,
45:06
which had the Amsterdam pictures and fun facts,
45:09
right?
45:10
SPEAKER_03: And something that is engaging.
45:11
SPEAKER_03: And then also like this actively roadsharing.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: So we would go and meet the GMs.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: Remember, we would actually have this meeting to share the plan.
45:20
SPEAKER_03: and have it blessed by the VPs.
45:23
SPEAKER_03: Same playbook.
45:24
SPEAKER_03: I have a plan.
45:25
SPEAKER_03: I do a roadshow with all the partner teams.
45:28
I remember the first couple of years,
45:30
my partners were like,
45:31
oh my God,
45:32
that's very expensive.
45:32
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, trust me.
45:34
SPEAKER_03: It's one day you will spend.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: You might think you're wasting it.
45:37
It's multiple meetings of escalations you will save because you
45:41
have a shared
45:42
SPEAKER_03: language and they understand what else you're doing.
45:45
So not everyone thinks they're a snowflake and like,
45:47
my thing isn't getting prioritized.
45:48
So I look for these patterns and what you tend to find is
45:51
actually a lot of them
45:53
SPEAKER_03: scale beyond even tech.
45:55
SPEAKER_00: Well,
45:55
but a lot of them really scale for engineering management
45:57
because I actually got
45:58
SPEAKER_00: the inspiration from you.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: So when I would go to San Francisco,
46:01
SPEAKER_00: the first few times I went to San Francisco,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: I would just,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: like,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: we worked with a few teams in San Francisco,
46:07
SPEAKER_00: so I would meet with them.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: We would like, you know, talk about stuff.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: But I kind of saw that when you went, you met a lot of people.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: And so what I started to do later,
46:15
SPEAKER_00: which turned out to be a really good decision,
46:17
SPEAKER_00: is when I went,
46:18
SPEAKER_00: I actually prioritized meeting people and understanding them,
46:21
SPEAKER_00: telling them what we do,
46:22
SPEAKER_00: understanding what they do,
46:23
SPEAKER_00: and trying to get to this point where we had to,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: like,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: just tell me who are you.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, what is your background?
46:28
SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you get into Uber?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do after Uber?
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, are you...
46:34
is this temporary and you're trying to be a CTO one day or
46:37
you're actually really into it.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: And since I started to do that,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: it felt cheating because I was not doing work per se,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: but it made everything so much easier.
46:49
SPEAKER_03: This is such an important point.
46:50
SPEAKER_03: This thing that you said, it felt like cheating.
46:53
We should actually unpack that a little bit because we've been
46:56
conditioned to
46:57
SPEAKER_03: Now I'm going to, you know, AB the sort of like a philosophy.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm here for it.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: I think we've been conditioned so much to like squeeze out efficiency.
47:07
SPEAKER_03: Like I go in nine, I clock in, we get in the room 30 minutes.
47:10
SPEAKER_03: It's like, let's get into it.
47:12
SPEAKER_03: And actually that's fine.
47:14
SPEAKER_03: And I'm a big believer.
47:16
SPEAKER_03: I actually think I'm highly efficient, but I go slow to go fast.
47:22
SPEAKER_03: So we might be in a one hour meeting and
47:24
SPEAKER_03: I literally just met a UXR lead on the team.
47:29
SPEAKER_03: Never met him in person.
47:31
SPEAKER_03: One of the things I like to do, I'm not saying everyone should do that.
47:33
SPEAKER_03: And maybe,
47:33
SPEAKER_03: you know,
47:34
SPEAKER_03: like I hug everyone,
47:35
SPEAKER_03: as you know,
47:35
SPEAKER_03: I hug everyone because I'm always on a screen.
47:39
SPEAKER_03: Right?
47:39
SPEAKER_03: I'm always on a screen.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: 90% of the time I'm going to be talking to people on a screen.
47:43
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, over continents, time zones.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: And podcasts.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: This is my second in-person podcast.
47:52
SPEAKER_03: Can we do more of these?
47:53
SPEAKER_03: But like, you're always on a screen.
47:55
And it's,
47:56
if I meet you,
47:57
and for 30 minutes,
47:58
I've come all the way,
47:59
nine hours.
48:00
And we spend that 30 minutes talking about something we could
48:03
have hashed out on an email.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: You failed.
48:06
SPEAKER_03: For me, we failed.
48:08
SPEAKER_03: Instead, it's 30 minutes to see your body language.
48:11
It's 30 minutes to understand this human,
48:13
to hug them,
48:15
to bring the 3D,
48:17
the 4D,
48:18
right?
48:19
And we can go back and do the efficient stuff by email,
48:22
but how much more efficient
48:23
will I be when I'm pinging that person,
48:25
a very blunt,
48:27
you know,
48:27
I'm horrible.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: I don't even do like, hi, I just get into it.
48:30
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm really, you know, I'm like, I just get into a message.
48:32
SPEAKER_03: That's how efficient I am.
48:34
SPEAKER_03: But when I meet you and I spend that time,
48:36
SPEAKER_03: whether it's a dinner or a lunch and it's a human connection,
48:41
SPEAKER_03: we will do so much more and go so much further.
48:45
SPEAKER_03: on in the document when I say,
48:46
SPEAKER_03: I disagree with this,
48:48
SPEAKER_03: because you've met AB the human,
48:49
SPEAKER_03: and I've connected with Gergay the human,
48:52
SPEAKER_03: the I disagree with this is contained into the thing we're talking about,
48:55
SPEAKER_03: not how dare she once again,
48:58
SPEAKER_03: and egos and all of that.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: So people think they're being efficient,
49:01
SPEAKER_03: they go in a meeting five minutes,
49:02
SPEAKER_03: how are you,
49:02
SPEAKER_03: how's your weekend?
49:03
SPEAKER_03: This sort of nonsense small talk and move on.
49:06
When I've been in meetings where I'm literally like,
49:08
how was your weekend?
49:10
SPEAKER_03: And I have something in my weekly meetings
49:12
SPEAKER_03: where we say, what's your personal win?
49:14
SPEAKER_03: And someone was like, I got married last weekend.
49:16
SPEAKER_03: None of us knew.
49:17
SPEAKER_03: It would never have come up.
49:19
SPEAKER_03: Right?
49:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is not my core team.
49:22
SPEAKER_03: This was like a team I had just inherited for one of the ERGs at Google.
49:26
And then we were like,
49:27
the rest of the meet,
49:28
like for 15 minutes,
49:29
how was it?
49:30
SPEAKER_03: Share us pictures, da-da-da-da.
49:32
SPEAKER_03: You just had this little spark.
49:34
SPEAKER_03: And then we can go to the rest of the meeting.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: But those moments, you just can't trade those.
49:39
SPEAKER_03: So I want to go back to it's not cheating.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: It is not cheating to connect at a human level
49:46
SPEAKER_03: Right?
49:46
SPEAKER_03: In a way that's comfortable for you.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: In working hours.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: In working hours.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's what it felt.
49:50
Because you will do so much more and achieve much more without
49:55
the squabbling,
49:56
SPEAKER_03: the bickering,
49:57
SPEAKER_03: the eat,
49:58
SPEAKER_03: you know,
49:58
SPEAKER_03: whatever.
49:59
SPEAKER_03: Because it's not a zero-sum game.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: No.
50:00
It's a reminder that we're two humans at the end of the day who
50:03
are in this
50:04
SPEAKER_03: construct of a company because we both believe in a common goal.
50:07
SPEAKER_03: And if you can just remember that, so much more be effective.
50:10
SPEAKER_03: So can we demystify,
50:11
let's normalize connections during working hours that are not
50:17
about like some
50:17
SPEAKER_03: efficient whatever.
50:19
SPEAKER_03: And then your meeting might be five minutes.
50:21
And so you mentioned patterns that you've seen,
50:25
but one pattern I'm interested.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: So you worked at Uber for a long time.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: You worked at Netflix.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: You're now working at Google.
50:32
What are patterns you've seen truly stand out software
50:36
engineers be like across these companies?
50:39
SPEAKER_00: At Uber, we had a team and maybe it was special, maybe it was not, but...
50:44
SPEAKER_00: Are there some kind of behaviors,
50:47
either skill sets or things that people do that make them just
50:51
a great engineer?
50:52
SPEAKER_00: Someone that you as a product manager are like,
50:55
SPEAKER_00: I can work with this person at either of these large companies.
51:00
SPEAKER_03: I'll start with the opposite.
51:01
SPEAKER_03: Let's just contradict for a second.
51:03
One pattern is everyone in their gut knows intuitively when
51:09
they have encountered a genius jerk.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: I remember the ones I worked with.
51:17
SPEAKER_03: And 10 times out of 10.
51:20
SPEAKER_03: Remember, we used to have a director, Daniel Isson.
51:22
SPEAKER_03: This is one thing I loved about him.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: And I still hear his voice in the back of my head.
51:27
SPEAKER_03: Right.
51:28
SPEAKER_03: It drags the entire team down.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: They might have brilliance in code and brilliance in execution.
51:35
SPEAKER_03: But when it comes down to it, those genius jerks.
51:39
SPEAKER_03: the net effect is exponentially worse than not having them.
51:44
SPEAKER_03: So I'll just start with that.
51:46
SPEAKER_03: And it's consistent across all the businesses.
51:48
Different businesses have different tolerances,
51:50
but it's consistent across all the businesses.
51:54
SPEAKER_03: Now,
51:54
SPEAKER_03: unpacking that a little bit more,
51:55
SPEAKER_03: there are some people who may manifest as jerks,
51:59
SPEAKER_03: but actually they've never been told.
52:02
SPEAKER_03: And the moment they're confronted with their jerkness, they correct it.
52:06
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, we've had, you know, like...
52:08
SPEAKER_03: certain PMs who may come up abrasive, but actually they mean well.
52:12
And when you actually have a conversation,
52:13
you're like,
52:13
oh,
52:13
the human is a good person.
52:15
SPEAKER_03: They just, they need to work on their comms.
52:17
SPEAKER_03: So I want to also want to, like, that's the second thing.
52:19
So you see these brilliant people who are not very good at,
52:22
like,
52:22
the social skills.
52:23
SPEAKER_03: That is different from a jerk.
52:25
SPEAKER_03: Right?
52:26
SPEAKER_03: And you actually intuitively know the difference.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:29
SPEAKER_03: So that's the extreme.
52:30
I want to start with that because that is so important to
52:33
remember and to state
52:35
SPEAKER_03: because our time on this world is limited.
52:37
And I just don't think anyone deserves to be in an environment
52:39
with anyone who
52:40
SPEAKER_03: makes them feel less than,
52:42
SPEAKER_03: period.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Now going in terms of the good patterns,
52:46
SPEAKER_03: I think the ones I have seen,
52:49
SPEAKER_03: and this is irrespective of,
52:52
SPEAKER_03: I'm talking from VP,
52:54
all the way down to like L4 IC,
52:57
there's a pattern that you see,
52:59
the tracks,
52:59
right?
53:00
SPEAKER_03: So I'm literally thinking in my head of like personas right now.
53:05
SPEAKER_03: One is they never stop learning.
53:08
SPEAKER_03: So my eng partner now,
53:10
SPEAKER_03: she over Christmas was like,
53:12
SPEAKER_03: I feel like I'm not up to speed on like the latest on the models.
53:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to go spend some time and play with it.
53:18
I remember like Daniel Isson,
53:19
he'd be like,
53:20
I'm going to go write some code.
53:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm solving some Lee, sorry, what do you call it?
53:24
SPEAKER_03: Lee coding exercise, right?
53:26
SPEAKER_00: Lee coding, I was building some side projects.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Right, building some stuff.
53:28
And this was a director of engineering,
53:30
a senior director of engineering,
53:31
something like that.
53:31
SPEAKER_03: Phenomenal guy.
53:32
SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't to everybody's liking or taste,
53:35
SPEAKER_03: but I loved him because this was just a human who cared deeply.
53:40
And this is actually a good example of the second category I
53:42
was talking about,
53:42
SPEAKER_03: where the delivery might've come across in a certain way,
53:45
SPEAKER_03: but actually at the core,
53:47
SPEAKER_03: it was just a good human.
53:51
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, nobody hates it.
53:55
SPEAKER_03: No one truly loves it.
53:56
SPEAKER_03: It's what I believe as well.
53:57
SPEAKER_03: But anyway,
53:58
SPEAKER_03: but there's another persona at YouTube now that I'm thinking of,
54:02
SPEAKER_03: a VP,
54:02
SPEAKER_03: been there for a while,
54:03
SPEAKER_03: phenomenal guy,
54:06
SPEAKER_03: Christos.
54:07
SPEAKER_03: And I remember when I joined,
54:08
SPEAKER_03: people were like,
54:09
SPEAKER_03: oh my God,
54:09
SPEAKER_03: Christos,
54:10
SPEAKER_03: you know,
54:10
SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
54:11
SPEAKER_03: you know,
54:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to talk about it.
54:12
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know how I am.
54:13
SPEAKER_03: I just, you know, and they're like, oh, you know,
54:16
SPEAKER_03: like warning.
54:16
And I met,
54:17
you know,
54:17
we're in a meeting and he said something and I was like,
54:19
I disagree.
54:20
SPEAKER_03: And people pinged me later like, oh, no one disagrees with Christos.
54:24
SPEAKER_03: And I just saw a human who was curious.
54:27
SPEAKER_03: And we've gone on,
54:27
SPEAKER_03: like we don't interact that much,
54:29
but he's gone out of his way to literally Google with something
54:32
called spot bonuses.
54:33
SPEAKER_03: It's a weird thing.
54:34
SPEAKER_03: I still don't understand.
54:35
SPEAKER_03: I get it and I'm like, you just gave me money for doing a good job?
54:38
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
54:38
SPEAKER_03: But anyway, but it's not so much about the money.
54:40
SPEAKER_03: It's a token of recognition.
54:42
SPEAKER_03: Literally my,
54:44
SPEAKER_03: you know,
54:45
SPEAKER_03: I have two spot bonuses from Christos because he's like,
54:48
SPEAKER_03: you delivered something that took multiple people,
54:51
SPEAKER_03: tried and failed.
54:53
SPEAKER_03: It took 10 years.
54:54
SPEAKER_03: Nobody shipped it.
54:54
SPEAKER_03: Thumbnail AB, thumbnail testing.
54:56
SPEAKER_03: And you guys, you did it.
54:58
SPEAKER_03: And he saw that.
55:00
SPEAKER_03: And we went through...
55:01
SPEAKER_03: What I just thought was a high friction,
55:03
SPEAKER_03: because he was,
55:04
SPEAKER_03: this guy is like somewhere else in the org.
55:07
SPEAKER_03: And he was like, I am concerned about this for creators.
55:10
Explain to me,
55:11
not his domain,
55:12
but he cared deeply and never stopped being curious.
55:14
SPEAKER_03: He was like, help me understand.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of a mix of caring and curiosity.
55:18
SPEAKER_03: It's curiosity.
55:19
SPEAKER_03: It's never stopped learning.
55:20
SPEAKER_03: And one thing with Christos is,
55:23
vp but you can bring up anything he will go down to the detail
55:27
like he understands
55:28
SPEAKER_03: it deeply and by the way this what i'm describing for engineering
55:33
SPEAKER_03: for UX,
55:34
SPEAKER_03: for product,
55:35
SPEAKER_03: for data science,
55:36
this ability to understand that you're a student of life and
55:39
you keep learning.
55:41
SPEAKER_03: You never get tired of learning.
55:43
SPEAKER_03: So that's one thing I always see.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: They're like,
55:45
SPEAKER_03: even the ICs,
55:46
SPEAKER_03: it's like,
55:47
SPEAKER_03: I just found,
55:47
SPEAKER_03: you know,
55:48
SPEAKER_03: the ones that send you,
55:49
SPEAKER_03: hey,
55:49
SPEAKER_03: I just played around with this new model,
55:50
SPEAKER_03: da,
55:50
SPEAKER_03: da,
55:51
SPEAKER_03: da,
55:51
SPEAKER_03: da,
55:51
SPEAKER_03: check it out.
55:51
SPEAKER_03: Here's my observations.
55:53
SPEAKER_03: Like this yearning for learning, right?
55:55
SPEAKER_03: So that's
55:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
55:57
SPEAKER_00: what I would add is at the engineering level,
55:59
SPEAKER_00: I think outside of the engineering manager is a little bit different,
56:02
SPEAKER_00: but as engineers,
56:04
SPEAKER_00: they're not afraid to get their hands dirty.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
56:07
SPEAKER_03: Learn and get their hands dirty.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: That's a nice way of putting it.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: And they will not just come like, oh, I've learned this.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: No, I wrote the code.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: Here's a pull request that does it.
56:19
Create a bit of a friction where they'll go to a team and
56:22
they'll be like,
56:22
SPEAKER_00: oh,
56:22
SPEAKER_00: we'd like to do this.
56:23
SPEAKER_00: And a team will be like, nah, that'll take us like two, three weeks.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: Can't do it.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: And these people... Are the kinds that are like, why?
56:30
SPEAKER_00: Well,
56:30
either they'll ask why and then they'll get to the point that
56:33
it's not that
56:34
SPEAKER_00: difficult and they'll do it.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes they just do it.
56:36
SPEAKER_00: But they do it in a way where it's not showing off or something.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, I did it.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Can we progress?
56:42
SPEAKER_00: It can be done.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: Or tell me what I'm missing because you're the expert.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: And I knew that used to piss off.
56:48
SPEAKER_03: It could piss off people.
56:50
SPEAKER_03: But it's like, same with my eng partner, Mathilde, same thing.
56:53
SPEAKER_03: She'll be like, I'm sorry, I'm going to call.
56:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to call.
56:56
SPEAKER_03: This is not passing my sniff test.
56:58
SPEAKER_03: Why is it two months?
57:00
SPEAKER_03: And then as they start going in,
57:01
what you find is you'll be able to help them problem solve oh
57:04
because you thought
57:04
you needed to do this extra thing have you thought about doing
57:07
that oh okay like
57:08
there was something we were talking about recently like we
57:10
could just remove this
57:11
this traffic have we oh okay we didn't realize that was an
57:14
option and actually you
57:16
know so that's there's two sides to that one is they're willing
57:20
to get their hands
57:21
messy and you know roll up their sleeves but the other side of
57:24
it which is they're
57:25
SPEAKER_03: also very comfortable with that being done to them yeah
57:30
SPEAKER_03: Like the strongest leaders,
57:32
SPEAKER_03: they're the ones who in a room be like,
57:33
SPEAKER_03: huh,
57:33
SPEAKER_03: I never thought about it that way.
57:34
SPEAKER_03: That's a good point.
57:35
SPEAKER_03: They're willing to call out that they were wrong.
57:39
SPEAKER_03: This notion of vulnerability is your strength.
57:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
57:43
SPEAKER_00: I think they basically,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: they're competent,
57:45
SPEAKER_00: but they don't let the ego get ahead of it.
57:47
Like they kind of put away their ego and they assume that they
57:50
might not be
57:51
SPEAKER_00: competent all the time,
57:52
SPEAKER_00: right?
57:52
SPEAKER_03: And it's the same,
57:54
SPEAKER_03: I think the common,
57:54
SPEAKER_03: it's like,
57:55
SPEAKER_03: because you're a student of life and you're always learning,
57:57
SPEAKER_03: you understand that the more you learn in life,
57:59
SPEAKER_03: anyone who's a student of life knows that the more you learn,
58:02
SPEAKER_03: the more you realize how much shit you do not know,
58:04
SPEAKER_03: right?
58:05
SPEAKER_03: Like just how much you don't know, you know?
58:07
SPEAKER_03: And so if...
58:10
SPEAKER_03: But they have strong conviction, which I'll get to in a minute.
58:13
SPEAKER_03: If I say this is the way to do A,
58:15
SPEAKER_03: they're open,
58:16
SPEAKER_03: but you better have a strong rationale,
58:18
SPEAKER_03: which is where some people buckle.
58:20
Because they're not able to have the vulnerable conversation to say,
58:24
actually,
58:24
I disagree.
58:25
SPEAKER_03: And then, oh, actually, no, no, no, actually, you were right.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: Right?
58:29
SPEAKER_03: So most people are like,
58:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm not even going to defend or challenge them because they have such a,
58:33
SPEAKER_03: you know,
58:33
SPEAKER_03: they're so clear in what is,
58:36
SPEAKER_03: you know the type?
58:37
SPEAKER_03: It's like, you can't challenge them.
58:38
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
58:38
They just thought about what they're saying before they opened
58:41
their mouth.
58:42
SPEAKER_03: Right?
58:43
SPEAKER_03: But they're usually open to being wrong.
58:45
It's just that they've thought about it so much that you need
58:49
to do the work to
58:50
SPEAKER_03: rationalize why it's wrong.
58:51
SPEAKER_03: And they're okay with being like, actually, you know what?
58:54
SPEAKER_03: Good point.
58:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm wrong.
58:56
Like in this case,
58:56
with this example,
58:58
I was like,
58:58
you know what I'm going to do?
58:59
SPEAKER_03: I hear you.
59:01
SPEAKER_03: I understand the feedback you're giving.
59:02
SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's a concern.
59:04
SPEAKER_03: but we may be wrong, right?
59:07
SPEAKER_03: But what I'm gonna do is at every step of the rollout,
59:09
SPEAKER_03: you're not in my chain,
59:11
SPEAKER_03: I don't need your approval,
59:13
but I will send you an email with the metrics that I'm seeing
59:15
and we should make,
59:16
SPEAKER_03: let's have a one-on-one or discussion.
59:18
SPEAKER_03: This is what I did with the VP Christos.
59:20
Let's have a one-on-one on like what you think and maybe
59:22
there's something I'm not seeing.
59:23
SPEAKER_03: And both parties, like my case, I've not been at YouTube for that long.
59:27
SPEAKER_03: This guy's been there for like 15 years.
59:29
Like in his case,
59:30
he also doesn't know,
59:30
like I know what I'm talking about.
59:33
SPEAKER_03: And so at each step,
59:34
SPEAKER_03: Actually, the conviction was correct.
59:37
SPEAKER_03: But the thing he called out made me think about,
59:40
SPEAKER_03: oh,
59:40
these metrics that he's called out that I just need to make
59:42
sure in the go-to
59:42
SPEAKER_03: market we solve for.
59:44
SPEAKER_03: So they are, one, students, they're willing to, they always be learning.
59:49
SPEAKER_03: Two, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands in it.
59:52
SPEAKER_03: And that usually means you actually need to dog food your own products.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, PMs and people out there.
59:59
SPEAKER_03: It is not okay to never have gone through your onboarding flow.
1:00:02
And also,
1:00:04
I'll call out the most efficient engineers who are the ones who
1:00:07
went through the...
1:00:09
SPEAKER_00: At Uber, for example, create a driver account.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: Drove and deliver food.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: Or even just do the simulator and see what the onboarding flow is like.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: Or open the competitors app and see what it takes to sign up there.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_03: And I think especially in big tech,
1:00:24
SPEAKER_03: people get so removed from the product that they just forget to use it.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, how are you going to have empathy?
1:00:28
You're building something and putting it in the world to
1:00:30
millions of people.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_03: You don't care enough to use it?
1:00:33
yeah that that's i feel like that's it's it's it's happening
1:00:38
but i think it's good
1:00:39
that we're talking about it and and then this final piece which
1:00:41
is that you know um
1:00:43
the conviction like they have a strong opinion they have
1:00:46
convictions where they say
1:00:47
like this is the way they're not like wobbly like uh maybe
1:00:51
whatever they're willing
1:00:52
to have skin in the game but they're also willing to be wrong
1:00:55
and be like you know
1:00:55
SPEAKER_03: what
1:00:56
SPEAKER_03: actually, I take it back.
1:00:57
Actually,
1:00:58
I didn't realize that I see Mathilde do that all the time,
1:01:00
like in meetings.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_03: She'd be like, oh, no, I didn't.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's a good point.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I never thought about that.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:01:05
SPEAKER_03: So, but she's also been like, guys, I'm sorry.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_03: My sniff test, my intuition, like they trust their gut.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_03: So, and that comes from years of training.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_03: So those are some patterns.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_03: And then of course,
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: there's some other tactical things like,
1:01:16
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:01:16
SPEAKER_03: they're actually able to communicate
1:01:19
SPEAKER_03: Like you might not be,
1:01:20
SPEAKER_03: I don't mean you need to be able to go on stage and present or whatever,
1:01:23
SPEAKER_03: but you can just talk human to human.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_03: You can have a conversation.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_03: And because it's so important,
1:01:28
SPEAKER_03: even if you're like shy or task turn,
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: you're able to kind of distill what you're saying into simple terms.
1:01:33
And the ones I love the most are the engineers that don't make
1:01:36
you feel like an idiot.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_03: And even at my, you know, I was an engineer.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_03: I think I'm actually good at, you know, technicalities.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: But there's some engineers in the room.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: They just throw out the acronyms and throw out this and throw out that.
1:01:47
And I'm like,
1:01:48
you think this makes you look smart,
1:01:50
but you're actually isolating yourself.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: Actually,
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: power is when you're able to take wisdom and,
1:01:55
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_03: Buddha or Gandhi,
1:01:58
they have these very simplistic quotes because they take
1:02:01
something that's so complicated,
1:02:02
distill it down where everyone can access that information and
1:02:06
that power.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_03: And that's powerful.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: Now, here's the shock or whatever.
1:02:11
Everything I've just described,
1:02:12
I think,
1:02:12
applies to every strong person that I have met.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_03: The designers, the PMs, the data scientists, it's the same patterns.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: They're hungry, they stay hungry, stay foolish, they have conviction.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: I'll just say that for software engineers,
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: what I've seen,
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: do not be afraid to get your hands dirty and code.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: Like...
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: Because there are things that apply to everyone,
1:02:33
but the people who I've seen fail at Teams who look good as
1:02:37
they just talk to talk,
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: but they don't get involved for whatever reason.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_03: But that's the same with designers who,
1:02:44
SPEAKER_03: design leaders who have not opened Figma to actually play with a mock.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:48
My design partner,
1:02:49
Brian,
1:02:49
he literally will mock up something as we're talking.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, I mock up stuff till today, right?
1:02:56
SPEAKER_03: I can write a PRD.
1:02:57
Like now I'm not going to be a hundred percent as efficient,
1:02:59
but I can still do it.
1:03:01
And that is so important because you have empathy for the
1:03:03
person in the role,
1:03:04
SPEAKER_03: not just marching orders,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_03: you know?
1:03:06
SPEAKER_03: So like,
1:03:07
SPEAKER_03: I really genuinely think it's like these skills,
1:03:10
you get better and better by being the student all the time and
1:03:14
by getting your
1:03:14
SPEAKER_03: hands dirty.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_00: One thing that you've done,
1:03:16
SPEAKER_00: which was really,
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: really interesting to me,
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: is you mentored a lot of my engineers on the team.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: And they actually grew a lot faster professionally.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: It was great.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen other PMs do it.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: What are tactics that you suggested to them?
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: And these could be things that an engineering manager could also use,
1:03:35
SPEAKER_00: a tech lead,
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: or even just an engineer who's,
1:03:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:03:38
SPEAKER_00: like a senior or engineer who's mentoring other engineers,
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: because luckily there's more and more engineers mentoring.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_03: What works?
1:03:45
SPEAKER_03: I know I'm going to sound like a broken record,
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: but I do believe repetition doesn't spoil the prayer.
1:03:51
This is a phenomenal example of where the playbook tracks
1:03:54
regardless of the role.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_03: Really?
1:03:57
SPEAKER_03: It's not just engineers.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_03: I mentored designers, as you know, on the team.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I actually even managed the team.
1:04:03
I managed the design team when our design manager went out on
1:04:07
parental leave.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: And then you were swamped and then we wrote some PRDs for you.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was so swamped.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_03: You wrote the PRDs.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_03: Which, by the way, is one of the tactics.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_03: It's like, care so much about the product.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_03: Be a product leader first.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_03: You care about the data science.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_03: You care about the metrics.
1:04:27
So that you are a participant in what are these artifacts that
1:04:30
you contribute to?
1:04:32
SPEAKER_03: It's the vision doc.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_03: It's actively participating in the PRD.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_00: And this would apply not just for product managers,
1:04:40
but for engineering managers or anyone who is either in a
1:04:42
leadership position or
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: wants to be in one.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: You know the Oprah Giff?
1:04:46
SPEAKER_03: Oprah Winfrey Giff where she's like...
1:04:50
SPEAKER_03: It applies.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, and it's not like checking a box.
1:04:55
It's something meaningful because when you now go to that PM
1:04:59
that you helped out or
1:05:00
SPEAKER_03: that busy partner or that marketing partner or that designer to say,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_03: hey,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_03: endorse my promo,
1:05:08
SPEAKER_03: they are like,
1:05:09
filming at the bit to do it because they've seen you actively participate,
1:05:14
right?
1:05:14
So I think caring about the product in a way where you're also
1:05:17
a contributor
1:05:18
SPEAKER_03: actively to like the OKRs,
1:05:20
SPEAKER_03: the whatever,
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: you know.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: So when you say caring about the product and the business, right?
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: Like just caring why we're here, why we're working here.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_03: Actually, we didn't do that.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: You know, product is like three things at its core.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_03: It's the business impact.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_03: It's the feasibility, the technical, you know, what's possible.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_03: And it is the customer experience.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_03: That's product.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_03: That's the definition of product.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_03: So when I say we're all product leaders.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: You never told me this before.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_03: No.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't know where I read that from.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's like some people call it viability, usability, feasibility.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: That's what we used to call it back then.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_00: I like the second one better.
1:05:54
And that is actually why I like to say we are all product
1:05:59
leaders because there is
1:06:00
no product if I come up with a shiny UX mock and it will be
1:06:04
great for the business.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: But engineers are like, this thing is going to take two, three years.
1:06:08
But I think this is just really good to think about because
1:06:11
these days I feel more
1:06:12
SPEAKER_00: and more engineers will become product people.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: Leaders.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: For example,
1:06:18
SPEAKER_00: you leave your tech company,
1:06:19
SPEAKER_00: you have a lot of savings,
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: you start a startup to build a product.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_00: You're a product leader.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_00: You're now a product leader.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_00: You join a team where there's not a product manager,
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: either you become a product leader or,
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: you know.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at linear.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: Like,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: they're multiple founders,
1:06:32
SPEAKER_03: but linear that,
1:06:33
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: we remember working with him.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_00: They hire for product sense and taste for all of engineers.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_00: And the reason they have so few product managers,
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: they now have one or two because everyone is one.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_03: Which makes it that more,
1:06:49
SPEAKER_03: another podcast,
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: but that much more important that I used to say this,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_03: you remember me saying this,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_03: if you take a PM out from a project,
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: there should be an order of magnitude exponential effect.
1:07:04
It's not like you went from nine to 10,
1:07:06
because we've worked with eng leaders
1:07:10
SPEAKER_03: we had people on the team who could do the nine to 10.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_03: They were really thoughtful in sending the updates, in the standups.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_03: So a PM comes in, your goal should be like an order of magnitude.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_03: And so in a world where like, what do PMs do?
1:07:25
I'm like,
1:07:25
if you are going from nine to 10,
1:07:27
you need to go rethink what you're doing as a PM.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_03: It's like, it's exponential.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_03: It's not immediate, but it's exponential.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_03: So going back to like this stuff, I think one is be a product leader.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: Now we all have the same definition.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_03: And that means you understand the business implications.
1:07:41
You understand how the metrics that you move ladder up to the
1:07:44
core businesses metrics.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_03: Like there's a direct correlation.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: We knew how incremental whatever moved Uber's numbers.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_03: I think the second one is treat your career like a project.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_03: What do I mean by that?
1:08:03
SPEAKER_03: Most of the time,
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: I'm not a fan of when people reach out to me like,
1:08:05
SPEAKER_03: hey,
1:08:06
SPEAKER_03: I have this issue,
1:08:07
SPEAKER_03: can you be my mentor?
1:08:09
SPEAKER_03: Sounds horrible,
1:08:09
SPEAKER_03: but nine times out of 10,
1:08:10
I don't even engage because I just don't know enough about you
1:08:15
to help you.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_03: I think mentorship,
1:08:18
SPEAKER_03: and I've become more of a big believer in sponsorship,
1:08:21
SPEAKER_03: which is even more important than mentorship,
1:08:23
SPEAKER_03: I think.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_03: I met everyone on the team at the beginning,
1:08:28
SPEAKER_03: but over time when I became more of a lead of the Money Hub site,
1:08:32
SPEAKER_03: I started meeting what I called,
1:08:35
SPEAKER_03: for me,
1:08:36
SPEAKER_03: those kind of ambassadors of the product.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_03: The ones that I knew were at the top,
1:08:44
SPEAKER_03: top fifth percentile who they could have an exponential effect.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_03: They would come to me and tell me,
1:08:49
SPEAKER_03: something is wrong with the architecture or there's something.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_03: And then I would catch it.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_03: And that's where we did the architecture sprint.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_03: Remember, to redesign the stack.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_03: But that came from a one-on-one walk with an engineer flagging it, right?
1:09:01
SPEAKER_03: Who cared enough to bring that to me.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_03: So...
1:09:04
SPEAKER_03: I start thinking more about sponsorship,
1:09:06
SPEAKER_03: which is like I'm a voice for you when you're not in the room.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_03: I am, you know, helping you sort of get to the next level.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_03: It's not just fixing skills.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_03: It's like we're actively getting you to the next level.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_03: So I start to say, you know, look for sponsorships instead of mentorship.
1:09:24
But your sponsors and mentors should be people who are deeply
1:09:27
aware of your work.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_03: It's not some random person online that you message on LinkedIn.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_03: That's not, you know.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_03: When you have that,
1:09:35
your career becomes a bit more like a project because if this
1:09:38
was a project,
1:09:40
SPEAKER_03: you would check in on a weekly basis.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you'd have monthly updates.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_03: You'd be aware of what the risks,
1:09:44
SPEAKER_03: the results are,
1:09:45
SPEAKER_03: what the challenges are,
1:09:46
SPEAKER_03: what the,
1:09:47
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:09:47
SPEAKER_03: PPP,
1:09:48
SPEAKER_03: progress plans,
1:09:49
SPEAKER_03: problems.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_03: Too many people have that conversation when it's too late.
1:09:52
After you've gotten your rating and they're like,
1:09:54
oh my God,
1:09:55
what did I do?
1:09:55
SPEAKER_03: It's like,
1:09:56
SPEAKER_03: actually,
1:09:56
why don't you have an active forward-looking conversation where
1:09:59
you're like,
1:09:59
SPEAKER_03: hey,
1:10:00
SPEAKER_03: Gergay manager,
1:10:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm aware that I'm not doing X,
1:10:02
SPEAKER_03: Y,
1:10:03
SPEAKER_03: Z.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_03: How can I fix this skill?
1:10:05
What are examples of other people who are doing a really good
1:10:06
job of this skill
1:10:07
SPEAKER_03: that I can emulate?
1:10:09
SPEAKER_03: That is such a more collaborative way
1:10:12
SPEAKER_03: to step up because it comes from a place of curiosity and learning,
1:10:15
SPEAKER_03: which we just talked about,
1:10:16
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:10:17
SPEAKER_03: And then I think the final one I'll say is, this is going to be hard.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_03: And this is why sponsorship is so important.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_03: I've never gotten a job that I applied for.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_03: Never.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_03: I've never gone online, clicked apply.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: Is it because you didn't apply or you got jobs else, the different way?
1:10:40
Somebody is like,
1:10:42
we need to hire her,
1:10:43
recruiter reaches out,
1:10:45
and then I apply.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_03: Every single job.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_03: Now, I have an atypical CV.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm a Nigerian girl.
1:10:53
SPEAKER_03: I'm not a typical profile of like 10 years or whatever,
1:10:56
SPEAKER_03: but I'm not a CV that,
1:10:57
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:10:58
SPEAKER_03: now maybe,
1:10:58
SPEAKER_03: but at the time,
1:11:00
SPEAKER_03: even when they hired me as a PM,
1:11:02
SPEAKER_03: what did I know about product management?
1:11:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_03: But it took people who I'd worked with as a GM who were like,
1:11:08
SPEAKER_03: I know her from West Africa,
1:11:12
SPEAKER_03: engineering brain,
1:11:12
SPEAKER_03: and that was like the folks in,
1:11:16
SPEAKER_03: you probably remember them now,
1:11:17
SPEAKER_03: but they were the ones that literally worked on the bin numbers,
1:11:21
the operations folks who had worked with me as a GM who like
1:11:24
told my hiring manager,
1:11:25
SPEAKER_03: like,
1:11:26
SPEAKER_03: we know her absolute like,
1:11:28
SPEAKER_03: joy to work with.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_03: And that's happened consistently.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_03: Like people come to me like, oh, how did you get on the Lego board?
1:11:34
SPEAKER_03: I met the recruiter five years ago.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_03: Talking about something else, entirely different.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_03: And from just sharing knowledge and talking, when the time came,
1:11:43
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, they put my name in the hat.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_03: So in every opportunity,
1:11:49
if you focus on doing good work and you focus on making every
1:11:54
moment a teaching altruistic,
1:11:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm not like,
1:11:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing this because I want to like get something.
1:12:00
Like it's not like I'm doing this because I want to check a box
1:12:02
so I can get promoted.
1:12:04
SPEAKER_03: I feel like people smell that stuff.
1:12:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they do.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_03: And I just, I'm just like, I see what you're doing.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_03: Like most people do.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_00: I also remember people who were doing this and I look back,
1:12:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:12:12
SPEAKER_00: 10 years later and they're stuck where they were.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_03: And the ones who just did good work,
1:12:18
SPEAKER_03: we talk,
1:12:19
SPEAKER_03: we've been talking about them in this room right now.
1:12:22
If somebody pings me and they're like,
1:12:23
even if they don't know,
1:12:24
and they're like,
1:12:25
SPEAKER_03: would you refer this person?
1:12:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my God, there are people I've said.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_03: I would give Move Mountains to work with them again.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_03: They don't even know.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_03: And it goes both ways.
1:12:33
SPEAKER_03: When people ping me as well, then they're like, hey, this person.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you know what?
1:12:36
SPEAKER_03: That person did X, Y, Z to their team.
1:12:39
SPEAKER_03: These are the good things.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_03: These are the bad things.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure I would choose to work with them again for these reasons.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_03: It goes both.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_03: Careers are long.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_03: And so play the long game.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_03: And so if the long game is ultimately you care deeply,
1:12:51
SPEAKER_03: we've just been talking about people in this room,
1:12:53
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:12:54
SPEAKER_03: We remember them, Charles.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_03: I know what Charles did.
1:12:57
Charles was the one who came to you and said,
1:12:59
you should listen to your PM.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_03: There's something to be learned from.
1:13:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:13:03
Like you could have had another manager was like,
1:13:05
oh,
1:13:05
screw product management.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_03: They always think they're the CEOs.
1:13:09
But if you play a long game and you just care about doing the
1:13:12
best that you can in
1:13:13
SPEAKER_03: that moment,
1:13:14
SPEAKER_03: like if you were in a sports team,
1:13:16
SPEAKER_03: I really like using sports team or musical team.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_03: When you're reading your notes in an orchestra,
1:13:21
SPEAKER_03: you're like,
1:13:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to play the best that I can.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_03: for me and this group of this note.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_03: It's not like I'm doing it so I can become,
1:13:27
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:13:27
SPEAKER_03: you're just like,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_03: there's this love for it.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_03: I come back to this word.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_03: When you do that, I feel like the rest follows.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_03: There'll be people who will stand up to sponsor you.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_03: And then you don't need to be,
1:13:39
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:13:40
SPEAKER_03: think of your career,
1:13:41
SPEAKER_03: be aware of it,
1:13:41
SPEAKER_03: not just forget about it,
1:13:42
SPEAKER_03: but at the same time,
1:13:43
SPEAKER_03: let that not be the thing that defines you.
1:13:45
Because I feel like in a world where everyone is doing
1:13:47
everything for some outcome,
1:13:50
it's just so refreshing to meet people who are doing it because
1:13:52
it's like the right
1:13:53
SPEAKER_03: thing to do.
1:13:54
so then wrapping up the so the three things that you mentioned
1:13:57
the first one was
1:13:59
caring be a product leader be a true product leader yeah so
1:14:05
like all those are
1:14:06
product leaders sponsor people where you can and play the long
1:14:10
game right the the
1:14:12
SPEAKER_03: um
1:14:13
SPEAKER_03: Be a product leader.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_03: Treat your career like a project.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_03: Periodic check-ins.
1:14:19
SPEAKER_03: Don't wait until... You wouldn't talk about a product when it's shipped.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_03: You would talk about it along the way.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_03: So treat your career in that way with your manager, with your peers.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_03: Like, hey, how am I doing in my this?
1:14:30
So check in periodically because people are more willing to
1:14:32
give you low stakes
1:14:34
SPEAKER_03: feedback when it's not like perf,
1:14:36
SPEAKER_03: right?
1:14:37
And finally,
1:14:38
don't go out actively just looking for like mentorships and
1:14:41
checking the boxes.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_03: Just do great work.
1:14:43
because the sponsors will come who will sponsor you when you're
1:14:47
not in the room by
1:14:49
just caring well well ab this was wonderful and just really
1:14:54
good to reconnect i
1:14:55
know i know i know i wonder what our next eight years will look
1:14:59
like wow eight
1:15:01
years i hope you enjoyed this conversation with ab in a
1:15:04
slightly different format
1:15:05
SPEAKER_00: than what we do with most podcast episodes
1:15:08
You can connect with AB on social media as listed in the show
1:15:11
notes below.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_00: For more tips on how to work with product managers,
1:15:14
SPEAKER_00: CT dives into Pragmatic Engineer,
1:15:16
SPEAKER_00: also linked in the show notes below.
1:15:17
SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this podcast,
1:15:18
please do consider leaving a rating on the podcast player
1:15:21
you're listening on.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_00: This helps more listeners discover the podcast.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and see you in the next one.