(00:00) hello welcome and Namaste to Career Journey podcast thank you so much for accepting my request to come as a guest on this podcast you have a lot of experience and you are helping developers to build their career so we will touch all that let’s start from sharing what you do and uh what’s your typical day or week look like sure my current position is a product owner and application owner at one of the top 15 banks in the country here in the United States called fif third and I work in the commercial lending aspect of
(00:47) the bank so I’m a product owner for an application that produces Commercial Credit analytics and it provides what we call Underwriters the people who are working on loans to make intelligent choices so it provides them with analytics such as one of the borrowings that and company has what we call their probability of Defense which is based on a whole bunch of modeling based on their financial statements balance sheets income statements those those sorts of things and last given default which is a a measure of what the bank
(01:37) could lose based on the amount that’s being borrowed and also the collateral underlying the loan and I have a pretty vast surface area and being product owner we are in an agile environment so we work in an agile way we’ve just adopted safe structured agile framework or or SC a scaled agile framework so my day begins generally I wake I’m an early wake so I I wake up early in the morning I I just naturally wake up at six o’clock in the morning every single day regardless if it’s a weekday or if it’s
(02:19) on the weekend sometimes I sleep a little bit more on the weekends but not too much begin night daing with about 15 minutes of meditation self-reflection I find that grounds me it allows me to align with purpose and I’m not perfect at this this is still I’m still grabbing this practice doing it for a long time but I F off the horse from time to time I have to get myself back on that this is generally what I do then I try to do some kind of physical exercise I do taiichi some just stretching and and that sort of thing and then I drink my
(03:00) coffee had go to the office uh typically the day begins at 8:00 a.m. the first meeting of the day which is technically our standup and our technical meeting now I have a team that is dispersed so I have four people that work in Bangalore India I have three developers that are on site with me and then I have someone in Florida that does a lot of our our testing in QA the morning meeting is our our standup so we go through our comand board we go through the stories people give updates on what they did yesterday what they’re
(03:47) doing today what walking them which is typical agile standup format try to minimize that to 15 minutes and then we go into the technical as we’re going through the daily standup we identify those stories that need refinement or Technical Solutions that need to be talked about and then we add that to a list that we then bring into the technical meeting and we do this in a formal way this is the standl okay here’s the board tell us what the updates are on N St What’s blocking you which ones you need uh further Direction
(04:29) on and then then we stop that and said okay now we’re going into the technical then we go into the technical and then we go through whatever it is that it mostly focused on alure developers alure developers then get the guidance that they need really to to frame out their next day because by the time we’re meeting with them it’s 6:00 pm or it’s pretty late they they’ve been their day and then we meet with them from 8 to about 9 sometimes it extends to 9:15 and 9:30 and that’s the first meeting of the
(05:08) day after that uh we take a break and I can have meetings we have what we call the art which is the Agile Release Train which is the virtual organization within safe that are all working towards adding value to the value strein in this case it’s commercial lending we group Happ and we already have our goals for the next three months we do this thing called Pi planning project increment planning and then throughout the day I’m strategizing with my developers reading things on the ground as far as what’s
(05:48) coming from technical support I what what the Jes of working in the industry I’m sure this B is that you really can’t plan your day even to the hour because you have no idea what’s going to come at you every single day and it just amazes me with variety of things that can come this software needs to be upgraded it needs to be upgraded tonight what this database is out of support you need to upgrade it uh all kinds of things that happen uh typically I’m the first point of cont attack for our stakeholders that’s generally a product
(06:34) owner type thing but anything that happens in the environment lb ran we have prod support I aming us emailing us telling us things that we need to know about the the functioning of the application that’s typically make where going through meeting strategizing with developers working with stakeholders and from time to time taking a rest generally our rests are walking around the building the team that we have the three people that I I work with most that are sit around me we’re we’re all in little
(07:11) pods we can see each other we we talk all day around even at lunch it it’s usually hard to get away from whatever we’re working on technically so that’s typically how the day goes I have many followup Christians but it seems like you’re working in office and then once you go home you you take rest yes how do you wind up because I know you also do a lot of content writing yeah yeah my my general Outlet is physical activity so I have a very I would say strict in in the way that I know that three days a week I need to go
(07:55) to the gym I have specific goals around that and my physical health and and wellbeing I have to plan for that and I have to plan around my family’s activities I had three daughters one one was 13 the other are older my 13year old is a Dancer competitive dancer which means she’s going to dance just about every single day so I have to make sure we organize is we have a calendar know that puts everything that needs to happen on the calendar and and I follow that calendar pretty well I fit in what I need to do
(08:39) within what the family needs to get done and but may going down spend time with my wife a lot of times we’ll work a little bit later into the night and she has all kinds of volunteer activities so when we’re when she’s doing her volunteer activities I’m trying to create the content and and and build my coaching business wow my daughter is also 13 and my son is in college so yeah but I I can fully understand what you mean yeah I had a 23 year old that graduated college and she’s in her first
(09:19) job and she just moved out of the house so that was a big step for her she’s living in an apartment fairly close by we’ll see her later today and then I have a middle daughter who is in college she’s in her junior year at Ohio University which is about three and a half hours away it’s far away enough that when she’s in college she’s right not in the household a 13y but is in the household and requires a lot of attention sure for sure you’re supporting poor womens yeah yeah no this is kudos to you uh one of
(10:06) my friend one of my colleague actually had uh two daughters and he used to say a man of three women and and he loves it like how couple of follow-up questions it seems like you’re working in office and you’re meeting the standup meeting goes for an hour so I guess the stand up plus the parking lot discussion and everything you said the this Pi planning and all so who does that is there a different person for release train engineer and also who does the pi planning so there yeah there there’s a a
(10:41) a program manager okay at the art level at the Agile Release Train level and then there’s a a release train engineer and they’re basically coordinating the activities of the art so the PM comes up with what she believes should be the pi we’re actually going through this that we’re doing Pi planning on Tuesday for the second quarter yes okay okay yes so in my company I work for adental and uh my department is the consumer digital group consumer products which incl advent.
(11:19) com adental account which is like patient portal application and that’s web iOS Android and me and my team is responsible for all that Pi planning and a scrum oh wow okay so all I have different team member who does different thing to support this activities so my background was a senior engineer to a team leader then development manager and now I’m agile transformation leader in my office and I also handled the the release or communication education and Adoption of the application okay okay yeah yes our program manager comes up
(12:04) with a list of goals that she wants to achieve and then each of the team looks through their backlog looks through the road map and tries to connect what they want to do with the goals that are being presented by the PM and for instance we had one thing that wasn’t on the PM goals and we said we think this is important so we had to meet we had to discuss it and we had to present our case and say look we’re expecting an increased volume in this area we know we need to do some work here we don’t like that their customer
(12:44) or internal customers are being negatively impacted we have a plan we can we can support your gos as well as this activity that we’re looking to do with the team so we able to influencer and get Buy in to spend time working on that during this next Pi okay I think we can have the entire episode just talking about this a lot right within this there’s a lot their tools their practice and in general agile is broken everywhere there I yet to meet with a company that is doing a perfect agile everybody I spoke
(13:28) to have one or the other thing that they are not happy about but it’s far better than a waterfall method that I used to use before absolutely yeah yeah yeah I worked on a startup and we were doing agile right there either but we were doing it no right then we’re probably doing it at the bank at certain times and we always used to get into these philosophical discussions about or we do are we doing what do they call it agile are we doing weak agile I feel like if you are running your business then you may not be doing the agile right the
(14:10) only people and I see say those people as cheerleader M those people are running agile the perfect ways but they are not running business they’re doing some kind of project that has no customer or no real world problem I know I’m putting myself in danger you yeah by saying that but your main goal is to solve business problem the main goal is to run a business for that you’re building an application and to build an application you have the customer that you’re trying to support your internal staff member
(14:50) whoever it is yeah at the startup we used to get customers on the F and we used the project manager or the product manager would present them with their vision of a solution for whatever problem they’re looking to solve and they would walk them through the workflows that they were developing and then they would get feedback and I used to say they on those sessions that was really cool I I thought that was really cool because you start to see the beginning and then you get to participate in the end and when you talk about the
(15:26) technology industry what moates me is is really the excitement of delivering that final solution to the there’s just some kind of high that comes from I’ve worked out the sofware it’s now live it’s in people’s hands you don’t necessarily like to hear product support yeah product support getting calls and things like that but when people call products supp bir it means they care they’re actually using your application and sales people are selling it and the companies making money and it’s R all around and the
(16:03) whole time I’m just having fun doing this that’s what the excitement for me of being in technology is it’s like being part of that process and how many application you deliver doesn’t get old like you still get excitement every time you release something yeah in the startup it’s spent about four or five months remaking this one application it was like a CRM application but it was custom and we went through this whole process of understanding the current application that they were using was
(16:37) also custom designed how should it be modified in order to make it better in order to provide more value we did user acceptance testing as we were iterating through the creation of the application I we did a lot of these things right and we came out and it was a great application and it lasted about a month because we didn’t realize this at the time but the upper L people were working on a murder we were part of a private Equity portfolio and they merg us with this other company that have very similar application that was already built and
(17:17) designed so they threw away had application that we worked on for months that we did all that hard work on and substituted this other application and and I’m they practical about these types of things I realized that let’s face it software is I’m going to go away eventually any software you’re working on don’t we mared to it because it’s going to wear away you know the the question is when that heart and soul into it the the lead technology developer this is like a big this is her trying
(17:56) to better her career by stepping into leadership they gave her the opportunity the responsibility to build this application um remember with the lady her name is Roda she was so invaded in this that it really Creed her when they killed the project I remember being in the meeting and with the leaders and they unveiled this merger that they were about to do and I was there with the CIO and my colleagues and as we were driving back I was like what are we going to tell rodica what what are we going to tell rodica who’s going to talk to rodica
(18:41) because she’s going to be crushed by this and the other guys weren’t even thinking about that they like well just tell her that the Project’s cancell right but she put her heart and sorrow through she’s going to really feel this as a major blow going to have to do this and ENT way she’s all right though she goes to my gym I see her she’s doing great doesn’t work to that company anymore though you’re now a project manager project owner but how did you start your career what was your previous
(19:18) roles yeah so I I I went through an untraditional route that I I was going to be in business so I was a business guy okay so I had to school for business and I don’t know how much how much you want me to go into it I was a business side I was in sales I was in operations for a number of financial companies for nine years long time yeah and I had previous tickles with with technology I remember my dad coming home I think it was was in the late 70s with this big gray box on my dining room table and I’m like what is that
(20:07) it’s a computer wow 1970 I think it was in 80 yeah 7 it was a ts80 I said said what are you gonna do with it he said I’m gonna fix it they have like the Mr Fix It guy fix just about anything did he go to school for computer engineering no but he knows solding he knows wires he knows transistors he knows capacitors he knows all those things so he fixed this computer it was given to him someone gave it to him and and he fixed it and and I started using it so that was my first experience with with computers
(20:48) that so you might ask why would you go to business when you already had some experience with computers you know and you had that idea yeah this is going to be the future this is going to be really cool place the answer to that question is limiting beliefs I didn’t think I was smart enough I thought software Engineers people in the technical industry even then were like the brightest of the bright and do M rare heads Geniuses and I learned later on in life that’s not the case and that’s what I build my coaching philosophy on is is
(21:21) that you shouldn’t buy into these limiting beliefs but anyway get back to the story I was in business and I start to develop a curiosity about the systems because for whatever reason I’d always find the thing that was wrong with the system I I always pressed the L button and then something unexpected happened and started to think about who who are these people are building this compute these system I want to talk to them I went know year 2000 came around in Y2K and I was working at Fidelity in time on the operations floor
(22:00) and we had to do ating all the software testing for our M systems someone from it came in and they put around a project to do this user acceptance testing and this is pretty cool just so happened that right after 2000 there was an opening in the QA team and I went for it and got it and that’s how I began my it career it was going into QA and then I progressed up the ladder of QA very quickly so within six years I was managing a team I had gone back to school learned software engineering I learned computer I learned
(22:40) coding C++ Java all that and then I was given a responsibility to run the automation team for my whole line of business so we were doing all kinds of test automation qtp we were building custom test apps and bb.net we had a whole bunch of things and then 2008 happened 2008 lean Brothers the banking crisis and a lot of uncertainty and in early 2009 the Fidelity basically laid off all of the Midwest employees I I lived in Cincinnati in technology and so I was looking for a job and then I’m I’m happy to say that
(23:27) everybody on my team got a job before me so about it took even in the worst economic environments in the United States at the time early 2009 the people who were working for me all of them got jobs within two to three months took me a little longer but when I did get my next job it was at that startup that I was talking about and it was one of the best experiences of my life yeah so I entered there I was the QA manager and systems analysis uh manager I had Bas and QA and it was a very flat organization so I help to
(24:13) backup operational leader I did all kinds of things and that was the J of it I I Diversified my skills to a large extent there and that was like 2009 is time when Right started of July 2009 end did that job in November 2018 so there for about 6 and a half years and then again I was looking for a job because they did all this restructuring and they eliminated my position and then I got the job at uh fif Third Bank I wanted to get back into development but the first job I took at the bank was in the QA area QA
(24:56) manager at the time they were extreme waterfall agile wasn’t yet really a thought for the bank since 2016 I had a very large team and I spent a lot of time just doing administrative just contract statements of work at the time I had about eight full-time employees had about 20 Entre onshore contractors and over a 100 offshore contractors that were in my organization and so a lot of time with vendors a lot of time with paperwork and not much delivery at all I needed to get out of that position so I did about a year and
(25:44) a half after that I went into the commercial lending organization I’m still part of I was brought in as a ba manager I call this my uh third party application babysitting days so I get a group of third party applications a bunch of vendors and uh couple Bas that were working underneath me and I just managed those applications so was vendor management and that’s when I started to work on my strategy to get back into development so every the applications I looked at I was trying to develop uh Integrations I was working with
(26:24) Architects I was trying to find whatever technical something I could do within as third party applications so I came up with all these plans and then this big project came up and I was selected to be the product owner of the application that we’re working on now part of it anyway we were taking this big month application that had been working in the bank for many years all the data was self-contained it was all brought in by ETL data transfer every night and we had like wi that apart part of the application was
(27:04) going into the cloud it was going to be a Salesforce uh application or basically a module that was built on Salesforce we didn’t have Salesforce at the time and then there were specialty applications like this credit analytics that I’m in charge of now where we had to build the mechanism to be in what I’ll call new ecosystem and our new ecosystem is basically based on microservices and messaging so rather than remoking our balance file every single night so just drop a old them yester from yesterday
(27:46) and remaking it now what we do is we accept changes so when the balance is change we get a message we update our database and then there’s a cascading effect that the calculations further up down the line so that was where I realized all right now I’m a technical leader again I have developers under me we’re building this Green Field project and and then Co hit then we both would have Co and we had number of contractors we had Consultants a lot of Consultants from a fairly famous consulting company that I
(28:27) won’t name but it begins with a big a and and there I ran a whole bench about Consulting and so that brings us up to today wow Incredible Journey from the business to QA to two bumps in the road and then navigating your own creating your own way in this Fifth Third Place yeah so matter ADV ADV to people who may be in a job that isn’t exactly what they want sometimes the answer is just to leave yeah so let’s talk about your coaching and what you do and how what the key differentiators or what methods
(29:14) that you use MH as you were saying the people that I help are all Gam of the spectrum so someone who’s looking for a job in technology brand new technology typically what I’ll suggest to them is to do what I did in 2009 basically work on your career Vision what do you imagine yourself doing in the next 3 to 5 years get really specific on that basically and it can change obviously you have these bumps in the road as you were calling them that kind of take you off clear but if you m glaring you have that kind of n Sor you have that girl in
(30:01) mind then even the bumps could help you in some mysterious way so you got to get clear on your career vision and and I’m working on a notion template that kind of walks people through that I call I was about to say that yeah ask you because that’s a big problem most people do not know what they want even when they have job even when they are five year in that job they don’t know what they really want and many people either adopt whatever their manager is saying whatever their colleague is doing and
(30:41) they all think okay all right I need this too so yeah big gap right whether it is a new person or whether it experienced person how do you help them find what they want yeah yeah and part of understanding what you want is is understanding what you’ve been successful at in the past so they say okay think about what you were really excited about when you were a child what did you do what what did you like to do were you someone that like to play splits were you someone that likeed to read were you like to play music did you like to dance try to
(31:22) really understand that aspect of yourself but getting back to the career Vision there some of them just starting out you need to come up with what I call your success stories even if you’re not in Tech you’re not in Tech you still have successes that you can talk about so your summer jobs for instance you need to be able to communicate because let’s face it if you’re brand new nobody’s expecting you to be experience nobody is expecting you to say I developed this really great application I need a million dollars and
(32:00) I sold it to Google you’re just starting out but what they do expect is that you can at least communicate what you have done in a way that allows people to a GRS in into who you are what are your values how do you handle problems how do you handle situations those are the types of things hey we ask a question for instance describe a conflict that you had to work through and how did you work through it and you have to say all right here’s something it may not connect to technology but that we’re not looking
(32:36) for something in technology we’re looking for you for what you did not the technical aspect and the other thing is that if you don’t have these success stories you just can’t make them if if you you don’t have a lot of them because maybe you don’t have a lot of experience you have to create the circumstance to have a success story this deles into what you you talk about a lot right you got to have a project you have to have to person a project you have to be working on things that are outside of your work that you
(33:14) can still talk about and highlight in your career right you you want to build that portfolio of projects that you can talk about those are success stories too where ask a question such as what projects are you working on working on this application a personal project what personal project are you working on and some people can answer that question and some people can’t lot people can answer that question and it becomes a very interesting conversation oh I’m building some computer game oh really what technology
(33:51) you using my first three job was all because of the last project that I worked on so that’s why or really believe in building something on your side that and really passionate about and you it it’s the energy that when you speak about it it’s the energy that everybody can sense yeah yeah and Technical people will start de delving into it now of course everything you say needs to be true otherwise that’ll come through too I had a guy who said oh I I did I built an extension Minecraft oh really where did what extension did you
(34:29) go what functionality did you go he said I really something he started hammering and it turn that he just figured out and had to change the configuration to make different things happen that happen where once that happen in the interview then me as a hiding manager I won’t listen to anything else because then I’m questioning everything that is there in your resume that’s right that’s right it it has happened with me where somebody has put in so many things so many skills in their resume and if I
(35:05) would randomly pick one ask two follow-up questions and done no this is not right that I if I cannot believe what you have in the third or fourth row in your resume how could I believe I’m not sitting here to to validate each and everything and then is still questioning whether this was right or not yeah yeah resume information is a big problem yeah for those staring out don’t do it even be okay if somebody tell me I’m talking about this one thing and then if that person say that honestly this was for ATS system otherwise I
(35:49) would not have been sitting here I wrote it so that your system can I will be okay with that somebody trying to play along and trying to tell story that is incorrect if you want to put something on your resume then just get the experience just make be able to defend make make your Li reality and then you don’t have a problem with it as long as you can defend if you cannot defend don’t put it and you have you a lot of opportunity nowadays like in the 90s we had no opportunity even in the early 2000s we
(36:21) didn’t have the opportunities that people have today you can get ramped up on any technology you want online there’s probably some kind of Simulator for it and you can get some experience if you want to put it on your resume you feel comfortable then go ahead and do it when I was working when I first interviewed for the start out I I interviewed the CIO and the CIO was this he’s just a great guy but I think this guy is a complete genius he has like a photographic memory he knows everything about software everything about
(36:55) databases everything about infrastructure and St and phone systems and like just an amazing guy and he said that I had put uh selenium on my resume selenium is test tool right yeah I love work in the browser you can use it in the browser and like Firefox and it it basically emulates Mouse clicks and I put it on my resume after spending about 3 hours on the application little bit of the risk but I I got the experience right I I could speak intelligently I knew how to animate an application using it I wasn’t an expert but I put it on my
(37:44) resume so he asked me about it and he was really excited he was like oh I’ve been wanting to take I wanted to bring this to the and he said it’s great that you know you have an experience with it and I basically said yeah I’ve spent some time working on it as a personal project I didn’t use it at my former employer we didn’t use it there we used dtp and all these other applications but unfamiliar with it I’m confident that I can stand it up here perfect and we did yeah that’s perfect if you put have resume have the
(38:22) experience to back it up doesn’t need to be an expert you just got to be forcoming about honest like you’re not an expert you have not used in the the professional setting it’s you have taken the initiative to learn it and with your experience with other tool you should be able to implement this one right yeah so you need your career Vision you need your success stories unfortunately even today you need your resume you need whatever supplemental for your resume putol projects you need to be able to
(39:00) communicate well I suggest to everybody that you start getting comfortable answering interview questions and when you’re answering interview questions you don’t want to go on and on you ask a question you basically bring up your situation the action Y the girls your reses and then you stop and wait for the interviewer to ask you the next question ask a fire up it needs to be a dance and your steps need to be light and you need to be able to play the game right because I’m sure you as a hiring manager you don’t have that much
(39:46) time to interview candidates so you prob get a resume you look at it you going P either I want to see this guy or I want to person or or I don’t want to see this person I think they may add value to my team but you’re probably not spending more than a half hour or an hour with these people and and if somebody keep talking about one answer I think after 30 second and in some cases after a minute I’m not able to focus and listen I’m trying to grasp okay so what exactly you’re telling me and that also limit my
(40:24) ability to ask follow-up questions which could have been more powerful or ask another different other questions yeah in order to get good at something you need to practice one more thing I add sorry sure when somebody give me like three to five minute of answers which is like all over the place I don’t know if it is right or wrong but I do judge them that how they will act in my team when we are having requirement conversation when we will have a conversation with a client or who ever will they be able to
(41:00) communicate or will I have to listen for 30 minute to be able to get something from them right yeah that’s a really good point you want to be concise in your communication something that I’ve been told that I’m really good at is basically taking this huge complex type of thing breaking it into smaller pieces and then coming up with the higher level communication for it so if you ask my developer to explain something yeah I give you an example we had a split review right so that’s a meeting that’s
(41:35) after this the Sprint Sprint is twoe period I’m assuming the people are familiar with agile and all that so we have a Sprint review and we select some of the stories to be highlighted during that Sprint review and we go ahead and give the developers the whole team Sprint reviews the whole team basically presenting to our stakehold holders anyone who cares about the work that we’re doing to get a glimpse into what we did in the last two weeks so I said the story and my main developer handled out to him and he just
(42:10) started spelling worry into the technical he starts showing screens and and queries and and not not to interrupt you but can you give people a high level view of what the problem is yeah you finding the problem statement like what is the problem so you got to get very clear and concise on why is someone going to listen to me like why would someone care I had to break in and then afterwards he’s yes thank you for doing that I’m I’m going to have to be better at that next time I’ll be make sure that
(42:49) I started the higher level because I every thinking about the person that’s sitting there listening and do they understand what’s going on so getting back to the interview you got to practice answering interview questions that’s the only way to do it you come up with a list of questions in some of material i’ be releasing soon I had a whole list of questions but you don’t need to go through a 100 questions every question is basically asking the same thing and one of the things that I’ve learned is
(43:21) that if you’re asked a technical question and you don’t know the answer it’s okay to just say I don’t know I actually had guy he interviewed my team I asked him some JavaScript thing and he said I don’t know and then it was silence and I was like wow I don’t know what to do next I guess I’m gonna have to go to the next question and he just said he didn’t know there’s nothing else for me to do here now I would say all right rather than saying I don’t know try to think about an
(43:52) experience like whatever problem or technical area with their haing about and connect it to that for instance if I ask you you have any experience with postgress postgress is a database application and then you just leave it there you miss an opportunity because maybe you know my sequel maybe you know a SQL Server maybe you know maybe you went to a database you you went to school and you know about the design of databases you know the structure of squl and and you know how Dr own t you know how to do a select
(44:28) statement you remember how to do all these other things but I ask you a specific question about pogress and you think I’m asking about postgress I’m not asking about postgress I’m asking about databases what do you know about databases so I would coach and say they askc you something about technology and you don’t know about it then if you can connect it to a past experience then do that I don’t have experience in postgress but I remember with postgress is database application and I worked on personal projects where
(45:03) I’ve stood at my secr I know how to do select statements I know how to do that through code and python or C or wherever and now I think you’re a technical guy right it gives you and even if you don’t know a PO grass let’s assume we don’t know po grass you could say I’ve not heard that what is that and people some people might judge you it’s true some people might say postgress it’s been around since I don’t know 93 or something it’s been around for a long time how could you not Le about it
(45:43) people in technology don’t know everything about everything that’s one of the things that I’ve learned we all have our own spec with these we only all have our real crevice of reality that we we’re diving into so it’s okay to just say you know I have another heard of postgress what is it and going say it’s a database application I heard about databases okay do you have any obviously if they ask you if you don’t have any experience and you hadn’t heard about it then that’s a silly question but if they
(46:11) ask you do you have any experience with let’s say Kafka I don’t if you’re familiar with Kafka we use Kafka a lot so Kafka is a a messaging Booker application so you can say what’s called oh it’s a messaging broker oh I have lots of experience with msmq it’s a messaging broker right I have experience with rabbit you have experience with rabbit HQ I think that’s really cool I I’ve stood up a proof of concepts of that but so way going back to the questions you got to learn how to answer your
(46:52) questions you got to be comfortable with talking to someone that you haven’t spoken to before giving them an idea of who you are through your stories and you have to have your marketing material which includes your resume to really do it right and I don’t think a lot of people do it right you have to come prepared you have to know about the company you have to try to know about the interviewer you have to come with questions exit an interview without getting a couple questions in and the more targeted towards whatever company it is
(47:37) the questions the the better it’s going to be I’ve had a number of interviews where it’s so you have any questions M really we have no questions I just told about El technology we’re working on we just gave you a couple of questions and you have my question so either a you’re not interested or B you don’t realize that what you’re signaling to me by not asking questions is that you’re not interested in the opportunity I migrated in us about 20 years ago but my first five job was in
(48:10) India and culturally at least at that time it was not accustomed to ask many questions yeah so I don’t know how it is now but in my first five interviews of jobs I did not ask any questions I learned that once I was migrated here yeah but we we definitely hired people that didn’t ask questions because you know what I mean I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker but to set yourself at for the best possible chance of getting a job oh for sure coming with intelligent questions and what I would do is I’d
(48:55) research the technology that they have if if if it’s available on the internet a lot of times there are people that are from those companies are giving talks and conferences and you can oh they’re working in Java they’re a Java shop or their net shop or you can figure that out and you could ask a very simple question what challenges are you experiencing inet what are challenges you’re experiencing in Java what’s on your road map so those are are some of the things and then the other thing I was going to say
(49:32) that a lot of people don’t do but I think they should is following up immediately fire up with a thank you it doesn’t need to be a r it doesn’t need to be on fancy stationary it just meanss to be a wellth thought out communication to the person that interviewed you saying thank you for giving me your time thank you for having the opportunity thank thank you for an exciting conversation and letting them know that you’re reflecting on the conversation and that you hooked into some piece of meaning that came out you
(50:08) just want to say oh I really enjoy the conversation that we had about postgress I leared a lot I’m gonna sounds like something I should know I’m going to do a personal project on whatever the fire rep is very important I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve gotten I’ve never gotten any additional communication and just sitting there waiting for me to say yes or no but when they do when we used to do some interviews and we’d have like multi multiple managers interview a single candidate we compare
(50:41) notes really we say oh I got an email from this guy oh I got an email too oh yeah wow okay it signals interest hey this person’s interested and that could be the dividing line never matter what’s going to lead to you being hired because even if you w the top can may have a whole other Venture of the irons in the fire they may have when they reviewing for other places they may Lear R learns before they accept for the job that you’re going for so you may we number two or three and still have the position right and many time number one
(51:20) candidate are not a good fit for the team so sometime even though you not the best but you’re best fit for the job or the uh Team yeah so that’s it’s a little bit about the way I coach and especially for someone going in new someone who’s more experienced I think it’s a suar path you got to get clear on the Clear Vision you got to get clear and where you want to go you’re probably set up better to come up with those success stories look for those success stories look for those areas look those areas where you
(52:03) can make a contribution that you can take credit for one of the things I I I talk about is there an application is there some kind of technology that is talked about but not yet implemented for instance we had spul you’re familiar with spul I have heard about it I have not used or dig deeper into it yeah so Splunk is a way it’s it’s a way to do logging of of an application in a much faster way than a database faster and and more visual we have spunk at the bank but we’re doing all our database
(52:41) logging or all our logging through the database every time we were looking to connect like a user experience to an exception in our application we’d have to do database query and we we had for years for a couple of years we had Spa on the Shelf there was a little work to be done ever R kept trumping that need to get to Splunk and then we had a NRA come in he’ never been messaging never been messaging at all and he’d never been Bly you where I do about banking no business context about banking but it
(53:27) was good technically we we could tell he was good technically he had leadership skills we felt like this is someone that we need to lead our offshore team from a technical perspective and we okay what what should we give him the work because knowledge transfer takes a long time so I said why don’t we just challenge him with slunk we had one of these guys working on it for about two months he’s got a poop a concept up and running we need to productionize Trump as Splunk let’s see if he can do it two days
(54:01) Splunk was up and running and ready for prop he thought he was a genius I don’t know how long he actually spent in those two days but that’s a big r and that kind of increased his brand on our team so someone who’s existing you got to start asking your questions what are things that the team wants or it’s talked about but isn’t yet implemented become an expert in those things become an expert in in spun get that thing up and running and then you can point to that as an example of you taking leadership
(54:42) on the team I talk about increasing your influence widening your influence someone comes over to me and says I got a prer okay great what job title do you want I’m a senior developer and I want to be a principal developer okay let’s look at the job description or a principal developer what does it say in in sure a principal developer the differentiator is cro is working mostly on the team and mo mostly inward focused on the team principal developers starting to widen his influence in affecting vable teams
(55:27) affecting the more more of the organization so they’re not just implementing Technical Solutions they’re actually teaching other developers and having influence on other teams they’re composing architectural Solutions if that’s what you want to do that’s what you need to demonstrate you you need to work with your M to come up with a plan I think a lot of people just think that these things are just going to happen oh if I just do the best job I can I’ll be promoted I typically say that for this it it’s
(56:00) actually a reflection of our education system every year you will go to the next class and every three to five four years you will get from elementary to Mid middle to high this is the mindset that we have been we have grown and nobody has changed like expect this too the squeaky whe gets de gree right right so we’re a m right if you have a GU ey who’s just senior developer and you may know who wants to be promoted but every time you meet with in Ron one it’s just H everything’s great yeah I’m Le this I’m doing this I
(56:39) have a problem here I have a problem there G is you haven’t ever seen your developer same level and he goes I want to be a principal developer and I want you to help me get there what do I need to do you guys when say here’s what I’ve grpl to plan right to get into a principal developer that kind of puts a right under year to help him get to where he wants to go because you can feel he’s moving towards something and he’s in right so you need to be I should take this ADV nice myself to be
(57:17) honest right now but I’m ever where I have one that one step left to go I’m not interested in seeing management anymore I was at one time I’m not anymore year but when I wanted to become a manager and I was team leader I went to two people one was my director that I want to do that what do I need to do help and then I I discuss different thing that is needed to be able to do that job and then I went to a mentor within the company that I’m a team leader become manager help me get there yeah two people that I contacted and it
(58:03) took me another year or two after that but I was very intentional and then the people around me became very intentional yeah yeah that’s a great strategy having a mentor to bounce ideas off of is invaluable and they can open up so many opportunities I’ve had mentors over over the years that that have really helped out and talking to your high level people at the higher level and let them know that you have a plan that you have a vision but I think vision is something that’s just not lacking a lot of
(58:43) times in there in getting people promoted people get promoted for variety of reasons but a lot of them are like they’re firing a vision it’s just they think they’re just taking the next step but my advice is to be B about it I had this one guy the every time I met with him he told me how Under Paid he was every time it got a little tiring but coming when when I was trying to figure out salaries for the next year that’s who I had in my head as far as who I was going to give more money to because the other people seem to be
(59:25) satisfied this guy’s not satisfied and I happen to agree with the fact that he might have been underpaid so the squeaky we next de grease a lot of with time and you got to be bold about it when I was given the opportunity to be a manager and a r automation team the way that worked out was I had a meeting with the VP and I said we need an automation team and I need to redit and he said what why and I said I’m uniquely qualified to run a team to build and run a team doing this it went he gave me the team I hired people from
(1:00:07) nothing there was no animation really going on at all in an organized fashion there and I BR R together and created a team to do it and so the point is you got to re builds you got to ask for what you want you got to get guidance along the way development plan if you work on a plan with your manager and let’s say it has 10 goals and month by month you start ticking off those gos and you get to that 10th go the you’ve probably grown tremendously with un relate you deserve that promotion and now you basically
(1:00:49) have it in writing from your manager that you’ve done everything necessary to get that promotion of course you managers don’t always control promotions they have to happen gradually but if you’re the only person on that team following this approach you’re going to get that there’s an opening when there is an opportunity you will be the next for sure yeah yeah yeah it’s another thing that I I coach so question for you and I know we are over I don’t know how much extra time you have but I
(1:01:20) wanted to ask you if somebody want this coaching from you what do they do how do they sign up yes on X ATB Tech coach there’s a link there that leads to a calendar Le and you can request coaching there you can DM me and I’ll be happy to help you on man my coaching Journey I’ve got a out of experience and I’m happy to help anybody as best I can to either B in or maximize their performance in their C position or to Tech from business because I’ve done that I’m assuming that they would sign up for this calendary
(1:02:04) which is like 30 minute conversation where you will assist and then based on their situation you will recommend them uh what next that’s right yes yes I’m still ring my journey here on the yeah content creation and standing up coaching business but I’m looking to stand up a coaching business for the long term I want this to be my next job right this is so what I’m telling myself is I’m creating something that I will retire in yeah and then I will just keep doing that forever but I need to
(1:02:44) build it now before I get retired and in Just 2 years it I already feeling I’m already feeling that I don’t don’t have to wait until retirement I could do this sooner yeah just like how you said this will be the next job not retirement so yeah this is amazing like how much our experience can help so many people speed up their Journey that took us longer to do everything I still remember the days when I wasted like three four years just thinking about should I be should I pursue management track or an architect I I just wasted
(1:03:28) three four years just thinking about it because there are two thing that I would do if I decide management track I would do MBA if I decide a technical track I would do M Ms because my company would pay like it’s a fre money but I was still waiting and then now many years later anything would have been okay it doesn’t matter in long run which track that you chose you could still be okay yeah I believe that yeah even if you had a career vision and you adjust it from time to time then as long as you’re
(1:04:09) firing your energy perfect yeah yeah yeah you gota I don’t know this is maybe esoteric but I believe that you need to follow your energy you need to know where your energy is taking you and that should be reflected in your career Vision right and if you’re go in a direction that you don’t fear the energy for right you need to find a way to Pivot and find it where do what you need to do to to fire that energy I think Life’s too short to spend too much energy in a Direction that’s not fulfilling yeah your needs yeah and
(1:04:57) career takes several turns it’s 30 40 Years of Journey MH and every person that I have interviewed in this career Journey podcast have taken many turns like in your case you started with marketing and sales and then QA and now you’re doing the product management so it it’s all different areas I interview somebody who started with the business and then became a teacher and now she’s a Elementary School principal and very happy with it I interview Pam who is was running Archer coaching they their primary
(1:05:39) client is Chicago MBA schools and she has many different turns in her career so anyway point is your career is 340 years long and right long journey and you start somewhere and that will take many turns and you will end up somewhere yeah it’s true they say a lot of people don’t they don’t get the careers in the areas that they went to school for a lot of them for sure that’s not true in my case because I have the business background to understand economics and the way business works and risk management and a lot of these
(1:06:22) things that someone who just studied computer science wouldn’t necessarily have but I also studied comp computer science and and programming and so I can talk intelligently about objectoriented design and architecture and all the things and then I can bring that together in a message to Business Leaders that give them an idea of what’s going on without going into the deep down technical so it’s what my sill set ended up being after 23 years in tech industry 30 years in in buz out of school so yeah it’s there’s
(1:07:13) definitely lot of turns in the road but so to to bring this session home I’ve lost questions one so is is there a question that I have not asked but you want to answer we’ve been talking for a long time nothing comes to mind right now I I could talk to you for a long time this is really great and thank you for the invitation and and I look forward to talking to you again all right so last question is what’s your message to the audience message to the audience is I feel very strongly that anybody can be successful
(1:08:04) in the tech business and it’s been my experience that there is a lot of fun and juring and challenges and it’s a great place to be you don’t necessarily need to be a programmer you don’t need to be a developer you could have a career in technology in other areas utilizing the skills that you’re building in your life today and I encourage anyone that wants to know more wants coaching or have you to contact me at bre Tech coach onx