Hey, how's it going guys? I work for Invisium, we do app sex stuff, it's great. They hired me as director of engineering and that's great except that it turns out that there is no chair and there is no megaphone. That is just not in the picture. Instead, what I got was crushing pressure. What it turns out happens if you're director of engineering is that you don't have this common kind of fallback that I've always had in the past. That is, when I've been unhappy on a previous job before, I've always been able to kind of fall back on one simple truth that I believe, right? It's not my fault. It's not my fault that things are sucky somewhere. It's like, you know, it's totally someone else. It's the CTO or the director of engineering or whoever, right? And, or it's Mike's fault. Actually, a lot of times it's Mike's fault when things are horrible. And so I'm not really proud of that. I mean, that's not the most prideful moment that I've had to say that I fall back on. It's not my fault. But I don't necessarily think I'm alone in the room either. So if you're honest with yourself, I mean, most of us kind of do this. In fact, I would say as engineers, how many of you, and keep your hands up, how many of you in this room have been at your job for less than one year, less than two years? Keep your hands up. Yeah, so most of the people in the room currently have their hands up. Most of them actually went up in one year. And so it's really easy to sort of walk away, to say, well, you know, I tried. It's just not working out. And I would be willing to wager that 100% of the people who raised their hand, when they left their job, they took themselves with them, right? So it's pretty safe bet you didn't think you were the problem. But at Invisium, I was hired to help build the software, to help build the team, and to help build the culture. So I guess what that really adds up to is that it's totally my fault if I end up leaving. So I wanted to really think through what that means for me, and what kind of culture do I really wanna work in? What makes me stay at a place? And looking at it from another angle, what makes me leave? So I wanna share a story with you. And it's really important that before I preface this story, with the fact that, yes, it is true, don't worry about the company that it's for. I can almost guarantee you this company doesn't do things this way anymore. And if they do, they won't be around long enough for it to matter. So don't worry about that. So I was hired to lead a small team of technical folks, and I reported to a CEO. And I was concerned at the time that I took on this job that I was gonna end up not getting the code, that I was constantly gonna be managing. I didn't wanna be just a manager per se. And I was assured that wouldn't happen. In fact, every single question, every single issue that I had was addressed very well. He had very good answers for all of my questions. And he really made it worth my while. And consequently, I took the job, and I fast forward about a half a year now. And strangely enough, I'm not spending a whole lot of time writing code. Who would've thought? In fact, I was spending a lot of time wrangling Kanban boards. You all familiar with these? This is my real Kanban board. I was horrible at my job. And I was, oh, hey. I knew that was gonna happen. I was managing Kanban board full of more urgent tasks than we had time and days. And I was managing people that were super stressed out and trying to shield them from the wrath of our friendly CEO who could only be described as mercurial in his temperament at times. So naturally I approached the CEO about this. And he says to me, and I kid you not, this is what he actually said. You're thinking of this all wrong. Think of it like another development task.  So he sends me on my way. And it was right about then. I mean, it really all became clear to me. I had been really struggling with this, and just those words alone made it super clear that I understood now what was wrong. And it turned out that my CEO had no idea what he was doing. You see, he was an engineer. And he was trying to run the company like he was still an engineer. He wanted to treat the company like software. That's easy because he knows it, right? And we all do that. And there may be a world where the answer to this question is true, but that is not the world we live in. There is no way, so much false. People are not objects. No matter how you try to slice it, they're not objects. And here I was, so it's really no question. I'm like, why am I miserable here? Well, I can't imagine. Now I was working at a company where the leader was actively telling me, yep, I'm dehumanizing my employees. They are totally objects to me. And no wonder that the employees were overwhelmed. So they were overwhelmed. We're hiring people, but strangely enough, we're unable to keep them around for very long because apparently they had boundaries against this manipulative, exploitative stuff. And it felt very frustrating to me because as much as I would talk to my CEO, it felt like he had a reality distortion field whose polarity was inverted. See, the problem was it was only affecting him. And I was really sensitive to this stuff because look, for about six years now, I've been a volunteer counselor and I work with people. I talk to them for hours and hours about problems and I try to work through this stuff, so I'm, but even before this, I would say I've always been kind of a sensitive guy. So, so I made repeated attempts to counsel my CEO on the problems that we had and kind of remind him, oh yeah, people are people, but it didn't really work out. And so I eventually walked away. And you might think, well, this is a really extreme, this is a really extreme case, right? And okay, I'll grant you that. It's pretty extreme. But I also want to say that it's not really unique in that the values that he had are very similar to the values that most businesses have. They value things like predictability. They value things like being able to measure and they value control because they see control as the way toward those things, towards those things they value. And I understand that. I mean, they want things to be neat and organized. Who doesn't, right? It would be nice if everything was neat. But one thing that I've learned is that people are really messy and they're no less beautiful for it. And how does a company really cope with messy reality? Well, they cope with messy reality in the same way that we cope with messy reality in our code. They use abstractions, right? So they try to reduce humans to another resource to be mined and measured out and applied to the problem. They put us in a little box and they just stack us up ever so nicely. I need three humans for this problem, four for this other problem. Did you ever stop to think that corporations, they actually reduce and abstract humans into human resources, into resources when the only corporeal thing about a corporation is the humans? That's a little weird. And I don't think that's sustainable. So I decided that the first thing about any culture that I wanted to be a part of would be one that recognized at first that we are humans working with humans to develop software for the benefit of humans. And you're probably thinking, yeah, thanks. That's great, you're giving me all kinds of wisdom. But if you stick with me, I believe some things arise out of that simple statement that are valuable. So I landed on the term humane development. And it's not just because it put human back into the words into my development methodology, but also because of what humane connotes. So you have certain connotations come along with humane and the dictionary definition, in fact, for humane is, I think, really useful. Humane, what I think really is interesting about it is that it has to do with inflicting the minimum of pain. And I think that's what we all want.  How many of you do agile? Do agile? How many of you like really do agile? Yeah, some hands are going down. So I think that we do it less than we think we do. And there was a really good talk called The Land That Scrum Forgot that Uncle Bob gave. And I wanna talk a little bit about that talk right now because I think it's valuable. I realize this is a little bit meta, just stick with me. So it's sort of a history lesson on how agile came to be. And he said that he and Martin Fowler were sitting around and they decided, you know, we need to have an organization of some sort. So they called a meeting and they sent out invitations this meeting. They called it the lightweight process summit, right? And at this meeting is where the term agile came about. Nobody was terribly crazy about it, but usually that's how you reach consensus. Nobody really likes it, but so that's what it was. And he says that he believes that Ward Cunningham was the one who said this, that they should come up with a statement of how they value a certain way of working, but they value another way more. And so you know what resulted from this probably. Many of you have read it, the agile manifesto. The idea is that there are all these things on the left, individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration and responding to change. These are things that we should value more than the things on the right. And it was at this meeting that he believes, anyway, that Kent Beck had said it should help to heal the divide, this idea, this agile thing, should help to heal the divide between business and development. And around this time, Ken Schwaber came up with the idea that he was gonna start running a certified scrum master course.   Project managers were signing up in droves to take this certified scrum master course. It was something else they could put on their LinkedIn profile because some people think LinkedIn is for real. And... And... And... And... And... And... Right, so the funny thing about that is that scrum masters were supposed to be coaches. They weren't really supposed to be managers. In fact, they were explicitly not supposed to be managers. If they were a manager, we were doing it wrong. And in fact, the role was not even supposed to be a long running role. It was supposed to not just rotate between team members but actually rotate away. Become unnecessary after a period of time. And I like the way that Uncle Bob describes it. He says, I don't think the project managers who took the certified scrum master course liked that particular interpretation. And so you see, like business often does, it's sort of embraced and extinguished. What happened was we took these things on the left and we gradually shifted them back over to the right. And this happens almost transparently. Do you see how this has happened? Now we rely on certain tools specifically and processes to make sure that we're agile. In fact, we define it in terms of that. And agile sounds great, right? Because again, it implies this speed. And speed is great. And if there's one thing business values, it's hustle. Business loves hustle. And this is a Google image search of the word hustle. It's like some kind of messed up wall of motivational posters. I absolutely, I absolutely hate this word. I'm pretty gangster, yeah. I like the one that's like the only place greatness becomes before hustle is in the dictionary. Really? Seriously? Okay, whatever.  I make one exception for this right here.  All right, but I mean seriously, think about what hustle really means. And I know at this point you're gonna say something, like all definitions of words change all the time. Find me one definition up there that is remotely praiseworthy. You might say, oh well, you know, busy movement and activity, right? But busy is not a virtue, just because you're busy doesn't mean you're busy about the right thing. I mean seriously, this is messed up. And this is what I think. I think that, regardless of whether you think the meaning of the word has changed, I think that our values have shifted. And we've decided to turn hustle into a virtue of some sort. We consider it very important to have hustle. And we've kind of accepted that in our startup culture for sure. You all know this popular motto, move fast and break things. First made popular by Facebook, now by tornadoes. This is the motto of a tornado.  Move fast and break things. Who wants to really aspire to break things? But I think that the notion of hustle as a virtue is the most damaging meme that afflicts us today in our industry. But we accept it because we need to quantify things. You know, we do planning poker, so we can assign points. So we can assign points. So we can track velocity because we're sprinting, right? We're sprinting. And it's a perfect analogy really, because you know, just like any sprint, you have a work to rest ratio. So you know, you sprint for a little while and then you take about three times that amount of time to recover, right? After your sprint. Some people told me, well you know, we have the weekend. When I asked this question on Twitter, we have the weekend, isn't that what weekends are for? Is to recover from our sprint? So I don't know a whole lot about sprinting, but I have done Tabata protocol workouts before. The idea is Dr. Izumi Tabata has found out this way to increase benefits of working out. And the general idea is that you work at your maximum possible output for a certain amount of time and then rest for half that amount of time. And this is what it looks like. So a sprint, you might have one to three work recovery. So each one of these blocks represents 10 seconds. So you might sprint for 20 seconds and then rest for say 60 seconds. So with Tabata, it's 20 and 10, right? You take a 10 second rest period and then start going full bore again. So at the very best, we might be doing Tabatas, but we sure as heck aren't doing sprints. And the thing about this is, these are not designed for sustainability. You're not supposed to be able to sustain the pace of a sprint or a Tabata indefinitely. If we really must stick with some kind of a running analogy, I think we may as well go with marathon. Now I have neither of these stickers on the back of my vehicle, nor do I intend to ever have either of these stickers on the back of my vehicle. However, I do know that some people who have in fact earned the right to put these stickers up have told me that marathons are nothing like sprints at all. Marathons are very much about just finding the way to put one foot in front of the other, repeatedly in a sustainable pace, because for a long portion of the marathon, the finish line is as much an abstract concept as a real thing. And in a marathon, an unsustainable pace is less than worthless. You won't finish the race. Or worse yet, you may not actually be able to run the next race because you've blown out your knee or you've done something horrible. And this is why I believe that a marathon is a better analogy. You need to have an idea of the big picture so you can figure out what sustainability looks like. And this is why I don't think that the big picture is on a need to know basis. And too many companies approach things in a way where they tell you, well, this is the next sprint. You don't think too far ahead. We'll organize the backlog for you, Mr. Developer and Mrs. Developer. You don't need to think about that. So all of this comes down to us wanting to be able to measure progress, right? And so it all really comes down to estimation. So I wanna briefly talk about estimation. This is my driveway about three weeks ago when we had a decent size storm in Louisville, which for Louisville means more than two inches. And then this particular case was about a seven inch snow storm. Now I have had, I have had in the past, snow in this driveway. I know what it's like to shovel this driveway. I think to myself, self, it's gonna take about an hour for you to shovel this driveway. It seems pretty accurate to me based on previous experience. As it turns out, the snow is still coming down. I'm relying on another estimate, the estimate of the weather person, to know when I should probably start this to make sure I don't have to do it again. And the backlog keeps coming down. The snow will not stop. And I go through one pass and I realize, well, it's snowed over what I've done before, so I need to go through another pass and I go through another pass.  I'm just kind of like, well, you know, I'm out here. It's probably been like an hour. I go back inside and I find out that my one hour estimated job turned into two and a half hours.  That's why I think that estimates are lies. And I think it works out okay because even though estimates are lies, deadlines are generally lies as well. So it works out. You miss your deadline, you just move the deadline. Well, okay then. Great, I'm glad we had that deadline. And most things aren't really urgent either. The most important question you can ask as a developer of anybody that comes to you with a task is why. Why is what takes you from a requirement to a reason? You need to know why you're doing things in order to do them in the right way. And most likely, the answer you're going to get from the business is that we're in a hurry and we don't have time to discuss why. Do as you're told. But I bet that we all have some stories of software that we've written to solve problems that turned out not to exist. And that's an incredibly frustrating situation and it can be stopped with one simple question. Why? And you may say, well, there are certain things that are obviously a problem and do I really need to ask why? If the site's down, it's obviously urgent. There's still a reason to ask why. Because there's two answers you can get in a situation like this. And the first is just because it's down, which is a useless answer and that's not helpful at all. But a better answer to why is the site down being urgent is that we're losing something. We're losing credibility. We're losing exposure. We're losing a certain amount of money as the site is down. And a misplaced sense of urgency is honestly sometimes more damaging than no sense of urgency at all. And I learned that better than most in an early, early time. How many of you have stories about doing something urgently, making the situation worse? Yeah, here's mine. When I first started out, I was a sysadmin and I was working for an ISP and we had a customer who's a mail spool. This is back when Pop3 was a thing. Anybody remember Pop3? And so we had a situation where the Pop3 daemon would occasionally corrupt a mail spool. And so I had to go in and I had to re-reason mailers. So I go into the directory and I'm rm-rf on the directory. And it turns out, yeah, let me see where this is going. Turns out I was a directory higher than I thought I was. And so boy, this remove is taking a while and I'm like, you knew the sinking feeling, right? So I got to spend the entire afternoon restoring from backup because I urgently solved this customer's issue and every other customer's issue as well and it was great. You're right, so the other thing is with deadlines and this happens with deadlines pretty frequently.   And you get the answer, well, so we can get this other thing by another particular date. And this, you see where this is going and eventually as with all things recursion and since we are Rubyists, you eventually blow your stack. You get super, super offended that you've gone like 200 wise and you still haven't gotten to our real reason. And I think it's important that we recognize that this divide that we're supposed to heal is really a lie as well. There's nothing really there. It's a construct we created. We are humans working with other humans to develop software for the benefit of humans. That means there's no us. We need to understand the business rationale. We need to understand what it is that the business gains by tasks. And on the flip side, there's no them. They need to understand the trade-offs that they're asking us to make to fully appreciate one another. And this is a shared unity of purpose and understanding that a mission statement does not get you and the only thing that gets you there is empathy. And we need to build empathy in our organizations and in ourselves. Once you have empathy, it pretty naturally leads to another important value and that's honesty. Nobody wants to be told because I said so as the reason whenever they ask why they need to do something.  And if we get attached to setting arbitrary deadlines, is it any wonder that we often end up with implementations that reek of feigned ignorance at worst or at best and malicious compliance at worst? I mean, how many of you have said something like, well, I got what was in the spec done. That wasn't in the spec so I didn't build it. And that's really malicious compliance if the feature is like a customer needs to be able to log in.  They reinforce the idea that it's more important to adhere to a timeline than it is to be building the right thing and the right way. And eventually the business is going to look back and wonder why it's going under when it hit all its milestones. Now, some businesses don't allow that to happen because they simply handle the problem in another way. They cram all the necessary work into the timeline that they arbitrarily decided and it's not at all scrumptious. So crunch mode is and should be an exceptional situation. It should be handled as such. So oftentimes the way we approach building our applications is that if we run out of time, we just engage crunch mode. We sacrifice our time, our sanity, our loved ones for the business goal. But this looks an awful lot like using exceptions as flow control to me. And swallowing an exception to get the, just to return the same result is not helpful. You need to know that something is going wrong. You need to allow that exception to raise. You need to track that exception. And that doesn't mean that you don't handle the issue as it comes up, right?  And then afterwards you conduct a post mortem the same way you would with any other production failure and you figure out what went wrong and how do we prevent it from happening again? Look, it's all great, well and good to have heroes, but I'd rather live in a world where I don't actually need them. And the way to do that is to try to refine your process so that you're not constantly needing heroes and needing rescuing. So with that in mind, I wanna show you my best code ever. I have to get this into a slide somewhere because I'm so proud of it. And here it is. It's the best code I've ever written. I'm the most proud of this code. This code, this code has 100% test coverage. It requires zero maintenance and it does exactly what you think. Okay. And there's value in that. And we are so quick. We are so quick to just assume the axiom that no code is the best code. We all say that and we believe it. We would rather not have to maintain code so we don't write code we don't need even though it's tempting sometimes because coding's fun. But formalized processes are code for your company. And they require maintenance and sometimes they have bugs and depending on the interpreter that you're funneling them through, meaning the person, they may result in very strange results. Formalized processes are code for your company. And so if you should be skeptical of coming up with your own code or process, then you should be doubly skeptical of assuming other people's processes. That's, of course, excluding humane development which is awesome and you all should do it. So I like to look at adopting processes as sort of like doing a software integration. You know, there are some that are just kind of lightweight, easy to understand gems. You kind of get the general idea. You add it to your gem file and you're happy, right? And then there are other things that are sort of heavyweight frameworks that require a lot of you and have a lot of opinions and have a lot of expectations of you or your business in the way that you're gonna code. And so I think of adopting processes that way. They're gonna have trade-offs. And then there's the problem where you can adopt a process in name only. It's kind of like you add mini tests to your gem file and then you never write any tests or you never run them. Nobody ever did that, right? So I think processes are a problem statement. And what they're really saying most of the time, they're kind of saying that you don't have trust. They're a stand-in for trust. And in some situations that's warranted, we don't necessarily like with TDD. We don't trust ourselves to write code that does what we think it's gonna do. So we have a process that we follow to try to ensure that we do. But others are more nefarious. Sometimes we just don't trust other people to do things the right way that we have determined because somebody messed up one time. That is not something that needs a process. That is something that you should address the source of the problem. You should go back to that person and you should walk them through what's necessary. And you use processes, formalized processes as a last resort because you will end up with legacy in your processes the same way that you get legacy in code. You've all probably opened up a source file that you haven't seen in years to see a huge nested, if then, set of conditionals. And you know every single one of those things is there for a reason, but you couldn't possibly point to why now. And if they're not tested, then the first thing you do to try to refactor this is you write some kind of throwaway test like Coraline talked about. You try to figure out what the existing behavior is and you treat that as the source of truth. Often in organizations, you end up with the same thing. Somehow the process becomes the definition of right. The rightness is determined by the adherence to the process, but we don't really know why anymore. We don't understand the rationale. And so I like to encourage what I call process metaprogramming. And that sounds like kind of a loaded word so I thought the best way to explain that would be an illustration. This is an illustration of a cat. It's a nice illustration, I think, throughout myself. I'm told that that's apparently not a good enough illustration. So my friend, Glenn Vanderberg, shared a story from his life that I think pretty well illustrates this. And it's from when he was learning to drive. Now I don't think he learned to drive in Georgia, but this just happens to be the prettiest driver handbook I could find. And his father sat him down and gave him the book. And he was like, well, how am I supposed to learn all of these rules? And you know the kinds of crazy rules that you see, right? This is like diagram, and you're looking at this as a 16 year old kid and you're just like, really? I'm just gonna forget I ever saw that. How am I gonna pass that on a test? And the funny thing about this is, this was not intentional, but as it turns out, this tiny little thing down here at the bottom, it says exactly the problem with this kind of a process, which is this roundabout diagram is an example only. Doesn't represent all roundabouts. So this is the problem with processes, right? You can put as many as you want out there, but you're not gonna cover all the cases. This is not the way to solve the problem. You step back, you explain why. And Glenn's dad knew this very well, and what he actually told Glenn was pretty darn wise, actually. Just drive so that everyone around you knows what you're going to do before you do it. That's the logic behind almost all of the rules. And even in the rules that just happened to have kind of an arbitrary decision made about what's going on, the reason that that decision is there is so that people can actually know what the other person is gonna do. It's not just to make an arbitrary decision, it's so that we have a shared understanding. This is really important because if we can do process metaprogramming, if we can tell people the why, give them the context, then it allows them to derive their own solutions for problems you haven't thought of yet. They all have their own processes and they'll be consistent with the general ideas that you've already kind of instilled in them. If we don't do this, what we end up with is tools and lots of them because we need tools to manage our processes and tools to kind of flow through our processes. And if formalized processes are the source code of an organization, then tools are the compiled object code.  And now the tool is, again, it's an abstraction between the real process and how we go about it. And so I think that tools all go through three phases and in the first phase, they reflect the process that actually was in place. There was some manual process, some process that we all understood and we decided we're gonna make it easier with a tool. Eventually, the tools become the process and the way that we get a new hire and we say open up Scrum Bun, Agile Tracker and click on the Agile tab. This is where all of your work will be done. And finally, they define the process. The path to changing the process now involves changing the tool. We no longer have the ability to simply be Agile and respond to changes as they come. We have to first fix the tool or otherwise people are gonna be doing the wrong thing. You see, again, the transformation that occurs. We started out asking the machines to serve us and now we're serving the machines. Now we have to do extra busy work just to be able to change a process that works for people.  CP has no, the CP command has no big designs on doing anything other than copying files. We don't expect it to. We know exactly what it's gonna do. It does one thing, it does it well. This buys us flexibility and flexibility is not just important for processes but also for people. This is a guy I've talked about before. Dr. Martin Seligman is considered the father of positive psychology. This is him in the 70s. Looks like a pretty hip guy, right? Looks like the kind of guy you'd like to hang out with. Shoot the breeze, have a party. Certainly doesn't look like the kind of guy that would be shocking dogs, would he? But it turns out he did. And this is hard for me to talk about because this is pretty upsetting. He did an experiment in which he had this box and he had dogs and they lit up an indicator that a shock was going to come. Aversive stimulus is what the scientists call it. It's pain is what it is but we call it that so it sounds better. And at the time that this light would light up the shock would happen momentarily and some dogs were able to escape the shock by jumping over a little barrier. Other dogs were unable to escape the shock and so what happened was after a period of time he took the dogs that had no escape from the shock and he put them in one of the enclosures that did have a barrier they could leap over to get away from the pain. But what he found out was that those dogs just laid down and they just took it. They just took the shock. They didn't even try. And they called it learned helplessness. The feeling that you had no control over your situation that eventually made you stop trying. And as it turns out this translates to humans. This experiment's been repeated multiple times since. One well publicized one was Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin. They did a study that was tantalizingly titled The Effects of Choice and Enhanced Personal Responsibility for the Aged-A-Field Experiment in Institutional Setting. And what they did, the structure of the experiment was that they went to a nursing home and on one floor they instructed the nurses to tell people that they were responsible for themselves. They told them that they had freedom to make choices and they went around and they gave a choice of a bunch of different plants and they asked the person to care for the plant. And on another floor the nurses were encouraged to tell people how much they were responsible for their well-being instead of the individuals, instead of the elderly. And how they would make the choices for them and in fact they would assign a plant to the person. They got no choice. They all got a plant and the nurses would take care of the plant. And what they found out over time was that on every conceivable metric of well-being, these people that were given choices were thriving compared to the ones who weren't. And so if you're a manager, you probably think to yourself, well, there's always one choice. If you don't like it, leave. Everybody has that choice. If your people are resorting to that choice, then there's a very likely chance that you are abusive. This is the excuse that everybody uses. Everybody that abuses power says, if you don't like it, leave. Or if they're still here, they must think it's all right. We're better than the next guy. But there are a lot of reasons that people might feel that they don't have that power. Some of them are financial. I can't be without a job and I can't go look because it would take time away from my job. Some are relational and emotional. There are lots of reasons and it really doesn't matter. You don't need to know the reasons. You just know that if that is their only recourse, then you have failed. And for me, you remember this guy, I was feeling like I was abandoning my coworkers. I really didn't want to leave.  I mean, this is all really depressing, right? So you all may know this guy. He's kind of the avatar for my favorite Twitter account ever, PHPCEO. And as it turns out, there are a lot of images of this particular model available. And I'd like to just for a minute, suspend disbelief and pretend that PHPCEO's avatar is in fact PHPCEO because as it turns out, PHPCEO really likes ice cream. Like a lot. He really loves it. I found this hilarious. There are more. I don't have time. Anyway, the sad part, the sad part is, we as developers, we're just like those dogs and we're just like those elderly people. We feel helpless sometimes to change things. And it's frustrating because as developers, we have some of the most freedom ever. We can work anytime, anywhere, and in tons of different ways that all will result in productive output.  Now there's no way I'm gonna let my head team have all that flexibility. But that's why we've been spending so much time talking about these values, empathy, honesty, and trust. Because once you get to trust, you can begin to relinquish some control and give your people autonomy. And let's just for a moment assume this guy had any point at all. Let's just say people are just like objects and we're doing OOP. Well, as we all know, OOP isn't about objects anyway. Everything about your organization is encoded in messages. And the point of a process should be to be a reusable message. Think of it like a compression scheme, right? You see the same message repeating. So you put it into a process so you can refer to the process once. That's what it should be. It's about increasing the SNR, the signal to noise ratio of your communication so that the important messages will rise to the top and you don't have to say the same things over and over. And since it's all about communication, this is why I think that requiring developers to work on site is a complete joke. We have so many wonderful avenues through which to pursue communication. And people will say very frequently that face-to-face communication is the best, the most high throughput way to communicate. But I'd like us to stop trying to substitute throughput for efficiency because programming is written communication and we should all be good at communicating. So if we can't communicate in our organization, what we end up with is these guys.  They're omnipresent. They're on that email thread, someone started within five minutes of receiving it. They work 13 hour days in the office or in chat and then they commit code they couldn't get to during the work day at 3 a.m. And I don't know if they're participating in some kind of sleep study, sleep deprivation study. Maybe they just feel that they are gonna miss something. That's usually the case. They feel like the company's gonna fall down if they're not around because there's no clear channel of communication. And the worst kind of these guys feel like they're heroes. They wanna be the hero. They need to, important point about heroes. Necks are not necessary. You can turn your head whichever way you want regardless of which way you're next facing. They wanna make sure everyone knows they're working harder than the next guy. And these people, these omnipresent people are their organizational morphine. They mask the pain that the organization should feel by continually bailing them out of situations they shouldn't be putting themselves into. And the problem with morphine is it's great for a short period of time but you can develop dependency on it and you're not doing the company a good service if you allow them to become dependent on your heroics. So stop it. Stop doing it. Eventually you need to step back and let the company fail if only in one possible endeavor so that they can understand that the process isn't sustainable. Because, and we say this in counseling a lot but it's attributed to an author, Tony Robbins. Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. The funny thing about all this is that we're thought workers. That's what they say we are in this industry. We're thought workers. How do you measure thought? This guy, he's working. And I guess this guy is like working really hard, maybe? I don't know what that even means. How do you measure thought working? And the funny thing is is that we've all had this experience where we're in the shower or something and we have this realization. We wake up and we have this realization. We are literally always working. So remind each other of that. It's okay to step away from the computer. Work doesn't magically happen because your butt's in a chair. That's just not how it works.  In my specific situation, I try not to communicate with anybody on my team except during business hours if I can avoid it. Somebody asked for a vacation time. My CTO told me it was okay. I said that's great, I'll let him know tomorrow morning. It was like 8 p.m. I don't need to be sending him emails at 8 p.m. because it implies that he should maybe be online at 8 p.m. to get them. Really it comes down to four key values, this humane development idea. Empathy, honesty, trust, and autonomy. And the funny thing about those is they're not even engineering specific. These are just values that I want in a human being. And I guess that's really what it comes down to when you're hiring.  And if you've learned one thing that you should be asking right now, it's why. And the reason is that that's just not how relationships work. That's all I've got. Thanks.


Thank you for coming to the employment seminar today. My name is Ryan Burgos. I am the National Employment Director for Disabled American Veterans. Before we begin the seminar, I would like to introduce some guests that are in the house today from our interim employment committee. If you guys could please stand and be recognized. And then also, we have our strategic partner, Recruit Military, here in the house. If you guys could please also stand. But again, thank you for coming to the seminar this morning. I would like to first introduce our special guest of the morning. His name is Mr. Julian Purdy. And he is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy for Veteran Employment and Training Service in the Department of Labor. Julian has over 12 years of service working for and in the federal government. As a former Army NCO, he is truly dedicated to public service and to the betterment of our nation's heroes. Everybody, please welcome Mr. Julian Purdy. All right, first I want to give thanks to Ryan for reading my short version of the bio. Appreciate that. Could have been here for a little while. So I'm really happy that I'm here. And I really want to thank the DAV National Leadership and all the veterans and family members in attendance today. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to participate in the 101st DAV National Convention and provide you with some information about vets, who we serve, and what our priorities are. I'm also thankful for the service of the 1 million DAV members across the nation and the great work that you do with support of service members, their families, and veterans of all generations. We know that this is a team effort to serve the employment needs of our veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses. And I'm grateful for DAV support and partnership. While we appreciate the support of the entire DAV family and team, I would like to give a special acknowledgement to the vision and leadership of a few folks, such as the national commander, Joe Parcentovich, the national adjunct, Barry Jesynowski, the national executive director, Cody Van Voxel, the executive director in Washington, Randy Rees, and one of vets' very own, the third junior vice commander, Joe Donovan. Where you at, Joe? I think you're in here somewhere. All right, there he is, back there. And so I have the very esteemed honor to be representing the Department of Veterans Employment and Training Service and serving there for over two and a half years in this administration. And our vets' team consists of over 2,800 federal and state staff, contractors, and grantees. And last year, we collectively served over 441,000 veterans and military spouses across all of our agencies' programs. We have staff in every state across the country. We fund over 1,500 veteran reps in the American Job Centers, which include over 1,000 disabled veteran outreach program specialists. We have 400 contractors supporting the employment workshops at over 200 installations worldwide for nearly 200,000 transitioning service members on the annual basis. And we have over 150 grantees supporting our homeless veterans' reintegration program. We have a committed and passionate team. I'm a prior Army veteran, as Ryan read earlier today, and I'd like to say that the Army is the best branch. Thank you. I'm glad we have unanimous consent on that. I heard no dissent in views, as I said that, so I appreciate it. And I have to say that over 96% of the vets' staff are veterans serving veterans. And a large percentage of those veterans are actually service-connected veterans to include myself. And even though we have 96% who are veterans, the other 4% also are those who are supporting veterans as spouses, as children, as parents, as veterans also. No, so we appreciate the service that veterans have done to our country, and we understand how important it is to support these veterans as they transition out of the military and beyond. And in fact, at vets, our mission is to enable all veterans transitioning service members, military spouses, to reach their full potential in the workforce. And during my time at vets, we've actually modified that legislation to ensure that we include military spouses and all reservists and national guards, because as a reservist myself, I understand how sometimes there are programs and services that component two and three have unequal eligibility requirements and sometimes are actually just left out of. So I've made that my personal choice to make sure we include those folks. And so as our nation moves beyond the pandemic, it's good to see that the veteran employment rate has gone back to what it was before COVID. As of July, the veterans unemployment rate is 2.8%, which is still below the full unemployment rate of 3.4% nationally. And so while that rate is pretty low and back to pre-pandemic levels, we still have to do more for underserved veteran communities who are experiencing a higher unemployment rate. For example, the unemployment rate for Gulf War II veterans with service-connected disabilities has actually gone up. And we have to do something about that. We have seen numbers that show that those with 60% or more of a disability rating have a civically lower participation rate in the workforce at 66%. While comparative veterans who have a disability rating of 30%, and their participation in the workforce is 95%. So there is a discrepancy there. We've noticed it and we have to do more research to figure out where other discrepancies exist and how we can combat them. So therefore, we look at promoting and advancing equity, inclusion, accessibility for underserved veteran communities such as disabled veterans as a key priority for our agency. But we also have to look at how we're supporting veterans of color, those in rural communities, Native American communities, LGBTQ plus communities, justice involved, and others who have been historically underrepresented. Every veteran deserves a good job with family sustaining wages and the opportunity to establish generational wealth and the wellbeing for themselves and their family. There's a lot of focus on veteran resiliency and suicide and rightly so. We recognize that meaningful employment facilitates social connectedness, sense of purpose, and financial stability. All key factors are resiliency. But at times the broken narrative, I mean the broken veteran narrative is more frequent and louder than veteran accomplishments and value in our workforce and our communities. I speak to a lot of employers and share this narrative, which also goes to a lot of the data that shows that veterans outperform their non-veteran peers in the workforce. And so we have seen that hiring veterans is a good business decision. And while it sounds great for me in my position to say that, we have numbers to actually back that up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, veterans have a lower employment rate and a higher labor participation rate than their non-veteran peers. Pew Research says that veterans have a 17% higher standard of living than their non-veterans over the last 40 years. And post-911 veterans earn more than those who have never served in our forces according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These numbers speak for themselves. However, this narrative needs to be told. We have to say this more often and more loudly, that hiring veterans is a good business decision. Service to our nation and uniform facilitates, as many people know, better long-term employment outcomes than those who don't serve. This message is essential for the sustainment and we're all going to your force as well. As you've been reading, recruitment has been very challenging as of lately and most services are on track to meet their annual goals. DOD has recently shared that about 23% of 17 to 24-year-olds would not even qualify for the military today. And then if you combine that between 180,000 and 200,000 service members leave the active duty every year, we see ourselves at a precipice that we must face. Financial stability is a key factor in how many folks leave the military. Re-enlistment and continuing to serve in uniform is a family decision. Our military families and spouses have a big vote, especially with the new blended retirement system where service members don't have to stay in for 20 years to receive some form of payment out in the pension. And our military spouses are extremely educated and a talented force, often more educated than their veteran and military spouses themselves. According to BLS, military spouses earn 38% less than civilian spouses counterparts. To me, that's a problem. And also, they experience 21% unemployment rate. So while I'm not a mathematician by any means, those numbers speak volumes about, we have a problem in our nation about hiring and retaining military spouses in our civilian workforce. And so on June 9th, 2023, President Biden signed an executive order to ensure that the federal government is an employer of choice for military and veteran spouses, as well as caregivers and survivors by strengthening the ability for the executive departments and agencies to recruit, hire, develop, promote and retain the skilled and diverse pool of talent. And in support of this executive order and the fiscal year 24 presidential's budget, VETS as an agency is seeking to expand eligibility for the Uniformed Services Employment and Reimplement Rights Act to ensure that military spouses have anti-discrimination protection within the workforce as well. Increasing employment opportunities and protections for military spouses will help retain members of the armed forces, enhance our military readiness and will allow employers to tap into a pool of talented individuals while sustaining the all volunteer force and the well-being of our military families. The current labor dynamics indicate that workers are seeking better opportunities with increased wages, benefits and flexibility to provide security and spend more time with their families. A clear path to good jobs is to register apprenticeships to include these high demand industries that allow such opportunities, such as cybersecurity, the defense industrial base, clean energy, semiconductors, transportation and union jobs and construction. VETS is currently working closely with these industries to create clear pathways for veterans and military spouses. This is why another one of VETS priorities is to leverage partnerships to maximize employment outcomes. And these partners include our Department of Labor teammates, such as the Employment and Training Administration, federal agency partners at DOD and VA, the Small Business Administration and others. And our close relationship with the state workforce agencies are truly crucial since we have a number of key partners that will help us extend and be a force multiplier for our efforts. We also have a number of key partners to include our grantees for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, veteran service organizations such as DAV, labor units, nonprofits and private sector entities focused on veteran employment. And of course the employers and industry associations leading forward to hire veterans and military spouses. Getting the military to civilian employment transition right continues to be a VETS focus. And I'm excited about our recent Transition Assistance Program initiatives to include the Employment Navigator and Partnership Pilot, also known as EMPP. This is our first program to provide one-on-one career assistance to interested transitioning service members and their spouses outside of the traditional TAP classroom setting. This program is currently at 29 military installations worldwide. And VETS has partnered with high-caliber employment and training organizations from the public and private sector that focus on apprenticeship, digital matching, placement services, employment mentorship and wraparound services to name a few. In fact, one of our first partners in this program was recruit military who's sitting right here in the second row. And so far to date, nearly 12,000 to include 750 military spouses have received services from our employment navigators. I'm also excited to talk about our efforts and our off-base transitioning training pilot, also known as OBTT, which kicked off last year. This is an opportunity for veterans, national guard and reservists, including their spouses to attend employment workshops and their local communities. The 10 two-hour workshops are in-person and virtual to help facilitate a busy lifestyle. Attendees can mix and match their workshops to meet their employment goals and attend at their own pace. OBTT is off to a great start at our five initial pilot states in California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Today, over 5,500 participants have attended over 3,100 workshops in those five states. And we received many compliments from participants who found that the training was very useful and led to employment. And as we continue to grow and evolve this program, we will also greatly appreciate any feedback we receive as we further evolve and customize this program to meet the demands of our participants. Soon, we plan to extend to at least 20 states across the nation in our efforts to roll out this program. And so we're thankful for DAV's efforts to promote this program via your networks and membership. And Vets has also launched a career workshop for transitioning military spouses known as the Transition Employment Assistance for Military Spouses Teams. And so the team's workshops are designed to help military spouses plan and prepare for their job search in pursuit of their employment goals. At fiscal year to date, we have had over 1,500 military spouses attend these workshops. We are also continuing to develop and implement the Wounded Warrior and Caregiver Employment Workshop. That is specifically designed to address the employment needs of Wounded Warriors. This has been developed in coordination with the Department of Labor's Office of Disability, Employment Policy, the VA, and various service organization, veteran service organizations and stakeholders. The curriculum is focused on job accommodation resources so Wounded Warriors are able to realize their full potential in the workplace despite the injuries they may have received while in service. This workshop blends learning delivery that includes instructor led virtual sessions and is designed to meet the needs of transitioning service members whether they may be wounded, ill, or injured. At fiscal year to date, we've nearly had 12,000 participants in this program alone. The military to civilian transition is challenging for most. Given this transition right, it focuses on getting that good employment outcome and resiliency that veterans and their families have. And this is why the transition assistance program remains and always will be a top priority for vets. So in closing, I wanna make it clear that the veterans team, the vets team is committed to employing, enabling all veterans, service members, and military spouses to reach their full potential in the workplace. Successful employment outcomes for our veterans and military spouses is fundamental for maintaining our all volunteer force. And it is the right thing to do for those who step forward to serve our nation. Soon, we don't have it up right now, but we're gonna put up a contact us slide. Thank you for that. And I appreciate the continued collaboration and partnership with DAV and vets. I appreciate being here with you today and thank you for all your efforts to advocate for and support those in uniform, veterans, and their military families. Thank you. Thank you, Julian. We, so again, my name is Ryan Burgos. I wanna go over a couple of items with you guys, just to inform everybody about how are the state of our national employment program.  We've got four individuals that are there, hopeful to get an additional assistant director here in the near future. However, we have Mr. Jeremy Yost. He is gonna be speaking here in a few moments. He is the assistant national employment director. We also have Mr. Anthony Pruitt, who's our employment specialist. And then we have Ms. Deanna Stofer, who's our support staff there in the office. We pride ourselves in the fact that whenever service members are coming off of active duty, it's a very stressful time for them. But we pride ourselves in the fact that we're a one stop shop. There's more to separating off active duty than filing claims for disability. It's vitally important that to continue to be a provider for their family, they need meaningful employment opportunities. And that's where DAV steps up to the plate again. And we hold numerous job fairs all over the country. We work directly with disabled veteran outreach program specialists. And to include local veteran employment representatives as well. We work directly with employers to ensure that they've got all the benefits needed to sustain a veteran workforce, to include employee resource groups. And they can get assistance from us at any point in time by reaching out directly to our office via our website or our contact information on a consistent basis. We also will hold different webinars with employers. Again, just as another resource to educate them on the importance of hiring disabled veterans. So our employment program began in 2014 with our strategic partner, Recruit Military. So next year we are coming up on a decade of service. And again, that was a very strategic partner because we know our strong suits are, which is assisting veterans when it comes to claims for disabilities and volunteer hours and things of that nature. However, when it comes to the employment space, we needed a partner that could go the extra mile on our side with us. So again, that's where Recruit Military has come in and really been that strategic partner. We also have Hiring America who assists us in creating videos and putting us, putting our name out there when it comes to Armed Forces Network, local news stations. As soon as the problem is education is everything. You don't know what you don't know. So if we can get on the basis and visit with separating service members and their spouses and give them that piece of education, it's gonna go a really long way. So on our website, jobs.dav.org, we've got a multitude of resources there to include a job board with over 290,000 vacancies nationwide. And on that website as well, we've got a complete list of our job fairs that are coming nearly everywhere. So this year, we're proud to say that we've got over a hundred and 17, 107 career fairs that is both virtual and in-person. And I personally like the virtual environment. Not only do we have one tomorrow, a virtual event, but these virtual events, individuals have the ability to, instead of walking from booth to booth, they're able to actually click on which booth they wanna go to. Employers can see them, they can see the employers on the spot, interviews can happen, on the spot hiring can happen. It's a really awesome environment to actually be a part of. Individuals, and also just so everybody knows, I mean, just because it's a virtual event does not mean that it's only remote opportunities. They are in-person opportunities as well. And I think that's one thing that we see at job fairs whenever we're there or whenever we're just talking to people, they say, well, I don't wanna attend a virtual event because I wanna work in-person. I don't wanna remote job. I mean, I'm kinda similar. I don't wanna work at home either. I'd rather be in the office and actually see people and engage with people. However, our virtual environments are awesome because, excuse me, these are locations where people can actually go into the office every single day. And this is just an image of our job boards that's on our website. Again, you don't have to log in. You don't have to do anything. You visit jobs.dav.org. Simple to use. You plug in something, the job that you're looking for. If you're looking for a human resources manager or a project manager, you plug that in along with your zip code, you have the ability to look within a 25 mile radius of your home and hundreds of jobs normally pop up depending on what you're looking for. And they're all hyperlinked directly to Recruit Military's website where you have the ability to see all the requirements for the position. You can also apply for that job just with a simple click of a button. So it's an awesome resource just to show a veteran or their spouse. Hey, look, this is so easy here. Let me show you this. Let me literally blow your mind on how easy this tool is to use. We also have our Patriot Employer Program. Our Patriot Employer Program, as you guys might have seen, we recognized a few businesses on stage yesterday along with the DevOps and Lever of the year. And this program has the ability to, excuse me, we have the ability to issue a digital badge to employers. We do this on a monthly basis. And it's all about spreading awareness because we know when an employer, when a veteran or a spouse is looking for a job, sees that DAV stamp of approval at the bottom, they know that that's an organization they can go to and trust. And they can have a meaningful career, not just a job to hold you over, but somewhere you can stay for a long period of time. So through this program, we have the ability to recognize numerous companies throughout the year. But just to give you guys a little more information, I wanna show you guys a short video real quick. DAV has long been devoted to helping veterans with everything from benefits assistance to job opportunities and more. And now through their Patriot Employer Program, DAV is recognizing those companies doing their part to help our nation's defenders find meaningful employment and provide a working environment that understands and appreciates veterans. We here at Disabled American Veterans, we feel it's very important to ensure that our nation's heroes leave active duty service with meaningful employment. One way that we do that is highlighting companies that go above and beyond when it comes to not only hiring veterans, but also retaining those veterans. The Patriot Employer Program was implemented in October of 2021. We wanted it to go out to all entities, no matter their size. So we recognize small, medium, and large employers. And then we have subcategories for companies that are very good in specific areas, whether it be hiring, career building, community involvement, and community support. Which is a nice thing to do. We wanna recognize as many companies as we can that are hiring veterans and their spouses. Here at DAV, we make sure we vet each application that comes in. So that way, when other organizations and other veterans see that DAV stamped approval, they know that because it's coming from a prolific service organization like our own, that they can trust that organization. And they know that, well, you know, DAV is giving their seal of approval. It must be somewhere that we can go to not only find employment, but we can find our next career move, not just a job to hold us over. Anyone can nominate a company, whether that's an employee or somebody outside the company that knows what the company is doing in regards to hiring veterans. Under the Patriot Employer Program, we're not just restricted to three awards or small, medium, and large. We wanna be able to offer the employers that are nominated a digital badge, showing that yes, they hire veterans and spouses. Applying for the Patriot Award qualified us for the Employer of the Year Award. And we were very proud to receive the Patriot Award from the DAV and we were notified that we actually won the Employer of the Year Award. Being recognized by the DAV is just amazing. Knowing all the work that they do and all the accomplishments that they have on a daily basis to be partnered with them is just, it's awesome on behalf of WPS. We put in two years ago for the first DAV Award, which was the Small Business DAV Employer of the Year Award and we felt incredibly privileged that we won that. And then this year, we won the DAV Career Advancement Award. Veterans looking for work when they come to your organization. The DAV Award lets them know that this is a place that respects their values, their mindset, their work ethics and their desires to advance in their career. Just even the Patriot Employer Award is a door and it shows that your door's open and it truly means that the business is open to you as a veteran and it's not the typical hurdles that you may have to cross. You might be teaching that company some things and they're ready and willing to learn or they're already at that stage and the door's open regardless for you to come in. So either way, it's a ready place for you. I encourage everyone to apply and nominate their companies for higher veterans. Higher veterans is beneficial for the employer and to the veteran and we hope that the Patriot Employer Program encourages more companies to hire even more veterans. That being said, I encourage everyone, please go home, go to patreonployer.org, nominate a business so we can get more veterans hired. It's vitally important to end veteran unemployment. This is just a small piece, you know, we, every step we take just chips off another piece so it is vitally important that we get many veterans hired. So from now I would like to introduce our Assistant National Employment Director, Sir Jeremy Yost, Marine Corps veteran. So please come up here. Sorry, I am standing, my apologies. I would say the Marine Corps is the best branch. Yeah, summer, yeah, now we got some negative nances. So the first thing I'm gonna go over is the Veterans Advantage Program. So when it comes to hiring veterans, it's not the only thing that we wanna do. We wanna also tell these companies on how to hire veterans, retain them and also before recruit them as well. So just because they hire them, it's not where we wanna stop. We wanna make sure that those individuals continue to have gainful employment and also have that career as well. So our Veterans Advantage Program, the DAV Guide to Retaining and Hiring Veterans with Disabilities, was launched in 2018. We have a 44-page booklet that is free to anyone to be able to read. All they have to do is go onto jobs.dav.org, click on the hiring guide and you can download it immediately. You can also provide it to companies that you know that are looking to hire veterans as well.  So as Ryan stated earlier, we started in 2014 with our DAV partner, recruit military. Currently this year we have done 90, well we will do, my apologies, 90 in-person job fairs this year and 18 virtual. Now this ranges across the entire country. Now we do have additional resources like tips for resume writing, interview tactics and other things on top of that on our website include mentors that can help you as well. Recruit Military, our partner, also has tools and resources on their website that can help you throughout the process. Next thing, job fairs. When you go onto our website and click on the job fairs tab, you're going to see all the job fairs that are coming in the next month to two months depending on when it is updated. Now it's updated every few weeks so anything that is adjusted, if we have a new one or one comes off, we will get that updated as soon as possible. All the ones in red are virtual. All the ones in black are in-person. So if somebody's looking to do a virtual event, we advise them to look for the red ones. If they're looking to go in-person, go to the black ones. Now when it comes to it, all you have to do is hit the register now. Type in and log into your recruit military profile and you can register for that event. Ryan stole my thunder a little earlier. We're doing 108 job fairs total this year. Again, 90 in-person, 18 virtual. The 24 schedule is now completed. It will be updated soon. Estimated around 99 events next year but we'll have additional ones put on there throughout the year. During our 18 virtual job fairs, these are hosted online so you can log in at home. You don't have to go anywhere and you're able to talk to all these employers while you're on there. These are different from the traditional because it gives the opportunity to locate and apply for jobs no matter where the veteran lives or serves. You can find out about all of our job fairs on all of our links, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Every single week we are updating with the new job fairs that we have coming that week. So just wanted to highlight some of the numbers that we have for this year. For since 2014, my apologies. Job fairs, we've been to 925 job fairs across country. We've had over 290,000 attendees. Exhibitors over 47,000. The two numbers that we see that are huge is DAV interviews, 135,000 interviews that have been done on the spot at job fairs. And jobs offered 174,867 job offers extended out to individuals. Now you see, you can see that the number is bigger for job offers than the actual interviews itself because multiple people are getting multiple interviews and job offers as well. So I'm going to introduce our new Patriot Employment Director. I'm just going to read the small bio, not his whole bio. Nick is a community builder, economic developer and entrepreneur who has worked in and around the entrepreneurial ecosystem for more than 14 years. Nick is also a Mustang Civil Affairs Officer in the United States Army Reserve where his community service includes earning the rank of staff sergeant before attending Officer Candid School where he is commissioned as an engineer officer before transferring to Civilian Affairs. He now holds a rank of major after 23 years of service and is planning to retire at the end of 2023. Thanks, Jeremy. I really didn't expect that much of an intro. Where's all my Army veterans at out there? Yeah, let's say on school. All right, well, as Jeremy mentioned, first I want to thank the team up here for allowing me to come and crash their party a little bit on the employment side. But thank you for the warm introduction. Thank you all for attending this morning. As you mentioned, I'm the director of Patriot Boot Camp, one of our newest programs here at the DAV, many of which many of you probably haven't even heard of the program. Although if you attended yesterday's business session, you probably saw Chef Robert Irvine up there talking about Patriot Boot Camp and I thought that was pretty exciting. Anybody else think that was exciting? Yeah, yeah. So what is Patriot Boot Camp? Some of you, as you came by the table over the last couple of days, knees were rattling thinking we're gonna send you away off to another boot camp. But it's not quite that rigorous. So this program is really for the veteran entrepreneur or the spouse entrepreneur. So we want to make that clear. We really want to support veterans and their spouses. So make sure you get the word out. But the program is really quite simple.  This is the place to come and get a trans, go through a transformative program where you get access to education. And I think the most important part is mentorship and access to other information in workshops, panel discussions about all the various topics that can help build you as a better business owner. So we all know that business owners, if you decide you're an entrepreneur and you have something to offer, whether that be service or a product, you're typically the best part, you're typically that service or that product. But the one thing that most entrepreneurs struggle in is all the other stuff, right? All the accounting and just the business understanding, the planning, all that aspect. So this is a great program to build upon those skills and take those with you into the future. It's also a program that allows that entrepreneur access to those who are investors, those who know about taking investment, those who can advise you and guide you in the investment scheme as you move forward in your business, if that's your thing, because it isn't necessarily every veteran's next step. But if you are also a business owner in your local community and you're looking for other resources, you may come across a term that is referred to as incubator. So you might see that out in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. You can associate DAB Patriot Food Camp with an incubator program, meaning you're in business, we take your program, we warm it up in a nice snuggly environment, give you the tools and the resources and the nurturing that you need to take the next step, to grow your business.  And if you ever get involved with the program, you will most certainly know of Tammy Mathis. She will contact you about pretty much anything that goes on with the program. And then Sherri Rice, who is at this particular juncture, a consultant of ours, but what's interesting about Sherri is she was part of the founding crew of Patriot Food Camp, which was its own standalone charity prior to DAB acquiring the program in 2022. So she has a lot of historical knowledge that she brings to the table about the formation, the do's and the don'ts about the program. And so she's a nice advisor, that's an addition to our team for the duration of time. Couple interesting impacts. So I, I know these are kind of small, I didn't realize they'd be so small, sorry, but we've had, to our greatest ability to track participants from one charity to the next, we've had 971 participating entrepreneurs over the last 12 years. We typically run our boot camps, three, maybe four boot camps per year, depending on sponsorships and opportunities and of course interest. So that's a large number when you think of a cohort of 50 every year. So 441 expert mentors, and this is again, I mentioned is a very good strength of the program. So while we have, we may have a cohort of 50 participating businesses, we also like to match it up with a 50 participant, participants of mentors. So that's a major component of the program. So if you are a business owner and you have some knowledge that you'd like to share, you can do so by getting involved with the DAB Patriot Boot Camp. 7,200 hours of mentorship, that's just an estimation. I'm sure it's way beyond that when you consider that lasting relationships are formed through the boot camp and they continue mentorship into the future with the people they meet there. 21% female participation, very happy about this number and actually our last cohort was 49% female. So that's, we're getting out, we wanna attract more female entrepreneurs. 80%, what is that, 82%? It's too small for me to read, that's how small it is. 82% identify as a service connected disabled vet and again, I think that's low balling this number. 52% racially diverse and what I really mean by that is all other ethnic groups combined outside of Caucasian and those who don't identify include 52%. So that's a huge statistic, blowing out any other inclusion statistic that you could even assign to us. And then again, 971 for sitting entrepreneurs, I think that's a typo, I think it's really supposed to say 170 million in capital raised for the businesses that has participated in Patriot Boot Camp over the last 12 years and again, I think that number is extremely low when you look at reality but that's a measure, one of the many different measures that we use to show progress in the program. And of course we have many more statistics if you wanna talk about those, I'll be at the booth, come find me. So what are some ways that you can help? Obviously if you are a participant, I think that's why, if you're someone who has, is an entrepreneur, is in business with an idea, it's a competitive process so you'd submit an application, we'd love to have you do that with the hopes of participating in a Patriot Boot Camp. But aside from that, we all know a business owner or someone who's aspiring to be a business owner so I think that's a good plug and so share that with your networks, with your chapters, with your friends, family, et cetera to get more people into the program as we build this. And if you're an experienced entrepreneur, as I mentioned earlier, we'd love for you to consider being coming a mentor. That means different things to different people but we would love at least to have that conversation and to put you on our mailing list at a minimum. So please connect with us on that. If you're looking to give back, I mean we're always looking for sponsorships, I know it's a shameless plug, but nonetheless, if you have a business or if you're interested in investing, your resources in this mission, we'd be happy to discuss that with you as well. If you're interested in growing your business in a different capacity, you can become a sponsor, we have lots of interesting opportunities that we can get creative, honestly. We can create whatever you want if you wanna show that support. And then if you're like-minded and you just wanna become a partner in any other way, again, I don't even have any specific examples. We'd love to partner anyway we can and work with that with you. And then if you're alumni, we wanna hire veterans. So for those who have gone through the program in the past, I shuffle, I make introductions to Ryan and his team to continue their engagement with DAV and growing their business through the hiring of veterans. And I think that's gonna wrap me up for today, how they do on time. I think we did well.  We'd love for you to come ask us some questions. I see some people getting up, all right. Thank you, everybody, for your time and attention today. Good morning. Good morning, Marty Panon, South Dakota. I see that we have a veteran advantage guide of hiring veterans for employers. I take questions once in a while from veterans that have experienced discrimination, ADA violations. Can you expand on that and what resources we have from a DAV perspective on how to address veterans that have experienced that? Thank you. From a DAV perspective, we have the resources to point people in the right direction. However, we don't directly represent them as a file of different lawsuits and things of that nature. However, I can invite Julian up to speak a little bit more on that. So there's a couple of different aspects that we could address with that. So first, within VETS agency itself, as I mentioned, there's the Uniform Services Employment and Reimplement Act, Rights Act. And what that does, that provides anti-discrimination protections for those who served in the workforce. So if it is an organization that is discriminated against someone because of their service or current affiliation or past affiliation, we will investigate that, find out if there's any merit, and then the US government can represent you in court if it goes to that level. We do try to mitigate those cases so it doesn't go to court between the employee and the employer. But worst case scenario, we do pass it on to the Department of Justice. You also mentioned the ADA. We also have some lawyers within the Department of Labor outside of VETS that can help and support any claims that someone has in regards to violations against the Americans with Disabilities Act. Jack Hanson, South Dakota. This is for Julian and the major. So I understand that you have never been in the service. So I have to say to that, we are Army strong. Army strong? Yes. But yes, we appreciate the comment. I do have to add to that. Although we stand up here and say the Army is the best service, I honestly can say, I appreciate each and every branch of service as I've worked with all of you. So you can't do it alone, so. There's not a question, it's just a statement. What works for us is that 10 reasons why you hire a veteran, hard copy. And we give that to any businesses. And I think that's very important. I don't know if you qualify for saying that, but that's so important, the hard copy, to give to the business. 10 reasons why we should hire a vet, and it works for us. I appreciate that, thank you. Stan Kokewicz, Chapter 44, Department of Wisconsin. I was a divot for nine years, LVR for 13, recently retired from the state of Wisconsin. But anyway, back when we had the hire vets first campaign, there were 52 buses in the city of Milwaukee with hire vets first. And I did not have the need to know where the money came from for that, even though my phone number was on the back of the bus. But anyway, why don't dozen vets put advertising money into the grant for divot LVR positions? So that's a great question. And to your point, we do have some really talented folks in those two positions. One thing that we are running up against, and I think a lot of departments are running up against this right now is just constraints for budget. And so sometimes you have to prioritize where we're putting our funding. And while we are rolling out with new initiatives to fill gaps, personnel is always a key aspect of how we do our service delivery. So making sure we have the right personnel in the right place is always important. But obviously with these state grants, we do leave it up to some degree of the state on who they hire and the qualifications of those individuals. But we do work very closely to assure that they are using the right metrics and spreading the word about these key positions. Hi, I'm Glenn Prouder. I started a chapter 66 with Larry. I started a disabled veteran food truck business here in Atlantic City. But at this point, I'd rather be a mentor to help other veterans in that way. So I'm trying to figure what programs do you offer that can help me be a mentor for my business? That's our Patriot Bootcamp. So just come talk to me when we get done. We can set you up, okay? And by the way, for the DAV app, if you, in this instance, if you're interested in becoming a mentor, if you go inside the DAV app, you'll see a, I guess it's a sub app for DAV Patriot Bootcamp and you can click on it. And there is a link in there to sign up with a mentor application and or subscribe to our mailing list. Yeah, Bob Casher at Great Commonwealth of Kentucky Chapter Three, Elizabeth Tomic. It's a scenario with a question. Small Town USA has a small construction business and they hire, they do hire veterans. How can they get into this program to get into some of these job fairs when they're having a critical time hiring experienced heavy equipment operators? So if they are interested in attending a job fair, all you need to do is reach out to us. So the, right when you visit our page, jobs.dav.org, the very first link that's on there is to email us directly and speak with us in reference to that. Does the owner of the company have to need to be a veteran in order to qualify to get into the program? No, they do not. Okay, that was my question. Thank you. Thanks for being here guys, I really appreciate it. Gary Burr, Chapter 169, Victoria, Texas. As a service officer, I sometimes come across the young guys just getting out that don't really have a lot of experience in interviewing. I get prepared for an interview. I've never been through a job interview. Don't want to set up their resume, et cetera. Is there some type of resource that you can help them before they attend these job fairs? There is, there is. So on our page again, there's a plug again, jobs.dav.org. So at the very bottom, there is mentorship opportunities where companies give a free hour to veterans to be mentored, whether that's help me build my resume, help me build my LinkedIn profile, interview tactics. And then also with our corporate partner recruit military, they hold webinars as well and they work with individuals and call one-on-one veterans and spouses to speak with them and make sure their resume is squared away just to give them the tools and equip them better for job fairs. Jeff Whitnamen, Chapter 9, Department of Ohio. I was a debop also and one of the things that we used to, that we talked to the veterans about was to let them know about WOTC, WOTC. It's a work opportunity tax credit and employers who hire veterans are eligible for a $9,600 tax break. So it's just, and I also tell them, hey, when you go in for an interview, they might ask you, hey, tell us the reason why we should hire you over at everybody else out in the waiting room. One reason is I'm a veteran, veterans are honest, we're dependable, we're loyal, we show up for work on time and we don't mind staying until the job gets done. And the second reason why is because if you hire me, you qualify for the tax break through WOTC and that doesn't mean you can hire me today, take the credit tomorrow and let me go on a third day. You have to keep me employed for 180 days. So if we have any employers here, hire a veteran. Thank you. Thank you. And just to kind of reiterate on that topic, I mean, the education is key. That's why we do meet with employers on a consistent basis and we talk about the veteran advantage, our hiring guide. And through education, we're able to make these employers realize just how important it is to hire veterans. But I mean, again, that is a vitally, vitally important topic. Is there, do we have any additional questions? Yes. Elville, chapter 57, Wisconsin. This is really directed towards recruit military. Pre-pandemic, recruit military would have job fairs in Milwaukee. Post-pandemic, we have not had any. We would hope that they would reconsider scheduling them back again. We're more than willing to work with them to ensure that they would be successful. So thank you. For sure. So I mean, in the event that a job fair is not in your area, that's the exact reason why there's virtual events. We can't be everywhere all at once. So in order to accommodate the more rural locations and to accommodate the veterans who can't attend our job fairs, that's why we have the virtual events. We're again, it's an awesome environment. I encourage everyone, if you have not seen it, even if you're not looking for a job, if you already have a job, I mean, the best time to find a job is when you already have one, right? So even if you don't have a job, whatever it might be, just explore the environment and see how awesome these virtual events are. Ryan, thanks. Stan Geno, Department of Washington, member of the Employment Committee, thank God. No, really, it's a great program.  Stop by the booth. If you're a service officer, obviously everybody's touching base with vets, a lot of them need jobs, a lot of them wanna work, spouses, transitioning. Some of them even wanna move on to a different job. Pick up some cards, have it on your desk, have a couple with you. It's got the website on there, jobs.dav.org. It's easy, just hand it to them. And it's a big help. So promote, promote, promote, please. Thank you. Thank you. We've got a lot of information there also, not just some free stuff for everybody to grab. So come get us some education also at our table. Dave Felt, Wisconsin. I understand you wanna promote. I understand you wanna grow. Walkie's not a rule to city, okay? What are you guys doing to dispel the D in front of disabled American veteran? Because still out there, right now employers are really striving to get people. It's really hard. But before pandemic disabled American veterans told the employer, you're disabled. So how are you changing that stigma? So again, that's where our hiring guide comes in the mix. We use real world examples from real companies, real veterans, and explain things like a work opportunity tax credit. We explain everything that a veteran, whenever you hire a veteran, all the pros that you're getting. A lot of these employers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual basis just to train the employees that they already have to be good leaders in the organization.  You have somebody already fresh, brand new that is born leader. That's what they're supposed to be. So through our hiring guide, if anybody hasn't taken a look at it, I encourage everybody to visit jobs.dav.org and take a review of that hiring guide. So that's an awesome piece of literature to take a look at. So I want to address that last question because I mentioned that a little bit in my remarks. And just because this is disabled American veterans, it doesn't mean we're broken American veterans. You know, so it takes all of us here to speak to what Ryan said, that we have to educate and inform people that this is a great business decision for employers to hire veterans. They're leaders, they're resilient, they get the job done. Not everybody else out there in that workforce can do it that way. So we're going to continue to tell that narrative here in vets. We know DAV is going to tell that story. And so we're encouraging everybody else out there to spread that message to employers. Good morning, Edmmereris, Department of Rhode Island. So when you guys travel in person to do these job fairs, are you self-contained unit?  Do you notify the state departments throughout the country that you're going to have these fairs rather than post it on a website? So I got to go play with the click, click, click. Do you have a notification ability via email to our agents, or we all have those lists?  So, again, I need to plug the click, click, click again. However, that is how we can reach the most amount of people in the quickest amount of time through all of our social media handles and everything of that nature. So every, almost a few times a week, there's posts that go up to inform everyone of our location. However, we always encourage any department or any chapter that if our job fair is in your area, please reach out to us. Let us know that you're going to be coming. Yes, that's my question. How do I keep scanning your calendars? Well, honestly, you'd only have to do a scan one time because we've got the complete list of all of our job fairs throughout the entire year located there. So you can look in January and find a job fair in December and you can notify us right when you read it in December or in January and say, hey, you know, Ryan, I would like to come to this job fair to see what it's about. You know, see the amount of veterans that you're in, spouses that you're helping and we've been more than happy to have you. Thank you. Thank you. Rodney Bones, Michigan, Army strong. I think we need to really go ahead and try to small mistake and power service officers to notify, because you'll be amazed at the number of veterans who don't want to file disability claims because of the job that they currently have. Because they think something's going to happen to them and I get it with law enforcement, personnel veterans, mainly law enforcement, to be honest with you. But a lot of them they say, well, I got a great job and if I follow disability claims, especially with that disability claim deals with PTSD, they think they're going to be discriminated against or they think something's going to happen. And then my retort to that is the bottom line is you've been doing your job for 8, 10, 12, 15 years. You haven't had an issue based on your disability. Only thing you're doing now is getting that disability recognized by the VA.  So we just got to get the word out to veterans that it's okay to file a claim and not be discriminated against when you do it, especially when you're already employed. For sure. And I think education is the biggest thing that needs to happen. Educate the veteran or the spouse about the importance of filing disability claims. I mean, DAB, I mean, that's why we're such a prolific service organization. It's because we are the subject matter experts. But then also educating employers as well. So they understand that, hey, you know, I'm disabled, I'm not broken, like Julian had indicated. So I think that's vitally important. I understand there's just one more question. We are going to wrap up. We can't talk some more up here. There's another seminar that is incoming, but we can't talk some more offline up here. But again, thank you for everybody's time. Please visit jobs.dav.org. Our contact information is on the screen up here and you can reach out to us. Thank you.