CHANTE: Hello and welcome back everyone to Greater Than Code. This is episode 166. This is Chante Thurmond and I'm here with my co-host, Jacob Stoebel.

JACOB: Hello, thank you. And I'm here with our esteemed guest, Phil Wheeler. Phil is a recovering software engineer who now works as a development manager for a life science education and research company in Dunedin, New Zealand. He's a classically trained percussionist who teaches music in the weekends and loves getting out on the mountain bike or playing and watching cricket. Welcome to the show, Phil.

PHIL: Thanks very much, Jacob. And hi, Chante. Nice to meet you.

CHANTE: Nice to meet you.

JACOB: I'm sure you know our first question, our first famous question, which is what is your superpower and how did you develop it?

PHIL: I should apologize for the accent now just for the listeners in case they struggle, I'm going to pronounce things weird. My superpower. I listened to this as sort of [inaudible] of time and I'll sort of sit there with the cast thinking, "What the heck is mine?" And I never really landed on one that I'm super happy with, but I keep coming back to sort of putting myself in others' shoes. I sort of really get people in, like bringing people together and trying to work out and find a common ground with everyone. It served me well with trying to get kids that I'm teaching onto a similar level trying to make them feel encouraged. It's helped me with software development, working with clients and it's just something that seems to be a natural thing for me, especially as a developer who notoriously is sort of more introvert and I really like engaging with people and trying to sort of get everybody on a good working footing.

JACOB: We said that you are a recovered engineer and I think that's because you said that you went into management?

PHIL: I did. I've been in sort of team lead. I mean, it's the usual career progression. It's one of those things that I think a lot of people in the software community struggle with at some point in their career is where we're presented with sort of what's conceptually a fork in the road and you have to pick either staying technical and doing your software or wandering down that sort of gloomy, ominous garden path of management. And I had a rush of blood to the head and decided I wanted to do that. Again, it was that people aspect where I really found that I enjoyed enabling others more than I actually enjoyed optimizing their algorithm. So yeah, I've been doing that for about three years now.

JACOB: I would guess that that empathy has only become more valuable in that career shift.

PHIL: It really has. It's funny that the trade offs that people perceive aren't really as strong as you think. In my experience anyway, a lot of management is just sort of the same as software engineering. It's basically engineering with people. You're trying to optimize, you're trying to find a new creative way to solve a particular problem. It's just that instead of ones and zeros, you're working with squishy [inaudible] which is a bit more intimidating in some ways.

CHANTE: [Chuckles] That's a good way to put it. So tell us how you came into the Greater Than Code community. Was it because you were managing people and you were looking for something to kind of help you with maybe what we all kind of consider our "soft skills". I'm putting that in air quotes as a joke. But how did you come into the community and has being involved in this community helped you become a better people leader?

PHIL: Oh yeah, absolutely. Some of the guests that you've had on the show in the past have been really, really insightful people that I've gotten a way to find out more about and grown a lot from. So that's been a terrific resource in that respect. I'm trying to remember how I landed on the podcast initially. I'm pretty sure through Twitter. I'm seeing some chatter somewhere there. But also around the same time, a conference that I attend regularly in Oakland, New Zealand called Codemania had Jessica Kerr on the show, on the lineup. I spend an unhealthy amount of time in Twitter. So of course, I immediately followed her.

CHANTE: [Laughs]

PHIL: She was great. She's such a great person.

CHANTE: Yes.

PHIL: Honestly, she's kind of happiness personified. She's perpetually sort of enthusiastic. It's great. But it was through that conference that I think I was really sort of following the podcast more deeply at that point.

CHANTE: Yay. I'm glad to hear that. That's amazing. Shout out to everyone over at Codemania and Jess because I'm sure she'll be excited to hear that. Who knew? [laughs] So one of the things, I was just reading our threads and I know that we threw out some topics that come to mind, but I would love to hear like, Jacob and I are here in the US and we tend to have our rants and raves about things that are impacting the tech community here. But I'm curious if it's the same over in New Zealand and if you all feel some of the same things that are impacting folks in technology, whether you're directly somebody who's the software developer, somebody who's leaning or somebody who's like me. I'm like on the auxiliary. I'm a recruiter and I'm also consultant for technology companies, moreso with people in mind, like building team culture and thinking about diversity and inclusion in the workplace and belonging. But I'm just curious if some of the things we rant and rave about, you notice on our threads and you hear them on the podcast, if these are the exact same things you're experiencing, like the phenomenon or are they different?

PHIL: I can't say if they're exactly the same, but there are definitely commonalities. We're Western in the usual sense. We have western civilization over here. We're western in some culture here, so we're not immune from those same sort of [inaudible] influences. So, diversity is an issue here. Inclusion is an issue here, equality. All of those sorts of things are visible. I don't know if necessarily they get the same emphasis or have as large a challenge in front of them as say the US market [inaudible]. But I think technology or the technology sector generally because of its very nature of being very connected and very sort of democratizing, it probably will sort of have similar reflected issues no matter where you go.

CHANTE: It's interesting. And I know that you have this life science software development experience. I would say in terms of different industries that you could be working in life sciences and healthcare for instance, those are places where thinking about inclusion and equity and accessibility is really important when you're building software and technology and services. Have you noticed that or do you all pay attention to that as you build out your product suites?

PHIL: Yeah, we definitely do because we are a cloud based application. My team is focused on building a product called LT which educators use to sort of teach the first year life science at the university level. So we're very cognizant of the sorts of things that we need to be aware of in every national market. So for the US, we've got one, I've got to be careful here, Section 508 I think, of the Accessibility Act, you've got to be aware of that. So we factor a lot of the requirements around accessibility into our product there. We're not perfect, but we're constantly sort of trying to improve it. Even in Europe, GDPR is another thing. It's not the same as accessibility, but privacy and data ownership is another thing. So we're sort of conscious about what information we're actually including, which is a tricky balance to strike when you're dealing with health information or education information. So, Jacob's saying equity and inclusion and life science being especially included. It's hard because I think especially over here in Dunedin, we are a fairly small town and we certainly do not have visibility of the challenges that a lot of people face out here. And so, trying to anticipate equity and inclusion needs that our market might have can be a challenge. We're quite privileged and I guess shielded from a lot of that. And so, we really rely on people providing their feedback back to us.

CHANTE: Thank you for that.

JACOB: You mentioned, just going back to your career pivot to management, what has been the learning curve for that? Has that been hard?

PHIL: Has it been hard? It depends. It hasn't been hard for me because it's something I was always kind of preparing for, and I was always interested in it. I read a lot, I follow a lot of people on various forums, mostly Twitter, let's be honest, who have sort of really good opinions about that stuff. And so even when I was just still working in software development, I was always kind of interested in, if I was managing this team, how would I want to do it better? Or how would I want to do it differently? So that was always there. But in other ways, it has been hard. You do find that -- like I said earlier, I was kind of confronted with making a choice. Is this something I wanted to go all in with or that I want to keep my hands dirty in the technical side. I had to reconcile that with myself for awhile. I kind of knew I did want to do it. It was an exciting opportunity for me and I was going to go down that route, but it's a very conscious choice I had to make. And so now that I'm in that, I do sort of look back and go, "Hah, did I make the right call? Am I actually is prepared for this?" I thought I was. You might hear or people might hear around about that management is one of those things where you can sort of work your way up to and people will sort of throw you in the management role and go, "Hey, congrats, you've done great. You're a manager now. Knock yourself out." And I'll kind of wander off. And you're sitting there looking around the room going, "Damn! What am I going to do?" And I think the further you work up the chain of command or the hierarchy of an organization, the less direct input or guidance you'll find from your superiors. You have to work a lot more out for yourself. In software development, it's a lot easier to get guidance from your peers or from your superiors. The senior developer is coaching the intermediates and the juniors, and that's quite an established structure. Into management, it's much less like that.

JACOB: I often wonder, because everyone has a lot of ideas about what they could do to organize their team better . I have lots of theories that I've -- since I'm not a manager, I don't play them out, which is fine by me at this point in my life. But I often wonder, how many of these ideas seem great in my head and may not really work out so well when I try to ship them out to the rest of the team.

PHIL: I've been very fortunate with people who have managed me in the past where they are open to feedback and willing to sort of afford opportunities to grow. And so, I've kind of wanted to model my style on that as well. If I've had an idea, even quite early on as an entry level dev, if I've sort of said, "Hey, I reckon we can do this and help us free up some time." [Inaudible] communication and generally speaking, the way my line managers will see it, "Oh, that's great, let's implement it." Over time, he sort of just said, "Look Phil, you seem to know what you're doing, so just go ahead and do that stuff anyway. You don't need to ask me about it anymore." And so, I've kind of grown in confidence, through that. Not every time though, I should point out. I think in anyone's career , sooner or later there is going to be that one place which really knocks you back. And I've had that experience too, where there was a seriously toxic manager who insisted on micromanaging everyone. It was a very hostile and cut throat kind of environment. This is Dunedin, we're still a small town, it was a small place. But even so, the effects are quite a bit. But that was a really good learning experience as well.

CHANTE: You talked about that and that's such an important thing. I feel like so many of us can relate to regardless of which function of the organization you're working for. And so, I'm wondering, like how did you go about getting the leadership skills and the soft skills over time to learn how to deal with things of that nature?

PHIL: A lot of the time I'd sort of carve out little niche areas for myself. A lot of my career has been spent in the professional services area where a client will come to you with money and say build me a thing and you build them the thing and you build them for every hour. Well, almost every minute. It's like lawyers or accountants. It was terrible. But once you built the thing, you'd throw it over the wall of confusion in some poor schmuck in support which sort of wind up just picking that up or whichever developer just happened to be sitting around looking suspiciously quiet. And so, that sort of wind up having to take this all. This was like in one of my very first jobs out of university and I sort of saw them doing this. I thought, "That was like something that I would be more interested in than being on the support desk," which is where I was at the time. "Hey, hey, developer, how about I take that on for you because I want to learn and sort of be better at development anyway. You don't have to worry about doing this stuff. You can concentrate on the fun bits of building that other product you wanted to be on." And so, they're kind of very, very willing to offload that. And so I was able to build out a support role or a support development function outside of what I was being paid to do, which was sort of support tickets. And then that kind of grew into being quite a recognized sort of a need within the organization. So they sort of turned that into a full time role, added more people. So now, I was a team leader. And so over time, it sort of became quite more established and I was sort of picking up a lot of those leadership and pioneering skills. Sorry, to answer your question then, I guess I've kind of, to some degree, I've made my own opportunities. I've found places in the organization where I've sort of said here is a need or here is something that could be useful and just gone ahead and done it. [Inaudible] has said no, don't, then it's kind of worked out quite well. They recognized actually that that's really productive.

CHANTE: [Inaudible] is it sounds like you made your own opportunities and that you are a person who seeks out those chances to learn and to take on more. But not everyone has that personality, you know what I mean?

PHIL: And it's fine.

CHANTE: Yeah. It's not for everyone. I think those of us who get into management, I mean I was a young manager actually right out of college too. I was always a person that was always taking on too much. And then I found myself in management and I was like, "Oh!" I was managing people two and three times my age and it was really humbling and scary at the same time when I had to fire the first person. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and I can't let anybody know. And so what I would do is spend all my time on the weekends preparing for these tough conversations and like going and investing my time and money into professional development, which led me to get Master's Degree in Organizational Leadership and Development. I may as well just spend that money because I was going to conferences and buying books and doing all that I could, books on tape at the time because podcast weren't a thing. And so, I'm just curious because I really think that there's a lot of people out here who want to get into management or they think that they do and they don't understand that once you get over here, there's a lot that goes into it. Not only do you have to kind of be good at whatever it was you were doing that landed you that job, you also now need to take on a whole new set of skills that need to compliment the technical hard stuff that you were doing.

PHIL: I was going to say, it's also more than that. Some people look at management and know that that's what they don't want to do. They're like, "Oh man, I don't want to do that stuff. That looks scary and awful."

CHANTE: True. [Laughs]

PHIL: And for the same reason that people are like, "Oh, maybe I do want to do it. I don't really know what's involved," or they don't fully appreciate whether or not they're necessarily going to be good at it. It just looks like, "I have no idea what I'm doing, so therefore I should not do this. It's just unpalatable to me." You mentioned before that you were sort of worried, you said that you felt like you had no idea what you were doing. Some days, I still don't. Probably too many days. Because that Impostor Syndrome thing is always there, no matter what role you're in or what field of work you're in. But I think people have sort of perceived ideas of, "Oh man, that management thing. That's not for me. That's just all the unpleasantness that's having to deal with arguments and telling people off and these people are older than me and I'd feel like an asshole having to sort of manage them when they're like 20 years my senior." And so, they kind of recoil from it, which is a shame I think because it comes back to that diversity thing. I think more people trying to go down that route is probably going to be a really healthy thing for any organization. You're not just going to get one type of person who's like either too overconfident or is just being promoted on merit or through privilege.

CHANTE: Right. It kind of reminds me of parenting, right?

PHIL: Oh, my God!

JACOB: [Laughs]

CHANTE: You have an idea like I think I want to have kids. [Laughs] Or I might be a good parent one day and you don't know what the hell you're doing until those kids come into the [inaudible] and you're like, "Yeah, I kind of suck at this." [Laughs]

JACOB: I can't even remember what I thought parenting was. You know what I mean?

CHANTE: Right. I mean, it is not what I thought it was. I can tell you that. I would rather be a manager of like 10 jerks all day long, than be a mom. Because honestly, it never stops. There's no break. You always have to worry about this human now for the rest of your life. It's really scary.

PHIL: The parallels are very real and you kind of feel it's a little bit condescending sometimes to sort of equate the parenting skills with management because it sort of assumes that your team are your kids and it's not that kind of relationship, but there are skills that definitely overlap there. There is some definite parallels. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

CHANTE: [Laughs] For all the parents out there listening, if you want to get into management, actually you just have kids first and you can survive that.

PHIL: If you can deal with that, you'll be fine.

CHANTE: Because I don't know that management prepares you for kids. I think it's the other way around, actually. One of the things that I would say actually most recently for me that I found out about leading teams is that it's really not about me at all. I started a family and I'm the mother and I also started a business, but it's actually not about me. It's about if I can empower everyone around me to do their best, then we as a team move forward. And so, I'm kind of the last one in terms of my needs. I'm really like, "Oh, I had this idea," I had this thing, I burst it, here it goes, but it's like so much bigger than me and we will have a legacy if I do that job really well.

JACOB: When you said that Chante, what that made me think of it is like -- so, I have a two-year old and I'm starting more often to see things that he does or his personality. And I look at him like, I didn't teach him that or I can't point to anything that I've done that made him that way. And it's like, "Oh, right. He's a human being." [Chuckles] And it's just blowing my mind. It's very humbling how there's things that are both positive and challenging that I have no control over, there's nothing that I can point to to say like this is something I did that created that. It's just this is the little human that I'm working with. And just like you were saying, it's realizing that you don't have 100% control over it is I think a really good life lesson.

PHIL: Challenging is right. If you've got a three-year old, you're automatically qualified to be a foreign affairs negotiator at the UN.

[Laughter]

CHANTE: Pretty much.

PHIL: Because they will test every limit.

CHANTE: Yes. I have five-year-old twin boys and I tell everyone, "You know, I feel like a person who's basically a bouncer at a bar where there's like two drunk college men who are arguing over things and they throw chairs and they throw drinks and whatever they can reach. And then two minutes later, they're making up and then like 10 minutes after that, I can't understand anything that they're saying. And it's like literally just nuts and they're punching me and punching each other. It's kind of funny, but I mean, I'm also really scared. I can't do this too much longer. I'm so tired.

[Laughter]

PHIL:I really get you. I do. I want to qualify what we're discussing here [inaudible], parenting is not a prerequisite for management. We're being a little facetious here. So, for listeners that are like, "I don't have kids and I'm a great manager," that's fair enough. That's cool. But when you do sort of realize that they're a -- it's synthesis awareness of new skills you didn't know you had. Patience is one, and being able to slip away from a challenging situation and take the time to sort of process it for a minute, even when those situations are really volatile. One thing my kids have taught me, it's what my tolerance for conflict is. You can recognize those signs when you start to feel a bit tied up in knots that you go, "Okay, look, let's step away from this situation for a minute. I think we obviously need to take some time to sort this thing." With adults, you can have a conversation. You're much willing to sort of go, "Hey, well at least I'm not trying to pull my kids apart. Let's have this conversation later and we'll work it out."

CHANTE: Yeah. And at least at work, you can step away for a little bit and be offline most of the time, at night.

PHIL: Hopefully, yeah.

CHANTE: Yeah. Turn off all the Slack notifications and Twitter notifications and all of those things and you're good. You're good to go.

PHIL: Absolutely.

JACOB: And at least, I don't know about you all, but for me it's the same when my son's at daycare [laughs] with regards to being able to not focus on parenting and know that there's very skilled professionals that are focused on that as well for eight hours a day.

CHANTE: There's nothing like sending the children to somebody else to take care of them. [Chuckles] When my kids were just home for winter break, I literally was counting down the hours and I was like, "God, why I'm having such a hard time." I should really get their teachers a present because they're with them seven or eight hours a day, and I'm going berserk. It's just super interesting because I was like, "Wow, this is the most that I've been home with them by myself in a while." And it was, Jacob, to your point, I was saying like, "Who are these people? There's little people with all these decisions and whatnot." And one of the things that kind of came up this last time, because they're old enough now to express themselves, was like, "Oh mommy, you're working and all you ever do is work. Don't you ever want to go have some fun?" I'm like, "What? I'm working from home, and I was having fun." They're like, "No, you always work. Your phone's always on, always buzzing." Last time, they kind of said some things that made me feel bad and I finally had to put all the things away, everything and just realize that these little people who are going to become leaders one day of themselves, that it's okay to have this work life balance. They don't quite understand what the work I do. It's a little confusing to explain that to them, but they don't understand that. So me working from home, it feels like to them, I have no boundaries, if that makes sense.

PHIL: Yeah. And do you find that no matter which way you slice it, that guilt, that nagging guilt is always in the back of your mind where, "Am I focusing enough on home or am I focusing enough on work?" And no matter which balance you strike, it's always that nagging doubt that you're sort of neglecting one in favor of the other.

CHANTE: Exactly. Phil, do you get to work from home or do you work at the office every day?

PHIL: Well, I choose to work at the office every day, but the opportunity to work from home is always there. And we've got recently implemented sort of working from home policy which makes that a bit more codified which has been great. But it does make me much more conscious of trying to set the right examples for the rest of the team that if they want to work from home then they don't have to sort of feel awkward or guilty about it. There's these social constructs that have accumulated over time where there was that sort of, I guess they call it the [Protestant] work ethic where you have to show up at the office from eight till five or whatever. And if you're not doing that, then you're clearly not doing your job. It can be hard to break that stuff down in trying to encourage people to take leave or to take learning and development opportunities, or to work from your lounge if you've got a tradesperson coming through to replace your windows or whatever. I find I'm almost having to walk people out of the door and sort of throw them out on the street to sort of go, "Go on, do the thing. You're fine. I'm not judging you."

JACOB: And also for health reasons too.

PHIL: Oh, absolutely.

JACOB: It's flu season here. My wife has some immunity issues and I'm just like, "Why can't my co-workers just stay out of the office when they have the flu?" Because it's this really strong thing. It's like, "I'm a hard worker. I need to always be in the office. I never miss work." That is a really good question.

PHIL: Yeah, I think it's something we're starting to see. That, at least, is something we're starting to see push back on, which is great. And I'm very keen to encourage it. People [inaudible] and you can see them sniffing and looking a little bit sub-par and they'll say, "Oh yeah, I'm kind of over the worst of it," or, "I'm not too infectious now," or whatever. And they've sort of made the call that they're well enough to show up because they feel like they need to be visible. And it's a tough judgment call to sort of go, "Actually, I'd rather you work here," or like, "Okay, fine. As long as you say so, then I'll take your word for it." It's a difficult one to judge what other people's perception is and how comfortable they are with someone who's at least recovering, if not still actually sick.

JACOB: Yeah. And I would guess that workers have to, it's one thing to be told, take a sick day in the company handbook or whatever, but to really feel that trust and like, "If I take a sick day, it's not going to be held against me either in writing or implicitly." And I would guess that women and people of color would probably be even more so than it would really be neat to know that they could trust that there wouldn't be adverse consequences.

CHANTE: Yeah. That was one thing when I was managing people, I was cognizant of the fact of my own, like when I would feel guilty and how much I had to go to great lengths to prove that I was really sick. And it's interesting, I come from the healthcare industry, so of course working in a health system or a health center, people are like, "Whoa, just come on in, we'll take your temperature here." And it's like, "No, actually I'm not." And so depending on which part of the industry I was working in, that was either a challenge or sometimes I could sidestep that. But I felt like at first, for the first 10 years of my career, if I was sick, I better have been basically like hit by a truck or something, have the flu and really sick at home. Otherwise, my co-workers would really judge me because we were there. Like in healthcare, it doesn't stop. And I'm curious, I know Phil that you're working in -- you said the healthcare life sciences, you're doing research. Does the nature of that, because you have people who are working in that industry, does it change the workplace culture and the expectation of what you consider to be health and well-being and things that bring balance at work?

PHIL: I don't feel that it does here because I think we are about one layer abstracted away from the front lines of the actual health industry. We provide some tools and some software, but we're not integrated into the health and life science in that way. So, I think we've probably got a nice little reality distortion bubble around our office here, which shields us to an extent from any of those sorts of negative influences, I guess.

CHANTE: That's good then.

PHIL: Possibly, because again, the virtue of being in a small town at the bottom of the world, we don't have a lot of the same sort of noise possibly that other organizations in Silicon Valley or London or somewhere like that might do.

CHANTE: How big is your town?

PHIL: Well, we're university towns, so during most of the year we're 120 odd thousand people. And over the summer when it's summer break here, over December, January, we're about a hundred thousand of permanent residents, roughly.

CHANTE: Okay. College towns are fun, at least here in the US.

PHIL: Yeah, it is. If you're a student, it absolutely is. [Inaudible] sort of cleaning up all the broken glass and putting out all the couches that were set on fire.

CHANTE: That's not fun? I'm just kidding.

[Laughter]

PHIL: It's kind of a fun part of our identity, which we reluctantly accept, I think

CHANTE: I live in a college, I live in Evanston, just North of Chicago, Northwestern just on a beautiful place. And I used to live and work in Iowa City, which is another big college town here in the United States. And that was a lot of debauchery. So to your point of picking up glass and everything, it was not fun. Just poking fun.

JACOB: I guess we've touched on Impostor Syndrome on this show a lot and I've really appreciated hearing about that. Well I guess I could just open it up to you for like, do you have any particular thoughts on the topic or challenges or questions?

PHIL: I mean, it was something that surprised me, I think. Because the show is people-focused, but in the technology sort of focus as well. And so, we kind of all accept that Impostor Syndrome is a thing in the technology sector. And I kind of, I don't know why, I probably naively thought that it wasn't going to be a factor in other disciplines, and that's something that I sort of struggled with last year was I've gotten through this sort of work and goals that I'd sit and I'm also sitting around at my desk looking around and going, "Damn! Now, what? I should be doing stuff [inaudible], managing something," and I'm kind of [inaudible] and it starts to sort of go through this spiel of all the things that I wasn't doing right or didn't know enough about. And so, something I've really wrestled with was am I actually as qualified and cut out for this as I like to pretend I am. The doubt is always there, but that's when you sort of go back to reading, it's not always that it's a personal failing. It's probably more of an inspiration problem where you've ticked off the things you kind of said you would, things are running well and that's great. And so the challenge is actually, what next? And so, I hit the books at that point and I'm reading a book at the moment called Turn The Ship Around! which I should have written a long time ago. But that's about a naval commander who takes control of a nuclear submarine and he has to get that up to speed. We can add that in the show notes later. But these resources are the sort of things I really want to fill my head with and go, "Oh yeah, we can totally try this at the the workplace."

One of the real luxuries I have here is pretty much a freedom to do whatever the hell I want within reason. If I can sort of argue that it's going to provide some benefit or some gains somewhere. So I think after a decent break of a couple of weeks and having sort of done some reading and gathered some other ideas and having them very fresh, I can feel a bit more confident that I've got somewhere that I want to go next and some things I want to do. But it can be hard to sort of be in a new role and management from development is a completely different role. You're not sort of moving up a career ladder. And I think people have seen this before. You've got to a ladder and now you're sort of stepping off and you're starting on a brand new ladder. And so, looking at it that way, it means that there's a lot more that I can sort of learn and upscale in. And that's encouraging.

JACOB: Yeah, it occurs to me that we have a concept of junior developers or junior engineers and I don't care about junior managers as often, by which I mean the acknowledgement that you may have a lot of experience as an engineer or in a technical position and you have a lot of experience managing yourself, so to speak. And then all of a sudden, you're put in charge of a team. And of course, that's going to be a new thing to you. And of course, that's going to have a learning curve. And that kind of has to come with an acknowledgement that that's something you're learning and you probably need some mentorship from a more experienced manager and all the same things.

PHIL: Yeah, it does. You're right. You mentioned the sort of junior-intermediate-senior developer, you don't tend to see that as much or it's not as obvious. And in management, you don't sort of get called a junior, intermediate or senior manager much. Or maybe senior, you might be like sort of senior VPs and things like that. I guess, we don't see that as much here. But yeah, that sort of growth and expansion of your skills and your role, it is a fresh start. There was another book I was reading by Camille Fournier, I hope I pronounced the name right, called The Manager's Path and that's basically just a collection of her blog posts where she started off from a software developer, worked up to team lead, engineering manager, someone up to CTO and playing in the big leagues. And that's been a fantastic resource as well, not just for somebody that wants to get into management, but somebody like me who sort of had started out as a developer and wants to look at, "What sort of skills, if I'm going to take on a team leadership thing and be a senior developer, what sort of skills do I need to demonstrate and articulate those things really, really well?" And so, I'd recommend that book for anybody that -- you don't have to be in management or want to get into management, but it gives you a really good sort of grounding for the sorts of things that you should be working towards just in software development for the next stage of your career or to expand your role or your responsibilities a bit.

JACOB: Something I've been thinking about more is managers, they're supposed to be responsible for doing their magic to sort of motivate and coordinate their team. And I think I heard the phrase "managing up" like, how do I be the best employee possible to help my manager do a good job and help my manager manage me? So yeah, I wonder if books like that would be something that someone like me who's not on a management track, maybe I should be reading more about that.

PHIL: Possibly. I think the thing that served me well along those lines where I could see that somebody else was getting slammed with stuff that they obviously weren't really enthusiastic about, whether that's your manager or somebody else elsewhere in the organization. And I recognize that I can fill that gap. I've got the capacity, or I've got the skillset. "Hey person, can I take that off you? I'm happy to do that. It'd be sort of a good skill growth for me." Especially for managing up or talking to your manager, if you can see them sort of having to knock out a monthly report and you can see the life fading from their eyes and the color draining from their face with every case strike, then you can go, "Hey, this looks like something that I should be aware of at least, and helps me sort of inform what's going on or for myself about what's going on in the organization. Can I take that off your hands for you?" More often than not, they're going to be super willing to go, "Oh God, please, take it."

CHANTE: To that point, one of the things when I found myself managing up. And I now when I notice other people doing the same thing, I often recognize that skills like self awareness and self mastery because those who are aware of just not only, I guess their own personal sort of feelings to something, they tend to have a little bit more empathy and awareness and emotional intelligence when it comes to their co-workers and their managers and what have you and can empathize with maybe why there's a deadline or why there's this report that nobody wants to do or the thing that has to happen. And then usually, what's the difference between somebody like being able to kind of jump in and help is if like their load is taken care of. So that requires that self mastery. You know what I mean? One of the areas I spent a lot of time in when I was getting my master's degree was this sort of area of leadership development. Like, how are leaders going to develop themselves for as cheaply and as freely as possible because most of us don't have the money. And I could empathize with that as a young kind of inexperienced and poorly paid manager myself, I knew that it was really key. So I did lots of reading in terms of self development, self help books, even the ones that I didn't think were my issue ended up being kind of a people issue. And I think it made me a better leader. And as I've gotten more mature, I've just spent so much more time being more introspective than I probably would have been had I not been encouraged or put on the management path. So, I'm thankful for that. That's one area that I think everyone should kind of, regardless of who you are and what you do, if you can, start there, like the self reflection is huge and it's free. It's painful sometimes.

PHIL: I love that point. Yeah, introspection and self-awareness is such a critical skill and it's hard to know how to do that well. It can be difficult to pick areas where you can explore and critique yourself and go,"What should I do next?" But yeah, you're absolutely right when you say that it's a real precursor to empathy with others. I love it.

CHANTE: Thank you for that. Jacob, what do you think? Because you're in an independent developer role right now, but do you feel like those are things that you already do or that you're able to do given the nature of your work?

JACOB: Oh yeah, definitely. I feel like I can always be better at that. But something, for example, that I've been trying to work on is my own personal documentation. We have shared documentation for our team and then there are just things that are specific only to sort of me and my brain and how I interface with everyone else, and I need to write those down. So, there's this one thing about how our team works together and it was confusing for me, I'm going to write it down. Or one thing that I wouldn't have done it this way naturally and I knew to sort of get myself into the habit of doing it, I'm going to journal it. I did a reflection last week about like, I keep getting this one thing wrong with our team. Like I'm finding that I'm doing it at the last minute and it's feeling like it's difficult and I can tell that it's sort of making extra work for my manager when I do that. What can I do to let me see if I can write down a strategy to get myself into the habit of being able to deliver on that a little bit earlier in the day, so everyone can just go along a little bit more happy. So yeah, I think that's sort of just part of what being a professional is, is about recognizing that you're not just a cog that's going to sort of produce widgets. You're responsible for your own personal growth and professional growth. No one's going to tell you, "Hey, you need to reflect on this." So, it's your job to sort of identify what are those things you need to come along and just sort of up the ante a little bit for yourself.

PHIL: Yep. People have probably heard Coraline mention a couple of times on this podcast before that she keeps a diary or a personal journal in the same way. There's a book -- I'm going to keep reciting books. I apologize for this. There's a book by Jerry Weinberg called Becoming a Technical Leader. And again, he recommends keeping a three to five minute daily personal journal of how you're going what sort of challenges you sort of see today, or what sort of problems did you find? It doesn't have to be long, but just forming that habit is a really, really great tool to help you improve. Not necessarily talking about leadership or management, it could be for anything, just for development or whatever. But it's a very, very useful tool for introspection and going back and looking how far you've come over six months or whatever. It's well worth it.

JACOB: Yeah. And also, every team is going to sort of organize. They're going to employ certain technology, whether it's JIRA or Trello or whatever of how they're going to sort of organize and communicate. And also, I've been thinking more about how everyone needs to also identify, because every management system like that is going to have some issue with somebody, like someone's going to have some problem with JIRA, right? And it's about identifying like what are the things about it that just are not clicking for me? And then, it's like what can I do to sort of supplement and what can I do to create my own individual system? For example, we don't use Trello at work, but I use Trello extensively and I have my own individual system that I try to be really strict about. And I've truly tried to think about, how is my individual system going to sort of link in with the team system so that if there's something about my team system that just wasn't working for me, I've got something that's going to sort of help me adapt a little bit better. And I think that's just something that everyone can think about. Like, how can I adapt to the team's chosen technology a little bit better?

PHIL: I think that comes back to Chante's point about that self-mastery thing where your willingness to help is a product of how you're able to take your own ego out of the equation and sort of try and find ways to make other people's lives a bit easier and sort of work in with other people's needs.

CHANTE: The other thing that I find to be really interesting is like after I got into working with more technical teams and just kind of understanding how they work in terms of agile frameworks and whatnot, I find that a lot of these teams are really great at identifying productivity tools and identifying where there's a gap between what they need to be doing and what the team perceives them to be doing. And so, folks are really great about taking upon themselves to use a Trello board or to use JIRA or something else that works if it's just kind of an issue at work. But when I work with folks who are not on technical teams, I am like almost jarred by the amount of folks who are not aware of the number of cool applications that are free that allow you to have the self management and productivity superpower. So I spend a lot of time with my own personal workflows and mastering those lately. And those have been really helpful. And it's mostly because I run a business that I kind of had to start to adopt this and adhere to it. I don't think I would have fully adopted it if I didn't, but it's been night and day for me. And so, I encourage anybody who is not in a technical role or on a technical team but you work at a technology company for instance, maybe you're in marketing or business development or people operations, whatever, I would highly recommend to go spend some time with folks on the technical team to find out how they're dealing with their workflows because it probably will make your life easier.

PHIL: I think the more senior you become, all the more relied upon you become within a team or an organization, the more prone you are to interruptions. And so those tools become real life savers if you sort of find one that really works for you.

CHANTE: What are some personal favorites for you two?

PHIL: For me? I'll tell you what. A personal favorite for me is a notebook. It's not a technical tool, and as a software developer, I should probably turn in my geek card. But a notebook is probably my go-to for a lot of my day. Jacob, you said Trello, right?

JACOB: Yeah. I kind of think about, I like to imagine my team as like a series of pipes where people are sending. Remember you see in the older movies -- pneumatic tubes where he puts a piece of paper in like a metal tube and then you put it in the building and it sucks it up like five stories or whatever. I just think of my team like that where we're constantly passing messages back and forth and then it's our job to sort of just keep them moving. And then eventually they get spit out into the outside world where they are actually generating value for our customers. So, I just try to model that pipeline or my individual pipeline inside Trello. It's like, things are to come in this way and then they're going to sort of progress as I do work on them, and then I'm going to put them in another tube and I'm going to send them off to whoever else it is. And then just sort of make sure everything is always moving.

PHIL: Another personal tool which I really like, well I find it's really useful for me, is writing a blog. My blog, which is in a state of renewal at the moment, but I find it's really useful for me to be able to sort of coalesce thoughts and get ideas into a coherent state by just writing about it. Just the process of writing is really, really cathartic and useful, I find.

CHANTE: I guess to echo what both of you have said, for me, I use a notebook, for sure. I love writing and I also definitely use Trello. I also love Airtable. Have either of you used Airtable?

PHIL: No.

CHANTE: It's amazing. I just love it.

JACOB: Is that like you can make a database with it?

CHANTE: Yeah. It's very much like Trello and a lot of other productivity tools in kind of one product management and project management can happen inside of that. But like you said, you can build a personal database and it's really visually pleasing.

PHIL: I'll look it up. Thanks.

JACOB: Good to know.

CHANTE: Yep. I love that one. What else? Have we touched on everything that you want to talk about, Phil?

PHIL: The thing that's sort of really been irking me this part of the year, the first week of the year, has been watching conversations around what Uber is doing or the sort of new lines and this or that. There is so much crazy stuff going on at the moment. New Zealand's really watching Australia literally going up in flames. It's been wild. Cities over here have woken up to bright orange days throughout the day. We're turning our lights on during the day because the smoke from Australia is covering our country. It's wild. And so, this is where I'll sort of come back to. The ones [inaudible] really want to sort of get my hands dirty and next will be that sort of ethical digital citizen concepts, and what solutions could we sort of create where it's citizens before consumers, not consumers before citizens. Maybe I'm getting older and I'm sort of getting into that stage where I'm like, "I really want to try and find a better solution for this." We keep all these Silicon Valleys with the VC funding and doing sort of really wild products. But we're all the ones that are dealing with environmental issues or education issues or health or whatever. And so, it's a thing that I sort of want to try and start exploring. I don't know if I can do that as a manager or as a developer. But yeah, I'm starting to feel a lot more energized about the idea of finding a way to contribute something on that front.

CHANTE: I totally share that same sentiment. I think a lot about being a global citizen, and what that means as we're going into this new fourth industrial revolution. And so, what I was looking locally was taking good care of my neighbors and making sure I was cleaning up the spaces around me and being mindful of my noise and never littering and never really talking poorly about people. But as we get into this digital and virtual world, I'm definitely thinking a lot about that. I think that's a really interesting topic. And I'm curious to know in terms of like, since this is about leadership and whatnot, how you might go about that, not only for yourself personally but at work. Would that be something that you would put out or could it be something you could put out like as a hackathon or like as a teen challenge? What can we do better? If there's one thing we can do better here to be better global digital, virtual citizens, what would it be?

PHIL: One of the things that I find very easy for me was sort of -- I've come to the table with ideas and they might be crazy ideas sometimes, but I like to sort of go, "Hey, why don't we try the thing?" And I've done hackathons as well where we can sort of -- the problem domain is well defined and we can go, "Here is some data that we can work with. Let's use that to build this thing." And so, I feel like I personally want to try and do that for some of these other issues. But now the problem domain isn't quite as well defined. You can't sort of go, "Solve environmentalism or solve education," or whatever. I think I rely a lot more for people to be talking about what are the specific problems that have wide-reaching consequences or wide-reaching implications. That's when I find that I function better. And so, that's why I'm a bit frustrated. And I guess at the moment where I'm like, "I've got this energy, I want to do something useful here," but I can't really tell where to direct that energy.

JACOB: That's where I come to have a lot of appreciation for, I guess in broad terms, the people who can identify where to direct that energy whether it's people who can say, "If the problem is X, then we need a piece of technology that looks like Y." And then people will want to use it and then they'll solve this problem. I'm really having a lot of appreciation for that because that is not easy.

PHIL: I think a lot of the problems seem too big to a tech and I think a lot of them sort of come back to ultimately political problems. And I don't want to get into politics here, but I think that is probably where I don't know necessarily if technology could be a solution, but certainly communities probably are in this. Maybe that's that sort of bias that I have around wanting to get people together because I'm sure there's communities out or also there could potentially be communities out there that want to sort of tackle these sort of things and have ideas for how. It's just sort of finding them and bringing them together, which is a bit nebulous.

CHANTE: Yeah. There's an organization that I am trying to remember the name of them and I'm going to look for it right now. I think it's The Global Digital Citizen foundation or Institute or something like that. Anyway, or either one of you familiar?

PHIL: Not with it, no.

JACOB: No.

CHANTE: It's an organization. I came across it earlier in the year when I was doing some planning, essentially if my memory serves me correct. Basically, they have some great resources in terms of how you prepare not only students but anybody who's interested in professional learning development, how to become great stewards of the world, of the globe that we are occupying, the space that we're occupying, and thinking about it from a digital perspective. So that might be a resource we can include in the show notes because I think that this is such an interesting topic and maybe one that we would need to explore more on the show.

PHIL: Yeah, for sure. I'd be fascinated with that. It'd be great.

CHANTE: It's definitely something that I think is important as you see, like you said, Australia going up in flames. It's one of these things to think like, "What causes that?" It's the overheating of our world. And as we're working, those of us who are in technology and those of us who love to consume it, we can't deny the fact that it takes a lot of energy and power and heat to maintain servers. Even though they're in somebody's cloud, they're not really in a cloud. There's somewhere else just not in front of us. And we have to be mindful about the data and information that we're creating and holding onto. I'm the most guiltiest person when it comes to having ridiculous amounts of storage and keeping things digitally that I shouldn't keep. But I have to remind myself that that takes up space on somebody's server and it might not impact me, but it could impact another country and they might have some global warming over there. So, I need to be more mindful about my digital footprint, for example.

PHIL: Yeah. That's before we even get into all the bitcoin mining, right?

CHANTE: Exactly. It's a whole nother conversation.

[Chuckles]

CHANTE: Yeah. There's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as doing things without consequence. Period. Interesting topic and I want to make sure we continue it. So whether you come back on for part two or we continue the thread and have this as a show theme, and then you can come back on and we can talk about it.

PHIL: Yeah, I'd love to.

CHANTE: Stay tuned folks. So, reflection time. Jacob, do you want to go first?

JACOB: Yeah, sure. I'm thinking about how I am definitely an individual contributor because that's the career track I'm on and I'm happy with that. And I'm thinking more about how even though that's where I am, I can still be thinking about the art of management and how can I interface better with my managers? How can the art of management help me be a better team member, help my manager manage me better, or really just to be aware of it because I think there's some empathy to be found there for my managers. So, I'm going to be thinking more about that.

PHIL: I keep coming back to Chante's point about the sort of self awareness and empathy and I really like that sort of introspective angle that she mentioned. I keep finding myself wanting to push my people to go in a particular direction or find new opportunities. And I think it would be really good for me to sort of just take a step back and look at where the motivation for that is coming from. Is it because I have some expectation that they should do a thing or is it because I think they genuinely want to do it? And so, I think it'd be good for me to go back and actually just take a bit more time to step outside myself and have a bit more time to explore what my own motivations are for wanting to do things for the rest of my team and build out that empathy more.

CHANTE: That's great. I think to your point, I was thinking a lot about the Impostor Syndrome and how we had this conversation. I was thinking like the Impostor Syndrome when you first said that, I was thinking about tech, or is this around actually just being in spaces you don't necessarily think you should be in quite yet? And how at some point in time, we're all impostors. You usually are when you're trying something new. So I think it not only helps me, but I'm guessing all, to do as much reading upon that as you can. If leadership is in the future for you or not, I think it would do all of us some good to understand when you're waiting through those feelings of uncertainty and being vulnerable regardless of the job and the functionality on the team.

PHIL: Sure.

CHANTE: Well, thank you. So I really appreciate you being able to jump in on this conversation all the way from the bottom, as you say, of the earth. We really appreciate it.

PHIL: It's been so great. I'm really thrilled to be on this. Thanks a lot for having me.

JACOB: Yeah, definitely.

CHANTE: Hopefully it's not the last. Come back.

PHIL: Sure. Absolutely.