Hello, hello, so you have to talk in the top of it right talk imagine. That's like a ping-pong ball between your chin and Microphone like that perfect. Okay. See my ears is a sound guy paying off You stand here. I'm gonna wonder can someone confirm whether or not we're in the frame Hey, brina Brina, can you ask Dustin if we're in the frame how to put us in the frame because there's two of us So that they're not looking at like half your face Well as long as it's a good crime if it was half my face Well if they go this way, it's not bad because then they can't see my bald spot, right? So we don't charge for that at a service I Think yours is lovely Amen good to see you a little bit different standing on this side This is Jensen's for time speaking at scale guys long time attendee first time speaking Hey, let's hear it for him. This is scary But see this is what happens when you stick around this conference long enough and you don't step back quickly enough I just want to make sure that we're in the frame because I don't know exactly how to fit us both Hello Hello, and welcome to open source career day 2024 this is our third open source career day We tried this at the beginning of 2020 and thought that we were gonna have one the next year and then you all know what happened So we've definitely improved things over the years. We bring you a lovely Series of sessions today They're gonna talk about a multitude of ways that you can get experience to re-career and enhance your careers Or to be able to strike out on your own create your own business or be a consultant or work Internationally, so I'm very excited about this the sessions we have today We also have career consulting that you're welcome to sign up for if 30 minute sessions that You can meet with a career consultant and bring your resume for review talk about the next things It is that you want to do in your career Ideate a little bit about what's available outside of the bubble that you're thinking in because there's a whole world Available in technology. It's not an industry It is a practice and it's available everywhere every business in the world needs what you have not just the Fang companies So please be sure to sign up for career consulting We have a number of lovely consultants that are all happy to meet with you We also have free headshots that are available today. You sign up with our photographer You'll be able to get a headshot professional headshot done. They'll be lovely You can put it on your LinkedIn put it wherever it is. You need it and that'll help you Look a little bit more professional as you're trying to present yourself in the world and with that I'd like to turn it over to Laurie barfield and Jensen Crawford and have a lovely day. Thank you so much All right, welcome everybody. Hopefully everybody is here for the the right conference How to get experience? When you have no experience one of the things we want to talk about is kind of the Paradox have to kind of like get behind my back to get this to work How do we get experience When nobody will hire me without experience, right? That's always a challenge. Everybody says you need experience We don't have experience, but I need experience We have a solution for you. So what Lori and I have done is We've worked with our R&D department and we've come up If I can get this to work we have to stand over here just so I can get the remote You're gonna need to stand here to be in the frame There we go. We've come up with canned experience that you can bring to your interview You bring the cans of experience to the interview. You say how much experience do you need? I've got all the experience you could ever want Now of course, it's not this easy Glad you realized this was a joke A little bit about me I'm a software executive. I've been a hiring manager for years A nerd.  I use the Dvorak keyboard layout You know, I work with boats. I'm on a boat crew. I'm an instructor. I'm a vessel examiner So done all those things that's a little bit about me and Here's some visuals about You know some of my volunteer work. I'll let Lori tell you a little bit about herself So For those of you that don't recognize me because I'm in uniform.  Also, I'm a member of the Coast Guard auxiliary and I am boat crew and I just qualified for a role called watch stander Which I'm very proud of I'm a natural branch assistant I'm a national branch assistant there and I am my background is and you'll hear things from this perspective I'm a former hiring manager. I was an executive at several startups And everywhere I went I was a hiring contrarian So here are my volunteer lives so the this talk is about how to integrate your volunteer experience with your regular career and How to have them play how to have them enhance each other and my volunteer experience at scale did exactly that for me My leadership I started out just volunteering at scale And then I moved into leadership roles and eventually I had a budget I had several teams of people working for me all of this informed my other career It was which was leading engineers And it gives it gave me things to talk about when I was meeting people for the first time and indeed if I ever wanted to Go back to work I could talk about my work in the Coast Guard auxiliary as a second level manager and with all the formal training I've gotten the auxiliary. I would have a lot to say All right, so we're gonna cover today is talking about how to get experience when you don't have experience We're gonna go through looking at the experience paradox How that fits into the raise me game plan? How to make your volunteer and work connection happen and then answer any questions you have So let's dive in with addressing the experience paradox one of the best ways that we've found to do this is volunteer work and People want to know well why volunteer work? Well for volunteer work you end up with flexibility in qualifications You get hands-on experience Volunteer organizations are desperate for people to help so if you have an interest in learning something They are more than willing to give you the chance to learn it Build some skills for yourself and help out the organization This also gives you the hands-on experience if you're a developer and you want to do cybersecurity if you're You know doing one thing you want to do another All of those things can be done in the volunteer organization and they're very flexible about When and how you can do that? We're looking at the time commitment because I mentioned when The time is also very flexible. They know you have another life It's not a 40 hour a week commitment It might be as little as one hour a week It might be as much as you have if you're in between jobs but the great thing is that they are willing to work with you and Let you put in the time that you have they understand that you've got other things going on This is an awesome way to build those skills, but do it in the time schedule that you have and to me the biggest thing about Going through and working in a volunteer organization is how rewarding it is you know being able to Work in something that I think is really a worthwhile cause and in our case it's saving lives That is really rewarding knowing that we're doing that knowing that I'm leaving the world a better place than I found it I feel that we're all members of a community and we have an obligation as a Community to leave the community better than when we found it So I'm going to give you an example of how Volunteering helped me a re-career So many years ago, let's see if I can get this I Hit the wrong button. There we go Met a young lady. We were dating. I didn't get to see her a lot because she was involved in theater So I started working backstage Learning how to run sound how to do lighting all those things Started doing those things and that led to me changing careers and spending ten years as an audio engineer so I did everything from television to corporate events to arena Shows one of the things they didn't know until I was driving up with Brian of this morning That if you see down here in the corner There's a backstage pass from Barbara Streisand's final tour Brian and I worked on the same show and never knew it. How about that? So that's that's kind of crazy So here's some ways that you can get experience That are unpaid We're here at scale right we all know about Open source projects There's a whole room full of people over in the convention center that would love to have help on their projects This is a great way To do work because it not only gives you the opportunity to look at other people's code, but Hiring managers get to see how it is you interact with other people they get to see the code You've actually committed they get to see how do you interact with the team to resolve issues? All those things are great ways that give you a real leg up over somebody that only has a resume to throw at them This is where Laurie got me last year so last year at very similar talk and My friend over here dragged me into it because she goes oh, I know Laurie we need to stay for this You know it's the Volunteer get involved the you know scale is the largest community run Open-source conference in North America and it's because of all the volunteers that come together and make it work You know and whether it's functioning as a speaker or I know my buddy Paul back there has been doing tech work for years There's all kinds of things that need to be done and it's great to give back to the community And that's after all why we're here at scale We want to learn more about it and the more people we meet the more Networking there is and it's more of an opportunity for us to realize you know Hey, I'm working on this and you know, she's looking for a job over here. Hey, have you talked to Laurie about this? It's an opportunity for us to network meet people and understand things about the industry in addition to just Getting the hands-on experience We could also have fun while we're getting experience My son was involved in cyber patrons. He went through there you go He went through he was a team captain led his team to Silver level for two years And he's actually put that on his resume. That's helped him get work People are impressed by that, but that's the kind of thing that we can do so whether it's going to a hackathon or competing in a Cyber security contest all those things are great to have Create a section on your resume so you can actually record What you've done what you've achieved and that'll be impressive to people Another thing it's important is finding a mentor It's important to have some guidance We often feel lost when we're in between jobs or starting or looking for mid-career going I don't know what I want to do next Having a mentor to talk to provide advice is a great way to learn not only the skills But learn kind of from a roadmap perspective how to lay out your career what you might want to do next Have a sounding board of experience that can can help you with that And if you're going to find a mentor one of the other things you can do is be a mentor Everybody in this room is Qualified to be a mentor to somebody else All of us have something to give to somebody else That wants to learn something that we know and this is a great opportunity To not only share that knowledge, but it's an opportunity for us To gain experience that we can put on our resume saying yes I've mentored three people you know that are Going through and wanted to learn more about software or wanted to learn more about cyber security or whatever it is This is a great opportunity for all of us to keep busy and Show that we know what we're doing and that we're willing to share and work with other people This is the one in Lori drag me into You know that if you go to meetings next you can speak at meetings now it doesn't have to be a meeting this big when Back in the early 2000s. I was working at a at a company was talking to a buddy of mine and We're saying gee it would be great to have like a reading group or something because you know It would be great to like go through and study with a bunch of people the the gang of fours Design patterns book well there weren't any book groups to do that So what David did is he reached out to the LA Java users group and said hey I'd like to start a group and He did and that group even though that David and I ended up leaving the group after a while that group went on for years So not only was he speaking and getting things going But it was an opportunity to create something that carried on and that he could be proud of He later it went on to become CTO of some publicly traded companies has had a great career so That that was pretty exciting for me as well And we have different social circles that we work in Whether it's our family whether it's people that we play sports with Different groups that we belong to our families All those things come together and we should be talking with people about here's what I want to do with my career How is your career going? What can I do to help you? Connections come in unexpected places Mike my son was talking to One of my wife's cousins and discovered that oh hey, it turns out the Steve is the CTO for AT&T My son's a computer science major What an amazing connection because they were talking about work and what they want to do So always be talking to people about what you're you want to do what your goals are and You know what it is that you'd like to do and how you can help those people Now I know We got all got into computers, so we didn't have to deal with people And it's not always comfortable for us So I'm not saying you know go to big meet-ups be uncomfortable or any of that But they're people that we deal with in ways that we are comfortable and just leverage those opportunities to learn more about what people can offer and What we can do for them and then another thing is that Often we're working and then we're not working and it's really important that in that time between jobs That we get busy Not just looking for another role, but how do we volunteer how do we fill that time to show You know that what was I doing? I was building skills. I was taking classes I was a volunteering and building my resume while I was in between those roles that's really a key thing for Putting together more experience showing everybody what we've done and how we're doing it and Then having a more presentable resume to go into that next role, so I've talked a bit about How to address the experience paradox Laurie's going to chat a little bit about how that additional experience fits into the overall raise me game plan and I'm going to hand her the Advance because I get the clicker to but it didn't work out that way I know that some of you are probably already thinking I want that consulting appointment So there are there are consultants out there just waiting to talk to you Let me introduce a little bit our raise me game plan how we recommend it raise me that People re-career or find their next career steps First of all here we go we have four steps we aim we build Reveal and we converge Okay, the first step is aiming where are you gonna go next if you are you you can tune out for a minute If you already know the next job that you want for those of you that don't we have some suggestions Okay, you need to pick a marketable skill set and by that we Raised me we recommend the the skills not just that will get you hired today But that will be useful for your employer in two years. So think ahead Also an appropriate role some people they want to re-career re-careering means you're making a change sometimes Two years ago when I was giving this a similar talk There was a woman that had a master's degree in fine arts and she wanted to be a system administrator She wasn't going to translate directly from the role that she had Was a leadership role working for a museum It wasn't going to translate directly to a leadership role in the technical in the IT world, right? She needed to start over at a more Junior positions so that she would have time to focus on her own skills before she was responsible for other people's output and the second thing to help you aim is to decide where you're going and If you already know the company you want to work for if you already have friends working in a certain place If you already have a direction then you don't need any advice But if you are trying to figure out where to go next here's what we recommend you do look for a strong industry and industry That's on the growth side And look for companies that are growing the reason you pick an industry that is That is growing is because then if the company you're working for runs into trouble or gets acquired Then you can go work for a competitor that's doing even better Okay, and the way I do this and And the way that consultants will show you to do this is we use Google we use LinkedIn we use the free resources out there to do our mining now remember that some of the places that are blogging this Information has something to sell you they want you to buy their stock or they want you to pay for their consulting services But every time you sit down and to work on your career to look for a job to look for a place to go to next to tune your resume Look around and see what the publications are saying about where the growth industries are and which companies are doing better It's the same as true for what skills to go to if you if you have time to take classes These are just random. I'm not recommending these are just from one random googling if You you know, you want you have time to pick up more skills You're not sure what to do next you're not on a project that says hey, we need someone that knows Julia then what you can do is go to the blogs and If you read enough sources Eventually what you see will start to resonate even though they're trying to sell you their classes and things They will all agree on something and that will help give you direction and this is kind of tiny But you know top of the list AI machine learning and and Docker Linux Java, this is not even an open-source site recommending these skills Okay, here's another thing You're doing exactly what people need to do to work on their careers whether you're looking for a role or not You're attending the largest open-source grassroots conference in North America. Here's sponsors these are companies that are doing so well they can afford to help pay for scale and They're here to talk to you and These companies have openings and they are looking for people with your skill sets who are fat passionate about open source You can't get a more targeted Experience than coming to scale and talking to exhibitors on the expo floor So raise me game plan the says so that's where you aim the second step is to build you need to build qualifications that will persuade a Potential employer with an opportunity that you're a good fit for their team And here's what our consultants will recommend you treat the in-between time like a job Jensen already mentioned this Okay, I even mentioned I even tell people to do to take Jensen's tips Make it a separate block on your resume just like it was another employment block give it a start and end date You know a little summary.  I found it a meet-up group make it a whole separate block It gives you something to talk about just as if you were talking about a previous job Don't forget for your open-source projects Include those links on your resume. There's nothing that takes the risk out of hiring somebody more than Hiring manager being able to click on a link and seeing what your work looks like before they hire you and train you The third step in our game plan is to reveal all of those skills that you've either recently acquired Or that you found in your past that you want to talk about that make you qualified And this does not have to cost money and this is important when we're in between jobs And we're also cheap skates because you know, we're open source. So your new skills and experience need to go on your LinkedIn profile You can build your brand and social media. We're all on different social networks, right? Always always be kind of in mental promotion phase be sure to link to groups participating groups talk online And publish your work to open-source repositories So that people can search for it and find it with the right keywords The role you want also needs to be communicated, okay, not just what your skill sets are And in your link, there's a tagline that goes underneath your your name on your LinkedIn profile Be sure to keep that up to date looking for a role doing X in Y industry Another thing that is a really powerful tool is the elevator pitch The elevator pitch is this 32nd pitch that you would give to somebody that you stepped on an elevator with on the first floor and Only had until floor 10 to give them a complete picture of who you are and That you're looking for work what kind of job you're looking for and why you think you're qualified Practice this elevator pitch until it's natural until it's 30 seconds or less Until you're not until it's not an apology for you being out of work It's a very positive forward-looking message about yourself The last thing that that we have heard that people do and I have not had An attendee do this yet, but they say the 90-second video can be a very worthwhile experience It's not just creating a 90-second video Showcasing your work talking about what what kind of companies you'd like to work for next One thing it does is that helps you decide in your own mind what you want to do next It's not just to show other people but the most important tool of all for revealing your skills and your desire for a new opportunity is Your resume So your resume is important How many people have sent out the same resume to a whole bunch of companies? How well does that work how many how many do you send 10? 12, okay So what we recommend is that you use a targeted resume Now How many of you have tried to write a targeted resume? Good, how many found it a giant pain? There you go So what we found is that the painful part and certainly for me is the writer's block of I'm looking at a Job listing I'm trying to figure out. What do they do? What do I write? How do I do this and? So the challenge is how do I get this targeted resume? Well? Raise me figured out that instead of Struggling and writing it's a lot easier To delete things and we're going to talk about how you can do that so that you're not writing You're starting with a master resume and you're deleting the things that you don't need Where we start and building our master resume is? Just an original narrative. It's a brain dump about all the things that you've done in each particular job My colleagues from M gauge and cholera will recognize some of the things that that I did These are not things that necessarily going to go on the resume But it's just to get you to think about everything that you've done. I went all the way back to In my narrative to when I was mowing lawns as a kid To just get everything I've done because we're stuff that I'd forgotten. Oh, yeah, I did this Oh, yeah, I was worked as a dishwasher in a nursing facility when I was in high school Oh, yeah, I worked on this, you know, Wang micro computer when I was in college Going through all those things Kind of helps us look at not just the individual Skills that we have and the tasks that we performed But it also helps us identify, you know, kind of an is there an arc to our career Is there something that looks like we're heading toward is where we're heading toward where we want to go Those are all really good things to have so the next step after having this giant narrative is To go through this and create a master resume and The idea with the master resume is I'm taking each block And I'm putting down Everything that could go in a resume so and the focus on this is on our outcomes not on the activities if You're sending me as a hiring manager if I get a Resume and I get a lot of resumes that say oh well I read the specifications and I wrote code and I debugged Like I know that from your job title that doesn't tell me what you accomplished that think of it this way the difference between somebody saying hey over the summer I volunteered and I took a hammer and I pounded 17,542 nails it was awesome Great tells me about the activity of no idea what they did But if somebody says hey, I worked this summer and I helped build 20 homes with habitat for humanity For low-income housing That outcome that's a lot more meaningful So it's very easy for us to get caught up in the activities because the activities are often what What we think of and what we're focused on but I recommend taking a step back and Really looking at what's the outcome? What's the business value of what we did? What I always tell my team and I'm sure Nicole will attest to this as well to seem back there that Our job is not writing code if you're a developer Our job is not writing code Codes what we use our job is creating business value So understand what that business value is and make sure that that's what's recorded in the resume So as we're going through the master resume Again, I have in my master resume stuff listed all the way back to that first job mowing lawns, you know talking about how I had to deal with you know collecting the bills and invoicing and all that stuff I'm not going to include that but now I've got that master resume from that I Can create a target a resume and the way that I do that is I make a copy of my master resume I Look at the job description and then I just start deleting the things that aren't needed That is so much easier than the writer's block and figuring out What do I say because I already have everything laid out at the end? I've got all the bullet points and now all I really have to do is write that short summary on top So one of the things that we have now that we didn't have two years ago is That we can use something like chat GPT to help give us an idea of well, what kind of thing could I say? you can provide the Job description you can provide your resume and ask saying hey, what's a three sentence summary of why I'm a good fit for this? then you can take that rewrite it in your own words and You now have a very powerful way to have that Information that top section of your resume what you're targeting Why you want to be in that industry and why you're going to bring value to that role? cameras up Where are we going to find those job postings? Remember the job postings is going to be a list of bullet items that the hiring manager has said that you need to Satisfy in order to be qualified for the role You don't have to meet every requirement that they offer But the more you can address in your resume the stronger amount she'll sound like the more they will advocate for your hiring So here are the places to look open source job hub full disclosure They are a media sponsor this year. They're they're helping support. You're sitting here in this chair They we they're providing every exhibitor in the hall free job postings Be sure to check them out because you can go directly to the expo hall afterward and actually talk to the companies that have openings Okay, so I Just want to make sure that you all know how to use LinkedIn you the And then the search in the upper left you see the red oval. That's the search bar You can put other keywords on the search search bar in order to narrow Down the companies and the jobs that you're looking for if you just look for open source You'll find over 1,000 postings and you can narrow it down based on the kind of company or the kind of work situation or even The kind of scholarship you're looking for And our consultants will help you with this if you if you You can stop at Howard's desk on the way out and you can tell them I need to talk to somebody because I need help finding a role Also, you can set up Alerts using key with the same keywords that work for your search. So LinkedIn will go to you and say hey something new has come up So and this is our new job board sponsored by open source job hub.com So the last the Next section in our talk that I would like to address is the volunteer work connection How do you take your volunteer experience and translate that into an effective actionable way to enhance your career? There this is where the rubber meets the rope How am I doing on time? Okay, so that ties in with step four of the raise me game plan for Recreary and that is converging with a company or hiring manager on a potential opportunity that works for you Okay, and first of all Do your homework never talk to an employer or go into a job interview until you've looked at all of the standard sources online and Try to figure out what it's like to work for that company and what the role you're looking for is like to actually fulfill There all these are free Okay, LinkedIn is the gold standard for mining around but a Facebook group almost every big company has its own Facebook group It's very informal Blind is kind of special because only people that have corporate addresses at the company that you're targeting can actually answer your questions cameras up Also There is some programming that I would like to de-program right now in the United States. We have too much emphasis. We have us Just Horrible habit of measuring people by their success by how much money they make Your career is more than that our philosophy it raised me is salary is only one factor Okay, and when you emphasize salary too much in your next position You'll find that you're giving up other things that are that are very important to you so if you target a company and As you work with them you're finding they're not they're not your top salary offer or they're not Offering as much as you think that you wanted originally They may have other things that they can offer you but you need to know to ask for them Here's some creative ideas, but there are probably many more and as you work with our consultants You may come up with them just in real time when you're talking with them But obviously work from home schedule is a big thing If you're looking for if you'd prefer a role where you only have to go into the office once a week or once a month That's worth money Hey signing bonuses or something you can simply ask for especially if you're not working with a recruiter because often they'll have a recruiting budget and And it what doesn't necessarily have to be a per diem for relocating it can just be The argument that you can make is hey if I stay at my company until the end of December I get a $5,000 bonus they can match that Not every company can do this, but they won't do it if you don't ask Flex time training and certifications. There are companies that want to pay for your training They want you to get training you need to ask. What is your budget? How many people did you send to scale last year? so Three slides pay attention Integrate your work your volunteer work with your resume and your interview okay your resume is as Johnson said it's going to Address the job posting, but it also acts like a table of contents for your discussion with the hiring manager to HR Personnel everybody you're working with so be sure that your resume has every talking point in it Don't trust yourself. Well, I'll just bring up this great experience. I have at the Coast Guard auxiliary Running a division with a hundred people in it, right? Don't don't depend on your memory to do that put it in your resume and find a way to tie it in that the hiring manager Will will recognize that it fits the role that you're applying for And if you don't have any other ideas about how your volunteer work matches your next job And if and if you're working with a consultant afterward can't use this angle The reason I did this volunteer work is because it's what I wanted to do when I grew up so Jensen poor Jensen he attended scale for how many years? Since scale Nine scale nine. Okay. He sat in those seats until scale nine and then last year he attended a talk here and I told him I play with helicopters And now Jensen plays with helicopters. Yep, so It gives you something to talk about and you'll see see how people light up when they talk about something they're passionate about That doesn't directly. I don't imagine that you're ever gonna get a job working in the helicopter industry It's such an industry exists, but when he talks about The experience that he's getting in the Coast Guard auxiliary he can say the reason I did that is because I want to go Say lives I want to I want to support people that are getting rescue swimmer training with helicopters And that leads right into the rest of the discussion Okay Second slide on how to tie this in Emphasize what hiring managers are looking for in your vertical So you're gonna go on LinkedIn look up the people you're interviewing with connect with them You can actually Oftentimes find the person you're replacing the person that left you can see what they what their Certifications were where they went to college you can get a sense for what the hiring company was looking for When they ask you questions in the interview don't just answer Oh, yeah, I worked at so-and-so place for three years, or I was a I was a manager I had two people reporting to me Pitch it pitch it concisely but explain why your experience is Matches what you've seen on LinkedIn that that company is looking for Especially for leadership roles, so I don't know how many Mature people we have in the audience that are looking for roles, but when you get up into senior positions There aren't the skill set the technical skill set Becomes more interchangeable you might for ten years be an expert in programming in one language But then when you become a manager and you're running a team They might be using a different technology, but your experience as a lead training people mentoring people Managing schedules rollouts rollbacks in case of emergency dealing with customer support dealing with the higher-ups preparing your monthly reports all of those things those are very generic skills and You do all the same thing in your volunteer work if you work for an open-source project if you work for the Coast Guard Auxiliary those more senior roles offer training and experience. That's very generic You just need to find a way to say it that will resonate with the manager that you're speaking to so another thing that you can do with your volunteer work volunteer multiple different places use your different social spheres and Try to do try to find ways that your volunteer work creates a common theme use the same language Working on multiple projects in my case. I was always a leader so I would I would be a team lead in different in working for different organizations, okay, and that because Repetition is very persuasive When a hiring manager sees the same kind of theme on your resume in multiple places It convinces them that you are good for that whatever that particular skill or whatever that particular particular kind of Experiences that you're trying to promote in yourself. Okay. It's very persuasive So I want to get I'll give you one example real quick I Went to my first startup in the mid 90s 1996 was an ISP a fledgling ISP it was back when AOL stock was eight dollars a share and it was a crappy stock And we wanted to take on AOL. I worked for that company for eight years during the crazy calm boom Where you couldn't you couldn't make mistakes badly enough in production that you'd ever really net lose customers people were just thronging into the internet I started out as a senior system administrator, so we call them back then and Eventually because it was a startup. I became a lead. I became a senior lead And then eventually I had multiple teams working for me in a 24 by 7 environment and during that time I Met people at scale. I was sitting in one of these shares once and then they needed help with something and so I ended up volunteering and Then I ended up leading a team and I ended up recruiting volunteers and a lot of those skills that I use to recruit volunteers and run teams and Handle budgets and grow efforts and be successful and contribute to the larger organizational team a lot of that translated directly to my experience in industry and It happened for me at scale and it can happen for you in the organizations that you volunteer for So when I talk to people about my volunteer experience the next time I want a leadership role, I Can talk about I'm a second level. I've been a division vice commander And I've had through my volunteer work actual professional charm school training. These are things. These are selling points I didn't pay for any of this with anything except my labor and in my goodwill So I can highlight the progression and challenges that I've taken over the years So how many people have volunteered for more than one organization? Okay, did you do the exact of the same thing in both organizations? But was there something in common Did your work progress? So you started in one role, but you ended up with more and more responsibility Almost always if you don't smell bad, you're gonna end up running a team, right? Okay So cameras up John cyclic's not here. He's our he's our resident professor on the raise me team. This is his very favorite link for Helping for Translating volunteer work into an IT job. Oh But do I need to go back? Oh Okay, sorry too fast Just just so you know all every raise me talk I ever give Any talk that that you're gonna see in this room will probably have elements of other previous talks of Feedback we've gotten from attendees And and who have said what works for them and what doesn't people tend to fall us from tech event to tech event And they'll tell us oh hey this this thing you said I use this in an interview in an interview and and it really changed things So we we learn From you and we learn from all the people that volunteer and do the consulting work with us And so this is kind of a compendium of all of all the best stuff So these and other people are very responsible for the content in this talk Why the uniform today? That's a great question. Laurie so we're actually Operating under orders today from the Coast Guard of jewelry the you know asked us to come and talk to you specifically about Volunteering for the Coast Guard auxiliary not just volunteering in general We are involved in a number of things As Laurie said we get to play with helicopters. We go we get to go out Helicopter flies over drops a basket down to our boat We load a dummy into it That that's a crash dummy. It's not one of the other crew members And you know, but we also are involved in other things. There's a photo of me teaching a navigation class We do vessel safety examinations Laurie's involved where you know if you're out on the boat And call and channel 16 because you have an emergency it might be Laurie that you're talking to she's actually working with the active duty Coast Guard Responding to the radio So it's a very exciting Opportunity you want to tell them that they should be here and not calling you No worries Thank you, I'm sorry guys my phone got stuck go ahead Jensen So I was just saying you know, there's there's a lot of opportunities one of the things there's actually for the Coast Guard on Instagram Yesterday there was a post from the Coast Guard saying hey, we're looking for IT people So, you know another opportunity to volunteer get experience and do some things Okay. Yeah, that's how I got started actually They needed security people and I was a branch assistant for pen testing I joined the course guard auxiliary to do nerd stuff and I didn't even know how to tie my shoes and now I'm a boat crew So here's a question for you guys I get this text message out of the blue a couple days ago from my co-speaker here you know Since he met me he's been doing this uniform thing and then he sends me this text message saying hey There's this other volunteer work I do and they're looking for people I'm just wondering if you think if you guys think that that maybe I should take him up on this Apparently these folks are looking for help too. Is turnabout fair play? Maybe it is Okay, so so now that concludes our presentation. Yep. Yep Okay, all right, yeah You want one that we wanted to put to you It depends on and do we have our next speaker in the house Omar? Perfect. Yeah, so we have 10 minutes and I'll just I'll start the yeah I'll start the I'll start the questions. We just have to make sure that he gets set up so With that said Who's first for our speakers? Did you guys upload them scale always tries to do that as long as you give us the slides? Yeah, what we will Okay, so please people let me get over to you So we have a recording of your questions. If not, we'll try to remember to repeat them and I didn't do that Okay, who else right over there. Oh, I'm sorry Where will the recordings be posted Let's see They process the bigger talks first, you know the key the important talks But actually you'll you'll also find previous Open-source career day talks on our YouTube channel Southern California Linux expo from previous years Yeah, just yeah, please do because there are two things we have the videos So you have the presentation and we also separately have the slide deck. So yeah Sorry, the URL is YouTube comm slash at So Cal Linux expo Let's see. Who else do I have here we go? Okay, and people it's uncomfortable Let me hold the mic because that seems to be what scale prefers No, no, you're good. I knew you weren't going to kind of wander off on attention. Here we go Do you have any tips for balancing like a full-time job and a family and also volunteering? It's kind of a lot Lori wouldn't know anything But I think a big, you know part of this is depends on where you're volunteering so when my son was Was younger I was very involved and so I volunteered with scouting so With spending time with him my wife was happy to have us out of the house and doing stuff there So part of it is you can find ways of volunteering just be be creative and realize there are so many volunteer organizations out there what they our kids are involved with that are Spouses are involved in our partners. It's it's very easy and as I said with the time flexibility There are places that would be happy to have somebody just for an hour a week You know as often it's just going we need somebody technical that can help us with just you know Getting this data onto the website when we get the information every month Doesn't have to be necessarily a huge commitment So that's one of the beauties of this and then you know one of things volunteer organizations understand our life Circumstances change and so there's going to be times where you know We've got time available and other times we're gonna I'm gonna have to step back for a few months because and they'll be fine with that Works not so much that flexible Yes, hi, so a question on the hiring manager's perspective of Screen through applicants right we're seeing like hundreds of applicants on a different job postings for a tech I guess how do you guys process through some of the applications and what makes the cut one doesn't make the cut For being seen at all I Think to know a lot of what I'm looking for is Really looking at are you telling me the What you've accomplished right? I'm look you know because There are so many resumes that you know if you ever talks about their activities, they're all gonna look the same Oh, hey, I was using Linux and I was using this and I was writing in Python and I was doing this and that But when you're start talking about your accomplishments, I can see much more easily is this a fit or not and as Laurie said, you know What I really look for is you know Three things in a candidate, you know, are you smart? Can you get things done and are you not going to be a pain in the butt? And and those are really the three things that I'm looking for and if you can communicate that in your resume and You know and the one that's often missing is the Gets things done because if you're just listing what your tasks and not your accomplishments, that's really hard to tell So yeah No, yeah for some reason they did not give us a break between so essentially we're trying to multitask the handoff at high-speed, so Anyway, thank you for coming give another hand for our speakers, please. Thank you very much Check check one two one two check check Can you hear me? One two one two one two. Yeah Check check check check Okay, there we go. It's 11. It's time for us to get started So if you don't have a seat, please find a seat and welcome our speaker Omar Alva Speaking on from LA to Munich embracing global open-source career adventures Check check check. Can you guys hear me? Okay? Perfect. All right Okay, welcome. Thank you for being here Today the talk is gonna be My experience my personal experience Going from LA to Munich first things first Please understand that The views the comments the ideas that I'm gonna express right now today our mind They do not represent the opinions or policies of my current past or future employers, please this is just for to inspire you guys for educational purposes and Please do not consider it this one as a legal advice With that out of the way and we hit before we start Can I ask please raise your hand? How many of you are actively looking for a job? How many of you are just about to give up? All right, okay. Yeah perfect so The power of global exploration what happens when you don't have a job you have Your resume you are sending resumes all over the place and nothing happens Something I can tell you is and I think Laurie mentioned that one briefly There is something out there other than just LA or perhaps just California, right? When you guys embrace that global opportunity There will be doors Ready for you to be opened and with those doors will come different perspectives different technologies and different cultures is Normal trust me is normal to be afraid When it was my time and I had the chance To move to to Europe I Was scared at that time. I was going through my green card process And I had the opportunity to move to Europe and I didn't know what to do It's okay to be afraid But it's not Okay to be afraid for too long. I remember one night because I was thinking What to do should I move should I stay what to do? What I did is I took my car and I started driving the PCH all the way to Malibu Just to clear my head To really understand what to do next with my life as you guys can imagine Well, let me give you a little context background about myself I'm not from here. I'm from Mexico. I Came to the to the States. I've been here. I was here for over 12 years Working Going through my green card process and out of the sudden Live changes in and like a Europe is calling you Sorry, but what? Yeah, there's an opportunity for you to move to Europe But I'm in the middle of my freaking green Green card process something it took me 12 years to achieve and actually I remember Just driving In thinking am I really really gonna leave everything behind Everything that I know as of today Just for an opportunity over there and something I can tell you guys is The most difficult decision is always To make the to take the first step the first one just that little step Should I do it or not? That step it took me five months In my case was five months that day and night I was thinking I need to go to work Back to to to my apartment and thinking about But I'm going to do all right So I took my chances, but they don't come free there issues Unfortunately for some for most of the those issues there are solutions and this is something I want to tell you guys Transitioning from one location to another Is not that simple I already a couple times it brings problems one of them The language barrier cultural shock home sickness bureaucracy in tax related I'm I'm gonna describe a little bit more about each one of them so Moving from Mexico to the US the first challenge the language The second one Culture on shock. I knew a little bit the about the culture over here, but it's not the same And then even when it's kind of next door Homesake yeah bureaucracy Try going to the DMV to get your your driver license. You will understand is It took me one time. It took me eight hours. It Took me multiple times just to get my driver license Despite the fact that I have that I have my all my paperwork why because bureaucracy they were asking for more and more and more documents all right, but How can we overcome? those challenges One of the things that I can tell you is Let's just move to the next one So I decided to move To Germany I decided to take my chances First of all, I do not speak German whatsoever. I do not the companies that they I was interviewing with They were okay with me in English. Just the business language was and is English right everywhere So far what I've seen in one of the things I can tell you is you should embrace the new culture and that requires for you to adjust to adapt to Understand that you are not home anymore That things will work in a different way Right for people. They are not really from here that we came to this country We cannot understand that but for a lot of people the the the entire reality is this Sometimes it's complicated to say hey, you know what? I'm gonna go to a completely different place They understand they speak a different language and Don't take me wrong in Germany, I can talk to people in English and They will understand They speak very English than me, but of course I Feel in the need to talk to them in the same language out of respect right But there's a challenge The other one is The other thing that I've been doing is find the new friends when I came here I started to get to know people and some of the people are here in this room They turn to be my family my new family right When I moved to a different continent I Lost that I was my myself. I have my job and nothing else So one of the things I started doing is I needed to find new friends. I needed to connect to people That will really help me to understand more about the culture and not to feel lonely and Exactly the next one staying busy That's really really really important for me. Why? Because as I said you go you do your job and after that what is it? If you are by yourself at home, you have a lot of time To think about how lonely you are how far you are from home And what I did was I was working as long as I could and after that I had different activities So I was always always always busy All right, one of the things that it was helping me a lot is Even before I decided to move over there. I Was doing an intense research About Munich about Germany And even with that research and everything There were a couple of surprises once I got there and I'll tell you one one story. I Started working over there And I got my my first paycheck and I was like What's the first paycheck and like where is the rest of the money? Like and I went to my manager and say hey, this is not what we agree upon and he said what do you mean? This looks this one looks like half like No, no, that's correct. What do you mean? It's correct. It's almost half And he said well Do you take a look at your taxes? Oh It's 42 percent. Yeah, that is correct That's Germany for you guys They pay we paid 42 percent of your salary in taxes and Nobody told me even the freaking research that I did they didn't tell me once you get your first paycheck It's 42 percent. Oh We're like, okay. Okay. Thank you There are pros and cons There is a reason for that we'll explain a little bit I will explain a little bit more later, but Honestly doing a really intense Research ahead of time what it helps you to understand more or less what to expect especially in a completely new Country in the new continent. All right. Now. Let's talk about a little bit about myself How did I get there?  And I bet whatever you guys want that I could apply to any company anywhere on the planet and Because of this guy We can get in It's amazing the power of this guy It's just unbelievable whatever we have been able to achieve. Thanks to Linux. That's the reason why I'm here That's the reason why I was able to move to the States That's the reason why I've been able to move to Germany That's thank you. Thanks to to Linux Storbles I told him when the day I met him I Met him because my previous company gave me the opportunity to travel to conferences in one of those conference I met Linux Storbles and I told him thank you. Thanks to you. I have what I have Thanks to the community Because they are helping the the product to to keep going I always had mentors I Was lucky enough to have mentors and I always had had mentors in Mentors in Linux the open source community all the contributions They can open Amazing doors Sometimes the problem is we are so comfortable in a specific area that we don't want something else and Unfortunately, I see it in This last couple days that I've been talking to some of my friends They are struggling over here a little bit because The IT market is not the best right now Is it gonna come back to the numbers where we used to see I don't know But there are chances there are opportunities in different places guys And if you know Linux I'm telling you There is a company out there potentially outside of LA potentially outside of California potentially outside of the US potentially outside of This continent that's looking For someone like you and trust me. They are really really really happy. They will be extremely happy to have you It's amazing how Germany gave me the opportunity To work with them. I was I was at my desk one night My manager came to me and said Omar Grab yourself.  No, no, no, I want to know exactly who you are. I Want to understand exactly what What can we do to help you? I was there I arrived to Munich September 1st 2019 November 10 2019 my manager came to came to my desk and he said Omar The company wants to sponsor your citizenship Wait, I just got here just let me I mean, thank you first of all, thank you, but Let me just understand exactly how everything works. Just think about it think about it like wow I've been here only two months and somehow The company wants to keep me here not just in this company but in a freaking country like alright That's nice As I said, I have nothing against the the US at all. I love this place. That's why I'm here. I Love the US. I Spend a lot of my professional career here. I Learned about Linux here. I Met amazing people here. I Worked with PhD guys here. I worked with kernel developers here, but they are all their opportunities. I Took though that knowledge and I'm able to use it somewhere else In they are okay with me over there All right This one Laurie already told you guys about your resume how to build a strong resume. I'm not gonna get a lot of in details but something I can tell you is I've been trying to hire people In Germany and when I was here when I was here I Worked for small company called Dell computers and I was the team the team lead and I was Hiring people so I got a lot of resumes and I can tell you something I can I saw with those resumes is I Was just looking for specific keywords like okay, okay this one this one And at the moment I brought them to an interview. I realized that some of them they just put Buzzy words in the the resume and but they didn't have the experience and that for me was a no-no and immediately was Sorry next Sorry next so my piece of advice to you guys is if you're gonna put something in your resume It's because you really really know about that As simple as that The other thing is yes Mentioned over here. I mean these days Let's just forget the name chat GPT But AI in general use whatever AI solution you are you feel comfortable with and Build a really strong resume, right? Don't don't put too many things because what one of the things I also learned I also learned Hiring people is I immediately just take a look one page That's something one of my HR friend told me one page resume And put the most important things not every single thing they mentioned a targeted Resume in the previous session actually, I Didn't know this but in Germany No, you don't you should not just do that You need to add a letter Asking or telling a story about why do you want to join the company? I Didn't know that so I needed to come up with something to tell the company a could you please hire me? Also something that is I don't think it's too common around here when you get rejected You send an email saying thank you for your consideration over there Thank you for taking the time to review my profile or take a look at my resume and Thank you for whatever so even if you are rejected you should say thank you All right, so let's see You guys made the decision I'm gonna take my chances somewhere else you guys did the analysis and research about The place that you you want to go next and Now you have your your resume Already is AI up AI approved and you're just ready to break into the global IT You have one more thing. There is a huge advantage. It's a well-known Everywhere I go That the in the US the tech industry is really strong They that By the simple fact that you guys put it that you are guys are coming from the US is there You don't need to describe that. Oh, yeah, it's a there is a nice tech industry in in the US. It's already there Just by saying I'm coming from Silicon Beach Everybody knows about Silicon Valley, right? Got it, but also Silicon Beach is a thing and the proof of that It's all of you The tech industry over here is really strong So you guys can automatically use that one that opportunity. I'm not I'm not saying to to show off I'm not saying that I'm saying by the factor at the moment that you want to to put your resume somewhere else The fact that you are saying that you are coming from LA it helps Because they know the California is a is a really good place to find people with your skills. Okay now Negotiating and interviewing on a global scale. Oh boy, as I said when I did my interview I interview with three companies over there Three big big companies something I can tell you another piece of advice Be honest Be completely completely honest There is not a single company that is looking for a perfect guy There is no company that is looking for a perfect guy. I'm sorry. No, that's that's wrong What they're looking for what they the hiring managers want is somebody they can take and they is gonna grow with the company itself Somebody is able to adapt and grow with the company. Okay Be honest because in in my in my interview I Had different people from different departments and they were asking me questions and some of those questions I didn't know the answer Even over here when interview In my previous company, I didn't have all the answers. I say sorry. I don't know the answer to that one But if you give me time, I Will take a look research. I'll come back to you In that honesty is really really appreciated Transparency one of the things that I said from the very very beginning where I interview over there look To be completely clear, I don't speak German and the other thing is I Need a work visa to be here All right, just I'm gonna put it up here for you to to understand So it's there are no surprises for you. There are no surprises for me and actually We understood each other There I was bringing some set of skills that they were looking for and also they were looking for Somebody to take care of the Linux infrastructure at that time And guess what it was perfect because they said oh The work visa nor a problem German with English you are more than enough. It's perfect but Then is when I said and this is the next part and actually Laurie said it Questions This is very very very good advice. I ask can you guess? Help me to learn German I said absolutely They paid for my school and I said, um Guys. Yeah, but so I'm in Los Angeles So I Have a car Can I bring over here? Sure. They took my car They ship my car over there. They send people to my place To box everything to pack everything all myself and take it to Munich So the last couple days that I was here in NLA. I was sleeping on the floor with just one blanket Because the company took everything My car was already on the way to to Germany And in my pocket was only one-way ticket to Munich and again without knowing exactly what to expect. I Didn't I don't I still don't speak the language. I mean I understand a little bit more I Can go to a restaurant. I can go to I can go to the grocery shopping, but Establish a business conversation with somebody. Oh, no, no, no, no, no Immediately I will switch to English immediately. So Ask questions Ask questions and during this negotiation I Did this research about the living cost and I'm gonna tell you why the expectation for most people is I'm gonna get the same salary that I'm getting in California. Let's start with that If you go to places in Europe in Germany In Munich Please do not Expect the same salary Why and I'm gonna tell you why when I did my research How expensive is LA compared to Munich I found out that is Los Angeles is 20% more expensive than Munich And if you do your math right that has to be replicated in your salary. I Was able to negotiate a couple of things here and there why One of the things that also they don't tell you until you are over there most places they will pay for overtime over there my Business hours were from Whenever I wanted to start Until and I needed to work only 7.4 hours per day. I'm not allowed to work over the weekend It's not that I don't want to Which I did a couple times It's considered kind of illegal to work on Sundays and holidays over there I will tell you a story So I was really into I don't know in this zone and I was just doing a couple things and It was on a Friday Afternoon and the guy is like my manager from UK He's like, oh, yeah, we have this issue. Can you get it down? Can you fix it? Yeah? Yeah, well, it takes whatever it takes. All right, and he went on but on over the weekend It happened to be that there was an UK was a normal day Monday But in Germany was a holiday Monday But in Germany was a holiday. So I was working the weekend and Monday Being being being being there was an alert My manager came to me on Tuesday and said Because I put in a system we have a system You can put your hours That's how they track how many hours so they can pay overtime and so on and so forth And I put my hours. Oh, I on Sunday. I work this hours and on Monday I work this hours, okay On Monday early on Tuesday early Tuesday, my manager was on my desk and like a mark Did you work over the weekend? Yeah, I needed to fix a couple things. They told me to do it. No matter where it will take That information went to the to HR and it went to the working console We have a union and basically the union complained to HR complained to my manager and my manager complained to me Why did you work on Sunday? Why did you work on a holiday? Long story short guys. I needed to remove those entries from the system And I got a pile of cash and instead of that because basically It's illegal. It's completely legal to work on Sunday and month or or a holiday and Besides that they told me don't do it again. Oh, you will get fire. I was about to get fired For working over the weekend something over here. It's like normal. I Used to do over here and what like it's all right. It's okay And over there was I was getting in trouble because I was working over the weekend Well, like, okay, I understood And that brings me to the next topic, which is the the law Please if you pick a different country In a different continent, please take a look at the the labor law Because it's different absolutely different Again, I'm gonna give you the example about Germany if I want to quit My contract which is by the way is in German and English my contract will tell me well, guess what? You can quit But only at the end of Every single quarter And there is something called a termination period of three months three Over here what happens? You go to the office or sometimes you get online and you cannot access the slack or you don't have access to the email They're like what's going on? Oh, yeah, by the way You're fired over there is like It's extremely extremely difficult for a company to fire you over there very very very difficult They need to give you like a warning and Then a second warning and then a third warning and I think that the period of time between one warning and another one It's like six months something like that So maybe by the time they go to the third warning they already forgot what was the first one about so it's like three months so Now that he comes to the the next the next thing why three months? This termination period The companies use it for you To do a knowledge transfer to somebody else And everything that you have been working on to transfer to some to somebody else So everything is in place before you leave It's good and it is not My take on this Most people when they're ready at the at the time that they want to quit. They're already checked out Even before that but it's still because of this termination period They still need to be there for another three months most people what they do is Most of the time this three months they take vacation They take juice vacation and that's it. I'm done period Vacation is another thing by law in the I think at least in Germany. I cannot say the entire EU but in Germany I Have 33 business days Vacation per year Plus the company will give you five personal days Plus I have overtime one year two years ago I accumulated six weeks Vacation and I took them in one all at once 36 weeks I Cannot tell you how crazy it was for me to take six weeks All at once. I didn't know what to do anymore Seriously, I didn't know what to do But those are the kind of things that nobody will tell you guys Nobody will come and explain to you. Well, actually you guys already have that knowledge What you want is you want to use that knowledge, right? There are companies somewhere else. They're looking for that knowledge maybe It doesn't have to be LA and again, I Do miss the weather. I miss my friends. I Miss The American culture. I do not miss the traffic. I do not I Do not for the love of me You know, what are they called traffic over there five cars in front of you five Five cars, it's like, oh, there is traffic today like seriously They have Excellent public transportation. I don't need to use my car. I take my bike to work. I Take the train. I can take the train to visit my my family in Switzerland or in Spain And it's totally fine. It does work. It's safe. It's secure. It's on time. It's fine So Everything is a trade-off Everything what do I miss as I said before my friends and their the the weather is cold It is cold I'm not gonna lie. It's cold. Germany gets pretty cold, but I should not complain. My brother is in Canada No offense to the guys in Canada, but My brother is in Canada and gets really really cold over there No, but Scotia by the way, so it's it's freezing cold Over here over there we get to 2010 Fahrenheit My brother gets all the way to 30. So yeah, all right. So let's recap You took the first step. You said yes. I Want to do this You research you did your research you did your homework and said yes Europe is the one the next one and it doesn't have to be your by the way It can be Canada. It can be somewhere in Latin America and can be H8 can be it doesn't really matter the place doesn't matter What it matters is you're doing your research. You took the the the the first step and you you made a decision You polished your your resume your practice interviews. You have everything over there You found it a nice company. You got the the position All right The next challenge and now over here is when I give you a little bit more context As I said When I was in Mexico, I was working as a sysadmin System administrator over here. I was doing sysadmin straighter at Verizon and then I got a chance to To do performance engineering that's when I was working with the other kernel developers and Then from there I got the opportunity to do cloud at that time was AWS and All that I put in my resume Verizon paid for my I did a certification data science University of Washington When I was at Dell they paid for my master's degree. So Right now I Was the leading a team as I said when I was at Dell computers I Was the the team lead for the US team? We had people in Romania. We had people in India We have people in Mexico and we have people here in the US In Germany, I was leading a team of five guys from Germany And this is the next challenge Remember when I said about cultural challenges cultural shock.  Why is the mentality just work work work work work and for them like a Yes, but no slow down please You need to slow down Like but but we need to get it done. Yes, but I need to go this week I need to take care of my family. I need to go on vacation. I need to go skiing I need to I need to like wait, but what about this one? It can wait and That's something that you also need to understand over there Everything can wait Nothing happens people go on vacation for a month and nothing happens And you still have a job You still have a job you can have a nice family You can have a nice vacation you can have a nice salary and you do have a job so Right now Again, I understand the situation is not the best over here. Is it because we don't want Or because we just want to feel comfortable because we like what we know at the moment that you force yourself to expand To see new horizons To grow a little bit more is that is the moment when you will realize. Oh, actually LA is not the only place It's a very very nice place But it's not the only place. I cannot believe And please again guys forgive me for this one, but I cannot believe that there's not a single company Within California or within the US that is not looking for somebody like you if that's the case again if that's the case What happens if you send those resumes outside Outside of the US. I did it. I Got the job from here through LinkedIn in Germany and I went there. I flew over there to have a personal interview on site with three different companies But the time I came back I had three different contracts Each one of the companies that I interviewed with they sent me a contract Signed it They offered me a position over there With one interview again If I can do it sort of you Sometimes it's just It takes a little bit of effort just to take the first step To make that decision Again, I'm not telling you move to Germany. I'm telling you explore new horizons Expand it understand that this is just bigger than just LA or California Once you do that you will see Things in a different way if you are gonna change Culture the other piece of advice that I can give you from the bottom of my heart is Try to assimilate try to embrace the other culture is a little bit painful sometimes to see people I'm not saying you guys people they're coming from the States And they just want to show off like yeah, I'm here to roll Like no no no no no no hold on hold on Because the mentality is is I understand because I've been here, but okay Hold on there are a couple of things that you need to understand to be here Right and one of them is we are equal. We're all equal. It doesn't really matter the position if you understand That there is no capitalism over there. There is not They don't you don't have to get the latest of the latest iPhone or the latest of the latest laptop To be happy over there That you have less salary But more happiness More free time for you and your family Then is when you're starting to reconsider your choices like huh? When you understand that it might be cold, but all you require is that just an extra jacket or a bigger jacket Then you start to appreciate the season because the snow is nice So all it takes is a little bit sometimes a different mindset a little bit of adjustment if you can achieve that by all means I will encourage you to do it Just do it. Go ahead and conquer But there are whatever is waiting for you outside this place and with that I Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening Okay, we're gonna have time for questions But we are also gonna have to multitask here. So give us one second Is it okay All right, let's see and my indispensable Partner here will take the questions Any questions? One thing if you would please make sure that we have the mic so that the recording has your questions so that we can make sure that the It's maximally useful to people So and you know you can raise your hand to make sure that we can efficiently make try to make sure everybody gets to ask Anybody so if there are no questions still I'm gonna be over there on one of the tables if you guys have questions Yes, I Don't know if you already answered this but my quest I have two questions one was what was the hardest thing about your transition to working in Germany What was the most challenging thing for you? The biggest challenge for me was to understand that I'm not Longer in sunny, California That has been the the biggest challenge for me Other than that the people have been nothing but nice to me even when I was here consider that I as I mentioned it before I came here with a work visa and I what I made it all the way to green card and then over there I started started with a simple Passport and now I'm going through my blue card, which is the equivalent of work visa and people are just nice to me is That's it, but yeah the weather and and then what is your most favorite thing about being there? Okay, I'm gonna be Completely honest One of the things I really really appreciate is how How you can encounter? Multiple cultures in one small area. Europe is tiny. It's tiny is almost the size of Mexico Europe the entire continent of Europe is almost the size of Mexico in Even with that you in you can find a lot of people in the people I talked to They don't speak just English or German. They speak four or five different languages Because they have to communicate with the neighbors And I mean no disrespect, but most of the people that I talked to here is Yeah, English got it hands down English But what else so I really really really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to people in English And I'm from time to time like a teach me a little bit in Italian teach me The the my friends that I played soccer with they are from Italy most of them. They are from Italy My friends I have I have family in Switzerland. So they have Swiss German So it just that interaction with other cultures is just mind-blowing That's it All right, anything else? Yes What was your what's triggers you travel to Europe and what was triggering your decision to to stay there and find a job All right, I mean maybe you stole it, but maybe it's like some homies. No worries. It's all good Yeah, I like to travel even before moving to Europe. I used to travel to win in Europe Asia and so on and so forth The decision for me to Try to get a job in Germany is because I met somebody I Made a person my girlfriend is from Germany and I told her Move to to LA come with me and she's like Come on and at that point I was a little bit arrogant and like oh come on It's LA come on is the US and she was like and she told me Spend one Christmas with us Just come to to Germany and spend one Christmas with us and after that just leave the experience You make a decision long story short. I've been there almost five years Yeah All right, I think we ran out of time, but thank you so much you guys. Thank you All right. Thank you everybody for coming for that great talk in about Seven minutes we'll have our next talk What happened here? Okay, we'll have that set up and so please stick around for Where did it go looks it looks like it got backed out, but I think this is your presentation right here You know what I don't like Did something a little weird here, and I don't understand why it's doing what it's doing Hello everybody I Have a very important question. I need to Take a survey here and this could this could move mountains Okay, in a hundred thousand years like this could be a butterfly effect My wife said you should wear a professional looking shirt white shirt button down Just look nice and clean talk about being a manager And then she threw me off my game because I'm headed out the door and she's like wait wait wait wait Maybe you should just be yourself and and she said she said maybe you could wear old blue So I figured I'd leave it up to you all We have this wonderful blue so by way of just applause or a little noise or whatever We're gonna vote if you would like me to just go with the stuffy white button-down shirt by way of applause Option a who would prefer option a Okay option B if you think it would look kind of sweet if I very briefly ducked into my Hawaiian shirt here and Put on old blue by way of applause who would be up for option B? Fantastic. All right, by the way, I want to give a very warm Thank you to this gentleman here Dustin Lawrence I am legally blind and there was a little bit of a miscommunication I can't really use laptops and so there was no device waiting for me and bumped into him yesterday in this room He spent an hour plus with me troubleshooting and we're ready to rock So please give a warm round of applause for Dustin He rocked it. I'm gonna turn I'm gonna turn the mic over to him He can do a little intro and I'm gonna go make myself look good I think the vote was very clear probably based on the idea that we are pretty sure We'd like to have a manager who's cool enough to wear Hawaiian in the office. I Worked for a while at a place that started playing with Hawaii Hawaiian Friday and They ended it before I had the chance to try my ultimate Friday Telecon outfit. I bought I did extensive research to purchase the worst Hawaiian shirt that ever existed and Each telecon I would add a piece of that But I never got to the parasol hat, which I still own and I'm lying in wait to use Yes, part of what you're seeing is that someone decided That we should have insta in this room instead of 15 minutes between the end of questions The next speaker so we can get them all set up someone decided we didn't need any time But we parallelized thanks to them sending me a Partner Sure Excellent This guy bounces around a little bit. So let me know if I fade out. I want to do the recording justice All right, and so we can get started I Give you our next speaker Larry give him a big round of applause and we're ready to go Excellent All right big important question today. Yes. Is this falling? Looking weird. All right, cool Fantastic and the sound is great. I'm just gonna try and not pull it off too much Thank you so much for showing up to my talk here. This is a this is a big important question for your careers Even in fact the gentleman Casey over over there last night. He and I were even chatting I think he reminded me that one of the reasons sometimes people become managers because no one else would step up to do it So we will talk about all sorts of good stuff the framework for making the decisions first I want to cover a quick piece of logistics. I am legally blind. So if Like say Taylor Swift comes in make sure I won't see that. So make sure like you get her autograph for me Ask ask her if she needs a guitarist But seriously, I may not see you raise your hand You can interrupt me with any questions anything you want to ask if you want clarification If you want to tell me my mic slipping and I'm not coming through so let's let's get rocking on this Yes Well, if you want to ask question, I will I will be his eyes. So everything should work smoothly and my goal is to If you could all help help a blind guy out and just kind of keep an eye on the clock I would love to leave a minimum of 15 minutes for Q&A, which is 35 minutes past the hour This usually generates a lot of good a lot of good back and forth So I may call out to Dustin or you guys for a quick time check And if you could just let me know what time it is and I'm trying to go by my phone here, too Okay, let's talk about a few terms here I did not realize that some people don't know what I see means I see stands for individual contributor if you are Working in a capacity such that you have no direct reports. You're an IC Sometimes people like to think of it as the leaf nodes on the tree. I'm not a big fan of it But if that helps you out there you go Contrary to that for the purposes of this talk We're gonna use the terms engineering manager or people manager or manager interchangeably This is the other side of the coin. This is if you do have one or more people Officially reporting to you on paper in the org chart officially is kind of important there Because that's not to be confused with tech lead. Many of you have worked with tech leads or you've been tech leads Tech leads tech leads are involved with leadership of the team somewhat they tend to focus on technical direction Vision they will often work with the people manager of the team I can tell you I love my tech leads and I work extensively with them. They're involved in perf reviews to some extent I get their insight their input. I bounce my ideas past them. So tech leads are a wonderful group of folks Kind of randomly inserted here, but I use it several times in the presentation I want you to be aware of what the term Intern program means a lot of companies like to recruit new talent They like to go to colleges. They'll often have a campus recruiting program the intern program at your company is simply Usually sponsored and run by HR and it's a way of bringing college talent a lot of times They haven't graduated yet to work at your company as a trial experience You all know what interns are the intern program is what HR sets up to get this continuous pipeline of folks Into the company as interns and hopefully if they're young bright talent and they like your shop. They choose to work there full-time Okay, should you become a people manager big question of this talk the whole reason you are here I Thought a lot about this and we are going to apply what it is known as the MMO framework. I Cannot tell you how much I wish I was about to talk about Eve online or World of Warcraft. I love me some MMOs, and I think a lot of you do too. We are not talking about MMOs, unfortunately We are talking about something you have all heard of though Motive means opportunity This does not mean we are going to solve some crimes Yet growth mindset We are going to answer the question should we become a manager So in this framework the talk we're going to do now is basically broken up into three sections Motive is the root of the word motivation Do you have the right reasons? I also feel is the most important category So we're going to lead off with this and I'm going to walk you through Some possible internal conversations you've had with yourself or you could have with yourself Means this is the meat of the talk. It goes last. This is do you have the skills and the traits? Are you cut out for it? Opportunity when you hear the word opportunity in the sense of career and job hunting you think is there an opening Is there a job a recruiter calls you cold calls you on the phone? What's the first thing they say? I have an amazing opportunity for you We're actually talking about something different in this Opportunity is going to be an objective set of circumstances and a lot of yes or no questions My wife will tell you I am a very Black and white zeros and ones binary thinker So I have I will give you a series of yes or no questions that will tell you if you have a good environment in circumstances to become a people manager So let's get started right away on motive. Let me check my time. Okay, cool. We're doing great Why is always the most important question and if any of you? Now or in the future are thinking about becoming a manager I want you to have a conversation with yourselves find someplace quiet maybe go on a trip for a day I actually look at myself in the mirror and just kind of have a silent conversation or I picture a friend's voice or my Dad's voice in my head my mom's voice What would they what would they say about what I'm thinking? It is surprisingly easy as human beings To delude ourselves. So let's go through. I want to go through here a lot of the common reasons Why we might want to become managers and this is a quick list of bullet points Find a spouse find a good friend a parent someone you really trust my wife Amanda is absolutely phenomenal For calling me on my BS like I'll tell her like I want to do this and here's the reason I want to do it and She's a scientist and a project manager So she's amazing with the logic and she will blow my logic out of the water in a loving way in a very supportive way I love when she tells me I'm wrong. It's it's fantastic Bonus points when you talk to this confidant if they Have been a manager before I have good friends. Their names are Jason and Steve and hopefully they'll see this talk They've been a big influence and a big help because they have tried Trudden whatever the word is they have gone the path before me. So they're a big help and Then do your homework read books read blogs There's an amazing amount of leadership books out there and you don't even need to read it for the how to do it just Read it for the stories read it for the oh is this something I would enjoy It's it's I did a lot of that before I became a people manager and it kind of turned me on to it So let's go through some common reasons. I have ranked these In a certain order you will soon see the order I'm gonna offer an opinion and the blind guy likes his color. So you're gonna see little colored numbers on the screen I would all like you to raise your hand if you think it is a fantastic idea to become a people manager if You would like to make more money Raise your hand if you believe that is true Okay, that is fair that is very fair and it's a trick question Now what you're about to see for the next 10 minutes or so of these slides is my opinion. I Have been wrong many times in my life usually several times a day. I Want you to be careful on this one and I rated a oh, yeah, blind guy sees a minus there So that's a minus 10 out of 10. I want to talk really briefly about this and this is a very important It's something you need to get in touch with yourself if you become a people manager and in general. It's a good idea Compensation is what is called an extrinsic Motivator it's the external carrot out in the world that you are chasing after There is this phenomenal book that I mentioned in the last bullet point called drive the surprising truth about what motivates us if you are Partially motivated by compensation and who isn't I am everyone to you know you got up you got a parent I had a great report. His name was Darren. He reported me to be Shopify and he had this great phase. He's like Larry Titles great and all but title doesn't pay a mortgage like amen. That is the truth It's the reason you don't want compensation To be your primary motivator in such an important career change is it will not Carry you that is one of the points covered in this book drive Extrinsic motivators are almost like a hit of dopamine or a drug that has a very temporary Effect and you know what happens what what happens? We've all heard these these awful stories of addiction and downfalls and you see it in celebrities and musicians all the time What happens the drug wears off? You need more of it And so what this book talks about is if you are constantly chasing after those extrinsic motivators The satisfaction that it gives you when you finally get it wears off So please I am begging you from the bottom of my heart more salary is okay But there are actually going to be other ways to get it while staying in Icy and doing what you love You check my time real quick here. Okay More control over your work. This is also not a good one And it's kind of an amusing reason why when you become a people manager You become of service to others the primary way in which you operate is through your calendar Your time becomes everyone else's and you will have less control over the day-to-day work of what you do You will get some stuff done I carve out some quiet time both the beginning and the end of the day and I can be productive But really when you're a people manager, you are now of service to others So I would not recommend this is a good reason to get more control over your work This next one I want to cover quickly because it's complex and if any of you want to talk about this over beers Let's like let's do it. I Also hear the reason well. I want more control over. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry blind guy.  The other three bullet points here real quick talk to your manager Ask yourself. Are they a micromanager? Are they not giving you the control you want? Do you need to switch teams? Sometimes it's a company-wide culture sometimes companies are just factories and they chew people up and they burn them out So you just got to step back look around your environment and say why am I not getting the control? I want but becoming a people manager will not give you that control all right. Here's the one Or I'll have beers with you because it's a complex topic. I Will hear people say I am frustrated with the work going on around me or what's going on Really this is something they haven't they usually miss articulate to themselves and in general they're just frustrated Here's a few bullet points of what they might be frustrated about the capacity of their team the direction of the team the vision of their team Really whenever I've had a conversation about this topic I'll be honest 75% of the time what is actually going on is they just need someone to vent to about how much their job sucks That's that's really what a lot of this comes down to so You can see my numeric range here minus seven to plus two it peaks out at plus two So this is not a great reason and please reach out to me after this talk I'll have my contact info if if this is one of your motivations. I can help you suss out some potential different reasons Okay Try something new I Thought about ten minutes silently in my chair of where I wanted to rate this I knew was an important one to bring up and I rated it fairly low and here's why It comes from a piece of great advice. My mom gave me growing up and it's stuck with me She said in life changes in evitable. It's changes gonna happen So a lot of times if you're lucky you're in control of some of that change And she said when you are making a change you have to ask yourself a fundamental question Are you running towards something or are you running away from something and If you were like me a lot of times and this is human desire my sister explained this to me because she's an expert on the mind and willpower Human beings get bored on long-term things every four to five years It is actually instinctual for us to crave something entirely different professionally So all I'm gonna warn you is if you're thinking I'd like to try something new Make sure it's not because you're bored Make sure it's not because you tend to hop from thing to thing because people management involves the custodian of other people's Careers and livelihood so makes so I'm not a huge fan of oh I want to try something new because a lot of times people are just bad just because that's it's a variation of that reason However, here's a good variation And sorry one one final point if you do want to become a people manager to try something new I do recommend making use of your company's intern program and we'll get more onto that in the opportunity section See how I'm doing on time here. You're curious that is a healthier version of you want to try something new You're intellectually stimulated and you say ha that seems interesting. I might want to try that so being curious That's that's a good reason and I think all of us in our technical roles curiosity has served us well That's when I did my most most learning It's when I figured out what I wanted to help people with what I wanted to do curiosity is generally a great thing Have more impact look at these ratings. We're getting up there. I like this one seven out of ten having more impact is a great thing I want to give you one caveat If you talk to your manager you talk to maybe your manager's peers You talk to the teams you work with a lot of times you can actually have more impact by Collaborating with other teams identifying bigger projects that you can be a part of a lot of times You don't have to become a people manager to have more impact around you So if you trust your manager talk to him about and just say hey, I'd like to come up with ways I can have more impact and Hopefully if one of my reports has that conversation with me It's because I dropped the ball because usually I'm looking for ways for my folks to have more impact like oh Hey, he's been cranking on some obscure firewall thing and this other team really needs help with that like let's put him with Them for a week things like that I threw this in yellow because it's important again.  That's slightly different motivation Impact is about affecting positive change in the people and the work around you. That's what I want you to remember a Couple more reasons. I like this one develop new skills You just need to remember That becoming a people manager is a whole new class of skills. I Hate to use this term, but it is relevant. It's an emotional intelligence thing If you've ever gone to the gym and done a certain exercise that you haven't done in a long time You'll feel like you've worked out muscles that you didn't know you had Every day for probably the first three to four months if not six months or longer Every day in people management was like that. I would be exhausted by the end of the day and I'd be like Why am I so exhausted? I sat at my desk. I went for a walk. I got some water. It was the Nature of the conversations and it wasn't bad. It was just a lot is writing on the line You know, you could have two conversations with two of your reports who feel they're not getting paid as much as they should and when you look at it You're like, yeah They should be getting paid more and you might have your hands tied You might not be able to get them a raise or a comp adjustment for six months That takes a toll and to deal with that and get through those types of types of conversations You're gonna have to develop some new skills, but developing new skills is a great reason to become a new people manager This is a good example. It was just a random one imagine a world-class Olympic athlete decides. Okay. I want to become a politician Sure, they might be able to do it. Sure. They were a great athlete, but being a phenomenal IC Especially in the technical genre may or may not translate to be being a phenomenal people manager and that's okay Not everyone's cut out to do it This is my favorite one Ten out of ten. Help people be more successful. Just help the people around you make the world a better place Again, this is my opinion, but I think this is the most important reason and a great motivation to become a people manager Okay, I'm gonna start needing to speed up because I want to make sure and get through all this content on time and leave time for Q&A. Let's move on to the second part of this framework opportunity This is the objective part. This is this is where you look around And say is this a healthy environment to become a people manager?  You want to go on to the Olympic team. Is that gonna take a lot of work? Yes, do you need to start practicing now? Yes, okay? The only environment you have access to at the moment is an empty Concrete pool with a high dive board Yes, or no, do you have an environment conducive to becoming an Olympic diver? And I would argue You have One opportunity you can jump off that diving board and execute the most perfect dive once So I'm gonna give you some yes or no questions to look around and say hey Is this the company that this is the is this the place in the time to do it? Here's some rigor-marole. Basically, I'm saying it's the objective set of Circumstances around you that are you say do I have this is there that is there that? Okay, I've got the ingredients this could work out Okay, step one. I've said it several times best thing you can do participate in your company's internship program I will let you kind of read through these reasons why but I'll summarize it real quick I already did it's when your HR department basically says we want to get some talent in here We want to be young talent. Let's hit the colleges. Let's hit the universities and your manager may tap you on the shoulder Or your director may tap you on the shoulder and say hey Would you please help out? Even if you think they're just trying to offload some work You should do it for all of these reasons in particular the one in green it genuinely gives you a low risk way of Getting a sense of what it's like to be responsible for others You might make friends for life. You'll develop the mentoring and coaching skills It's really a good first step if your company offers it Be very careful Some interns are fantastic. They are low overhead You know from the second you meet them. They're future rock stars and maybe you have two or three interns And each of those interns maybe takes a half an hour a week or you do a little bit of paired programming Let's say an hour a week So you begin thinking to yourself this people management stuff is cake and it is low overhead. I Could have seven people reporting to me and they'll only take an hour a week sweet I've got 33 hours and a typical work week left for tech work. I am gonna do people management No, no, no It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time. So just a quick word of advice Don't extrapolate the time Lack of intensiveness with interns with okay I'll have plenty of time to split my career between people managing and I see technical work Let's see and again as I said before if you get asked to do it that is an honor your management train trust you your peers trust You if you get asked to hey, will you please take these interns for the summer for us? Just do it even if you're not thinking about becoming a people manager. It's a very rewarding experience Okay, step two. This is an important one folks does your company offer separate technical and management development tracks and Kind of an opinion alert coming up here, but if not In my opinion, you are most likely not in a healthy environment to become a people manager in my experience You won't be well supported. You certainly will not be able to make the decision reversible and the argument goes like this managers rank above I seats HR will almost always consider it a promotion that comes along with a little bit more salary. Yay.  Oh No, you don't like it. You'd like to go back to being an IC Well going back to an IC is a different salary band. It's lower. So HR says well we'd have to give you less money and That would be a demotion and a demotion is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Yeah No, yeah, we can't really go back to being an IC So be very careful if you work at a company where there's no track and at some point you have to become a manager Just I would I would advise against it Let's see again these type of companies tend to make the assumption. You were a great IC Therefore you will make a great manager. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not I think you all can come up with an example in your career where you met someone who went from IC became a manager Wasn't necessarily the best manager you could have hoped for Okay, and again, it's a culture thing worker bees on the bottom managers up top just not a healthy environment Step three make a reversible. This is a big mantra for us in tech and infrastructure and coding make it reversible You want to go and you want to talk to HR and you want to grill HR for answers and I've seen this so I'm not making this up Oops, sorry. Let's go back You'll run into a catch 22 and HR departments all over the world don't realize they've created it and it works like this They want lateral movement. They were like sure you can try out people management. Yes. Let's talk to your manager Let's find a spot. Let's let's get it happening and What they forget is they've also instantiated this rule that says oh For a role change We don't want low performers just topping from one team to another messing things up so In order to do a rule change you need to have positive performance for one review cycle or two review cycles This is a catch 22 the whole reason you are trying out people management is to see if you're any good at it And if it doesn't work out for you Well, if you're going by HR rule, hey, I you know, I'm not doing performance wise too great here And they well it doesn't matter you got to have high perf to get back So you want to see if you're good at something and the rule says well You have to be good at it if you want to stop doing it. So it is catch 22. You got to watch out for those situations We talked about the second bullet point a little bit already Step 4 talk to your manager if you have a supportive manager I would love to hear from my reports that they were thinking about it someday Every single one of my reports throughout my management career was a great I see and they loved doing it So I didn't have to have many of these conversations, but if you do are thinking about this talk to your manager and Use words like someday like don't drop this on him at the zero hour because if you're a good contributor as an IC They won't want to lose you Even if you trust them observe how they react when you say hey I was kind of playing around with the idea of someday becoming a people manager. Do they squirm is uh The first word out of their mouth. You want to get a sense of if they're gonna Help you in your career. I hope you have a manager that wants to be excited about this and help you develop in your career But give them to give them plenty of heads up And like I said a good manager will support you I would love to talk about my folks that that want to become managers someday All right, this is straightforward find an opening ideally you want it to be where you work because hopefully you've built up some good Will some social capital You know if you've become a great IC people will be rooting for you There's nothing like the feeling of trying something new you haven't done before that and having your peers root for you That is really a good feeling You can look in all the usual places check your internal job boards if your manager is helping you out He may have heard of something that's available a lot of times There may be a sister team or a sibling team where they do similar work and their manager Whatever needs to cut out permanently or maybe he's going on leave. There's a lot of opportunities if you just if you look they're out there Okay, I'm gonna fire off these bullet points. I'll let you read them as I kind of talk about them Good handoff good handoff is being about a good citizen to the end So if you've got projects you need to finish them you need to kill them or you need to hand them off You need to work with your manager be willing to hire your replacement be willing to interview or your replacement at one point in my career I conducted nine interviews with my I was the tech lead with my people manager And I was moving on and this wasn't even into a manager position and we did a lot of interviewing to find the right Personality so just be willing to help in the transition and understand We may be chomping at the bit to try the new gig, but it can take weeks or even months So just be patient and do everything you can to help your manager out All right, what are we doing on time check? Oh, yeah, I got to get moving here Step seven go for it. The main thing I would say is if you become a people manager You want to give it an absolute minimum six months preferably nine to twelve and it relates to the third bullet point If your company does perf reviews you really want to get yourself You want to experience a full performance review cycle from the beginning all the way through Doing the writings doing the feedbacks collecting the feedbacks assigning ratings Hopefully you get to have some great conversations salary bumps promotions I'd say my single favorite thing doing is a people manager is promoting my folks and showing them off Even if it means sending them to another team like again, it goes back to just help people be successful Okay, lastly, let's talk about means. This is do you have the skills? Do you have the attributes? I set this next little effect for fading and I made it yellow because it's kind of ominous and it's important Are you cut out for this? I'm gonna try and give you a little taste and tell you about the traits that in my opinion are Quintessential to survival as a people manager. I have a working title I have three chapters of a book written, but it's got a bad word in the title So if you all want to know the title of the book, I'm working on come find me afterwards. It's it's a good one Okay This right here could be three books and it could be five hours at to talk So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna tap my keyboard over and over and I want you to watch the words that come up on the screen This is just a sampling of the types of things you might do on a random day when you are a full-blown people manager Oh Look at all that stuff. Oh, there's salary salary is good. Oh Personal issues documentation. Everyone loves documentation. Whoa, wait, didn't we already talk about meetings? Wait, is that double vision? Nope, there's more meetings. Oh what therapy? What is going on there? I therapy Well one-on-ones. Yeah, it makes sense perf review. Wow rigors. Oh, that's always fun. Oh, I forgot about meetings So if you like variety, yeah True story. I set a stopwatch. I was sitting in a text file in Emax because I'm old school I set a stopwatch and I said, okay, I need to come up with a full slide of this stuff and It took me 27 seconds to list all this stuff and I'm like, okay, I got a stop This will fill up a slide you give me five more minutes. I could give you a hundred more items People management, you never know what's in store for you. If you want to hear crazy stories go to HR They have fantastic war stories It's something new every day and it's it's very rewarding I'll talk about a little bit of these But most importantly what we want to move on to is the attributes I think you need as opposed to hey, what's it like to be a manager if you want to know what it's like You want to hear the day-to-day? Come find me come zoom meeting Google meeting. I'll talk about this stuff all day long We're gonna talk about the attributes. I think you need This is the most important you have to want others to be more successful You put their success above yours. This is my opinion you talk to a hundred managers They'll give you a hundred different explanations of like. Oh, what do you need to be a successful manager? This I believe is I love correlation Regardless of what other traits you possess I believe if you have this attribute You are very likely to become a phenomenal people manager. You will figure out how to build the rest of what you need Conversely, I feel that if you do not have this attribute or you're not truly willing to put the success of others above your own You will not likely make a good people manager Especially the people that report in through you as you make your way through your career You may have an entire org. I hope this isn't a condescending analogy But I always look at my org as my flock the people I protect I look out for their careers I look out for their skills development, you know I made a decision did this help everyone become more successful if it didn't why did I make the decision if they're Successful you're successful if they failed you fail cut and dry that is it Your number one attribute for being a people manager putting everyone's success above your own And if you were at a good company and you put everyone else's success above your own Good things will happen to you the universe. I'm not a touchy-feely guy But I will tell you the universe does reward good karma if you are helping the others around you to be successful And that's not just true for people managers. That's true for us. I see that's that's everyone in that everyone that qualifies Okay, folks, this is important Long time ago. I was on the phone with my sister because I thought I was a weirdo and I said hey Jay Her name is Joni. I'm like Joni. I Was at this party and I liked talking to people and then there's a really weird thing and it happens to all these parties after about an hour I am Exhausted and this weird Switch in my brain goes off and I have to get myself Outside away from people or I'm gonna explode and I just need quiet and I just need to not talk And she said the best phrase that any human being Can say to another human being she said Oh No crap. Holy kill. Yeah, that happens to me all the time. I thought I was the only one. It was fantastic And here's where this applies to us a lot of technical folks myself included our introverts In modern psychology and introvert it used to be back in the day an introvert meant you don't like being around other people You know heads down hang out in your cave watch your TV play your games write your code Extrovert meant you want to be the party you're in sales right 30 years when I was growing up in the 80s extroverts were in sales Modern psychology has a much better definition And I want you all to be aware of it because it affects you may think you're not cut out to be a people managing you actually are It was determined that introversion Simply means that when you interact with people that depletes your energy you could love it But it depletes your energy and at some point you just got to kick out peace out and and get a break And I'm I'm like that my kids could tell you like that dad needs a few minutes a day of his quiet time in the basement So understand you can be an introvert you can Be a successful people manager while being an introvert But what you need to do folks is you need to be willing to have Frequent interactions if you need to cut out and and get a few minutes to collect your thoughts That's totally fine But if you like working in a silo if you like being alone with your thoughts if you like solving hard problems for days on end like I used to People manager probably not the best route at this time and in the future your approach could change This is a big if if there were ever managers that I did not enjoy working for This is one of the big culprits folks You got to be able to you've got to be willing to relinquish control It's good if you try to micromanage you're gonna create resentment You've got to you've got to take every opportunity to show your reports that you trust them So be prepared to let go of the control you owe it to the folks around you You don't want to micromanage a good buddy of mine Steve gave me a great little Nugget of wisdom and he said Larry I think our job as managers is no longer to have the answers That's our smart. I see that's why we hire that's why we put them through grueling interviews They'll come up with the answers our job is to now make sure the questions get asked and he was absolutely right So Steve when you go to watch this recording someday 100% amen. You are totally right Another thing on on giving up control I have very high standards a little bit of it relates to my vision impairment I need to get things just right. I need indentation just right I loved Python many years ago when I discovered it. I need things a certain way But I want you to ask yourself when you are people managers ask yourself questions like this Do my reports hold each other accountable? Are they doing quality work? Are they are they providing value to the company or are they going above and beyond if most those questions are yes? Don't critique them. Don't polish their work Just kind of pipe down and know that maybe their work isn't up to your standards If you were doing it, but guess what? You are not doing it. You are helping them to do it. You're you're you're supervising Okay, I need to go pretty fast while yeah, we're we're running. I want to make sure leave a little room for Q&A So there's a few more traits that are of lesser import all on one slide So I want you to think about the worst scenario possible could you fire a friend you've had talks with him and A few of you in this room know of a woman her name is Bethany Blunt. She was my one of my managers at Facebook She said the greatest thing ever the first one-on-one When I sat down with Bethany the first thing she said Really stuck with me. It was so profound and she said Larry. I'm gonna tell you what my job is My job is to make sure there are never any surprises on your performance review Bomb dropped mic drop walk down there. It was perfect. Like that's that's so important If you have conversations with someone on your team and they're just not improving and you can't identify the reason why and you've given them every opportunity I Will tell you I've had to fire people it sucks I have learned that when after I need to fire someone I take the rest of the day off and I go sit in a room And I just stew in my own oh Man the world's unfair and it's it's just it's it's rough But you have to be able to do it and worst-case scenario could you do it to someone that you personally love and trust and they're a friend Conversely, there's someone on your team. You don't really get along with but they're great for the team They're great for the company and they're a star performer. Could you promote someone that you personally don't get along with? That's important Gentlemen by the name of Brent Proctor. I worked with we were in the same onboarding class at Facebook He eventually became a manager and He was the manager of my team and I was chatting with him I said hey Brent what what is the trickiest thing about being a manager and he used a Unix analogy and he's like well Larry We used to sit at a shell prompt you hit enter you get you can get a return code like okay? Zero success or minus two or 255 or whatever you can compile something right you can check exceptions You can check logs as an IC You can decide you want to try something do it and get a result that says You screwed up or hey everything's fantastic You don't get that as a people manager You need to be comfortable going with your gut going with your heart going with your brain and Watching things manifest over a course of weeks or months. I'm a big-time gaver So the analogy I threw out of being an IC is like Mario Kart Well then people management is like playing a long game of civilization like you make your decisions and then Might not be till the next era when you see like oh this might not have been a good idea You need to get comfortable with that and if you have a good network, they'll help you through it Empathy be able to understand the world from other people's point of view. I'm legally blind I cannot see the world through my own eyes. I better sure as hell be able to see it through other people's eyes That's the way I look at it empathy is critical proactive Ask yourself do I need to wait to be given a checklist? Do I need to be kind of fed direction? If if so then people management might not might not be a great, okay? I hate to throw it into the literature But there's radical candor and radical acceptance and crucial conversations and unfortunately I'm going to have to add two phrases to the literature and the vernacular become profoundly resourceful if you want to excel at people management Know what to do when you don't know what to do and if you tread carefully But with confidence and you have good support network you will rock it Okay, I'm gonna let you know a little secret. We're approaching the end of the talk here. I Truly don't know if I put this at the end because I think it's the most important or Then and I think my buddy Casey back there will be able to relate to this I really think these next couple of slides are for Myself because I can have some challenges with this You need to become a stoic you need to be able to learn how to take the frustration The angst the anger and you don't repress it But you need to learn how to deal with it because if it leaks through as a people manager It can demoralize your folks it can tarnish your professional reputation and and here's the thing like I Actually would like to think that I excelled as an IC because I was brutally honest And if I saw something that was stupid I I didn't use the word stupid But I said hey, we got to be doing something different you got it You got to keep your emotions in check folks and again. This is really just a message for myself Gotta learn to control them This is one of my favorites. This is a serenity serenity prayer. It's used by many folks Alcoholics Anonymous uses this I need to on this recording give my wife Amanda major props She has been telling me for years if not decades Larry You burn way too much energy stressing about things you can't control and God bless her I've been working on it and I have been feeling better and This is a great little tidbit to summarize how I think you should approach things, right? If you can't see it grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference And here's another good one Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it like it or not We live in a political human driven environment You will be judged positively negatively or both based on your reactions My previous manager her name was a partner I loved her pieces and she kind of was watching me from a distance I ran a compliance engineering team in compliance. They're kind of like the misfits of the engineering world They have to do things differently. They don't get access to all the great tools and TLC and love from the engineering groups So I was a little frustrated. I was a little angsty and In our first long one-on-one a Parna was such a sweetheart and she said, you know Larry I I like that you are really passionate You if you've been a people manager You quickly learn that's a zip file that you quickly learned to extract and see what's in it and she wasn't being supportive and What she was also saying is it might not have been a good idea to drop the f-bomb in the slack channel where there were a Couple of executives hanging out Maybe we didn't need the analogy between curing cancer and cleaning toilets in front of the CFO like, you know Let's she was very sweet. She's very kind and she helped me work on it. So I took this into account I'm like, I just need to remember to control my reactions and I apologize. I'm not leaving much time for Q&A but Okay, excellent. Thank you. This is the final thought and this is from the bottom of my heart And I want to apologize because I'm gonna put five words up on this screen. It's not meant to sound snarky Please raise your hand if you are a parent. Can I see if we've got parents in here? Okay, you'll be able to relate to this and I think you'll appreciate how it very much ties into becoming a people manager At the point of my career where I effectively signed on the dotted line, right? Like point of no return like okay I'm gonna go in tomorrow and holy cow There were 50 I have 15 reports the start of my people management career I went from I see one day to 15 reports the next day. Don't do that but So so I had I had that moment and I looked myself in the mirror And I don't know if it was my voice or just something from the ether But I said these words out loud to myself and I also say them to every new parent This takes us full circle I really hope all of you have people managers or have had people managers that operate like this It takes us back to the very beginning great Managers live and die and breathe and eat and sleep on the success of those around them When I was in I see I loved crunching my brain on hard problems My daughter Zoe was born and some of the hardest problems I solved that Facebook were solved by taking my little girl my little baby girl and walking her around at 3 a.m. I kid you true story one of the best little solutions I ever came up for a problem that Facebook Simultaneously happened while she threw up all over me and somehow her throwing up on me Inspired the solution. I'm like oh, that's totally what we could do We just need to barf all of the data out like this is not about parsing. This is this is about a transparency issue But I love my kids really helped me think about management and management helps me think about my kids So really I want to leave you with this parting thought. It's not about you anymore Just be prepared to dedicate all of your energy to your folks your peers your management chain But really your folks in the Oregon the people that report into you Folks oh it was in quotes. Yeah, I'll show off just some random dude that said that folks. That's it for my talk Thank you so much. I Want to I love talking about this stuff I apologize. I didn't leave room for much Q&A, but let's let's do that now if you're good We promise you 50 minutes and on all the other tracks you then have 10 minutes for questions Okay, just they smushed this so it's unclear So we're gonna start the questions. Do we have our next speaker in the house? You okay, so what you come up? So you can get started. I'm parallelizing it because they didn't give us our normal space, so Please go ahead Before we do the questions, so I'm gonna take this out of her way and then we will go And again, I mean that if anyone wants to talk about this stuff I could talk about a day and night, so feel free to look me up on LinkedIn come find me if you use Facebook I'm available there email you name it and we can we can hop on some meats So if there's any Q&A like are we are we done? Is there no Q&A time or do we have a couple minutes? Oh, no, we're gonna do Q&A fantastic. I'm getting this out of her way so that she can be this setup. That's all sounds great I'll help you if you need it, but for now I'm gonna start too much. You want to do the Q&A? Okay Any questions I am I've been fighting Being not being a manager, so I'm gonna be more of a tech lead. That's my my path But I am noticing that as I do that I Also have to hone up on same the same skills dealing with people with like junior developers because I'm responsible for vetting their stuff absolutely and I think having the skills acquiring the skills even if you're not going to be a manager is Important one for communicating also with your manager. It makes the relationship a little bit easier Absolutely, and and so there's no net negative on learning about it And then maybe you like it or maybe in one company You're not gonna have that opportunity, but somewhere else you will absolutely I want to paraphrase for the sake of the recording in case it didn't come through the mic And I want to paraphrase it like these skills are amazingly adaptable and valuable Even if you don't want to become a people manager and and thank you for that example being a tech lead and being responsible for junior developers absolutely critical skills I Couldn't agree more Anyone else have any data points thereafter Yeah, so let's say you become a manager. What about support for being a manager like I work in a very small company So it's not like I have a lot of other people at my level to hang out with That's tough. That is that you every we need peers, right? We need I'll tell you what if nothing else a good people manager needs a trusted peer to vent to And needs a therapist. I have been a therapist many times. I've needed therapy many times. I Wish I had better advice for you, but I would say do your best To find someone in your network who is in as similar of a situation as possible and You benefit by them being outside of the company because then you can dump all of the dirt and gossip that you need to right? You can turn off the filter we people managers one of that I talked about being an introvert and the things that take your energy You have to be careful and approach your communications in a certain ways of people manager and the great thing Is if you can find a peer away from your company you can just let it roll You can just let it all come out and and if it's if you're lucky enough that it's a pre-existing friend then They get it and they'll just let you vent. Well, things tumble, but I wish I had an answer for you But at a small company of support for being a manager You you're gonna have to find your external resources. I wish I had a better answer I wish I was there because then I would get you up there Like I would look for every opportunity to develop you and say like give you more responsibility like hey You're ready for more so you're gonna have to be self-sufficient and find it Externally and then if you find you crave that advancement and you're not getting it where you're at You're gonna have to consider going elsewhere, which is not a trivial deal. That's a very big deal Look me up on LinkedIn or however you like to communicate and let's do a call Sorry, I just got my notice on Wednesday, so now I'm looking at working at another company. Oh my gosh. Yes, so I'm so sorry to hear that Yeah, well, I mean once all the film work comes back. I might be back at my company But I got to figure out something to do in between and so, you know I'm like, okay What do I want to be doing it my next company and because I'm managing at a small company Do I want to manage at a bigger company? Absolutely and and I I feel like I could help you answer that question I can again I give you a framework if you want it if you want to chat about it, but yeah That's it's kind of turbulent and it can be unexpected But but absolutely it's it's about what's available matched to what you're familiar with you could do a large small versus large is not a huge transition That's that's the good news. There's just like almost like a few pro tips. I would pass on Looks like we got one back there Hi, thank you. Thank you for the call for the talk. It was I'm a big people manager So I came to this talk trying to figure out if it's truly for me because I'm struggling with that Right. I've been being a people manager and the reason I'm a people manager is because I'm in the company that you said that you shouldn't be Where there is you become a nice see it after at some point you have to become a people manager Oh, okay, and I'm gonna ask you to be very honest in the big picture. How's that working out for folks there? Is it is a good culture? Is it does it work or is it difficult to navigate? Yeah, it's very difficult to navigate It's complicated. There's all like a I'm not