HH #92.mp3

Harpreet: [00:00:09] What's up, everybody? Welcome. Welcome to the arts of Data Science. Happy hour. Happy hour number 92. And if you're listening on the podcast and you hear this Chris Smooth voice, no more AirPods voice, that's because I'm back, I'm back in my studio. So excited to be back here six months and it's been over six months since the basement got flooded. But I'm back. I'm back just a few more finishing touches and this room will be complete. But I'm excited to be here. Shout out to everybody that's joining us in the room. Vin, what's going on? Jennifer, good to see you again. Jennifer. Michael, what's going on? Anthony Jacob Russell, Rashaad Christian, how y'all doing, man? Good to have you guys here. Get to see a lot of old faces, man. It's been a while since I've seen you, Jennifer. Good to have you back. So. I just completed like a full, full on first week. Well last week I started at desk, but I sort of like in the middle of the week on a Wednesday. But this was my first full week and part of what I did for this week at the very beginning of this week was to come up with like a 90 day plan for myself, a 90 day plan to kind of set myself up for success, kind of doing.

Harpreet: [00:01:21] Doing doing the work before actually doing the work. Right, planning out how I want things to go. And I think that's a a good topic to kind of kick off this happy hour with how do you onboard successfully for a new job? What are the steps that you should take to onboard successfully? And let's let's pivot this not towards like the entry level type of roles. Let's talk more about in leadership type of roles. That's that's kind of one. Want to hear your thoughts on. Let's go to Rashaad. And then after a shot, we'll hear from Vin and then maybe Russell and then Jennifer. Whoever else wants to [00:02:00] go, please let me know. Just use the hand raised icon. I'll call on you if you're watching on LinkedIn, if you're watching on YouTube, or if you're here in the room and you have a question, do let me know. I will be sure to add your question to the queue. That being said, go for it, Rashad.

Speaker2: [00:02:16] No problem. Firstly, it's nice to be back. It's been a while since I've been on here, but starting off with an intense question is always. Well, I can I can say my last job. I so I joined it was a startup type environment and there was someone and so there was like ten of us and there was someone above us who had an idea of what should be done. And they basically immediately assigned me a thing to do. And I was sort of skeptical that it was the best thing to do. Right? So what I did essentially was I said, well, hold on, because firstly, you when you join and someone gives you an immediate task, you're like, Oh, I should do it to impress them. But then you also want to make sure that you're not just spinning your wheels and doing random work. And so I essentially pushed back a little bit. I said, I'm not sure if this is necessarily the best way to approach it. I wanted to approach it in a different way. And then two weeks later, like I was, I was fired because apparently it didn't do much. I was like, What? Where have I entered? What have I what kind of environment if I joined? That was that was my first time joining as a in a senior level capacity. In my current job I it was a lot less ruckus even though it was still early stage. I essentially joined and I basically I started talking to people to understand their different challenges, sort of the landscape.

Speaker2: [00:03:43] And so I think some of those early meetings with people, but they at least know who you are, are very important. And then when you do that, to ask really good questions. So I think asking good questions rather than coming in like a bulldozer and being like, I know your solutions, I know the answer to everything, [00:04:00] that's probably pretty important. Oftentimes there is sort of entrenched organizational perspectives and you want to get a sense of those different perspectives, sort of like the main axes of conflict relatively quickly. That's probably a mistake I've made every time, and looking back, I would do that a little differently so that I could better understand, okay, what strategy should I come up with to operate in this environment? Because you could do things. It's a little different than just, here's your ticket now, go to work. If you don't understand the pros and cons, what will happen is you'll you'll do something and then people will be like, Well, that's not really what I want. Or You will encounter resistance and you'll be and you'll wonder, where did that come from? I have no clue. So trying to understand in the beginning where those conflicts are, this group thinks this. And I think that that's probably the most important thing I would tell my younger self. And you do that through conversations with senior level people and people on the ground floor doing the hands on work and asking good questions to understand those sources of conflict and what they care about.

Harpreet: [00:05:08] Thank you very much, Rashad. Appreciate that. Let's hear from Vin and then after Vin, let's hear from let's hear from Jennifer. Then Mexico and whoever else wants to chime in, please let me know. I'll add you to the queue. Go for Vin.

Speaker3: [00:05:22] So you're talking about from a leadership perspective?

Harpreet: [00:05:25] Yeah. Yeah. Let's say you've just started a role and maybe you're at the manager or above level where you don't necessarily have tasks really maybe handed down to you, but you kind of have to pave your own way.

Speaker3: [00:05:37] You know, it's interesting, depending upon what level you're in on boarding like the business on boards you at I'd say the junior VP level and below and you on board the business at the VP and senior level. You get hired because you've submitted a vision or 100 day plan or something [00:06:00] where the company says you're the best person to take us through whatever it is that we're going through right now. And so from an organizational standpoint, or even sometimes at the C-suite standpoint, you're brought in and you on board the business, even though you get the lay of the land and you definitely get to know people, you've done your research up front and then you take the job because you know what's going on and you know what needs to happen. It's very interesting that at a lower level you can't come in guns blazing. Here's what we're going to do. But at a higher level, at some point, you are expected to come in and say, okay, I understand the problems that we're having and here are my vision. Here are the purpose of why we're going to do these things. Here are the changes that I'm going to help you make. Here's a you know, and then you begin to work with other organizations, work with other people. So I think that's the at some point in your career, you're going to be brought in because you have experience fixing or you have experience with growth. Like CEOs will sometimes be brought in to take a business from a certain revenue point to a certain revenue point or to grow into a certain segment.

Speaker3: [00:07:13] You'll have people brought in for to take over a data science organization who will take it from one size to the next size, or who can help help it learn how to deliver certain projects and certain product lines. So that's really even at the lower level when you're going to have to be onboarded by the business, always understand and do the same type of research that you would if you're coming in as the chief data and analytics officer or chief data scientist and figure out why you're being brought in, why you why you for this team, what is it that this team is transitioning from and to that you have specific experience with that's going to not only help you land the job, but also during that onboarding time, [00:08:00] you're going to be way more successful because you're going to be asking the right questions, building the right relationships, getting to I mean, because it's easy to know, okay, that's my boss, that's my team, or those are the leaders under me and these are their teams. The org chart stuff simple. It's Who else do I have to network with that? The last person in this job didn't. Why did they leave? What did they fail at? Why did they get fired or did they get promoted? What kind of mess did they leave? For me, it really is all about what change am I leading at that at any level of leadership, really? Management, I'd say the lowest expectation of change. But in data teams, sometimes the manager reports to the CTO.

Speaker3: [00:08:46] So you could be the person. And that's the that's really what to think about is are you coming in to on board the business is the business onboarding you and what changes are you expected to lead and how are you going to do that? I mean, what's your plan? What's your 90 day plan? What's your because in a leadership role, it's not so much them giving you. It's really you giving them this is my 90 day plan. This is what we're going to do. Talking to your next level leadership, whether that's a VP or C level and saying, okay, so this is my plan. What do you think? What am I too assertive on? Who am I going to run into, what kind of politics I'm about to walk through? And, you know, it's really before you start doing instead of saying, okay, and this is and we're going to do all of it, it's really here's my plan. What do you think? And getting other people's opinions and buy in. They're going to tell you the culture. They're going to tell you who's going to hate it and who's going to love it. There's going to they're going to tell you who thought they should have your job. That happens a lot. Yeah, there's two people that thought they were having your job and then you showed up. Who are those? Sometimes it's even, you know, who do you have to fire or who do you have to bring in in the first 30 days in order to set yourself up for success? It's a plan [00:10:00] is critical.

Harpreet: [00:10:03] Ben, thank you very much. Yeah, I've been I spent a couple of days this week just just doing the the 30 day plan. And I dedicated the first, like, real two weeks just to learning the business, just going like, you know, for developer relations. I got to understand not only the product that we have, but also the people using the product are competitors. What the market's like, where are we in the market? What's our messaging, what's our positioning like? And I just been taking that time just to to learn and absorb. And it's something I didn't do in my last role last fall. I just kind of they put me into something and I was like, do all these things. And it was really just that disconnect that that I don't think helped set me up for success there. But I'd love to hear some more thoughts. Let's go to let's go to Jennifer, Mexico. If you are around, I'd love to hear from you as well. Go for Jennifer. Good to see you again, by the way.

Speaker4: [00:10:58] Good to see you guys. Really then. And Richard covered so much of what I had written down out of the chute, hit the one on ones, meet with everyone, talk to everyone, know where you're going. But in sort of a listening, what do you think about things mode because the politics are the hardest thing to navigate and to elegantly elicit from others. And then deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver.

Harpreet: [00:11:28] I like that elegantly elicit. Let's go to. Let's go to Mexico and then Russell.

Speaker4: [00:11:37] Oh, sorry. You know, hot mess eating Friday. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm just I go along with, like, Ben's point, like when a leader doesn't like when a leader comes in and they're kind of loosey goosey and they're like, Yeah, we don't really know what we're doing. We don't know what we really want. That's when the season the directors are like. Go on LinkedIn, go find some recruiters because there's [00:12:00] like a difference between sorry, I also have smooth jazz in the background. It's OC Hot Mess Thomas Friday it's a new thing, right? But there's a difference between knowing the vision versus like the tactics, right? Like tactics should not be done necessarily the first two weeks. Like you should not be doing that work, but you should have a vision and outcome. And more importantly, like building up the relationships and understanding what's on the ground. Because like a lot of times to like, for example, you'll see like really senior people are being brought in because they're friends with like the alt right. So they're being told something else. We can pretend cronyism doesn't happen, but it does. But also to like if you work really effectively with someone in the past on a high stakes project, you're going to want to work with those same people and not take a risk on a nobody. Right? But they have like a certain directive versus like what they will hear the first couple of days, like working with the other directors and all that. So I would say like a leader that doesn't come in with a vision or what they want to get out of it or an understanding. That's like a big, big red flag. But there is like that sort of bridge between like. I have a vision. At the same time, I am willing to work with people here on figuring out how exactly to execute that successfully versus I have a vision and I'm going to do what I want. And that's like the biggest way to.

Speaker2: [00:13:30] Kind of.

Speaker4: [00:13:30] Not get buy in very early on. For people who are more like on the technical leadership staff, it's going to be a little bit different. The advice I think is still don't do work the first two weeks, but also for all the technical leadership people, shut up and listen. Like honestly, that would be the best onboarding. And also, like assume good intent. It's a really, really big one, right? Like [00:14:00] at the end of the day, we all we all have issues with legacy software. The people who operate legacy software hate it. No one loves it. But it was there. It got the company to a purpose, right? So I think that's like those are really kind of the common things. It's like, shut up and listen, have a vision, be willing to work with people, and then honestly, they'll kind of just tell you their problems. It's really great.

Harpreet: [00:14:26] Thank you very much, Akiko. Let's go to Russell.

Speaker3: [00:14:32] Thanks, Aubrey. So I'd split it up into into kind of different increments. Firstly, I'd split out tactical from strategic. And by tactical I mean the things that directly relate to you as an employee for the company. Even if you're senior.

Speaker2: [00:14:47] There's going to be.

Speaker3: [00:14:48] Some prerequisites that need to be done. You know, sort out how your your salary is going to be paid to which bank account. Learn the systems for booking absences and all that type of stuff. And you know, even if you're going to have a an assistant that's going to help some of that stuff, make sure that that relationship is fully understood. Because once you.

Speaker2: [00:15:09] Start to get into the business, you'll.

Speaker3: [00:15:11] Never have more time than you will have at the start.

Speaker2: [00:15:13] To get all of.

Speaker3: [00:15:14] That stuff buttoned down, then move on to the strategic stuff. That's more to do with the relationship of the business.

Speaker2: [00:15:20] And start.

Speaker3: [00:15:21] With a self onboarding. So maybe take the first 30 days of those 90 days to be go and introduce yourself to everyone in the business, tell them you're having a self start. You've just joined the business, you're not actively tackling any problems at the moment. You're just understanding the business and let them know. It's a perfect time for them to give you that breakdown of their opinion of the business and try and absorb as much knowledge as you can from everyone in that 30 days. But then perhaps also say whilst it's a it's a soft onboarding, if there are any critical things that do crop up, let let the you know, as soon as possible. It's not that you're refusing to do things, but you're taking the time to have [00:16:00] this soft onboarding and then start to ramp up from day 33 to day 92 to pick up the important things. But absolutely, as Ben and Jennifer has mentioned and the key goals are, absorb as much knowledge.

Speaker2: [00:16:13] From the.

Speaker3: [00:16:15] From the experience of the business as you possibly can. And once you get that from everybody, you.

Speaker2: [00:16:21] Should be able to tell if you get enough information from all of them, if there are.

Speaker3: [00:16:26] Areas of the business where there's more resistance to some certain things, if perhaps if you had some problems, staff, etc..

Speaker2: [00:16:32] You might not need other people to tell you that.

Speaker3: [00:16:34] But, you know, look at everything broad spectrum as a, as a.

Speaker2: [00:16:36] Complete entity from all of the.

Speaker3: [00:16:38] Feedback you get from the business and.

Speaker2: [00:16:39] Then.

Speaker3: [00:16:41] Then build your strategic way forward for day 30, day 19 onwards.

Harpreet: [00:16:48] Russell, thank you very much. Let me let me let me know if you guys have any questions, either on LinkedIn or on YouTube. Happy to take your questions or right here in the chat. Happy to take your questions as well. Got a question here on LinkedIn from Sangita. I'll try to make the question as general as possible, but she's saying sometimes she gets bogged down with so many resources. She really enjoys solving NLP problems. Also enjoys doing developer advocacy. And she's saying, where would it take on developer advocacy? I'm not sure I understand the question, but the second half of the question sounds very clear. What's your input towards really enjoying learning new technologies without extra pressure? Let's just go ahead and make that last part. The actual question that we're will we'll talk about right now. How do you how do you learn new technologies? How do you make the practice of learning new technology technologies enjoyable? That's a good question. I mean, there's so many tools out there in data science, machine learning, so many tools. I think the part you're sitting here getting bogged down with so many resources, so many tools. Don't don't believe [00:18:00] everything you read on a job description. All those like technologies and tools. You don't have to learn all of them. So I think that's step one towards. You know, give me a sense of of enjoyment is just don't feel like you have to learn everything. And then once you do, you know, narrow down a list of things that look actually interesting to you. Just go through the hello world and and just be curious. Be open minded. Don't get, you know, frustrated. Hopefully some of these products have a smooth developer experience and it makes that process enjoyable. But that that would be my advice. I'll just stop there. Just don't think that you have to learn how to do everything all at once. Let's go to Richard for this, because Richard knows all about finding joy. So go for it.

Speaker2: [00:18:47] Yeah, sure. I know exactly how you feel. I think I do, because I only hear this question over text. But it's a very common thing in a lot of people, including myself. And I remember before I got my first data science job, I really wanted to work in music, Spotify or something. So I wanted to learn audio learning, but it was just a little advanced for me as a beginner and I made it stressful and I was trying to do a side project because I heard, Oh, we should have a side project to prove your excellence, right? But the things I had to learn to do it were inside my soul. Such a high scope and the perfectionism of not wanting to show something. Some the internet that was not perfect kept me from doing very much. So I kept learning, learning, learning. I never did anything with it very little. And it was very stressful and I would recommend doing the opposite of what I did back then. So now looking looking at tech, I've enjoyed learning, like I'm not enjoy learning. The main thing for me was that I start with a problem in mind. So you could you could start from just what's interesting and go learn that. [00:20:00] For example, you could also look at a job description, see the enormous list like Harpreet Sahota, and you could feel overwhelmed, or you could just pick one of the things and start. I think you could be a little more strategic with it. And there's a couple of heuristics you could use. For example, you find five jobs that you think sound really cool. Perhaps it's a specific industry specific kind of data you're working with or something, something that draws you to those specific things. And you have a pretty good reason why I would find the overlapping skills and probably start there if I were starting from scratch.

Speaker2: [00:20:31] Just sort of like the skills you need to get in the door. And then I would probably after that pick one skill that might make you stand out, maybe something they list under the nice to have. Usually some sort of knowledge of the industry itself will make you stand out just because you have the same, same machine learning techniques but so many different industries that the course you can get to the industry listed in a description or a set of descriptions, the more you'll stand out. And that's a very efficient use of your time with the with having a problem in mind thing I would say having a specific side product or goal, making it very concrete. I want to work backwards, kind of like Amazon does when they think about launching a product, they will start with writing a fake letter from the customer that's really happy with this product and then they work backwards from that to, Okay, what should we do about it? I would work backwards and then figure out what skills you need to deliver a things. And that makes it a lot more enjoyable because instead of procrastinating like I did, you'll end up learning something that's very specific and applied. You'll apply it and you'll feel good about yourself that you used your knowledge. You won't feel fake to actually understand this. Do I know you? You did. You used it, right. So I would I would suggest working backwards from some sort of deliverable, even if it's something you make up yourself and then also be strategic about what that is by finding overlapping jobs you [00:22:00] like. And then. Focusing on the most common skill first.

Harpreet: [00:22:08] Richard, thank you so much, Sangeetha. Hopefully that that answered your question. We'll do a quick count to three to see if anybody else has something to add on to this 3 to 1 note. So let's go ahead and go do a Jacob's question. By the way, if you're watching on LinkedIn or on YouTube and you have questions, do let me know right there in the chat. Jacob, go for it.

Speaker5: [00:22:33] Yeah. Thanks. Sorry you can't give me.

Harpreet: [00:22:38] Yeah. Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear.

Speaker5: [00:22:40] So mine is the first question you asked. So I've been working as a data analyst for like 18 months now, and I happen to manage the team. So the business is taking a new turn and I'm told to be more strategic and taking a bit more initiative. So I would say I've never had, like, a manager. And to work on the for like six months. I think that's like the longest time I've worked on somebody. So it's a bit. Dreadful because I'm a technical person, not a business minded person. So that's going to my challenge, too. So how do I move from being technical to being a business minded person, trying to help them scale up the business?

Harpreet: [00:23:32] Yeah. I think this one is a question for Vin, because Vin has a course on essentially strategy for for technical thinkers or data scientists. So let's go to VIN also, by the way. Shout out to the new folks that joined. Cathy, good to see you. Na'vi and Vivian. Good to see all of you guys. Got questions or comments? You know what to do, Vin. Go for it.

Speaker3: [00:23:54] Yeah. I think first. Always make sure what they mean by strategic. A lot of times [00:24:00] the. Your manager will throw that word out because somebody told your manager, we we need to be more strategic about how we use data. We need to be more strategic about how we use AI. And so they went and literally took the piece of paper and handed it to you. So that's the first thing is get some context. Think about how you're going to phrase that question because you can't really come back and say, okay, define strategy, but just ask what's the objective? That's a good way of phrasing it. What are you? What would change as far as my deliverables, the outcomes? Are you just looking for me to give you some more value and then realized that at the very beginning strategy is just another word for value. So if you look at how does the business create value, why does it create it that way? How does the business get money from customers? Why does it do it that way? You're going to figure out pretty quickly that strategy is a lot of that type of call and response, you know, some question about value and then why some question about value and then why. And you're going to eventually get that get to the point where you do that with your projects, where you say, okay, we're going to do this, it's going to produce this value. Now, why are we doing it? And eventually you'll reverse it when you go from thinking tactically to thinking strategically.

Speaker3: [00:25:24] You'll start saying, okay. Why are we doing data? Why are we doing data science? Why are we doing analytics? Where does it fit in the business? Where does the business need it to fit? Why does this support core strategy? Why does this support goals? Will this lead to and this is one of my something that the CEO of Disney said they were very focused on shareholder value and creating value for shareholders. And will this result in shareholder [00:26:00] value? And once you get to that point where you go, how does this project make cash for the business or return value to shareholders investors depending upon your public private startup? It'll be a different intended audience, but at the end of the day, it's really there's a business impact that the person that owns the business will tangibly feel. They'll be happy about it. They might take you to dinner for it if they if they find out that you were part of it and that's where you want to start aiming. And that's really strategy at the very beginning, is that concept of value. Why are we doing that? And then reversing the the concept of instead of we could do this so we will we could make money, so we will beginning with Y and then moving forward to saying, okay, I understand the goal is understand why. Now let's figure out what we should be doing. And then you're thinking strategically all of a sudden that's that's business acumen and 3 minutes.

Harpreet: [00:26:59] One of the things I could find hard is like knowing not only who to ask why, but like how to ask why. Without? Without, I don't know. Feeling stupid, without, without. Because if I go with somebody and say, Hey, why do we want to do data? I'm just gonna think that immediate response is going to be, Well, that's why we hired you to go figure out why we need data, I guess. How do you kind of navigate those?

Speaker3: [00:27:23] Yeah, I got to I got to jump in. Okay, whatever you do, don't ask your CEO. Why? Because they will kill you. Like that's the end of your career right there. If you go to your CEO and go, why? So why are we selling these products? Because it's either one. They're worried that you don't know, or two they don't know and they're scared that you're asking them. There's no way to win that question. So it's and when I say ask why, it's really you're asking yourself this and you're usually in the best position in the business to understand the answer and to quantify the answer. And in many cases you'll [00:28:00] realize, okay, we shouldn't be doing this. Here's actually a better opportunity. There's a better option. And that's where you as a data scientist can add a lot of value to the business. It's just really helping the business understand itself and give them some tools to do things better. But yeah, when I said why, yeah, it didn't mean out with the outside voice. I'm sorry, I should have said that.

Harpreet: [00:28:23] Be real much in. Let's hear from Rashad and then Michiko. Some good comments from Akiko. Mickey says It's almost like asking, why did she think that was a good outfit to wear? Never good answer to that. I like that. Mickey, go. Let's go to Rashad and let's hear from Mickey. Go after that. And by the way, if anybody else wants to jump in on this and provide some insight, please do feel free to do that. And Jacob, you know, let me know if you need any further clarification at all to I wish I could go for it.

Speaker2: [00:28:56] Ben's answer is great. I'll just say you're confused. Where to start with that? I mean, revenue and cost is a good place to start. Now, if you're already hired, I would assume you would know about that to some extent already. But if you're working with someone new, you could start, like, all the like all the management consulting interviews. All right. Well, what are the biggest drivers of revenue and what are the biggest drivers of cost? And why do you focus there and not this other thing? And yeah, you just you just that's sort of the why train, then it can get there. But basically they give you an answer and then you say, okay, well, what does that what does that do? And what are you not doing right? Because a lot of strategies, what you're not doing or we're going to focus on high end hotels, we're not going to focus on economy hotels. Why will we have a manager where we are a history, we understand them better, we understand how they work and we think we can get X percent more margin and we have access to these locations and stuff. [00:30:00] Like there's all sorts of reasons why it could be the talent, it could be the technology, it could be their processes or legacy, or they acquired it. There's all sorts of reasons why they do one thing or the other. What if you just keep asking? Then you'll start to when you get each answer, maybe one thing you could do is to brainstorm. Okay, well, given that, I wonder how data science get help with that. If that's driving revenue, then maybe we could do projects related to this, this, this and this. And you start to come up with ideas. And I guess that's one heuristic to think. Strategic thinking, strategic thinking, bigger picture work. The biggest things that people care about rather than or it's from where you are now. I'd say that just being like, okay, here's a random idea that's like the opposite of being strategic. It's really working backwards from goals and understanding constraints. And the constraints of most businesses are revenues and costs.

Speaker3: [00:30:56] So.

Speaker2: [00:30:57] The good people.

Harpreet: [00:30:59] Which Richard, thank so much. Let's hear from you.

Speaker4: [00:31:06] Um. Sorry. So I think when that question actually comes up a lot in the work I do, and usually that's another form of saying, hey, the reports that you are doing, I don't know what to do with them. At least that's like in my world. That's kind of the lingo for, Hey, what do I do with all these reports that are coming to me? So sometimes it's a question that, you know, somebody a little bit higher up is thinking and it's valid that I'm getting all these reports. I just don't know. What does that mean for me? So sometimes it's kind of a nice. Place for you to step back and say, hey, let me just kind of get an inventory list of what's going on and what is the value of that. And it's a valid, valid question. If they're saying, let's be strategic, [00:32:00] that means, hey, if I'm sending out 20 reports and they're only using three of them, maybe I don't need 20 reports, you know, so it's one of the exercises that I'm currently doing where I'm working with like a bunch of clients across spread across different countries. And there's just a ton and ton of reporting and. Right now, I'm just kind of staring at it at this point to see like, what does that even mean? So I think it's a valid question. Sometimes we just kind of need to pause and think about, you know, where am I going with this? So, you know. Take your time to think about it.

Harpreet: [00:32:44] They never even says in the comments here, you keep asking questions until you find one they cannot answer, then provide data that helps answer it. I like that Michael is here from you.

Speaker4: [00:32:58] Sorry. No, like it went to the wrong camera. Yeah. This livestreaming thing's not going to go well next week. Oh. Oh, there you are. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to recommend some books because I feel like when I was learning, kind of. I feel like a lot of times the hardest what was hard for me becoming like an I see that interface a lot with like. Business partners or key stakeholders on the business side was not understanding like the business model. So. I always love asking the question to my business partners, Hey, like, what books are you reading that help you with your job and that help inform your work? Especially when I was dealing with like sales and customer success marketing. So this is honestly one of my all time favorite books of all time, and I can't believe you guys can see my background. Everything is wrong. Today I had a Zoom background, but this one is my favorite book, Lean Analytics. It's like within the Lean Startup series, but it literally talks about [00:34:00] all the key metrics, like within the different major business models, which I really like. It's very like surface level.

Speaker4: [00:34:07] So, you know, it's not going to go deep into like fine financial metrics, but I really love it. And you can see it's been really well loved and used and highlighted. And then the other couple, the other two books that they're kind of the same, to be honest, but they're not bad. A pick up is a guy tantalizing companies from VR. It's like a mini NBA book, but a little bit better written. And then this one's guide to Financial Management. So it's more like the finance principles of. Like companies. So those were really great. And I think any time I went into like a new field, like, I just I really try familiarize myself with like what my partners were thinking of in terms of metrics and the problems they're trying to solve. So whether it was like supply chain, a sloppy planning. Sales management, real estate, finance, all that. I feel like that helped me a lot. So those are just some book recommendations. If people are interested in terms of at least building the intuition of the business model and the metrics and things like that.

Harpreet: [00:35:20] Thank you very much, Michiko. And by the way, I interviewed one of the authors of Lean Analytics, Alastair Crow, way back in the day. So definitely check that episode out. Alastair Crow on the Science Podcast. Another book I'd recommend is How to Measure Anything. That's a really, really good book by Douglas Hubbard. He was actually on my podcast as well, got an episode with him. We just talk about literally how to measure these unmeasurable things. Really good book. A lot of. Lot of. Math and stats in that book. If you're into that, I highly recommend it. So don't see any of the questions. Mickey [00:36:00] flashed a lot of books up there. They just books after books. After books. And I'm wondering, like, you know, speaking about reading books, like how how do you handle all that information? That's that's one thing I've been really trying to deal with. We're trying to find a system to put in place over the last. A couple of months is just changing my relationship to information because there's a ton of information out there and I don't know how many times I see something. I'm like, Oh damn, that looks like an awesome article. Let me open a tab and read it later or damn, I'm going to put this in my saved bookmarks on on medium and come back and read it later and none of those tabs ever get read. I end up with like a hundred tabs open of things that I intend to read. I have dozens upon dozens of, you know, bookmark articles on Medium that I'll never get to read. And I'm just wondering, how do you handle this? This just barrage of brushes, right? Where deluge of information. Let's hear from Akiko. Then after that, if anybody else has some tips, do let me know. And if anyone's interested, I can kind of share my system and what I've been doing recently. Go from Akiko.

Speaker4: [00:37:12] Yeah. I kind of hearkens back to like our mentoring days together, right where I just go like, Oh, this book, this book are free. Yeah. I mean, like, even right now, like my reading, I guess productivity level has not been great, mainly because I'm spending so much time reading like really super technical, like O'Reilly books or honestly nonsense politicking on Slack. So that takes emotional energy. That honestly leaves me drained of reading. But I think part of it is also knowing, like knowing what information you need to have at the time. And I think that goes back to that earlier question of like, how do you feel good about learning? Like, I used to get all very sort of obsessive about creating a learning plan for myself, and that honestly stressed me out because it was almost like when you [00:38:00] frame up all the things you don't know. In a way that's very consumable. It gets very easy to see how little you kind of know, I guess, and can kind of consume. So I kind of feel like it's super important. Like you need like a portfolio of learning, right? I would say like, you know, let's say, for example, 20 to 30 or 40% of your portfolio if you're like like in working like for example, should maybe be new stuff like another 30% should be like really firming down like foundations.

Speaker4: [00:38:35] It's almost like you're doing maintenance or operational work where you're filling the gaps and the other three or 40% or however remaining is left should be like things that are immediately relevant, like to one's job. And that's how I kind of view it. And it's like I try not to, I don't know. Like it's one of those things that I don't necessarily love about social media is I do feel like a lot of influencers, they paint an incredibly rosy picture of their lives. Like I'm able to accomplish all like 1020 X things and it's like what they're doing at full time. Like if I had a full time, like, for example. Alex Analyst Right. He had that video with Kenji where he's like, I get one hour to YouTube. He's also got like 300,000 subscribers. He occasionally does courses and all that, but he's got three kids, two dogs, two cats and I think a whole lot of other animals. And his wife stays at home and takes care of the kids. Right. So he's only got so much time and he's just kind of accepted that, like there's just certain things he's just not going to get to. So it's kind of the same thing with like the earlier question of like how do you keep learning fun? It's like, realize that you're going to be imperfect.

Speaker4: [00:39:44] You're not going to be the smartest kid in the block. Honestly, there's a 15 year old right around the corner that's just probably going to kick everyone's. But anyway, so let's just kind of keep improving from where we are. And the other aspect to you is like visual learning. Like [00:40:00] I'm starting to take all my notes, draw them out and all that I try to get to when I can, but you know, like it is what it is, right? So that's I think just more of the advice because I haven't, for example, these guys I haven't revisited in years, but I remember them. I tried to really learn it deeply at that time and I can refer back to, but I haven't like actually opened these up in like. Five years since leaving the business side of the house. So, yeah, honestly. I'm amazed that you're like, reading, like, productivity. I'm like, for me, it's like, if I can get through, like, let's say 50, 60 pages a week of, like, technical stuff, I feel like that's, that's a win. But yeah, it's definitely not whole books like a month anymore.

Harpreet: [00:40:49] Yeah, it's definitely tough, but I'll talk about my system a little bit if we got time or whatever. But if anybody wants to share theirs, I'd love to hear how you you do it regardless. Let's hear from you. And then looks like Vin has a question. So after Rishard I'll kind of show what my system is and we'll get into Vin's question. And if anybody has tips on how they manage their relationship with information, let us know whether you're in the chat or if you want to unmute and talk to us here.

Speaker2: [00:41:20] So I think of learning as the you can bring it in two sections I guess is the system side sort of how you organize it. And then there's the enjoyment side and you want to make sure that you enjoy the systems that you set up. I think a lot of times people who are very ambitious to learn will try to set up systems that they've pulled from other people and oh, I'm going to do this and read 60 books a year or something like that, and then they end up not really liking it. And partly it's maybe you're forcing yourself into a mold learning in a way that you don't actually enjoy. So I have also gone through this journey over time, and [00:42:00] I think for me part of the learning has to be structured and goal oriented and that's like a lot of what's that what you do at work. For example, I'm reading papers now about reconciling groups and Hierarchical Time series right now with different methods and updates. Getting latest up to date on that as a requirement for a project that's really goal oriented. And it's fun because, well, essentially you you skim a bunch of papers and then you say, okay, I think this one is the most relevant because of XYZ caveats and then you're okay, is there an implementation? Can I implement it like that? There's some sort of action bias, but if I were to only do structured goal directed learning, I would hate it. I would procrastinate on it. I notice because I have and so I realize I need some unstructured learning too, and that has to be a lot broader.

Speaker2: [00:42:50] Often it has to be serendipitous. That's part of the reason I enjoy being on LinkedIn posting on LinkedIn, following a wide variety of people because sometimes I'll, I'll read something, I'll see something and think, Oh, I never thought of it that way, or I never even thought that this was a thing. It's sort of like there's this vast world of unknown unknowns, things you don't even know, you don't know. And it's really fun for me personally to encounter that and make it a known unknown and then think, okay, do I want to learn something about that? More so there's that joy of discovery in addition to the goal stuff. So I'd say make sure probably need some room for both. So make sure that your system, whatever you use, incorporates that emotional aspect and you can always audit. Is my learning system good? One simple thing I've been doing lately with my goals is just rating 1 to 10. How I feel about the system I use like say a system to get into the flow state, a system for learning or whatever. And if it's not ten, which isn't okay, what's one idea I could use to improve it? And you can iterate over time to improve that system. And I found that doing that it compounds actually end up with a system that you quite [00:44:00] enjoy. I enjoy mine currently I could probably a better structures and that's the advice that you guys are giving. But I'd say make sure you also focus on the enjoyment side. What's optimal for others may not be optimal for you.

Harpreet: [00:44:13] Absolutely agree with that. That point about what's optimal for others like there's I'm a self-help junkie, dude. I'm consistently just trying to be better, you know, because I've spent so much time not being that great. I'm trying to be better. So I'm always looking for for ways to, to improve myself. And part of that just means being curious about a number of different things. So the way I've started is just picking a few areas in life that I just want to focus on, right? And then ignoring everything else until I'm bored with those areas in life. So for, for me, like, you know, those areas that I, that I focus on are developer relations. And within developer relations is how do I create a good strategy, how do I build community, how do I create good content? How how do I become a better marketer to developers? The next area for me is philosophy and then deep learning, specifically computer vision. You know, trying to that's a huge part of our product offering. That's something I've got to get good at is computer vision. And then, you know, I listen to a bunch of podcast. How do I learn from those podcasts? I take what I've learned and put it into action and then also personal, personal growth. So what I've done is taken taken bits of this system, you know, building a second brain. I'm just going to share something on my screen real quick, if you guys don't mind. Share my entire desktop here. So I use something called Obsidian. I use this as my second brain. So it's a personal knowledge management thing. And essentially how I have my life split up is I follow this method called para para. So you know, what active projects am I working on? What are the areas in life that I'm focusing on at the moment and then everything else that's not related [00:46:00] to the areas in life or just, you know, other stuff I put into resources and then archive is just stuff that I've moved on from and it starts by first figuring out what these areas are that I care most about in life at the moment and then capturing.

Harpreet: [00:46:17] Just whatever I captured that I'm reading, just making sure that I at least put 30 to 45 seconds of due diligence before I add it to my queue. And when I add it to my queue, I use something called matter. So you'll see here I've got subscription business newsletter sent here. All my subscriptions for newsletters come here and I'm bad at keeping up on newsletters, but I've got like a reading queue as well. And then here's all the stuff that that I'm currently coming across that. That relate to those areas that are most focused on. And then what I'll do is I'll just like highlight stuff from that. And when I highlight stuff, it goes automatically. It sinks into my second brain into this inbox. And I'll have highlights that I'm obviously a poker player. That's one area in life that is never going to change, but. Capturing notes, then distilling it down. So, for example, here is an example of me coming up with my 90 day plan. Like here, I took a bunch of notes and distilled down the notes with some takeaways and then built my own kind of 90 day plan from that. So just coming up with a system that that works, that has been quite helpful. But I will stop there. Let's go ahead and get into to to Vin's question.

Speaker3: [00:47:40] It's kind of simple, but I think it's maybe a complicated answers. Is anybody afraid of getting laid off right now? And if it's a yea or an A, why? You know, if you're not afraid of it, what what's giving you the confidence that your job is good, safe, stable? And if you are worried about it, what is it? [00:48:00] What's the thing that's concerning you most obviously, if you can talk about it, I don't mean I don't mean to get into internal company politics, but, you know, what is it just broadly that's got you worried?

Harpreet: [00:48:13] That's where like I'm in a constant state of wondering if I'm going to get fired, not not because of like I'm not doing a good job. It's just that's just how I how I am. Like, the moment I get to the moment I get a job offer, I'm just like, Oh, shit, they're going to lay me off or something. So, I mean, all jokes aside, I. Currently. I'm not really afraid of getting laid off in this current role just because I feel like I've developed a unique skill set right. Not only my technically proficient, I've also got. Selling skills to a certain extent, like, you know, non-technical hard skills. Like I'm pretty decent at marketing. I'm kind of learning that a lot and I'm kind of decent at writing. So, you know, I can both build and sell and I feel like the combination of those two skills are. You know, kind of hard to replace. But I'm wondering as well, like anybody wants to chime in, let me know. Let's go to Mexico. Shout out to Joe Reese. Joe is in the building. Good to see Joe Reese. Also, Alexis has joined us. Good to see you as well.

Speaker4: [00:49:19] Honestly, my big concern is just how ridiculous sometimes the engineering interviews are. That's that's legitimately kind of the only like thing. But even then, it's like as long as I steer clear of the things, I'm actually pretty good. Like when I was struggling with the technical interviews, one of my mentors was just like, just don't do them. And I'm like, What do you mean? Just like, don't do them? Like just say I'm not going to. They're like, Yeah, just say you're not going to. And then the minute recruiter says that there's a technical screen, just tell them no and just tell them why. I'm like, okay, like, let's see if I actually have a job. And I'm getting three job offers for, you know, like [00:50:00] senior ish mops roles had another two or three like Fang interviews where I was like, I don't know if I really care to do it all that jazz. I think like once you get beyond like it's like it really is. I think once you get to senior, it becomes so much easier than when you're entry level. And then even then it then becomes more of a like, do you want to sell your soul for potentially doing like micro work? Or do you want kind of broader scope but maybe a little bit less money? Or do you want to go into like management or what have you? Because it was interesting because Shopify had a huge layoff the the week that Matt Sharp was hired.

Speaker4: [00:50:43] And I was like, Are you okay, dude? He's like, Yeah, you're a great data engineer, right? They, if they, like, lay us off, then, you know, that's like real bad news for the company. So I think if you're on business partner teams, I feel like it's a little bit more concerning. Or if you're just doing like work, that could be easily automated by a Python script. But for everything else, especially if you deal with systems, I kind of feel like as long as people keep their skills up to date, it's okay. But some of the like entry interviews are just really ridiculous what they ask for. That's like my only stress is I'm like, okay, what if just luck of the draw. It's all companies that only on do text screens. How do I serve? I don't know. Do ideal or whatever.

Harpreet: [00:51:27] Rashad, let's hear from you. Rashad was reading Snow Leopard. That is on my wish list by the category Pirates, one of which is what's his name? Nicholas Cole. Oh, yeah, I love his stuff, but go for it.

Speaker2: [00:51:44] Yeah. Yeah. So afraid of. Well, I'm not particularly afraid in our situation. So I'm part of the Blackstone family, and they're doing very well. They keep buying shit, to put it lightly. And [00:52:00] they the way they think about things, they call it high conviction. But it basically means that they've thought that in the long run that the outlook for the things they buy is very high. It's very, very good from a valuation and cash flow depending on the type of investment. So whatever their conviction is, it seems to be working well for them and our portfolio company, like we're growing and we have so many data engineering openings in particular. It was just enormous amount of data in all sorts of strange places that we need to wrangle. Yeah. And then as long as and then from the data science perspective, as long as we're aligned to either net new opportunities or essentially scaling what people already do, it's easy to make the case for ROI. And as long as the person has faith that you're not just blowing smoke, then yeah, I think that's generically why I think that we're not particularly worried. I would be most worried probably you guys seen in startups or people that sort of did a growth at all cost and they haven't reached that tipping point where they become Uber and Lyft. You know, those are the people who have to worry the most because that sort of capital is seen as drying up.

Harpreet: [00:53:25] I'd be worried if I was in a company, if the company was, let's say, a developer product company, and most of the people on their staff were salespeople. I think that would be a scary situation to be in, that that'd be one situation where I'd worry because like this. Like that kind of goes back to what Rashad was saying about growth at all costs. That's kind of what what those type of companies I think are in. But I guess what are your thoughts on that of in. If [00:54:00] you're at one of these growth at all cost companies. And first of all, how do you tell if you're in a growth at all all cost company?

Speaker3: [00:54:09] Well, you've got a balance. There's a the way that they're investing. Are they bringing people in at a loss or are they focusing on monetizing the people that they already have? And that's going to be the thing that will tell you which way that you're going. If they're investing in new ways to monetize the people that they have, the customers that they have or subscriptions or whatever. That's where, you know, they've made the switch between growth at all costs to profitability, whereas if they don't care if they're taking a loss on every acquisition, yeah, that's a growth at all costs.

Harpreet: [00:54:51] I'll read any other questions or follow ups. All right. So, I don't know, man, like. I saw this article, I read the headline of it. I didn't read the entire article, but it was I think it was something along the lines that Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg think that employees in tech spend too much time chilling and enough time working. Have you guys seen this headline of this article? Anyone. Now. I'd love to hear, hear just thoughts or opinions to kind of give off that. Are people in Texas spending too much time chilling? Not enough time working? Mickey, go. Go for it.

Speaker4: [00:55:39] I mean, whose fault is it if that's the case, right? Like, I mean I mean, realistically, like, if you're. This is something that I struggle with because it's like on the one hand, we have a lot of people talking about leadership out in the world, but we don't have a lot of people like practicing it, like good leadership and management. And I'm constantly, [00:56:00] constantly reminded by this, like whenever I hear stories of like everyone's heard stories, right? Like of their friends or family at companies. And I feel like there's a couple reasons why, like, for example, engineers might not be working. One is because they don't want to deal with, like, the business side. Sometimes the business side really needs to kind of really clarify, like what their priorities are. I think the other a second thing, though, and this is on the engineer's fault is a lot of times like engineers or geoscience or whatnot, sometimes we're just really comfortable with just building stuff and we're like, you know what? We just want to go build stuff. We don't want to. We don't want to pollute the purity of development by like adding dollars and money into the mix. And I kind of hear this from like some creative people. They're like, Well, we don't want to pollute our art. It's like, well, at the same time, you like watching Mad Men, which is about advertising. So, you know, so things like that. But also too, like, I think at the end of the day, like. And Vin had snorkel about this too, that I really loved. I think it was Monday, basically.

Speaker4: [00:57:03] It was about like performance management on teams. I mean, you can do a better job of summarizing, but it resonates to me because I was like, there are various points in time where in my career I was definitely very underemployed and I was super bored, which means I was going to hop ship at any point or I was really burned down. And you look at the rest team and it's like not everyone is either. Everyone, everyone is also burned out or you're just seeing like distinctly some people's workloads are a lot worse than others and they're kind of not being given the mentorship to improve. So I'm kind of like, I don't know, Zuckerberg and Fincher and all that. It's leadership comes from, you know, top down and like, you know, empowerment comes from, like, bottom up, right? So. You need to kind of lead and empower your teams to like go on and take on those new opportunities. Because, I mean, for some people, they like to [00:58:00] just check in, check out like a huge salary and that's fine. They exist. It's cool, right? But there's probably a lot more people who wish they were genuinely engaged in their work, for whom like to put any effort into something, is putting their heart in soul. And for those people, I think they are not always being well served by kind of the lackadaisical emphasis on like management, unlike true management and like leadership. But. Anyway, I'm going to get off my soapbox. I really love that blog post. It was great.

Harpreet: [00:58:40] When can you talk about that blog post real quick?

Speaker3: [00:58:43] Yeah, a little bit of it was just talking about how you can how you can help people at different stages in their career because not everybody is a high performer. Not everybody is always. Not everybody who is a high performer will always be a high performer. And so part of the process of leadership is figuring out where people are and just helping them improve. In some cases, you're managing a low performer, and it's not about where they are right now. It's about, what can I do to get them to a better place? How much can I improve this person in one year? What kind of plan can I put together? To get this person to improve and to get this person out of whatever, you know, what's going on. I don't I'm not going to ask you like personal questions and I'm not going to try to address core issues of what's going on outside of life. But, you know, in my mind, I'm saying, okay, what could be going on with this human not with this resource, but with this human in front of me who is asking me, you know, just by their poor performance, they're asking me to help. That's that's what it really is. If they're not performing as well as they used to or as well as I know they could be, [01:00:00] that's somebody saying, help me out.

Speaker3: [01:00:02] And so it's about building a plan and will they follow it? You know, because if they're not following the plan to improve, that's when you have to say, okay. Look, I've done the work of a leader. You haven't done the work of an employee. It's time. It's time for some tough choices here. And so that's what the way I take a look at low performers is. This is a huge opportunity for me to improve the entire productivity of the team. With just one person. This person going from low performer to just mid is such a huge difference that I should be spending my time here. But only if we put a plan together. They agree with it, they agree to it, and then they give up on it. Okay. That's if you're not working with it. Yes, I'm someone to work with you as long as you will. But just understanding. Everybody's at a different place. High performers need ways to improve to a better give you an improvement plan. I better give you a career, pat quick or you're gone. A better find some interesting stuff for you to be doing or you're gone. And so that's another area where you have to, as a leader, put a lot of work into and create a performance. It's the same same approach. I mean, leading a low performer in a high performer is exactly the same approach.

Speaker3: [01:01:21] I better put a plan in place and you're agreeing to it for a completely different reason. It's because that's basically my retention strategy. To make sure you don't go someplace is I've got to put a plan in place, and the only way I keep you following me is if I can make you better, if I can figure out a way, if I can find resources, if I can put you in front of interesting projects, if I can get you more challenged, if I can give you access to stuff, whatever it is that's going to put you into the direction you want to go and make you better. And so if I don't do that to the low performer, they're going to be on the team forever and [01:02:00] they're never going to be any better if I don't do it with the high performer. They're not going to be there much longer and they're never going to get better. So, yeah, it's kind of two sides to your original question about work. I cannot tell you. I spend a lot of time with CEOs. I can't tell you how much they hate you guys. I cannot even explain to you right now the level of I don't like that's going on at the sea level. I just I cannot explain it to you. They hate y'all.

Speaker3: [01:02:33] And it's just, you know, half of it's perception. Half of the time when I actually take somebody down and say, why don't you sit down and talk with these people? Half of it's perception. But the other half is there is a management mentality. And there is a newer version of what it means to work and the management mentality doesn't. Can't figure it out. It's happened so fast that the way every leader at the C level has been trained to run an organization is busted. And they absolutely they're in chaos right now in some companies. As far as what do they do with management? There are companies that are talking about getting rid of an entire middle layer of management because they don't need them, you know, and that's got the C-suite saying, okay. Who's next? Because they have boards who are basically saying, look, adapt or die. And a lot of the adapt is being driven by employees who they can't replace. They can't replace any of you at all. There's no way. There's not enough people. They can't lay you off, even though there are definitely companies that are going to and shoot themselves in the foot in the process. But [01:04:00] they can't really they don't have the bargaining power that they used to to bring everyone back to the old management paradigm. And so you are I cannot even tell you how much stress is at that top level, just having to do with not only talent management, which is organizational structure and the future of management and leadership, the amount of money they're spending on seminars and training to try to understand the new workforce and the future of work and the new remote worker.

Speaker3: [01:04:33] Understanding your millennials and just the dumbest things you've ever seen. Titles of seminars and they're selling out. And it's because right now the C-suite can't handle you guys just 100%. They don't know what to do with this new type of organization. And there's this sort of bifurcation where you have people like Chapek, who's running Disney. He knows how to handle creatives. He knows how to handle advanced R&D, he knows how to work with and to get people to do that combination where they still fit into the old paradigm. But they're beginning to incorporate slowly the new paradigm of work, and they're retraining leadership and they're bringing new people in and new ideas in, and they're killing it. And so there is this this new sort of CEO that's emerging, who's able to handle it and management manage it better. And so that's even scaring the old school even more. It's like just, I wish I could. Be specific about some of the things I've heard, but. Oh. Things going to happen soon.

Harpreet: [01:05:46] What is it about us? Is it just the. Is it because. A worry threat. Do we uncover ugliness in the business? Do we ask too many questions? What? [01:06:00] What is it about? About us and by us. I'm assuming you mean like data professionals at large?

Speaker3: [01:06:05] Yes. Just everything. Is. And Mexico does this really well. She asks blunt questions and expects answers. Whereas previous generations would ask blunt questions and then back down. And so that's the change. That is literally the shift in mindset. Is that now and that it's kind of my generation and younger who are all doing kind of the same thing and we're emboldening each other because one of us sees, Oh, there's five people doing that. Yeah, I can do that too now. And all of a sudden it's an entire organization who is asking blunt questions and expecting answers. And now you have this data group. Who goes, Yeah, I can get you an answer. What do you need? And all of a sudden, it's coming together. At the same time as you have this sort of business cultural movement happening to where workers have more power than they really have at any time since the eighties, because there's just not enough of any sort of technical talent. And there's a lot of technical talent that's just leaving technology because they're tired of it. That's the other piece of this that's happening is you have people who are leaving technology and going into either retirement early. Like a lot of people my age are talking retirement. I'm thinking, wow, okay. That's a that's a huge shift. And you also have obviously the older generations in mind who are like, how do I get out? We're taking their massive stock and going, We can sell this. I'm at the top. I'm good. I'm out. And so there is a huge shortage.

Speaker3: [01:07:44] It's not going anywhere. There's no interest in the high school ranks. And I figured this out over the last year. None of them want to go into technology. There's just such a small percentage of people in high school who want to go into technology, period, [01:08:00] let alone data science. And so all of those dynamics are happening at the same time. And that's what leadership hates, is we've created uncertainty, we've created rapid change, and we have bargaining power. And so there isn't a power dynamic that can be exploited to slow the change down. And that's that's what they hate is we are creating a level of uncertainty in the operations of the business and we are increasing costs and demanding a different type of leadership style that some CEOs are eating up. They are loving it because that's what they've really wanted to move the organization towards, is how do we really optimize? How do we really make things better? Yes, how do we actually get these fresh ideas? And so there is a small percentage of CEOs that are loving this, but it is the overwhelming majority who absolutely hate this and who are. And it is for some strange reason, everything is directed straight at what they call the San Francisco mentality or the Silicon Valley mentality. And those tech workers and those millennials, I mean, it's like all labels. And if you ask people what those actually mean, they're like, Well, you know, and they don't know. It's just we got we got for Boogie Man and for Straw Men and everything else.

Harpreet: [01:09:30] Andy. Let's hear from you, man. Unless I was an accidental hand-raised. All right. I'm just going to assume that was the accidental hand raised. And he. Any other questions or comments? Rashad says he hates the word resource. Why is that?

Speaker2: [01:09:57] It just it sounds so dehumanizing in [01:10:00] my organization and most places I've been, the vast majority of times are talking about getting people to do something. They use the word resource in it. I always hated that usage of it. I figure resources are technologies, processes, but I don't like referring to people as resources. Oh, we need we need more resources. And also, I'm a fan of squad based sort of organizing where you have cross-functional teams that face customer clients or whatever and they sort of develop our relationship together. So instead of giving people or resources or 10% of X and 20% of Y on the project, it's much better, I think, to have spots. Otherwise you get a lot of information loss. So I feel like not only is resource dehumanizing, but I also think it encourages a sort of let's we need X skills, so let's get X person and then what happens is that it's hard to establish ownership in larger organizations around certain. Types of deliverables, certain processes, something that we're dealing with now. So we're trying to fix that, my bosses. But yeah, it's multiple reasons.

Harpreet: [01:11:19] Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from anyone? Please do let me know. Otherwise we can start to wind it down. If you guys have not already, be sure to check out the. It's on YouTube right now and it's on my LinkedIn. Did an interview with a couple of folks from Tony Guy. They are the fake data company that will be released at some point in the future on the actual podcast. The plan now is just to create again a backlog of podcast episodes and then release those kind of highlighted on a weekly cadence. I've had a lot of people I've had to catch up with, had a ton of interviews scheduled prior to the office being flooded that I had to cancel. So [01:12:00] there's a lot to record. So I'll be busy. I might just I might do something more. I just continue the happy hours for the next. I guess I'll just continue. Happy hours until the end of the year, build up a stack of episodes and then this, you know, kind of release them all starting in in January just to give myself a buffer again. But yeah, if you guys if you're interested in coming on the podcast, send me a message. Let me know if you're interested in sponsoring the podcast, let me know. The episode I did with Tonic, I will say sponsored episode. So if you liked that and if you're a founder or if you're just trying to spread the word about your product, hit me up. I'm happy to have you on the podcast and we'll chat about what you got. But yeah, if you know people who are who are cool, who might want to come on the podcast, let me know.

Harpreet: [01:12:54] I should just announce now that there's going to be another podcast coming up. One specifically focused on deep learning. That will be at some point later this year. That will be a podcast that's done through my work at DCA. So the RC data science will still remain what it is. It's, you know, it's not really like a technical podcast. Like if you guys want a day in the life of data scientist, you can always tune into daily on his podcast or or Jon Cronin's podcast. Mine is always kind of a little bit different, but the Deep Learning podcast, I'm extremely excited about launching that. So definitely keep an eye out for that in the near future. All right. Does not look like there's any other questions or comments. I think I did a good job killing time. Until then, thank you all for being here. It feels good to be back in the in the office. I'll give you guys a quick, quick tour of what it looks like around here. There's a couple other things I got to get on the list. I got to get another proper camera and all that. But here's a quick tour of the of the office. That's where I sit down. It's my little office. That's a little old couch. It's my lights. And [01:14:00] that's it. That is pretty much it, man. So thank you all for being here. If you're listening to the podcast and what it looks like, then go to YouTube and check that out. You all take care and have a good weekend. I'll see you around. My friends, you got one life on this planet. Why not try to do something? Cheers, everyone.