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Netflix Sports Club Podcast


1 America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Season 2 - Tryouts, Tears, & Texas 32:48
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America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is back for its second season! Kay Adams welcomes the women who assemble the squad, Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammell, to the Netflix Sports Club Podcast. They discuss the emotional rollercoaster of putting together the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Judy and Kelli open up about what it means to embrace flaws in the pursuit of perfection, how they identify that winning combo of stamina and wow factor, and what it’s like to see Thunderstruck go viral. Plus, the duo shares their hopes for the future of DCC beyond the field. Netflix Sports Club Podcast Correspondent Dani Klupenger also stops by to discuss the NBA Finals, basketball’s biggest moments with Michael Jordan and LeBron, and Kevin Durant’s international dominance. Dani and Kay detail the rise of Coco Gauff’s greatness and the most exciting storylines heading into Wimbledon. We want to hear from you! Leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/NetflixSportsClub Find more from the Netflix Sports Club Podcast @NetflixSports on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X. You can catch Kay Adams @heykayadams and Dani Klupenger @daniklup on IG and X. Be sure to follow Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammel @kellifinglass and @dcc_judy on IG. Hosted by Kay Adams, the Netflix Sports Club Podcast is an all-access deep dive into the Netflix Sports universe! Each episode, Adams will speak with athletes, coaches, and a rotating cycle of familiar sports correspondents to talk about a recently released Netflix Sports series. The podcast will feature hot takes, deep analysis, games, and intimate conversations. Be sure to watch, listen, and subscribe to the Netflix Sports Club Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Tudum, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes on Fridays every other week.…
Find the Missing Context: Perspectives and Observations from Enterprise Experience with Daniel Lemire (2/4)
Manage episode 478415980 series 2398408
Content provided by John White | Nick Korte. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by John White | Nick Korte or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned.
Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation?
Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025
Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323.
Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy
3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience
* Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education.
* As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology.
* In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world.
* “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program
* Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques.
* Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things:
* Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him.
* Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree.
* “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...
…
continue reading
Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation?
Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025
Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323.
Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy
3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience
* Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education.
* As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology.
* In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world.
* “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program
* Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques.
* Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things:
* Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him.
* Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree.
* “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...
401 episodes
Manage episode 478415980 series 2398408
Content provided by John White | Nick Korte. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by John White | Nick Korte or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.
When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned.
Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation?
Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025
Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323.
Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy
3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience
* Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education.
* As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology.
* In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world.
* “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program
* Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques.
* Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things:
* Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him.
* Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree.
* “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...
…
continue reading
Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation?
Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025
Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323.
Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy
3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience
* Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education.
* As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology.
* In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world.
* “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program
* Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques.
* Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things:
* Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him.
* Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree.
* “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Finding Drive: The Parallels of Mentoring and Technology Partnerships with Daniel Paluszek (1/3) 45:10
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How does one company form an effective technology partnership with another company? Our guest this week might tell you it’s not so different than a successful mentoring relationship. It requires alignment on the outcomes both parties want to achieve. Daniel Paluszek is a Principal Partner Technology Strategist at ServiceNow, and in episode 337 he helps us set some context on technology partnerships and go-to-market strategies before we discuss his personal journey to working in technology. We’ll follow Daniel through early experience working at a university help desk, learn about how he grew in scope and responsibility working for a defense contractor, understand why he later chose to move into a consulting role, and wrap the entire discussion with advice on mentoring and the importance of effective communication. Original Recording Date: 06-11-2025 Topics – Meet Daniel Paluszek, What Makes a Technology Partner Best of Breed, Tech Origin Story, Mentorship and Lessons in Developing Others, Communication through Presentations, A Step Toward Consulting 2:12 – Meet Daniel Paluszek Daniel Paluszek is a Principal Partner Technology Strategist at ServiceNow. He is part of a solution consulting team supporting ServiceNow’s global strategic partners. Daniel and his peers work to optimize the way in which ServiceNow and its global partners go to market together to solve customer business problems and build solutions that drive business transformation. On a daily basis, Daniel looks at the following: Where is the industry moving? What technology is ServiceNow developing that can apply to industry challenges? What are the customer pain points, and how can a joint strategy be developed to solve these? Daniel consistently thinks about how to solve problems, and it may not be something technical that solves a problem. ServiceNow has evolved from an IT ticketing platform to a work platform, and many of the things Daniel works on span beyond IT. 4:21 – What Makes a Technology Partner Best of Breed What does it mean to be a partner to a technology company like ServiceNow? Many listeners may not understand this. Daniel believes a partner can look at a customer from an agnostic point of view to help solve specific business or technical challenges. Partners usually work with and have a joint strategy with several equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or ISVs (independent software vendors). These can be leveraged to provide a best of breed solution that meets a customer’s requirements. Regardless of a partner’s experience, they should focus on solving the customer’s unique problem(s), and this means ignoring / removing the technology landscape to make sure they understand what problem needs to be solved. Once the problem(s) are well understood, a plan and solution can be jointly developed. Solution partners can aid companies like ServiceNow in answering customer requirements. John likes this explanation of the partner ecosystem and expected Daniel to use the word reseller, but he did not mention it. “Resell for me is a motion, a sales motion. It is not the end all or be all. There’s some great resell partners, but in my mind, in my vision, the strongest partners are the ones that encompass the entire lifecycle…. The partners that are achieving and acquiring the new business look at it from a holistic approach…not just selling a product.” – Daniel Paluszek Executive leaders like Bill McDermott talk about empowering businesses to increase revenue and productivity while reducing operational expense, and Daniel tells us this effort has to focus on the core problems. A partner may also have professionals Nick mentions being a partner may also mean the partner can do professional services for a specific technology stack tied to a hardware or software vendor. John thinks even consulting services are in service of the greater outcomes a partner is trying to drive for an end customer. The goal would not be to sell services or specific pieces / parts but to “partner” with the customer and vendors to present a best of breed solution. Daniel agrees and says it is about the outcomes we’re trying to produce with the solution. The best partners can understand what needs to be achieved, set expectations, and develop a plan of execution to get there. John says we ask people what they do because one of the goals of the podcast is to expose listeners working in technology today (perhaps in IT Operations) to different types of roles in our industry across customers, tech vendors, partners, or even system integrators. In Daniel’s case, we’re talking about a role at a large technology vendor focused on a large partner and the go-to-market partnership. Can we define go-to-market? Daniel says go-to-market is an execution path based on a channel. Daniel’s role working with partners is how the partner positions their offerings and solutions to end customers. As part of the ServiceNow team, he would work with the partner to position the overall solution to an end customer. Many technology vendors have 2 major routes to market, but some may only have 1 of these. Selling products / services directly to an end customer (called selling “direct”) Selling products / services through a partner The DNA or type of solution we’re talking about and the industry to which the solution will be sold (i.e., retail, government, etc.) will dictate what the route to market (or go-to-market) is for a company. Over the course of his career, Daniel has worked with large enterprises as well as state and local governments. The direct route to market usually means the company has field selling teams that work with end customers. This can coincide with partners who work hand in hand with these field teams. John says there are likely different go-to-market plans within a technology vendor for different types of partners but that these plans will need to be customized to a specific partner based on factors like industry expertise, the way they build relationships with customers, etc. Daniel says when it comes to global systems integrators as an example, there are normally dedicated teams to serve an industry who know the industry well (its nuances, the common themes and solutions, etc.). Daniel gives an example of the retail industry and some of the nuances around point of sale, visibility, onboarding employees and making them productive despite attrition, etc. Partners with industry expertise can share how they have solved problems within that industry and how they address the common themes and challenges within that industry. Nick says there is probably a specific way in which company leaders at technology vendors would identify only those partners it makes sense for them to work with based on specific solutions or industry expertise. Partners have to be qualified and identified before a joint go-to-market can be developed. Companies like ServiceNow have online tools to help end customers find partners with specific experience (i.e. capabilities, outcomes delivered, certifications, industries of focus, regional presence or focus). Check out the ServiceNow Partner Finder as an example. Daniel looks for partner success stories in which a partner accelerated or de-risked an outcome. Due diligence is required when building a solution for our customer (i.e. the right solution for the right people at the right time), and part of this is ensuring the right partner with the right expertise is involved. 15:59 – Tech Origin Story Daniel says he grew up in technology. His father was a programmer at Bell Labs and worked at also Sun Microsystems. Daniel remembers his first exposure to Linux being on a computer running Solaris. “I was just fascinated and enamored by technology. I started off as just a kid tinkering.” – Daniel Paluszek Daniel wanted a computer because he loved video games and obsessed over getting optimal performance. He tinkered with overclocking, for example, with a group of friends. Daniel’s first job was in high school, and he was doing computer repairs. Even though he might not know how to solve a problem, Daniel was determined to go figure it out, trying to eliminate variables along the path to a solution. After determining that he wanted to work in the technology field, Daniel signed up for the computer science program and the University of Central Florida (UCF) but would find that programming did not interest him as much as solving hardware and software issues. Daniel switched to studying Information Technology (IT) after a year in the computer science program and started working in the IT help desk for the university. While working at the help desk at UCF, Daniel remembers posting his resume for an internship program which was open to all computer science and IT students. He tells the story of getting a call about a defense contractor (Ensco) that needed an intern. They wanted someone who was interested in systems engineering and systems administration, but Daniel would have to start in the help desk. Daniel initially said he was not interested because of the focus on help desk. The person he spoke to said since this was a defense contractor, they could get him on some projects working with the US government, and that piqued his interest. After interviewing, Daniel received an offer that he accepted. This began as an internship that morphed into a part-time job while he finished his IT degree. Daniel remembers working on a defense contract for the Air Force after 1-2 years, and it was focused on Solaris administration. The experience from Daniel’s childhood on Solaris paid off here. Daniel also began working with VMware technology during this time (early 2000s) for server virtualization. The Solaris administration Daniel did was in a SCIF environment. Daniel feels like saying yes to this opportunity accelerated his exposure to a different type of technology environment and different landscape that helped him progress to where he is now. “That was really my big…initial opportunity into systems engineering, administration, and really understanding a different purview…especially in federal government contracting.” – Daniel Paluszek Did Daniel understand the differences in systems administration and systems engineering when he first received the call about the role at the defense contractor? Daniel says no. He saw administration as day 2 operational patch management applied to a specific technology platform and was doing a little bit of this in the help desk role. Daniel gained experience designing new datacenters while working for the defense contractor. One of his first projects in this role at age 19 involved designing smart power infrastructure for a datacenter. “It was anxiety inducing. I’ll just say that, and I had to learn a lot. It was also my first foray into dealing with vendors….” – Daniel Paluszek Daniel had to test technology from different vendors (hardware and software) as part of this project, and he had to learn about different NEMA plugs used in datacenters. This experience helped Daniel in future roles because he understood how power and cooling worked and knew how to design a 42-unit rack. “It wasn’t something I learned at school. That was trial by fire by experience. You were dropped into this situation. You either had to sink or swim, and you had to figure it out…. But it was my first foray into designing a solution…. And I didn’t have awareness at the time of what the methodology was. I just had to figure out how to build this and get some guidance from mentors along the way.” – Daniel Paluszek Daniel says he had supportive managers he could use to vet ideas and suggested solutions. In designing a solution, Daniel had to think about things from the conceptual, logical, and physical views of the solution. If someone listening really likes the idea of being a systems designer, how much systems administration experience do they need, if any? It’s difficult for Daniel to say someone needs to choose a specific path to be successful. An administrator of a system is exposed to how the system performs and how it behaves (i.e. real-world experience using the system). This kind of experience and exposure helps one understand some of the constraints and challenges of system design. “So as a designer if I don’t have the experience of how to manage this from a day 2 perspective, I think you missed part of the equation. I’m not saying a good designer has to have that experience, but I think it adds up to this formula that makes certain individuals unique because they have had that real-world experience. Not the conceptual view of it…they lived it. They breathed it. When something broke and it’s all hands on deck, they know how to actually…figure that out….” – Daniel Paluszek Daniel reminds us that as humans we usually learn well from the times things break. So, when something does go wrong, Daniel suggests we look at those times through the lens of what we can learn and how it will make us better technologists and professionals as a result. 25:23 – Mentorship and Lessons in Developing Others Did Daniel learn any lessons in all this about teaching people or overseeing their development? As someone who had the chance to broaden his horizons at a young age, Daniel is a firm believer in mentoring. “I think guiding others on their career journey and development is key for our industry because it gives everybody an opportunity to say, ‘how do I get exposed to what’s next?’ …I had somebody for some reason randomly pick me out of thin air when I worked at a help desk to provide me an opportunity, and I’m a firm believer in passing it forward….” – Daniel Paluszek Daniel considers mentoring the next generation pf people and professionals in this industry as something that is at the heart of his personal and professional development. How does Daniel spot people who might need some mentoring? He looks for people who have a desire to learn and challenge themselves. Daniel shares a story about a product manager who called him seeking to understand the perspective of a field-facing sales engineer. This person wanted to become a better product manager by understanding more about how Daniel and others in his role worked with customers on a day-to-day basis. He and Daniel developed a long-standing deep relationship as a result. People who want to challenge themselves to be better are often seeking guidance. Daniel mentions the importance of guardrails from a mentor in these situations. After Daniel recognizes the drive and high-performance potential in someone, he likes to take time to get to know the person and understand what they really want / what they are trying to pursue. Daniel tells us he challenges himself daily to articulate solutions better every time he talks about them, and it’s about constantly seeking to become a better professional. What guidance does Daniel have for the person who is asking for mentorship (i.e. the mentee)? Daniel encourages us to communicate the context. Be sure to communicate what you want to achieve as well as your short-term and longer-term goals / aspirations. For those in pre-sales, are you looking to provide differentiated value in a specific industry, for example? Do you want to become a subject matter expert? Are you looking to gain exposure to giving presentations? The secret, according to Daniel, is practice! When he worked for the defense contractor, Daniel had to present his physical power infrastructure solution to a large group of people (around 100 people). He tells us it was awful despite weeks of practice. “But I realized very quickly it just comes down to…you have to put in the time, the effort, the discipline to put yourself in a better position. I also had this naïve view that…certifications and certain qualifications were this end all be all…. That’s part of the equation. It’s about how you communicate, how you work through a dialogue, and that comes with experience. That’s priceless. You can’t purchase that. Yeah, you can have classes that teach you to become more of an eloquent speaker and articulate a message…but the proof is in the pudding when you’re in front of the customer, in front of the panel, in front of the event. I always process. What did I do really well here, and what can I improve on? Or what do I need to work on next time? So, I always have this post-processing operation for me that says, ‘these are things I need to improve on’ even to this day.” – Daniel Paluszek When mentoring others, Daniel wants to know what the person is trying to achieve and the outcome the person wants. He also asks why people came to him specifically and what he can help with. 32:01 – Communication through Presentations John says people often think having expertise will allow them to eloquently communicate expertise, but there’s a difference between gaining mastery of a skill and teaching someone about that skill. It seemed like Daniel realized the act of presenting was something very different. “What I realized very quickly is I really enjoyed speaking to others about a technology and also framing it in the reference that they could understand. One of the things I learned very quickly is you need to know your audience. Who are you speaking to? Who are these individuals? …You could be a subject matter expert in this technology. You have to have the context of who you’re speaking to, who you’re trying to articulate a message to.” – Daniel Paluszek Presenting a solution to an executive compared to someone who is more technical at a lower level in an organization is quite different. You need a different approach and must frame things in a way that the audience understands based on the context of the solution or situation at hand. Think about why people in the audience are there. What do they want to understand or take away from what you present? Daniel stresses the importance of meeting the audience where they are / meeting them in the middle and putting things in their terms. He learned how to apply the right context within his presentations so it would be impactful to the audience. Daniel knew after his first speaking experience that he had a lot of room to improve. But he also found it both interesting and enjoyable. Doing presentations gave Daniel a lot of energy, especially seeing people understand complex solutions or take something away from the discussion they can apply to improve their own work. “Even today, it’s about providing a level of understanding the audience can just take away. What are the key points that I am trying to drive towards that solve your issues and your business problems?” – Daniel Paluszek Did Daniel get some pointed feedback after that first presentation that led him to the post-processing exercise, or did that come only through more experience? Daniel remembers people saying he did a good job but feels they were just trying to be nice. He walked away from that experience knowing he needed to do better but at the same time really enjoyed the challenge and the impact. This presentation happened before Daniel got into consulting and started working for partners. “But I saw a spark. This was something that I really enjoyed…presenting and articulating a message. I just didn’t know at that time where that was going to lead me….” – Daniel Paluszek Around the time of that first presentation, Daniel was focused on learning everything he could and soaking in new experiences. He wanted a broad view of the industry and the market as a whole from which to learn. When new opportunities came up, Daniel would be the first to volunteer. Things he had never done were opportunities to go and learn something new and then compound past knowledge. “The words of wisdom I could give to anybody starting off their IT career or in this industry is be the first one to raise your hand. You may not know how the heck to do it, but if you have the drive and desire, you’ll figure it out. I figured it out, and I don’t feel like I’m the smartest person…. But I feel like I have that innate drive and desire to figure it out. And I set my mind to it, and I don’t stop.” – Daniel Paluszek 37:13 – A Step Toward Consulting Is the drive what led Daniel into consulting? Did someone else recognize it, or did he push into that on his own? After the defense contractor, Daniel worked for a service provider (a cable provider) for a short time. Daniel did get to go and engineer solutions that he would then get to deploy. But then he would have to maintain those solutions. The day 2 maintenance and operations became repetitive and kind of boring for Daniel. “But I just felt like it was this same cycle over and over again….” – Daniel Paluszek, on building systems and then needing to maintain them Despite this, Daniel did get exposure to new technologies during this time. The company was focused on virtualization and consolidation of workloads using VMware technologies. He felt virtualization as a technology trend was really going to take off and could see this capability was driving good outcomes inside his employer like simplifying the architecture, but Daniel says he didn’t realize the economic impact of using virtualization technology at that time. Daniel had an interesting opportunity to work at a small partner in Tallahassee, Florida called DynTek Services. The role was a systems engineer for the consulting / professional services arm of the company. “At the cable provider, I started seeing these partners come in and out and really help us with our technology…. It just seemed so fun to me…. They can come in to a customer and present a solution, work with us on deploying it, ensuring that it’s working for us”, and it really changes our paradigm. So I said, ‘I’d love to do something like that.’ Needless to say, I got this opportunity…and that started my consulting career. No prior experience…I was just an engineer at the time. I didn’t have any pre-sales experience, but I worked with a sales rep who was an incredible mentor to me." – Daniel Paluszek Daniel says the sales rep was kind enough to “show him the ropes” once he joined DynTek. Their focus together was on state and local government. This sales rep was kind, true to his customers, and developed long-standing relationships with people when it came to solving problems. The sales rep had built strong relationships, and when the customer needed to solve a new problem, they would seek his advice. “He treated companies and organizations in state and local departments with respect, with honesty, in an ethical way, and always made their lives better and their organizations better. So, it was a great learning experience for me. Wow, this is incredible. I can learn and really experience the people side of it and how to have the interpersonal skills and work with dynamic situations…but also bring in technology. And it was almost like a switch turned on in my brain that said, ‘this is incredible. This is what I want to do.’ Because I felt every week it was something new. It was something dynamic. It was a new opportunity or a new customer problem came up, and we had to go solve it…. We had to orchestrate and build a solution that was compelling enough for them to say, ‘yeah, we’re going to buy off on this, and you’re going to help us go deploy this.’ …This is exactly what I was looking for that I didn’t have before.” – Daniel Paluszek, on working with a great sales rep Mentioned in the Outro Did you hear the parallels between mentorship and technology partnership? If you’re seeking a mentor, you want someone with expertise in the area where you need help just like a technology company or end customer would seek a partner with the right level of expertise. It has to be good for both parties. It’s good for the mentee because they get to develop in a specific area, and it’s good for the mentor because their experience is valued and applied in the right place. Daniel talked about spotting individuals who had high performance potential and a specific amount of drive. This is also analogous to finding the right partner. Mentorship is something we should all be doing to develop others and to make our industry better. If you are seeking a mentor, be prepared to communicate why you specifically picked someone to mentor you in an area. When Daniel mentioned guardrails as key to mentorship, we immediately thought of the discussions with Dale McKay on this topic: Episode 288 – Guardrails for Growth: A Mentor’s Experience with Dale McKay (1/2) Episode 289 – Enhance Your Personal Brand: Feedback as a Catalyst for Change with Dale McKay (2/2) We heard about the importance of effective communication to different audiences in our industry in this episode as well. Many different guests have stressed a similar emphasis on communication. Former guest Neil Thompson of Teach the Geek wrote some good articles on importance of developing strong communicators: How Tech Leaders Can Develop Strong Communicators Why Technical Leaders Need Strong Communicators Neil joined us in Episode 193 – Communication for Specialists with Neil Thompson (1/2) and Episode 194 – Question Askers and Problem Solvers with Neil Thompson (2/2) if you want to go back and listen. If you want to get better at doing presentations check out our Presentations Tag with links to episodes that discuss this topic. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Leadership as a Responsibility: Establishing Credibility and the Pull of New Opportunities with Srikanth Bollavaram (2/2) 34:45
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Looking back on one’s career, it might be easy to connect the dots between job roles you held in the past, but what can we really do to influence where the dots are placed in the future? Srikanth Bollavaram took an approach that pulled opportunities in his direction. What if you could do the same? This week in episode 336, we continue the discussion with Srikanth and focus on his consistent openness to taking different roles across various areas, many of which came to him at the suggestion of leaders who knew his reputation, skills, and capabilities. In the cases where a new role pushed Srikanth out of his comfort zone, personal growth and more opportunities always followed. It suited his desire to keep learning. Srikanth found over time that leadership isn’t a specific title or role. It’s a responsibility you have that could be an aspect of many roles. Srikanth also stresses the importance of defining your non-negotiables like self-care and family as a leader to help manage time constraints. Original Recording Date: 03-30-2025 Srikanth Bollavaram is a product development leader with experience spanning the financial, railroad, and consumer packaged goods industries. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Srikanth, check out Episode 335 . Topics – Gaining Experience along the Path Less Traveled, Connecting the Dots Backwards, Leadership as a Responsibility, Time Constraints and Non-negotiables Before we begin, did you do the homework we assigned last week? If not, we highly recommend you go back and listen to this episode before listening to part 2 of Srikanth’s story – Episode 325 – Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4) . 3:18 – Gaining Experience along the Path Less Traveled Was it normal for people who were brought in for roles like the one Srikanth had to have or be very interested in both business and technology operations and the marrying of the two? We would probably classify this type of role as operational technology today. When Srikanth first started working for the railroad, he began working on the digitization of the customer interactions. He did not go directly to the operational side. “First, you have to gain some credibility in whatever you do. It doesn’t matter what that work is.” – Srikanth Bollavaram In those days, customers might call, fax, or e-mail the railroad. Srikanth’s role was to digitize all customer interactions end-to-end. This included building, tracking, tracing, payments, and more. After working on the digitization for a couple of years, Srikanth started noticing several other interesting projects. The work on control systems he mentioned earlier was the result of the opportunities given to him over time. “A lot of times it’s not me seeking. This is actually a very repeated pattern in my career. People identified me as a potential candidate…and then pulled me into those roles, whether it’s an architect role or even a principal engineer role…. The leaders in the company identified me as a potential candidate and just started giving me those opportunities.” – Srikanth Bollavaram The control systems were part of a project for the railroad’s dispatch center, which orchestrated all switches, signals, and communication to locomotives. At the time Srikanth was selected for this project, it was not going very well, and it was not considered a good move to take on the role. Srikanth tells us he likes to choose the “path less traveled” to see what happens. “If it is interesting enough and challenging enough, you just go and try it, give your best, and see what happens. That always, at least to me…worked out well. I gained an experience which I wouldn’t have if I thought what would have been best for me rather than looking at my superiors…. They’re telling me, ‘hey, maybe you should do this.’ I probably would have chosen something in my comfort zone as an extension to my comfort zone. All these things actually pushed me completely out of my comfort zone…. Especially if you have been asked to do it, and if your seniors trust you enough so that you could do it, just do it. You may not like it initially, but that would add a very valuable experience for you.” – Srikanth Bollavaram, on considering opportunities 6:37 – Connecting the Dots Backwards Did Srikanth’s move into the railroad industry also involve shifting from individual contributor to leader? Srikanth began as an individual contributor when he was working for the railroad but transitioned quickly into a technical lead role and then into more of an architect role. These were moves up into leadership type roles. “Instead of seeking for a next level job, you try to do a next level job…in your current position, and then that automatically opens up positions for you. And I think pull is always better than a push in my opinion. Creating those opportunities and making you as an ideal candidate is how I operated…. It all depends on…where you are in your career and what that involves…. How many changes can you adapt at the same time…not only in career but also family wise…? …That’s why when somebody asks it’s always based on the context at which you are taking that decision.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth tells us the shifting of roles may involve a relocation or moving to a new company. For those who have children, consider their age and where they are in school to determine how changes you make will impact family stability. According to Srikanth, we should seek to make ourselves candidates for multiple things and not just one thing through building credibility and gaining critical experience in different areas of a company. Srikanth once received advice to think of himself like a stock. If you are traded out in the open market, you should always be more valuable in that trade than to the current company. In this way you’re providing more value where you are operating because it’s like they get the stock at a discounted rate. Instead of focusing too much on a level you want to achieve, improve your skills and capabilities so that you give more value to where you are currently operating. John mentions patterns we’ve seen related to the idea of growth vs. comfort. When we are comfortable, we are operating fully within our capabilities, but growth means learning and pushing beyond what is comfortable. It helps to have people pushing us to grow. Srikanth also mentioned being pulled into specific roles, which speaks to having a strong brand within the organization as someone who can adapt, problem solve, and troubleshoot effectively. It means people recognize you as having the skills and abilities to perform a role when opportunities arise. Additionally, it can be difficult to move to a new company based solely on having a strong internal reputation at your existing company. With the above items in mind, let’s talk about Srikanth’s move into leadership and out of the railroad industry. Srikanth says if you are comfortable in your job, you are likely not growing. If you have good leaders and mentors as Srikanth mentions he did, they will be able to spot some of your gaps / blind spots and suggest ways to fill those gaps. Srikanth tells us that moving out of the railroad industry was also a family decision. The family lived in a small town and wanted to move to a warmer climate. Srikanth’s kids were in elementary school, and he had extended family in the Dallas area. Srikanth viewed changing companies as something that was better to do earlier in his career rather than later. Initially, Srikanth thought he would still be working for the railroad if his family relocated, but that was not the case. Srikanth saw a leadership opportunity at a different company that needed someone to build digital platforms, and he had experience from the railroad industry which would easily transfer. “I had a very good knowledge in terms of how to build those platforms, so I took that as an opportunity to come and start a new career in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry. But what you said is totally true. You just have to start from zero again in terms of your credibility and your relationships. It’s going to be a struggle, not only because you’re trying to build that within the company but you’re adapting to a new environment, new city…. It was a bit stressful to be honest at least in the initial years….” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth was excited about building a new team culture. He was energized by the opportunity to build internal products and solutions. The team needed to think about how to build and make the platforms like a product. Srikanth says they were buidling the capabilities in the cloud, and it was very exciting. “In terms of leadership, first you have to establish yourself as a credible leader. You have to bring along your team. I think that’s something from time to time you have to go through. You have to go through this phase of reinventing yourself….And you can always say this looking back.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth reiterates that the change was more for family reasons than for a different position or to move up. John says being able to tell a story looking back does not mean we know at the inflection point we know what the story is going to be. There is a range of possibilities in any decision. Srikanth says if you’re very clear and focused about exactly where you want to go, that is a good thing, but he likes to remain more open. “I am going to trust the process and see where it leads me, and what I learned in the process is establishing the relationships, building credibility. And while you’re working, not only think for your success but how do you make sure you’re always thinking of people who are working, how they are going to be successful? If you…go with that attitude – more of a team culture, your peers and colleagues…how do I make them successful, not just me? …You go through these projects or programs or roles…. It’s beautiful afterwards. The relationships you establish are long lasting if you go with that process, and that to me is more valuable than any roles or positions you held….” – Srikanth Bollavaram Though we can connect the dots backward, Srikanth encourages us to think about the following when looking forward to increase the likelihood of good things happening because people will remember you. Are you developing future leaders? Are you making others successful and not just you? Are you learning and getting out of your comfort zone? 17:53 – Leadership as a Responsibility Is what Srikanth shared above what it means to truly progress as a leader once you become one, or are there other aspects we’ve overlooked? “See, when you are a leader, the most important thing is you have to deliver the results. That is non-negotiable. But then comes how you do it…. I think you could achieve the results in various ways.” – Srikanth Bollavaram If a leader can deliver the results through empowering people, being open, understanding yourself, and create a positive team culture…that leader can look back and be proud of the results. This part is personal to the leader. Srikanth mentions reading the book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership which talks about leaders operating and delivering results based on their values (values being personal to each leader). As a leader Srikanth adopts the things which are important to him without compromising the results. “As you go up in the organization, it’s very hard to execute, deliver the results in the right way. But that’s where the real leadership test comes. Leadership is…to me a responsibility. It’s not a title. It’s more of a responsibility…towards the people you’re working with and toward the mission at hand….” – Srikanth Bollavaram Each leader has a mission to deliver results which is usually based on the purview of their team and the internal organization in which it operates. When a leader is open to opportunities and is given a new mission to lead a different team, how do you make the transition while maintaining relationships with the former team and building up those with the new team? First, it is about not only your success but also the success of the people working with you (on your team and beyond). “Whenever I take up a role, what I see is…you’re there for a reason, to solve a problem. If you do it effectively, within a year or two, that position shouldn’t be there technically…. If you develop appropriate leaders…identify the leaders who are taking more responsibility and you grow them, any of them should be able to take it and run with it.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth says when you’re given a leadership position, if you streamline it, you create an opportunity for future leaders who can take that role later on. You can also leave that position in a better state than when you started in it for the benefit of your successor. “If you do that well, you don’t really spoil any relationships because you’re growing the people. You’re solving the problem…making it…. If you create a system effective enough, it probably can run itself.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth takes the above approach in every leadership role he takes – leaving things better than when he initially started in the role and in a state such that someone else on the team can run the team. Maybe this approach is similar to parents training their children to become adults and to need their parents less over time? Srikanth reminds us that the aspiration of a leader is to leave the place in a better state than in which you found it. You can do this successfully by developing the next generation of leaders and ensuring the mission is not compromised. John mentions the theory of constraints and reminds us that we don’t want to engineer a system where the leader is the constraint. We don’t often think about leaders being a constraint. It’s usually something on the operations side that we think of being a constraint. But if a leader is the constraint, it is likely a leadership issue. “But if the leader is there catalyzing a change that perpetuates itself beyond the leader’s presence, that’s a successful change.” – John White Nick says a move to a new position is identifying and exploiting the next constraint. Srikanth said his team did this very successfully when building digital platforms that were resilient and self-healing. They did things that at first didn’t even seem possible by eliminating one constraint at a time. 25:06 – Time Constraints and Non-negotiables Nick mentions one big constraint for leaders is time. How can existing leaders and prospective leaders manage their time to focus on the most important things? “I think about this in…multiple layers. First is take care of yourself…. Have a good fitness regimen…. Because if you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of either your family or the team…. It gets really important to maintain your health, not only health in terms of physical fitness but also mental fitness…. What helps me is learn some kind of meditation…where you kind of take all the noise out and reset your mind from time to time. I think those are very important.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Right behind taking care of yourself is taking care of your family and fulfilling your responsibilities to the family. A job, for example, can be replaced. You and the role you play in your family cannot. Srikanth tells us when it comes to work, it is a process of continuous learning. Each day, he is trying to learn how to manage time better through developing new leaders, new processes, and new systems. All of these together allow for an operating mode that helps manage and reduce the number of exceptions to this operating mode over time. “I think you have to continuously learn too because a lot of stress comes when you’re only seeing problems day to day. You may be solving the problems, but you have to have something else to enrich your mind other than the work and activities outside. I think it’s all about balance. It will go off balance many times, but it’s how quickly you come back to it is the key.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth says we put some guardrails in place like planning fitness time and vacation time and working everything else around them. These breaks are needed and allow for rest and rejuvenation so we can come back and operate effectively. “Work-life balance…I think it’s so intertwined now. It’s very difficult to say what that is…. You just have to within your context create that and what works best for you…. I would say your self-care and family…are non-negotiables.” – Srikanth Bollavaram If you want to follow up with Srikanth on this conversation, you can contact him on LinkedIn . Mentioned in the Outro We heard about it last week and this week. Srikanth was open to new opportunities throughout his career to gain different kinds of experience across different areas. Family was a big factor in job decisions for Srikanth, and along these lines he cautions us to be careful not to change too many things at once. How many changes could you handle at once? We might not know until we try it. The episode we assigned for homework, Episode 325 – Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4) , was an example of someone taking on more change than they could handle at once. It was, however, a learning experience for Daniel. Many times Srikanth needed to make a job decision because a leader suggested he take a new role. Those leaders understood Srikanth’s capabilities and skills because he had built credibility through delivering results. We did not talk about it in the interview, but Srikanth must have been communicating his accomplishments to his leaders in 1-1 meetings. Srikanth encouraged building our skills and capabilities over seeking a specific job role or title. It’s skills and capabilities that help us meet job requirements. Have you taken time to think about the skills and capabilities you need to build for what’s next? What areas do you need to sharpen, and what are some new areas in which you need to build some skills? You might need a mentor or someone else to give you advice on these topics. Srikanth spoke about stepping into people leadership. His path, like that of many other guests traversed through technical lead. He was also an architect and even a principal engineer. It was not an immediate jump from individual contributor to people leader, but at each step, there was an element of leadership in these roles. Part of the mindset shift in being a people leader was to focus on the success of others – building future leaders, improve processes, and build helpful systems. Did you notice he’s still building systems even as a people leader? Here’s a episode on the decision point between individual contributor and people manager that pairs very nicely with this episode – Episode 244 – An Array of Decision Points with Tim Crawford (2/2) . Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Beyond System Building: The Practical Applications of Industry Expertise with Srikanth Bollavaram (1/2) 39:24
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How honest should we be in job interview situations when it comes to what we don’t know? Srikanth Bollavaram, our guest in episode 335, would encourage transparency in these situations, but we should also find a way to communicate what our capabilities are and our potential to meet the challenges of a role. Srikanth is a product development leader with experience spanning the financial, railroad, and consumer packaged goods industries. His story showcases stepping beyond building systems to become a well-rounded leader capable of driving real business impact. Listen closely to the story of an unexpected job assignment in Switzerland that jumpstarted Srikanth’s embrace of industry expertise. Pay special attention during this interview to learn from Srikanth’s experience: Supplementing technical skills with business acumen and continued education Embracing the mindset that every challenge is an opportunity, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first Explaining complex concepts through the lens of practicality to stand out as a job candidate Original Recording Date: 03-30-2025 Topics – Meet Srikanth Bollavaram, Practical Approaches to Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, Relocation and Experience as a Consultant, Execution and Delivery, Continued Education and a Step Beyond Building Systems, End-to-End Solutions in the Railroad Industry 2:13 – Meet Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth Bollavaram leads a product development organization for a global consumer packaged goods (or CPG) company. His organization is currently focused on building a product for a major business transformation. Srikanth is originally from India but had the opportunity to relocate a couple of different times beginning early in his career. Srikanth relocated first to Switzerland to work in the financial industry and then later to the US. Today Srikanth and his family reside in Dallas, Texas. 2:54 – Practical Approaches to Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science Growing up in India, Srikanth wanted to be an engineer. He was curious about how to build things and how things worked. But at that time there was a general expectation to become either a doctor or an engineer. After being unable to dissect a frog in middle school, Srikanth realized his path was engineering. When you want to be an engineer in India, you have to pass a test similar to the SAT. Based on overall rank, students in the top 1% get to choose their major. Most pursuing higher education would go to either a government school or a private college. Srikanth had only a couple of minutes with a counselor to choose between pursuing mechanical engineering at a top state school or attending a private college to focus on computer science. At the time, Srikanth chose mechanical engineering because he had always wanted to go to the school where this program was offered. While he did like mechanical engineering, Srikanth wanted to be a computer science engineer as well. Many of his courses for mechanical engineering were computer courses, and he focused on the practical uses of computer science for mechanical engineering tasks. John mentions listeners might not know that the test and ranking Srikanth mentioned in India is nation-wide. Universities might differ on the requirements for entry based on your ranking. Srikanth mentioned there was a state-level test in addition to the nationwide test, and based on your ranking you get a choice of major. But you don’t know which major you will get into until you go to counseling. When Srikanth graduated there were not many national or state-wide engineering colleges. Now there is a quite a bit of choice for students in India. Was engineering as a discipline of study as interesting as Srikanth thought it would be? Before he began studying engineering, Srikanth says most of his education leading up to high school was heavily theory based. Srikanth tells us this did change but not to the extent he would have liked. Srikanth tells us engineering designs were basically hand drawn 2-dimensional models. He was studying computer languages and wondered if he could draw a design in real-time on a computer screen, which provided an opportunity to experiment and observe. Srikanth says he was more comfortable with the hands-on aspects of learning than the theoretical parts. There were lab exercises, but they weren’t representative of real-world scenarios. Srikanth was also studying thermodynamics. While they did have labs, if he wanted to see how energy transfer worked (i.e. heat energy converting to electrical energy), Srikanth could go to a power plant to see the entire process. The practical aspect was more interesting. “In engineering what I tried to do is focus less on academics but more on the practical applications of those academics, and that turned out…in my favor…. When I was graduating, all the consulting companies were coming and interviewing, and they were more looking for that broader application or mindset, and it was easier for me to get selected even though my academics were not the top in the class. But I had a broad variety of experience both in computers and engineering, and I could explain things in an easy way.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Consulting firms partnered with many of the universities and would interview graduating students for jobs. Srikanth mentions a computer-based consultancy that was willing to consider candidates from various majors (including mechanical engineering, for example). The consulting firms might ask candidates to take a competency test or conduct interviews to determine how candidates solve problems. Nick says the desire to understand how things work and the practical application of it sets someone up nicely to be able to communicate how things work in a simple way. Srikanth remembers a specific question from his interview about internal combustion engines. The internal combustion engine had been built based on Western designs, but Srikanth explained an example of how Indian engineers had built a stabilizer for fuel efficiency when vehicles traverse rough terrain. Srikanth’s approach to answering the question from a practical standpoint instead of solely a theoretical one really impressed the interviewer. John mentions being able to ground complex concepts in reality and explain them in a way people can understand is something solution engineers constantly have to do, but as a skill this is useful in any discipline or field. Srikanth stresses the importance of taking the time to understand a problem and its practical applications before narrowing to solution. John says this feels like it falls into a pattern we’ve seen in the past. If you think you understand a concept, can you write down an explanation of it in your own words that you will be able to read and understand at a later time? If you cannot explain a concept to yourself, you might not understand it as well as you thought. Srikanth remembers working for a leader who shared a similar lesson related to design. Put the design on paper, and try to explain it to yourself. This process would help someone think through all of a design’s implications and remember more about it in future days and even months afterward. Was this process of explaining things to cement learning something Srikanth found himself doing when he made the move into consulting after graduating from school, or was it later in his career? Srikanth thinks it was later in his career when he moved to technical leader and architect after some coaching from his leaders. Earlier in his career, Srikanth was a programmer driven to learn new concepts through testing and asking questions. 13:59 – Relocation and Experience as a Consultant Srikanth tells us that his relocation to Switzerland was somewhat unexpected. At the time, he was a programmer, and he really wanted to go to the US. Srikanth had heard about a project in Switzerland that would last a few months and was eventually told he had to go. When Srikanth was chosen for the assignment in Switzerland, he did not know what type of work he would be doing. Srikanth learned he would be acting as a liaison between the customer who had hired his employer (a consulting firm) for the project and the IT team. “A lot of times people are observing you, what you do…. Your skill set or what you are is determined by what people are observing. And they somehow thought that I was a better fit for this.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth remembers his boss on the customer side asking him a lot of business questions the first time they met. In that moment, Srikanth was honest about what he knew and what he did not know but also spoke to the things he could potentially do. “Talking about relocation…it’s all about context…. A lot of it is built on how you take it. I could have been sent back on the next flight because I was not fit for the job, but I talked to him and explained what I know and what I could do potentially based on if somebody could give a training. So, they sent me back on a business side training for like 3 days to get up to speed quickly. Initially I was supposed to be there 4 months, but they liked my work. So, they extended me for like 2 years…. I was a consultant. You just have to go and look at the job you have been assigned, not necessarily just ‘this is what I am going to do.’ What is the problem at…hand? …Do it well, and if you don’t know, build that trust you don’t know but you will learn and still do it. It was a great experience from that regard. It could have ended up otherwise. But it’s what opportunities come to you, and then how…you take it and run with it…makes the difference.” – Srikanth Bollavaram, on being a consultant John reiterates the lesson here in being honest about what our capabilities are and are not. It’s not just about what you don’t feel qualified to do. Speak to what you can do and how you would get up to speed to do what a hiring manager / employer would need you to do. Srikanth tells us it is about building trust and then following it through, even if extra effort is required in the beginning to serve the needs of the problem at hand. Even though Srikanth did not know what the job was initially, he was curious enough to learn and focus on solving the problem. Nick thinks the manager in question really had 2 choices after understanding Srikanth’s current competencies. There is a lesson here for those in the manager’s seat to consider giving people the chance to learn something if they have the potential rather than dismissing a candidate because they don’t fit exactly what was needed. Srikanth feels he has had leaders in the past who provided him with a chance to adjust and still execute. Even when we are competent, we still might struggle when initially pursuing something new (i.e. a new assignment / job, a new project, etc.). As a people leader now, Srikanth tries to keep these things in mind when considering the holistic candidate based on the lessons he has learned and the opportunities previously granted to him. 19:20 – Execution and Delivery What kind of pressure did Srikanth feel (if any) knowing he wasn’t fully qualified for what he had been asked to do? Though he did take the training, was there something more? The first days of training helped Srikanth understand how the business ran and what they were asking him to do. This helped him feel more confident. Srikanth also built relationships with others during the training to contact in the future for guidance if needed. After about a week, Srikanth was much more confident. He also describes making an intentional mindset shift. “I knew the programming. I knew all this. But this is something I cannot learn anywhere…. This is once in a lifetime opportunity. If I put in enough efforts, I could learn quite a bit in this area. So, I got more energized by that…. There was some…impostor syndrome, but I believe early in your career you are kind of ignorant to some extent. The excitement to learn and the opportunity overshadowed me, at least initially…. There is so much to learn, so let’s go and learn and do it.” – Srikanth Bollavaram The company’s business was related to the Swiss stock exchange, clearing, and settlement on a domestic and international level. Are some of these things we’re discussing inherent in the consultant role? Usually this is someone from outside an organization who is brought in to give some feedback or to solve a problem. Srikanth tells us there was a specific problem to solve. The company who had hired him was working with a specific 3rd party company to build a solution. There were some gaps between what the business wanted and what was being provided, and they needed someone in the middle to help. There were not really product-focused roles at this time. Even business analyst as a term was pretty new. They needed a mix of technical and business knowledge to ensure the appropriate requirements were gathered to design and deliver a solution for what was needed. The company who hired Srikanth’s company wanted an external entity to provide the technical skills they were lacking and to execute the project representing them. John says we might think about this today as being an external product manager who works with an external contractor that is developing a product. “In a lot of ways, I was holding my own company people accountable to deliver that sitting on the other side, which was a bit awkward at that point…. But I think that was a very valuable experience because at the end that drives trust and accountability in a way that was not existing before.” – Srikanth Bollavaram John says a company might do this to not ruin a relationship with another company. It would allow someone else to act as the “bad guy.” Srikanth says whether you’re a consultant or in any other role, it is about building trust, keeping your promises, and then executing and delivering. 24:51 – Continued Education and a Step Beyond Building Systems Nick sees elements of leadership in Srikanth’s role. He was in an interesting spot between the business and the extremely technical side, which provided multiple options for a next career step. How did Srikanth decide what to do next once the job in Switzerland came to an end, and how did the previous experience influence his decision? “That did kind of teach me you just have to be multi-faceted. You need to…gain a well-rounded experience. Work on the business side. Try to understand the business. Do various roles…. Take whatever the role is thrown at you. Don’t ask whether it is specifically this or that. Try multiple areas, and then you can choose which direction you want. And that also enables you to be a well-rounded person.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth wanted to come to the United States, and he would end up working for a credit rating agency, which he describes as a completely different challenge. At the time, this was not an extremely intentional choice, but Srikanth would later embrace an intentionality in his career, changing areas every 2 or 3 years to gain more experience. John highlights the collision of / tension between 2 ideas here. First, there is confidence – determining what an employer needs and figuring out how to deliver it regardless of your current skill set. The second is the lesson Srikanth learned about intentionality as a contributor to career growth. Srikanth mentioned upon coming to the United States, he also wanted to continue his education in addition to working full-time. He would enroll in a master’s program in MIS (management information systems – which we refer to as a computer science related field). Even after completing the master’s program, Srikanth would take courses in leadership, program management, and other areas to add another layer to his skill set which he says was very much needed. John highlights the MIS degree program as one of the few that could have at that time pointed Srikanth toward what we call IT (information technology) today. Srikanth tells us the MIS degree was a combination of business, information technology, economics, and finance. Srikanth knew programming and how to build systems, but these additional courses provided a more complete picture. “…I believe 5 years into my career at that point, and I knew the programming. I know how to build the systems. At that point, I felt that it was more appropriate to not only build the systems but also understand the other aspects to be more complete.” – Srikanth Bollavaram 29:24 – End-to-End Solutions in the Railroad Industry Nick mentions that the studies compliment Srikanth’s desire to build things and understand how they work. One of the best ways to figure out how something works is to build it. When Srikanth joined the railroad, he discovered there are few industry specific products for the railroad. In fact, most of the technology solutions needed to be engineered and built in-house. They needed employees with both software and hardware expertise. Some of the hardware components on a locomotive were very specific, for example. Srikanth says working for the railroad really satisfied his desire to build things. “I was very surprised to see how technically advanced the railroad information technology or engineering were. That’s where I would say I cut my teeth…. And the leaders there were just fantastic, even coaching and…growing us in the way that we could solve those bigger problems.” – Srikanth Bollavaram During his time working for the railroad industry, Srikanth had the chance to be part of large programs which made a big impact both on the overall railroad industry and the greater US economy. John highlights that this is an industry specialized enough to be somewhat unfazed by advances in commodity technology. It requires the operations teams to have an end-to-end system where they own all the parts or what John calls “owning things end-to-end.” Commodity items purchased off the shelf might need to be tuned to the specific use case (i.e. ruggedized hardware, for example). This was at a time before internet of things was really a thing. Srikanth tells us it was about building end-to-end solutions and thinking about how to productize them to sell for other railroads to use. He gained some design experience during this time as well. “Everything is an opportunity. When there is not a solution, you build it, but you can also productize and market it.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Srikanth describes the introduction of a safety mandate for autonomous control of trains and needing to build something that could adapt to future technological advances. While autonomous control would stop a train if a human could not, it also introduces other considerations which must be addressed. Srikanth was fascinated by the process of building real-time control systems. He stresses the importance of having deep engineering talent to support the end-to-end solution from a software and hardware standpoint. These control systems are also safety critical. “You need to make sure it not only performs the function…you asked to do but in all cases,…the safety of the system is not compromised. So, you have to think of all those boundary conditions as well.” – Srikanth Bollavaram Nick feels like this is a great blending of the computer science and engineering background Srikanth had. Did Srikanth seek out the railroad industry specifically, or did the opportunity come to him? Srikanth says he did not seek it out, but it was a logical decision. He had moved from Switzerland to California and would then move to the midwestern United States for the railroad job mainly for family reasons. Srikanth says his wife was studying at the University of Nebraska at the time. “It happened to be the best decision…in terms of…combining all of those experiences and really growing myself. It was a very good environment to nurture the talent, experiment, do things, even sometimes fail…but recover and really enjoy the engineering work.” – Srikanth Bollavaram, on relocating to the Midwest for a railroad job Mentioned in the Outro Srikanth understood the technology but spotted opportunities to learn about the use and impact of technology within the scope of a certain industry’s business operations. The industry exposure and experience was the opportunity for learning in his mind. These decisions took Srikanth’s knowledge beyond just building systems. It was a great exercise in truly understanding all the requirements a system must meet (including architectural considerations, design implications, etc.) based on the business need. If you are looking for other stories of guests who embraced industry expertise to progress in their career, check out these conversations with Amy Arnold about her experience in the public sector: Episode 281 – Packets Don’t Lie: Quality of Service for Technical Exploration in Network Engineering with Amy Arnold (1/2) Episode 282 – All the Networking Things: Project Management, Pre-Sales, and Broadening a Technical Specialty with Amy Arnold (2/2) Building end-to-end solutions required supporting every piece of the solution. This was truly product management and treating the solution like a product. While the railroad productized the solutions to sell to other railroads, not every company may productize things to sell outside the company. They may productize to use internally for different business units with different use cases. The product mindset can still be an effective approach. Remember, if you are looking to progress into product management, you do not need to limit your search to only technology vendors. Product management roles can exist in many different places. Your homework before we release part 2 of Srikanth’s story is to listen to this episode featuring Daniel Lemire’s story of taking on too much change in his career at once: Episode 325 – Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4) Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 First Time Manager – Your Old Job Description Has Been Deleted 24:16
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Imagine developing a set of skills that enables you to get a management job, only to find you have to throw away the entire toolkit that made you successful. This is the jarring reality for many new managers, a career change that is less of a step up and more of a step over into a completely different profession. This week in episode 334, John White flies solo to share a candid teardown of his first two and a half years as a first-time manager. He unpacks the great “unspoken skill swap” required to transition from a top individual contributor to an effective leader. Drawing from his own journey and advice from past guests, John offers a realistic preview of a manager’s daily reality, covering the jarring shifts in responsibility from doing the work to setting the context, from having the answers to finding the resources, and from individual achievement to enabling the success of others. Original Recording Date: 06-29-2025 Topics – The IC-to-Manager Skill Swap, From “Do-er” to “Enabler”, Navigating Organizational Dynamics, Proactive Preparation for Management 1:01 – Your Job Description Has Been Deleted Imagine the skills that you had to develop in order to stand out as an individual contributor. Imagine that the managerial job that you get as a result uses almost none of those skills in your day to day Join John on a reflective journey on the realities of becoming a first-time manager. 3:25 – The Teardown – Learning the New Job Description Teardown 1 – From “Doing the Work” to “Setting the Context” The first jarring skill swap is moving from being the best individual doer to someone who communicates strategy and ensures operational smoothness for the team. John recounts his initial instinct as a new manager to immediately re-engineer his team’s reporting process. He recognized this as the wrong move, an attempt to act as the head practitioner rather than the manager. He advises new managers to adopt an “Imitation before Variation before Innovation” framework. Your first job is not to innovate but to create clarity and stability. You must first crawl by understanding why things are done the current way, then walk by making small tweaks, and only run with a major overhaul once you have a deep understanding of the context and have built trust. 7:20 Teardown 2 – From “Finding the Answer” to “Finding the Resources” As a manager, your value no longer comes from having all the technical answers yourself, but from ensuring your team has the tools and connections they need. John shares his experience of becoming a manager at a new company for a product he had never been a sales engineer for. He knew he would never be the top technical expert on the team. His instinct was to dive deep into the technology and certifications, but he realized his true job was to unblock his team. The key shift in mindset is asking “Who knows the answer?” instead of “What’s the answer?” A new manager must learn to tap into the team’s collective knowledge, relying on tenured members and peers to draw organizational maps that reveal where to go for help and how to solve problems. 11:02 Teardown 3 – From “Individual Contributor” to “Organizational Politician” A skill that is often celebrated in an individual contributor—fearlessly asking challenging questions to find the best idea—can be detrimental for a manager. The new job requires managing up and sideways to protect the team and secure resources, which involves navigating a complex political ecosystem. John learned this lesson the hard way, realizing that asking pointed questions in a leadership meeting could be seen as confrontational or critical rather than constructive. The new skill is understanding influence, timing, and venue. You must learn to have tough conversations privately, build consensus before a big meeting, and strategically navigate the chain of command to get your questions answered effectively without undercutting others. 15:04 Teardown 4 – From “Did I Have a Good Day?” to “How Can I Help?” The metric for a “good day” changes entirely. As an IC, satisfaction comes from completing tasks and making tangible progress. * As a manager, you can end a day full of back-to-back meetings feeling like you accomplished nothing. The new job is to measure your success through the output and growth of others. John emphasizes that your most powerful tool is the one-on-one meeting, and the most important question you can ask is, “How can I help?” “A good day is when you leave your team members more clear, capable, and confident than you found them.” Your job shifts from being a do-er to an un-blocker, and your long-term success is the sum of your team’s successes. 17:01 Teardown 5 – From “Interviewer” to “Owning the Hiring Process” Transitioning to management often means moving from occasionally helping with interviews to owning the entire, complex hiring process. This responsibility extends from crafting the job description to ensuring the new hire is successfully onboarded. A manager must coordinate with recruiters, budget approvers, and a cross-functional interview panel, all while ensuring consistency and fairness for every candidate. This involves evaluating not just skills, but also understanding a candidate’s weaknesses and gaps, what training would be required, and how they compare to the team’s needs, turning it into a highly complex project management challenge. 20:00 – Synthesis – How to Build Your New Toolkit So, how do you develop these new managerial skills, perhaps even before you have the title? John provides actionable advice for aspiring managers. Start by observing your current manager like an anthropologist—decode the “why” behind their actions. * Become an interviewer by taking other managers out for coffee to ask about the unseen parts of their job, such as handling performance conversations or advocating for budget. Finally, find low-stakes opportunities to practice influence without authority by volunteering to lead small cross-functional projects or mentoring junior employees. Call to action: perform a “micro experiment” in your next team meeting by holding back an answer and instead guiding the team to their own solution with questions. This feeling of guiding, not doing, is the core sensation of being a manager. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Level Up Your Career Documents with AI as a Thought Partner 20:59
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This week in episode 333 John flies solo in a discussion of using AI to help generate high-quality career documentation. Original Recording Date: 06-23-2025 Topics – Refresh LinkedIn, Rewrite Your Resume, Outline a Blog Post, with AI as a Career Co-Pilot 01:03 – Introduction This episode provides tactical advice for technology professionals on how to level up their career documents, such as resumes and LinkedIn profiles, by using Generative AI as a “thought partner.” The goal is to improve career resilience in times of economic uncertainty. 2:03 The core philosophy presented is that when using AI, you must be the “thought leader,” and the AI should serve as your “thought partner.” This model, first encountered by the host in Geoff Woods’ book The AI Driven Leader, ensures you retain control over your career narrative and authentic voice. 2:35 – Act 1: The Philosophy 3:00 The roles in this partnership are clearly defined. As the thought leader, your job is to set strategy, own the message, provide the raw material (your experiences), and make final decisions. The AI’s job, as the thought partner, is to help brainstorm, suggest angles, challenge assumptions, structure thoughts, and rephrase sentences. 4:26 A key warning is that recruiters and hiring managers are becoming adept at spotting low-effort, inauthentic “AI slop.” An imperfect but authentic resume or performance review is considered far more valuable than a generic, AI-generated one. You can’t blame the AI for mistakes; you are ultimately responsible. 4:50 – Act 2: The Playbook To get consistent, high-quality results from AI, John introduces a five-step method detailed in his blog post, Wielding the AI Chainsaw, a Starter Technique Toolkit . This process is designed to move from a simple request to a collaborative and structured session. Step 1: Persona Prompting : Tell the AI who it should act as (e.g., a career coach, a skeptical engineer). Step 2: Knowledge Generation : Have the AI pull foundational facts or frameworks relevant to your task before you begin. Step 3: Task Specificity & Interactive Context Building : Give the AI a specific goal and instruct it to ask you clarifying questions to get the context it needs. Step 4: Scaffolding : Provide the AI with a precise structure for its output. Step 5: Reflection : Ask the AI to critique its own work based on your goals. 7:07 Workflow 1: LinkedIn Profile The discussion details how to apply the five-step process to improve your LinkedIn “About” section. Starting with your own messy first draft, you guide the AI by assigning it the persona of a senior technical recruiter (Step 1), asking it for the critical elements of a great profile (Step 2), having it ask you questions about your draft (Step 3), requesting specific outputs like opening hooks and keywords (Step 4), and having it review its suggestions for tone and authenticity (Step 5). 11:44 Workflow 2: Resume or Self-Assessment This workflow demonstrates using the five steps to refine accomplishment descriptions. * The process involves assigning the AI a career coach persona (Step 1) and using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method as the foundational framework (Step 2). You provide a project description and a relevant job description, then have the AI ask questions to align your project with the STAR method (Step 3). The AI is then tasked with restructuring your description into powerful bullet points (Step 4) and finally, reviewing those points for quantifiable impact and conciseness (Step 5). This framing is valuable for both resumes and internal performance reviews, but it must be based on your actual experience, never fabrication. 15:02 Workflow 3: Blog Post Outline The final example combines skill development with the practice of “learning in public.” To brainstorm a blog post (e.g., “Why Network Engineers Need to Learn Python”), you assign the AI a dual persona of a content strategist and a skeptical senior engineer (Step 1). The AI then generates potential objections a skeptic would have (Step 2), helps you brainstorm persuasive arguments by asking questions (Step 3), creates a structured outline for the post (Step 4), and reviews that outline for its persuasiveness and suggests a compelling title (Step 5). 17:07 – Act 3: Homework Listeners are given homework to practice the full methodology. The task is to take one bullet point from their resume, find a relevant job description, and walk through the five-step process with an AI to rewrite it using the STAR method. This exercise is designed to build a repeatable skill for wielding AI with intention. 19:34 Conclusion The episode concludes by emphasizing that AI is a powerful tool, but its effectiveness depends entirely on the thought leader wielding it—you. The ultimate goal is not to become an AI expert, but to be a proficient user of the tool to cultivate a more resilient and well-documented career. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 My Delivery is Their Delivery with Erin O’Quinn (3/3) 41:52
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This week in episode 332 we’re joined by guest Erin O’Quinn. In this part 3 of our discussion with Erin we’ll discuss her career journey through leadership, advocacy, and supporting women in tech. Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025 Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. If you missed part one and two of our discussion with Erin detailing her early career, check out Episode 330 and Episode 331 . Topics – Career Progression and Leadership Evolution, The Power of Customer Advocacy, Navigating Workplace Challenges as a Woman in Tech 4:05 – The Transition to Senior Manager and Director The transition to senior manager and then director involved a shift in perspective from being an individual contributor to an enabler for the team. Erin O’Quinn explains that a higher title can help get a “foot in the door” for important conversations. 04:40 A key lesson in moving to a director role was realizing the job is not about personal delivery, but about empowering the team to deliver. Erin’s success became synonymous with her team’s success. This involved trusting the team and intentionally not being the expert on everything to allow team members to own their areas of expertise. “I made a point of not knowing everything on purpose when I hit the director level, because I didn’t want to be the expert on everything. I wanted somebody else to go, ‘Oh, Erin, we’re going to you for this.’ [I’d reply], ‘Actually, you wanna go to my team member who is doing this, and that’s their area of expertise. They know this account better than I do,’ and letting them take the ownership. Not everybody above me had always done that. And giving that opportunity for [the team member] to say like, ‘My boss thinks I own this,’ it gives them a space to step up and into where they feel like they have more control of their own trajectory.” — Erin O’Quinn 05:50 When promotions or title changes aren’t possible, a manager can provide growth by giving team members ownership and opportunities to expand their skills. This includes building career paths and being okay with team members leaving for roles that make them happier, ensuring the manager isn’t a gatekeeper to their career progression. 07:04 To learn how to have effective career conversations, Erin spoke with other managers, took their advice with a grain of salt, and analyzed different approaches. She adopted a practice of listening without judgment and evaluating new ideas, even uncomfortable ones, to determine if they were better for her team. 08:04 Having a mentor who was recently in the same role was invaluable. This mentor provided a 360-degree view, sharing perspectives from leadership and helping to avoid potential mistakes. 09:18 A manager’s role includes identifying and clearing “landmines” for their team to make them more successful. Erin emphasizes making this responsibility explicit to the team, which encourages them to be open about challenges and fosters a learning environment where they were more willing to discuss challenges. This meant that Erin heard about all the challenges, not that it was her role to solve them all. Sometimes it was a challenge the individual needed to handle, but at least Erin heard about more challenges and could sometimes help. 11:47 Erin distinguishes between project and program management. Project Manager: Like an event manager, they see a specific task from “birth to death” with a clear finality (e.g., building one car). Program Manager: They create and maintain a continuous system or cycle (e.g., building and running the factory that manufactures cars). The focus is on iteration and improvement of the system itself. 12:42 While Erin considers herself more of a project person who enjoys seeing a definitive end to a task, she stays engaged with program management by focusing on how to enhance the “project experience” for new people encountering the program. This reframing keeps the work interesting. John notes that sales engineering has some parallels, where a specific sales campaign might be akin to a project, but the overall process of how sales campaigns are handled over time is akin to a program. 17:16 Customer Advocacy The discussion turns to customer advocacy, which is a program designed to understand and share customer stories. It’s not about taking credit for a customer’s work but about highlighting how they solved a universal business challenge using a specific technology. 17:59 Customer advocacy provides mutual benefits. For the customer: It validates their project, helps secure internal budget and mindshare, and can serve as a recruitment tool by showcasing the cool technologies they use. For the individual: It elevates their personal brand, positioning them as an expert and giving them a platform to build confidence and public speaking skills. 22:28 When a customer is hesitant to share their story, the first step is to simply let them talk about their work in a low-pressure environment. By asking sincere questions and helping them see the broader impact of their work (e.g., “you’re taking this pain out of their lives”), they often realize their story is important and worth sharing. 24:28 Women in Tech For women in tech facing hostile or unsupportive environments, it’s important to first have a direct conversation with a manager about the perceived challenges. Taking on side projects can also provide visibility outside of a difficult team dynamic. 26:06 A challenge for women in tech can sometimes come from other women who have had to fight to be seen and adopt a competitive, “Highlander” (“there can be only one”) mentality. A frank conversation can help, but the first step is to ask to understand the situation. 28:27 It’s crucial to avoid a zero-sum game mentality. Lifting up a colleague, especially a junior one through mentorship, can be multiplicative for the whole team rather than a loss for one individual. 29:07 A subtle challenge for women in tech is being pigeonholed into “office admin” or emotional labor roles, like party planning, simply because they are women. Erin advises saying “no” to these assumed tasks. 31:03 Micro-aggressions, like being called “dear” in a professional setting, are real and their impact stacks up. While they may not be intentional, they can be infantilizing and add to the emotional baggage of being in a minority position. Allies can help by being aware and addressing these moments. There’s even more emotional labor involved with handling these situations. 34:49 Working mothers often carry an additional, invisible workload. They are frequently the default parent for school issues and bear the mental load for things like teacher appreciation week, which can lead to exhaustion. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 A Space for Critique: Lead by Amplifying Voices and Giving Credit with Erin O’Quinn (2/3) 38:45
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Looking to improve the performance of your team? Improve the way they communicate, and you just might surprise yourself. When we take the time to understand how people like to be communicated with and how they like to communicate with others, it changes everything. In episode 331, Erin O’Quinn is back with us to share what it takes to create a safe space for collecting ideas from members of a team so that all voices are heard and the right people get the credit for great work. You’ll hear all this through the backdrop of Erin’s experience as a team lead and people manager, and you won’t want to miss the story of how Erin shifted her personal brand to improve her own job performance in the process. Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025 Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. If you missed part one of our discussion with Erin detailing her early career, check out Episode 330 . Topics – Elements of Leadership and Experience as a Team Lead, Giving Others a Voice and a Space for More Contribution, The Tactics Behind the Strategy of People Management, Promotion and Personal Brand 2:49 – Elements of Leadership and Experience as a Team Lead To this point we’ve talked about a lot of projects with which Erin was successful, and people started to give her more. In all of these cases there were elements of leadership in getting the project accomplished by working with others. Let’s explore how Erin moved into the team lead role. The team lead guides a specific group of people toward a goal and is usually not the people manager of any member of the team. A team lead could be leading a team of people who report to many different managers, for example. Erin began leading programs in her twenties, but at first, some of her colleagues with more experience were apprehensive about Erin’s placement in that position. Erin remembers having great managers who would sense a conflict coming and have a conversation with people before Erin did as a form of blocking and tackling and supporting her in these situations. “With the team lead piece it’s figuring out how to get a successful delivery of something. You may not always run each of these people’s schedules or timelines, so it’s being that program or project manager. And you have to deliver a successful result. Usually for me, with these marketing pieces, it was to an event or to a point…. It was going to have a final point and stop. There was a put up or shut up moment that will happen for every single thing that I touched, and you will know if you succeeded or your failed because it happened or it didn’t. And if it didn’t, then we have another problem, and that’s another conversation you’ll have with your actual manager.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin says the team lead role is about learning how other people work, and one of her biggest challenges was figuring out how to best communicate with people. She gives a few examples: People take criticism and feedback differently. Some people are very shy in a group setting and don’t feel comfortable speaking up, while others are loud and consistently speak up in a group setting. Erin gives the example of navigating how to take feedback from the person talking the most in a meeting as well as feedback from someone who sent an e-mail or had a 1-1 conversation with you after the meeting because they were not comfortable speaking up in the meeting. “Being able to hear the different levels of voices as a manager of a program or a project or a team became one of the challenges that I got really excited about because I knew so many people…they were geniuses when you would put them on a stage or get them speaking to people, but they would get in these…quagmires when they were talking to their managers because they didn’t know how to speak to that one individual.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin saw this kind of thing happening and didn’t want to be in this situation. She also did not want to be the future manager who didn’t let a top performer shine due to not knowing how to make them look better / get seen in the best possible way. Erin would e-mail the team to communicate decisions in a way that showed the rest of the team how she was going to take in team member feedback. She gives the example of sending a message and adding in an important context point one member of the team brought up to her directly. “It became a learned process to how to work together…. A lot of times the loudest person in the room is the one that gets heard the most, and that’s the way that you always go. But…they realized that sometimes there was a benefit to the other quieter voices actually having a say or letting them own a piece of something in a different way and letting their creativity shine in a new way that maybe would have been squashed down in a bigger group so that everybody had something that they had ownership of. There was more pride. That allowed the team to do more things better because they were willing to do it that way. And it was a lot of fun.” – Erin O’Quinn, on being a team lead 7:41 – Giving Others a Voice and a Space for More Contribution Did experience as a team lead get Erin comfortable to start looking for a people manager position? “I think I was always looking for a people management position, but being a woman in tech…there’s a tendency that if you’re not already qualified to do the job you’re taking on you don’t apply for the job that you’re taking on, that you really want.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin mentions there is statistical data supporting the stark difference in the likelihood of applying for a job between women and men. Women feel they need to have significantly more of the required skills for a specific job before they are comfortable applying. It’s been harder for women to get into upper-level management because they are more tentative and don’t push because they think they shouldn’t unless they are perfect for the job. “I think there’s a little bit more bravado that comes from a lot of guys where they’re like, ‘I want that so I’m going to go for it’ versus women who say, ‘I’m qualified for it so I will go for it.’ One is a lot harder to do than the other.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin was on a team that was half men and half women with each person having their own communication style. Erin noticed women on the team would be collaborative with each other and work together well. If put into a larger group with men, they would often not speak up the same way they would if part of a group of all women. “So, figuring out how to be the voice willing to come over the top and say, ‘such and such has an idea or such and such has this approach…let’s look at all of them together’ became my superpower…. And it didn’t have to be me. If anyone else put a new idea on the table let’s at least look at it because even if it wasn’t the perfect idea, it’s going to spur on ideas from others that maybe leads to that perfect idea or a better idea than just the one that was shouted out the loudest. That’s where I started to learn the team management skills….” – Erin O’Quinn Erin first had to learn how to lead a group of people, and the people manager skills came only after getting to that position. Were people initially uncomfortable with their ideas being shared with the entire team if shared with Erin 1-1? Thinking back to the first time this happened, Erin shared an idea without asking first because the person was not comfortable speaking up in larger groups. After doing this Erin went back and spoke to that person 1-1. Everything turned out ok in this case. After later becoming a team manager, Erin would have these conversations with people beforehand to ensure it was ok to share their ideas / feedback with the larger team. As part of these discussions, she would help team members understand the value of their idea to the larger group and both the timeliness and urgency of sharing the feedback. In early management roles, Erin liked to make deicisions, go fast, and consider the right factors and team member input before a decision couldn’t be reversed. John says in an ideation phase, having more ideas is better than having less. But judging the ideas is a separate phase entirely. Erin says it should be but may not always happen that way. “If you go into a room with a lot of people and there’s different levels of role within that room…if I’m not at the bottom, I try not to talk first. There’s a power with having a title or having an experience or what have you where if you say, ‘this is my idea,’ some people who are junior might go, ‘oh, that’s THE idea’ not ‘this is an idea.’” – Erin O’Quinn Even if a person with a high title says something just to get the conversation going, junior team members may think their opinion will not matter. Erin stresses the importance of letting more junior people share ideas first. The team can then iterate on those, and junior team members will not be afraid to participate. It puts everyone on equal footing. Erin tells us there have been a number of times where she asked a question about something a senior leader said in a meeting because she felt like it was a safe enough environment in which to do it. She made sure to ask questions before a decision was made so as not to question the direction set forth by the leader. “If we’re still trying to figure it out or trying to sus out what the goal is, throw everything up then, and don’t be afraid…. If I was doing this with one of my teams I would always start…asking other individual contributors first…. Where should this go? What is your idea? What problem do you see with this? Give them a space to critique somebody else, or give them a space to critique somebody who is more senior to them, even if they have the same title, because a lot of times…some people put a lot of value and weight to somebody else who has years, age years, on them…. The world is changing all the time, and somebody who is looking at it with fresh eyes may have a better approach. And there’s nothing wrong with listening. Even if you disagree with them, hear it out first, and then decide…is what they said worth it? I think a good manager and a good team lead or a project lead can provide a lot of space for more contribution so you don’t get stuck in a ‘this is how we do things.’ I think that is one of the challenges of being at a bigger company. Because you’re working with a matrixed organization and a big machine, you gotta do all these steps and all these processes, but sometimes if you don’t stop and look at the machine, you can’t figure out how to change it. And you will be left behind by these small, nimble organizations.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin has seen very experienced colleagues think they are right because of the extent of their experience, but they might not be. Try listening to fresh ideas and being open to new perspectives. Ask the newest member of the team how they are looking at or seeing something. This can open up questions and topics of discussion that can lead to better results. Erin reminds us there is no harm in asking for this kind of feedback early on. Nick loves the idea of providing a safe space in which people can give feedback and share ideas. Did sending out people’s ideas to the team make them more likely to speak up in future discussions? Erin likes to give credit for concepts. While we do have to be careful about adding ideas after an open discussion concludes to not look like we’re pushing a personal agenda, Erin wanted to let her teams know that people who may have been quiet in the room were indeed participating. Their participation was in a different way than others, and that is ok. It may feel like a time suck, but Erin tells us it is well worth it to take the time to go through a process to understand how people like to be communicated with and how they like to communicate to others. “Understanding that process really can make a huge difference in how a team functions. I’ve been on very dysfunctional teams. I’ve been on very, very streamlined teams…. One of the teams that I was on…it was a great team. Everybody loved each other. Working as individuals with each other, everybody got along, but there were some communication challenges. And we went through this process and learned that certain people, even if they were quiet people, they communicated in a different way than you expected them to….” – Erin O’Quinn The communications exercise Erin mentioned above cleared up a lot of misunderstandings with one particular team and made a massive difference in the way people worked with one another. Erin shares an example of how understanding communication styles helped junior team members gain confidence, dispel fear, and collaborate more effectively with other teammates faster than they would have without that understanding. “If you build the team, you know the players on your team. You kind of know what you’re bringing into a group. If…you’re inheriting a team, setting a level playing field for how people talk to each other is very helpful so that everybody understands the communication process.” – Erin O’Quinn 19:04 – The Tactics Behind the Strategy of People Management When Erin got the manager role, did she feel she was fully qualified before she applied? Erin says she had no doubt at that point and that she probably should have tried it earlier. Erin is in customer advocacy / customer references, and it’s a pretty flat organization. “It’s hard to move up when everything’s pretty flat. Your responsibility changes. Maybe you mentor more or you guide more or you’re seen as an expert by more people. But you’re rarely moved to a different layer of management because it’s usually a fairly flat organization.” – Erin O’Quinn Did Erin seek out the manager role, or did someone encourage her to do it? Erin thinks she had been speaking to her manager about it. She was given a promotion but not necessarily to manage people. When asked what other kinds of things she wanted to do, Erin said she wanted to have a team. “I want to have a team, and it’s not because I need more people, necessarily, to do everything that I’m doing. But, I think that I’ve picked up rapport and skills that I could help others navigate these things in a more meaningful way…. I can help somebody else. That’s why I wanted to be a people manager.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin cites having excellent managers in the past who were great mentors that walked her through processes even when they were very busy. She was able to observe how those managers did blocking and tackling, learn from their strategic thinking, and understand how decisions were made. She was able to understand “the tactics behind the strategy” to make it easier to move into people management later. “Not everybody is cut out to be a people manager. I think there’s a lot more people who could be amazing…thought leaders or individual contributors, and there’s no harm in that. And a lot of tech companies have realized some of the people who are genius level individuals are not designed to have a team of 50 report to them because that takes them away from what they are amazing at…. For me, I realized that there’s only so many things that one human being can do at a time, and I think I’ve picked up the skills and the abilities to actually be able to help others even if what they’re doing is not my expertise. I don’t have to train them in my image. I just have to be able to give them the space and the tools so that they can do what they’re going to be good at.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin has also seen examples of very bad managerial conversations. She mentions one instance of a manager reprimanding an employee who was never told until the reprimand that there was a problem. “In a space where people don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, sometimes it’s ok to be the bearer of bad news. You have to actually just say it.” – Erin O’Quinn, on giving difficult feedback Erin shares the story of having a discussion with someone about specific challenges. The person thought everything was fine and working well, but that was very different than how things were being perceived by others. Erin had to give the person some very candid feedback on how what they were doing was being perceived, making sure not to label it as right or wrong. This person needed to communicate their successes and the gaps more effectively to their management. Erin took the time to coach this person in better ways to communicate via the quote shared below and helped develop a plan for improvement. In the end, this person thanked Erin for the feedback and help because they did not know. “You can’t do that. Until they know that you are the expert, they won’t necessarily believe that saying ‘we’re good’ means anything. So, you gotta prove first that you get it, you understand the metrics the way that they need to see the metrics, and show them repeatedly that you’re delivering these results. And then, after that, if they see the pattern, then you can say ‘we’re good’ and they know that that means that you got all of these metrics down and we’re set…. But until you can articulate it and speak it in the same language, that’s not how it’s being seen.” – Erin O’Quinn, feedback to someone on how to better communicate with leaders Erin likes to address things early on to avoid “kick in the pants” moments like the one shared earlier. If you see something, you should say something. Erin might send someone an e-mail with feedback after a meeting, for example. She encourages team members to take credit for the work they are doing. It is better for a team member to talk about the great work they are doing in front of others so they get the credit. If Erin mentions it, she might get the credit instead of the team member (which she does not want). Erin has even encouraged peers of hers to promote themselves in front of others so that the team overall looks stronger. “The rest of the people are why I’m a leader – because they’re doing all these amazing things, and these are all the amazing things that they’re doing. Give yourself credit. Don’t just say, ‘this happened.’ Say, ‘I helped this happen’ or ‘this happened because I did this work.’ And show the work…. Being able to help people toot their own horn is one of my favorite parts of being a manager.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin tells us there’s a misconception about customer advocacy. People think stories being out there make them magically appear. It takes work to identify the story and give someone the space to tell the story that can then be packaged into something amazing. It’s the extra pieces brought to the story that make it work, and people deserve credit for shaping that final product. Nick likes the way Erin didn’t label anything as good or bad when giving difficult feedback to someone and focused only on how someone’s actions were being perceived. We need to give people a context to work in. If we tell someone something is wrong, they need to understand what is wrong and what is right. We have to set a context and tell a person what people are seeing and the mismatch between what others see and what they are trying to do. Erin likes to help the person build a plan to get the person closer to where they intended to go. “There’s a lot of people who are great at promoting other things, but they’re not great at promoting themselves. For a long time, I was in that boat….” – Erin O’Quinn At first Erin felt like promoting herself and her work was bragging. She wanted to be humble and stay behind the scenes when it came to event marketing. Erin says we cannot move forward if we don’t talk a little bit about what we’re doing. 27:25 – Promotion and Personal Brand John feels like we’ve been talking about personal brands in the last few minutes. What’s Erin’s take on personal branding? Erin says a brand is the feeling we get when we perceive something. When we see company logos of brands, there’s an instant emotional reaction of some kind that happens. “A personal brand is, ‘what does this person mean to you in the context of work?’ Straightforward. Everybody’s got one whether you want one or not.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin says she re-built her personal brand during COVID but didn’t realize she was doing it at the time. She had a number of personal challenges during the lockdowns in addition to just COVID. “Being a mom with a kid at home going through personal stuff during COVID, and everything was on display because everybody’s working from home. It takes a lot of effort to have your business persona and your home persona, and I realized that I was putting up a lot of effort to separate them…. I stopped trying to separate that and just be more present, more me…. I realized that what people said was professional was just being in a box, and I kind of threw the box out.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin had been told earlier in her career what being professional or being approachable looked like. There were some other preconceived notions as well. “I kind of scrapped it and said, ‘I think I’m good at my job because the people that I work with appreciate my candor. They appreciate my sense of humor or my approachability. Just do that and be that all the time. Why try to be something else if it’s working?’” – Erin O’Quinn Erin realized she did not need to separate those parts as much and could bring her personality into all parts of her job. It was ok to do it. After making this change, Erin felt more comfortable, and because she was more comfortable, she was more approachable and able to do her job better. Being more present as a person allowed Erin to have better conversations with co-workers. She was more candid and open. Erin was able to approach customer conversations very differently than before as well. “It makes it easier to have the conversation, easier to do the next step, if they are talking to a person as opposed to a role. Once I figured that out and let it go, my job got so much easier, and I got better at it too.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin has been able to maintain this brand and attitude ever since making the change. Multiple times she has been able to approach something differently or ask in a different way to encourage someone to share their story with the customer advocacy team. It helps eliminate doubt. “Any time I can do that to help somebody get their story out in the world, I’m in to help that.” – Erin O’Quinn John refers to this as injecting human and personal relationships into a business process to remove friction. Organizations are ultimately made up of people. “I think if people realize that they’re working with a person and that person has thoughts, feelings, and emotions you are more beholden to act. If given the opportunity, I’d rather have the conversation in person. I’d rather have it on Zoom than on the phone because I can see your reaction or you can see my reaction, and you know that I’m being genuine. You can’t fake real. You can try. You can be the best actor in the world. You can know how to cry on command or whatever, but there’s a falsehood to it. And I’d rather just be genuine, make an ask or connect with somebody, and it’ll work better. It’s helped me maintain more meaningful work relationships over the years…my whole career, quite honestly.” – Erin O’Quinn Mentioned in the Outro While not mentioned in the episode, Erin has used empathy as a skill in effective team management. This pairs very nicely with Marni Coffey’s use of empathy to build inclusive teams in Episode 278 – Uncovering Empathy: The Greatest Skill of an Inclusive Leader with Marni Coffey (1/3) . Erin’s focus on improved communication even as a team lead was also a focus on developing the people around her. If you listen to Marni Coffey’s story of becoming a team lead in Episode 279 – Change Management: The Hardest Leap and Developing People with Marni Coffey (2/3) , this theme of developing others is reiterated. We’ve heard multiple guests reiterate the need to develop others to be successful as a team lead. Even if you’re not a team lead or a manager, you can figure out how to best communicate with your co-workers by just asking them. Brad Pinkston told us way back in Episode 84 – Management Interviews and Transitions with Brad Pinkston that one of the first questions he asks a new boss is how they like to be communicated with. We can also blend our personality into our communication with people to strengthen connection. There were a number of motivations for becoming a people manager in that episode: Helping other people avoid mistakes Make sure people receive credit for the work they are doing and that they can communicate their work to management in an understandable way. Some of Erin’s work as a manager is getting employees to advocate for themselves to tell the story of the work they did to achieve an outcome. Hopefully you’re communicating the work you are doing in 1-1s with your manager, but don’t forget that documenting your accomplishments is a pre-requisite to these conversations! Erin paid attention to things her managers did well (i.e. how to have difficult conversations) and what some did not do well. Check out Episode 244 – An Array of Decision Points with Tim Crawford (2/2) as a compliment to this episode with some extra considerations on the decision between individual contributor and manager. Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page . If uncertainty is getting to you, check out or Career Uncertainty Action Guide with a checklist of actions to take control during uncertain periods and AI prompts to help you think through topics like navigating a recent layoff, financial planning, or managing your mindset and being overwhelmed.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 A Utility Player’s Advantage: The Work of Marketing in Tech with Erin O’Quinn (1/3) 45:06
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Being a utility player in the sports world is one thing, but what does a utility player look like in the tech industry? Erin O’Quinn, our guest this week in episode 330, says it takes a willingness to learn, approaching what you learn as something that can help you later, and a willingness to advocate for yourself. Erin is currently a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. After studying communications in college, Erin’s first roles were in marketing communications, where she became well versed in the logistics of events like trade shows and developed a distinctive advantage by saying yes to new tasks / projects (even a little IT support for her employer). Throughout this first part of the story, Erin learned what she wanted most from a company’s culture, what it takes to develop a corporate brand, and how to communicate effectively with executives. As you listen to this episode, think about this – what is something you could say yes to today that could help you grow in the future? Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025 Topics – Communications and the Work of Marketing, Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies, A Return to the Tech Industry, The Strategic Side of Marketing, Communication with Executives 2:15 – Communications and the Work of Marketing Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. She has conversations with account teams and end customers to truly understand how customers use specific products, the benefits they have received from those products over time, and how success has impacted careers, teams, and the overall business. Erin tells us it’s a fun job. From where Erin began, it’s been a long, winding road to get to where she is now. Upon starting college, Erin planned to be a psychologist and counsel people in a 1-1 staetting. The school she attended (University of California San Diego) had a psychology program more focused on behavioral psychology and less on how people interact. As a result, Erin decided to pivot to studying communications. This ended up being a natural shift. The communications program focused on mass communications and communications as a social and cultural force. Human information processing concepts brought in some psychology as well. Erin refers to herself as a media junkie who wanted to understand how it influences people Some of Erin’s first roles were in MarCom positions, but not all were with technology companies. MarCom is marketing communications, but with marketing in general, the same terms can mean different things at different companies. “If you ever look at job descriptions and you see a title, you can’t just go by the name of a job. You actually have to look at what the job description is to figure out if what you think it says is what it is. But marketing communications at that point meant more of the mass communications…creating publications….” – Erin O’Quinn, on MarCom positions In college Erin became the editor of a newsletter. She learned how to do layouts and graphic design in addition to doing some writing. Her first job was with the San Jose Real Estate Board, made up of local chapters to help members become realtors. Erin would send out the newsletter, but the company also realized Erin knew how to fix computers. When people had questions and IT was not around, people would ask Erin. She became the IT department and the marketing department. The company was switching from Novell to Microsoft. They wanted Erin to help with this transition, and when she asked for formal training to fill knowledge and experience gaps, it was denied. She was worried a poor outcome could be career limiting and began looking for other jobs. The transition to Microsoft, however, did go smoothly. “But I did switch from there into tech because I realized I enjoyed the idea of being a little more hands on with technology, but I like the marketing side. So, I went to a tech company….” – Erin O’Quinn The company Erin worked for developed a back end for search engines like HotBot and Yahoo. Erin accepted a job as an executive assistant at this company but told her boss she would only take it with the understanding that she did not want to be an executive assistant in a year. “I told my boss at the time, ‘I will take this job if you promise me that I won’t be your assistant in a year. ‘I knew that I wasn’t somebody who wanted to be an administrative assistant. I wanted in at the company because it sounded fun and the people were interesting. And I loved not being the smartest person in the room. I was guaranteed to do that at this company. I knew I would be learning all the time.” – Erin O’Quinn Around 6 weeks into the job, Erin was asked to help support the company at a trade show. She expressed a willingness to learn and said yes to her first trade show. The next time she was asked to support the company at a trade show, Erin had to run the entire event in New York City to fill in for a colleague. She learned about unions, working with vendors, and how to set up the booth at the trade show. Since it was a small team, Erin needed to know how to demo the company’s products, who to ask if there were in-depth questions she could not answer, and how to talk to anyone who came by the booth whether it was a CIO or any other member of a technical team. Erin loved the events side. It allowed her to work with many different people at the company. She liked the challenge of either figuring things out or failing. Were there other reasons Erin didn’t want to be an executive assistant long-term? Being an executive assistant (or EA) was more about taking care of an individual and less about doing the work of marketing. Erin was more interested in the marketing work than being a support character. Erin had worked in her own department before and was changing jobs to become someone’s assistant. After developing skills and experience in her previous marketing role, she wanted to keep growing. Many assistants stay in those roles for a long time, and Erin didn’t want to stay in it long because the shift to something else is more difficult if you are an assistant for a long time. Erin wanted to set the agenda and intention with her boss up front, and it made things easier to shift out of the assistant role later. “I wasn’t asking for crazy money. I wasn’t asking for a lot of things, but if I was willing to fight for myself that way up front, he knew that I was going to be somebody interesting to work with. And I think that actually helped me get the job…. I love being a generalist whenever possible. It’s more fun.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin was focused on ambition and optionality. Had Erin been interested in writing up to the point of doing the newsletter to make her a well-rounded communicator going into marketing? When in college, Erin assumed communications entailed either being in front of a camera or writing, thinking she needed to build skills in both areas. Erin tells the story of working with her roommate to resurrect a specific newsletter for the university. Erin used her experience in layouts, and the roommate did the editorial part. Even after Erin and her roommate left the university, the newsletter continued to build momentum thanks to their initial commitment to get it going again. Erin also did an internship at a phone book company. The phone books were published in English, Tagalog , Chinese, and Vietnamese to serve a large Asian community in San Diego. Erin would take translated ads and do layouts as well as reach out to local politicians to get endorsement letters. “I started advocacy in college, whether I knew it or not. I just followed the transcript and did it. It kind of got me set up, I guess, to do it later in life.” – Erin O’Quinn 12:28 – Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies What did the moves look like once Erin moved on from the executive assistant role? Erin grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and has been surrounded by tech since birth. Some of her family members worked for HP for their entire career. Erin’s mother works in the biotech / pharmaceutical industry, and her dad worked as a punch card programmer before he went on to a career in sales. Tech was booming at this time. There were lots of job opportunities, and it seemed like a good industry to enter. The web was still pretty new. Erin had learned HTML in college and filled in once when a webmaster (or website administrator) left. Erin worked on promotional items and ran events. Because she was good at it, Erin was asked to run all the trade shows for the company, and it became her primary job. This involved things like handling logistics, working with product management and product marketing teams, and sometimes working with development teams. Erin had to ensure the technical specifications for what would be demonstrated in the booth were properly captured and that the booth was set up properly. Understanding servers and networking was very helpful because Erin helped set up the booth and especially in cases where they had technical issues at the booth. Erin needed to know other things like how to have people behave, how they should dress, the colors to use, and how to handle marketing for the events. Erin says she eventually became the promo queen at this company. “I was always having fun and always getting to learn. I never felt like I was being stuck in a role. If I wanted to know something different, I asked the question. That first tech company I worked at was very happy to get me involved. They had a very open culture.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin describes some of the cultural elements at this first tech company where she worked (during the .com era) – super soaker fights, barbecue competitions, etc. “…Different levels of creativity. I loved seeing that it wasn’t just the people who were supposed to be creative. By outside standards everybody assumes that in marketing you’re supposed to be the creative ones because you’re coming up with the visual and the brand and the words. But I loved how creative the development teams were and how creative the IT teams even could be at times…. I gained respect not just for people’s technical knowledge or how they could wordsmith but seeing every person at this organization as wholistic people who have multiple skills. I think that also prepared me for being able to move into different organizations after that in a more meaningful way….It was a blast.” – Erin O’Quinn The unique nature of Erin’s role allowed her to meet every person at the company that went from 65 people to 1300 people at one point. Erin worked with events, internal events, and internal communications. She would assist with content creation for company meetings and handle the meeting logistics. What did Erin take away from this experience in terms of the company culture she wanted for future jobs? Erin calls out the way people interacted and supported each other as something she really liked. There is a difference between doing an activity because we have to and doing it because we want to spend time with the people involved in the activity. “To work with people that made me happy to be in the office with every day was something that I decided I needed in a career, and that’s something that stuck with me….” – Erin O’Quinn Based on the cultural exposure she’d had to that point, Erin was able to look at a new company and contemplate what about it she wanted to be a part of. Erin took a brief break from working in the tech industry after a time of layoffs at her company and worked as a merchandising coordinator at Technology Credit Union. The company had a dual focus – expanding their membership and to whom they were allowed to market. Erin realized quickly into the merchandising coordinator that the work came in spurts. Promotions happened once per quarter and took about 4 weeks to handle effective. Things were quiet the rest of the time, and Erin didn’t like this. As Erin began looking for other things to occupy her time, she found a couple of different teams inside the company with no support from marketing. The first was the business development team who would reach out to businesses (tech companies) and promote membership. “And what I rapidly realized was that the people who were doing that were very good at business development at a credit union, but they didn’t know how tech people thought. They didn’t know their audience.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin felt her experience running tech events could help the business development team communicate more effectively with their audience. She created some marketing packages with branded designs and supported their events. The business development team needed to rethink items they might use for free giveaways because of the tech audience, for example. There was a mortgage team Erin worked with to build out their first set of marketing materials to be seen as consistent with the organization. Erin continued to expand her reach in addition to supporting the promotions each quarter. Helping those other groups as well made the job much more interesting to her. Did the additional work Erin did increase her value to the overall organization? She believes it did. The job market was tough during this time, but for credit unions it is about growing and maintaining the membership. Erin was primarily concerned about 2 things – being useful and picking up skills. Previously when she worked at the tech company, Erin was learning on a daily basis. “How can I make sure that I keep that trajectory? Because otherwise, I will get bored, and I don’t do well in boredom…. So, I wanted to find ways to keep myself entertained, and I did. But it drew me back to tech.” – Erin O’Quinn Did Erin communicate the additional work she was doing to her leadership in 1-1 meetings, for example? Erin’s manager knew what she was doing as did the vice president (VP) above her manager. Sometimes the VP would assign her exploratory projects or ideas to test directly. She would get random tasks. They didn’t always lead somewhere, but each one was an opportunity to learn something, making it interesting for Erin. John says Erin was a utility player in this role. She agrees and says this is a pattern for her over time. Erin tells a story from her previous role at Inktomi that involved buying as many matchbox Ferraris she could purchase in San Francisco as a joke for the CEO of the company. “I always ended up with these very bizarre tasks because I would just be up for whatever was needed.” – Erin O’Quinn Breaks between event seasons gave her the room to be creative in the work she took on. 23:55 – A Return to the Tech Industry When Erin transitioned back to working for a tech company after working at the credit union, she returned to a MarCom role and at first wondered what the pace would be like. She worked for a startup-like public company called Opsware. Erin’s first project after getting the job was focused on the company’s new executive briefing center. She tells the story of needing to have a chairman make some final decisions and then slammed into him by accident in one of the office hallways upon their first meeting. Despite the collision, she did get the answers needed, and her managers were impressed. Part of Erin’s work was doing case studies and trying to establish a corporate brand. The company was also building their sales teams around this time. Erin would work with different groups to make usable tools to serve those teams. As the company became more event focused, Erin jumped back into trade shows again, and since this was her comfort zone, anything else they did would be easy. “I was able to bring some of my expertise in the job, but I was also spending a good portion of the time learning about the technology…. I went from a caching and search engine company into a true enterprise software company. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know how the sales teams would operate. I didn’t understand what was needed, but I learned fast because everybody was willing to talk to me and tell me. Being in a company where they want you to learn and they force you to learn, I was all in for drinking from that fire hose.” – Erin O’Quinn When Erin asked people to show her how to demo products so she could fill in for anyone working the booth as needed, they were a little surprised. Erin was insistent on learning the products, only wanting people to help her understand the pitch for a basic understanding, which opened the door to pass a conversation on to someone else if more depth was needed. As the product portfolio expanded, Erin continued to learn the remainder of the products. Erin refers to her time at Opsware as fast, furious, and fun. She later would go on to work for VMware but realized she was at the first VMworld event representing Opsware. At that conference she ran into a number of former colleagues from Inktomi. “That is when I realized I guess how strong of a world technology really was and that who you know sometimes comes in handy.” – Erin O’Quinn Erin also tells us she stores many different pieces of information in her memory that she will find a use for some time later. How you packed a suitcase might help give you a creative idea for shipping something to an event, for example. Candy is expensive to get through customs when going to Europe, for example. Certain things we learn which we will never forget come in handy in other parts of our job. 28:29 – The Strategic Side of Marketing In addition to tactical items, did Erin get involved in some of the strategic sides of marketing like cultivating the voice of the brand? Erin says she worked on a lot of the presentations for the company. She cannot take credit for the voice of the company but was able to work with a marketing agency her company worked with. They had to figure out how to make something look simple and complicated at the same time or prove the complexity was there without showing it to make the message more accessible to people. Erin worked on creating the visual identity of the company and not specifically the brand or logo. Part of that work was translating what they wanted (which might be complex words) to someone who was very graphically inclined in a way that was understandable. “How do these pieces of information get carried through so that it can be explained either very simply, or prove that complexity to show that we’re handling the complexity in a simple way? That process definitely has helped me along the way…. It was learning new skills more around translation and connecting than it was about how to build a strategy for that company until we were acquired, and then I got a chance to do a little bit more hands on with some of the strategic planning.” – Erin O’Quinn, on developing a visual identity for the company Opsware was acquired by HP and became part of HP Software. Once this happened, Erin was one of the only people from Opsware who was not placed in product marketing. They left Erin in corporate marketing, but she did not really fit into a specific bucket because she is a generalist. The event team thought Erin worked for them for a long time, but they later realized she was not part of their org chart. Erin still supported some of their events. Erin was able to work with the brand team, the search engine optimization team, and some others. “Every skill you pick up at some point in your career is going to help you some place else whether you know it or not. That would be one of the biggest things I could stress in that journey for me.” – Erin O’Quinn In working with the brand team, Erin also worked with executive communications for different types of events (a user conference, a sales event, etc.). She was more focused on logistics but got to be in the room to hear conversations about how to convey strategy. “So, I didn’t shape it. I never would take credit for any of those parts, but being there and being in that room where it happens, you learn a lot as to how that works…. You can see the process and then extrapolate that into something else that you can actually build yourself later.” – Erin O’Quinn 32:52 – Communication with Executives Did Erin apply the thing she was learning from being a part of the executive communications in her own communication with executives? This is very difficult for the individual contributor. Erin says her first 3 jobs working in small organizations really prepared her for this. She knew the CEO at each of those companies on a first name basis. This experience built a fearlessness when communicating with executives. Erin tells the story of a developer who came to her at one of these companies and said he wanted to start a cricket team. When Erin encouraged him to go speak to the CFO (whom she knew on a first name basis), he was terrified. Erin offered to introduce this person to the CFO to make it easier. “By knowing them and them knowing me and becoming more comfortable just remembering that they’re people before they are anything else made it much more comfortable for me to do that. So, I do feel privileged that I had that opportunity, but it stuck with me.” – Erin O’Quinn When we speak to executives as experts in what we do, we need to remember executives are experts in what they do (running something much bigger). Understand what an executive’s position is and what matters to them about what you’re going to ask. You might need to give them more context to understand the full details of what you’re asking or understand that you’re asking the wrong person. If you need an executive’s buy in on something, Erin suggests getting to know the person’s executive assistant. “They are much more approachable as a rule, and they are the gate keepers to a lot of executives. So never, ever, in any company treat an executive assistant poorly because they are the most helpful people on the planet. Or they can be very difficult if you treat them badly.” – Erin O’Quinn, on treating executive assistants well. Executive assistants will let you know what your level of access is to an executive. Never take it personally if an executive assistant provides feedback on a better way to approach something. Take it as information they are giving you to help you. When someone tries to help us by explaining their expertise, we should listen and not take it as a critique. “A lot of people can take critique very personally, and the only way to grow, I think, is to be given guidance. If everything that you do is perfect the first time, you don’t get an opportunity to learn because you don’t understand how to fix something. It just means you’re lucky in some situations…or you’re not stretching. If you’re not willing to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while, you’re not going to get that chance to grow…. If somebody offers you an opportunity, unless you know you can’t really put the time into it, say yes. Say yes as often as your schedule will allow because it’s some form of a skill that will help you…. Don’t necessarily go too far backwards, but if something is new, sideways or up…say yes because you never know what skill or what contact or what benefit you’re going to get out of that.” – Erin O’Quinn John says we’ve boiled down this pattern to “if you’re always comfortable, you are never growing.” If Erin gets too comfortable, she gets bored. Boredom is her brain’s way of saying she isn’t doing enough and to try something else. How do we know what we should say no to? We should not take on more than we can physically do or our time will allow us to do successfully. If we need to sacrifice quality in our base work for something, it is not something we should do. For things you really want to do but really don’t have the time, Erin would recommend addressing it with your manager. Communicate the value of what you want to do, and ask if there’s a way to make better use of your time to do it. Be willing to advocate for yourself with your management in this way. This shows initiative and indicates career growth. It might let your manager know that you’d like to do more or take on more responsibility, and it gives them an opportunity to provide some of that rather than you seeking it elsewhere. “Don’t be afraid to have the conversation with your manager. If they say no, then you know where they stand, and that’s not a bad thing either because sometimes they are also doing things to protect you. They may know something big is coming, and they don’t want you to take on something you can’t handle because more is coming in short order.” – Erin O’Quinn Mentioned in the Outro We can advocate for ourselves or the work we do and its impact / value. When Erin reached out to local politicians for endorsements, it was about the work and its impact. The story was similar when Erin started helping other teams inside the credit union who did not have support from marketing. She knew her work would be valuable to help them. When advocating for the work we do, be sure to communicate the work you do and the impact you’re making in 1-1 meetings with your manager. Erin did this, and we think it’s part of the reason she was given more and more responsibilities. Erin advocated for herself and her career in when taking the role as an executive assistant through the transparent conversation she had with her manager at the time. Erin also advocated for herself when it came to having others show her how to demo products in the booth at a trade show. We also see an element of how industry expertise can apply to another company not focused on the same industry. Erin used her knowledge of working at a technology company to help co-workers at the credit union understand technology professionals as an audience to improve the message. Maybe you have a deep expertise in regulatory compliance or working through audits. Maybe you’ve worked for a service provider or hosting company and can take some of what you have learned to another company to improve their operations. Maybe you worked at a technology vendor or value added reseller and can help improve vendor relationships for the company. Amy Arnold used her expertise from working in the public sector to be effective in future roles such as pre-sales. Check out these episodes for more of the story. Episode 281 – Packets Don’t Lie: Quality of Service for Technical Exploration in Network Engineering with Amy Arnold (1/2) Episode 282 – All the Networking Things: Project Management, Pre-Sales, and Broadening a Technical Specialty with Amy Arnold (2/2) Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page .…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Controlled and Proactive: Managing Your Career During Uncertain Times 38:55
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How should we be managing our careers during times of uncertainty? News of layoffs and economic uncertainty induces paralyzing fear and anxiety in many of us. What can we really control in the midst of it all, if anything? This week in episode 329, we’ll talk through a 5-pillar framework with actionable steps you can take now to be more proactive in your career even when it’s a difficult job market. Whether you’re employed and feeling uncertain or recently unemployed, we’ll share prescriptive advice and helpful AI prompts for forward progress so you can work through the challenges and not get frozen in worry. Be sure to check out our free Career Uncertainty Action Guide to access the AI prompts discussed in today’s show. Original Recording Date: 05-15-2025 Topics – Facing Uncertainty with an Actionable Plan, Pillar 1: Building Financial Resilience, Pillar 2: Maximizing Current Job Performance and Visibility, Pillar 3: Execute Strategic Skill Development, Pillar 4: Effective Networking and Relationship Building, Pillar 5: Managing Your Mindset and Control Your Narrative, AI Prompts and the Call to Action 1:30 – Facing Uncertainty with an Actionable Plan Though not feeling 100% when this was recorded, John and Nick wanted to get this episode on an important topic out in order to help our listeners. Maybe you’re coming into this episode with a lot of anxiety. We continue to see news about tech industry layoffs and economic uncertainty. It feels pretty heavy. We spoke about fear, uncertainty, and how to take control in Episode 70 – Taking Control During Uncertain Times . Maybe you feel secure but are hearing whispers about layoffs at your company and are beginning to worry. Maybe you’ve been impacted by a layoff. We see you. We hear you. Maybe you’re trying to recession-proof your skills, feel stuck at your current employer, or have become highly specialized and don’t know what to do. Wherever you happen to be, those feelings are real. The biggest challenge we each have is the risk to job security and financial stability. Though it may seem wrong, forces outside of our control do affect our careers. Today our intent is not to sit and dwell on problems like a difficult job market. We’re focusing on a practical plan to help you regain a sense of control with actionable steps you can take to proactively navigate this period. Our purpose is to provide career advice we wish we’d had earlier in our careers. We want to help listeners accelerate career progression, increase job satisfaction, and be more effective in your existing role. When things feel unstable and when we see layoffs at our company or in our industry, it’s ok to take more of a defensive approach. It’s rational to feel anxious when finances and job security are threatened by layoffs or economic uncertainty. It’s ok to feel that way. We’re here to help channel that energy into proactive career management. We’ve broken this down into 5 pillars / 5 areas where you can take action starting right now. Building financial resilience Maximizing your current job performance and visibility Executing strategic skill development Engaging in effective networking and relationship building Managing your mindset and controlling your narrative 5:01 – Pillar 1: Building Financial Resilience A buffer against the risk of layoffs and income instability is having a savings account with 3-6 months’ living expenses. Do you know the real numbers for your household expenses? If you don’t, take time this week to determine what they are. What is that bare bones minimum set of expenses? How long could the savings you have right now actually last based on your expenses? In Episode 299 – Chronic Stress: Connecting the Dots between Layoffs and Burnout with Cait Donovan Cait Donovan mentioned You Need a Budget or YNAB as one option to help track your expenses. There are certainly other tools to help with this. Maybe you could decide right now which subscriptions you would cancel or what you would stop spending on if your source of income was suddenly cut (i.e. job loss). We covered some of these items in Episode 57 – Preparing for Unexpected Opportunities Part 5 – Personal Finance . Having a liquid savings account that you can easily access and eliminating high interest debt will bring greater peace of mind if something happens to your job. John is thankful for the jobs and roles he’s had over time enabled him to build an emergency fund. He shares how much peace of mind it brought after being laid off from Google in 2023. Catch the full story on that in Episode 220 – John Got Fired . “It let me basically wake up, read the termination e-mail, and go back to sleep. I didn’t even wake up my wife to let her know. This is not great news, but we are in a financial position to survive. And it’s not a problem.” – John White, on the peace of mind that comes from having an emergency fund Nick mentions he’s had success with building up savings by making it automatic. Maybe you could make an automatic draft from each paycheck to consistently save more starting right now. John mentions he has a separate savings account for his emergency fund that money goes into every time he gets paid. It’s a great psychological barrier to spending any of it. Having an emergency fund in an account that is separate from everything else is step 1. Once you have started this and are contributing to it, then you can begin shopping for a high yield savings account which could earn you something on an annual basis. It’s important to know and understand the benefits you’re getting from your employer. Do you know, for example, what the company policy is on severance packages in the event that they have layoffs? Is that in an employee handbook somewhere? Consider the cost of things like COBRA in your state (continued health insurance after job loss for a period of time). Expect an increase from what you were paying through your employer. In the case of a mass layoff, there may be a 60-day WARN period in your state. Do some research on this. John mentions if it’s a small layoff, the company may not be required to do this. Make sure you understand the vesting schedule for any applicable retirement accounts tied to your employer or RSUs (restricted stock units) that are part of your compensation package. We’ve created a guide that we will reference again a little bit later in the discussion. In the guide is an AI prompt focused on finances that you can use with ChatGPT, Claude, or your favorite generative AI tool. This prompt will interview you to help work through assessing the current state of your finances (which is often a high stakes emotional process). It considers things like understanding savings, retirement funds, current cost of living, and what you could cut out in an emergency. The prompt also has some examples of how the conversation might go. We hope you find it helpful! The link to our uncertainty guide and a link to the above prompt can be found here: nerd-journey.com/uncertaintyguide . 10:50 – Pillar 2: Maximizing Current Job Performance and Visibility Our best defense against being let go or laid off is demonstrating that we are providing value to the organization. Visibility builds internal leverage and credibility in both uncertain times and in more prosperous times. Ideally, we want our personal brand and reputation to stand on its own and make people hesitate to cut us because of our importance to the organization. Action points for this pillar… We talked about some of this in Episode 70 – Taking Control During Uncertain Times , and it’s worth your time to go back and listen. Track your accomplishments, and focus on the quantifiable results you have delivered or the impact you’ve made. Quantify whenever possible! Think about reduced process time, value delivered to a project, etc. Leverage feedback from others to quantify your impact. Think about how you can be valuable and adaptable. What is the unique combination of skills you use to bring value to the organization? Proactively make your impact known by: Giving your manager updates Sharing wins in team meetings when appropriate (not in a boastful way) and offering to help others Documenting your contributions Documenting our accomplishments / contributions is the required input to be able to tell the story of what you are doing. Remember that writing is thinking as we discussed with guest Josh Duffney back in Episode 156 – Better Notes, Better You with Josh Duffney (1/2) and helps us formulate the way to say things. We should be sharing our accomplishments with our manager in 1-1 discussions. That would not be the entire conversation, but if you can share something that worked really well, share it. Keep a copy of your accomplishments saved somewhere in your personal files so you have access should you be separated from your company. Documented accomplishments should translate to bullet points on your private resume or LinkedIn describing the quantified results. John suggests we consider practicing the 30-60 second value statement out loud so we can easily explain it if someone asks. It’s important to understand whether you are or are not delivering value to the organization. One way to get feedback on this is sharing with your boss. If your boss says something wasn’t valuable, at least you will know. An episode that pairs nicely with this advice is Episode 284 – Draft Your Narrative: Writing and Building a Technical Portfolio with Jason Belk (2/2) . It’s important to acknowledge that we can follow all the advice given in this episode very well, be valuable to an organization, and still be impacted by a layoff. The advice we’re sharing is critically important because if you are terminated, the work you have done turns into something that builds your resume with quantifiable value statements that you can demonstrate and speak to effectively. From there you can customize your resume for an application based on what they are looking for in the job description. It’s worth putting in the effort now. 15:31 – Pillar 3: Execute Strategic Skill Development We want to give ourselves industry longevity in our careers and increase the optionality, regardless of whether we stay at a company or go elsewhere. Think about the key skills you have today. What will be resilient and valuable in the market? Maybe it’s knowledge of public cloud technologies, a scripting language or automation framework, cybersecurity concepts and principles, or foundational awareness of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning. Don’t overlook the fundamentals! As you think through the skills you want to build or sharpen, consider the following: What will help you be better at your job right now and prepare you for a future opportunity? Is the skill area you’re looking at focused on a technology your company already uses and plans to use long term? Do you need to go deeper in this area or learn more about it to make what you’re doing more valuable? Does this focus area provide growth for you? Joseph Griffiths told us in Episode 327 – A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2) that growth can take different forms throughout our careers. Growth for you may mean technical skills, but it could also be communication skills. Will the skills you are building be valuable to other companies? Investigate job descriptions to get feedback on the skill(s) to intend to sharpen or build before taking action. Look at job descriptions for roles similar to yours, closely related to yours, or something you aspire to do. Each job description will have required skills that you might not have today. Nick says you’re looking for a double check mark. How can you execute on either building a new skill or sharpening an existing one? Employer training budgets – do you have funds from your employer to use for this purpose? If paying for training yourself, consider cost-effective options like Pluralsight, Udemy, Coursera, or many others. Consider free options like YouTube as well. What if you blocked 2-3 hours of your week for learning? Maybe it’s during work hours, but maybe it’s on your own time. Be consistent, and treat it like an important meeting you cannot miss to build skills over time. John mentioned a resource called Google Cloud Skills Boost that is somewhat neutral in its technology approach which helps you learn transferrable skills even outside Google Cloud technologies. Many companies have public facing training / lab resources which are free to low cost. What if you only have limited time for strategic skill building? How does one decide what to learn? If you had a list of 3-4 things that give you the double check mark as we discussed, you should think about which one is most valuable to both what you do today and what would be next (i.e. longevity in the market). Nick suggests weighing value to your current employer at 60%. It’s important to be good at what you do to continue doing it for the time being. John says this also depends on how uncertain you feel about your position. If your company is having consistent layoffs and things in your role feel very uncertain, for example, you may want to prioritize the skills that are more valuable in the job market. It’s important to tailor the selections to your situation. Also consider your learning style. Do you prefer to start with going as deep as you can in a new area or with a high-level conceptual overview? Think about technology waves and trends. What is interesting to you? What is real vs. just hype? Consider investigating areas that might be the next technology wave. These suggestions are great to keep in mind as we proceed to the next pillar. 21:46 – Pillar 4: Effective Networking and Relationship Building Invest in this now because your network is your safety net, information source, and opportunity, engine. It becomes even more important when things are uncertain. John references an epidemic of AI-generated resumes and AI screening tools that’s causing a bit of a grid lock. Employee referrals are even more important now. Remember the people who refer you for a job role are going to get asked about your strengths and if you are a fit for a specific role. Even an indirect referral such as someone telling you a company is hiring for a specific type of role is helpful. You can investigate this role, see who you might know at the company, and determine if you might be a fit. We don’t want to start building a network when we begin to feel uncertain, but if that’s you, now is a great time to begin. We want to do it consistently and continuously over time if possible. We want to nurture network connections but adapt to what is happening right now. John recommends leading with empathy and checking in on people in your network. Ask how they are doing right now. Offer to help or share relevant information before you ask for anything. Don’t forget to do networking inside your company. Understand the challenges of others outside your team. Who are those leaders within the greater company that you might be interested in working for? Many times, in an economic-based layoff, people will be given time to find other roles within the organization upon being terminated. For networking external to your company, LinkedIn is extremely valuable. Consider participating in online / in-person communities related to your job or the technology you use. Stay engaged with these communities! Actions you can take… Identify 3 people in your network that you haven’t spoken to recently. Reach out this month just to connect with them and see how they are doing. Nick suggests combining this with pillar 3 and asking people what they are learning about and why they are learning about it. This is not asking for a job referral but rather a curiosity and opportunity for feedback on what you want to learn / the skills you plan to develop. John went to LinkedIn and downloaded his connections to a CSV file. He chose a few different people at random to contact based on the strength of connection to that person. This exercise only costs you time. Each person you contact will have a different perspective on the job market, the technology community at large, and the skills that are needed to thrive within it. It provides a diversity of thought that we can learn from. John would highly encourage a similar process for you. Start with people you can think of inside your network, and don’t forget to choose some people randomly. For more tips on professional networking, check out this recent episode for advice – Episode 307 – Sales Skills: Professional Networking and Continued Practice with Ramzi Marjaba (1/2) . 27:27 – Pillar 5: Managing Your Mindset and Control Your Narrative The actions we’ve discussed may seem difficult to take. Fear can cause paralysis and lead to poor decisions. It’s ok to feel fear, but we want to shift our focus to the controllable things we discussed in pillars 1-4. Combat paralysis and inaction by taking action. Consider breaking larger tasks into smaller tasks. If you need to update your resume, it might seem like a mountainous task. What’s the smallest possible step? Maybe it’s updating a job title. Could you schedule 15 minutes to do that today? Even small progress is still progress that we can celebrate. It’s about small, incremental gains over time. See also our discussions on Finish by Jon Acuff with guest host Jason Gass, specifically the one about using data to celebrate progress: Episode 272 – Book Discussion: Finish, Part 1 – The Day after Perfect and Cut Your Goal in Half Episode 273 – Book Discussion: Finish, Part 2 – Deliberate Time Investments and Avoiding Distractions Episode 274 – Book Discussion: Finish, Part 3 – Get Rid of Your Secret Rules and Use Data to Celebrate Your Imperfect Progress Episode 275 – Book Discussion: Finish, Part 4 – The Day before Done and Perfectionism’s Final Roadblocks Try reframing your perspective. Could this time of uncertainty push you to learn something new you had deprioritized? What if this leads to a role that is a better fit for you? If nervous or anxious energy keeps you up at night, what if you worked on learning something fun for an hour to make yourself tired? Reading a book is a great way to learn and to wind down in the evening. John recently took some time to reboot his blog site – vjourneyman.com and made a blog post describing the way he setup the new site . When John started, he wasn’t even sure his WordPress site was still running. But he broke the task down into smaller pieces, eventually changing to a static site instead of just a WordPress site. John says it was a fun small project he did on his own time that got him energized to write more content. The energy carried through to his day job, and he’s been energized to write more content moving forward as a result. John mentions an article he’s working on about effective use of AI prompts. Stay tuned for that once it is published! Nick says when he takes a break to work on podcast stuff he can feel a difference in energy. John and Nick remind listeners that they are not immune to times of uncertainty. John’s blog project is an example of something he did to energize and empower himself. John is also modeling a pattern we’ve seen – developing proof of work / learning in public. We talked about learning something new in pillar 3. If you’re learning something new, could you write about it and publish what you learned or put your scripts on GitHub? Think about what you can generate that is public facing so people can understand what you’re learning and how you think. This is one way to own your story. John’s blog project illustrates adaptability, resilience, and proactivity. He built a new blog site and is planning to write content on topics he’s not previously written about. When the task list gets long, it’s hard to decide what you should do next. Sometimes we just need to pick something we can finish instead of spending energy picking which thing. If something is easily classifiable as in the top 5 things we need to do, it’s fine to go ahead and do it. If someone needs to reclassify your tasks and let you know something is an emergency, you will probably hear from them. 34:17 – AI Prompts and the Call to Action John created an AI prompt to help with our mindset. This is another outcome from John’s tinkering with generative AI. He prefers Google Gemini, but the tool doesn’t matter so much for you. The mindset prompt can be found in the uncertainty guide. Copy and paste it into your generative AI tool of choice. The prompt will instruct the AI to be a helper and motivator for you and help unfreeze you. It will interact with and brainstorm with you on the most important actions to take a positive step forward and could even create a prioritized checklist for you. The page on our site containing the prompt will have an example output for reference. Your interaction will be unique to you based on the answers you provide. Remember this does not have to be perfect and that something is better than nothing. If you do use the prompt, we’d love your feedback! Reach out to John or Nick on LinkedIn or e-mail us – nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com . Your action challenge is to visit nerd-journey.com/uncertaintyguide to download the free career uncertainty action guide which includes the advice from today’s episode with checklists and AI prompts to help you. The resources inside the uncertainty guide are divided into two categories – employed but feeling uncertain or recently unemployed. This is about helping people. If you can help us, help people, we’d really appreciate that. Remember we also have a Layoff Resources Page that you can utilize. We believe you can do things to influence your career path even during difficult times. You cannot control everything, but you CAN control what you do. So, what will you do? Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page .…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 A Manager’s Preoccupation: 1-1 Meetings and Focused Prioritization with Joseph Griffiths (2/2) 43:18
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Your manager has a preoccupation, but do you know what it is? The answer reveals a clue about their focus and the culture this manager will foster. Join us in episode 328 as Joseph Griffiths shares advice for making 1-1s with your manager and skip-level manager more productive, guidance for the aspiring managers listening, and observations from managing both technical and sales teams. We look at all this through the lens of a manager’s focused prioritization, the difficult part of being consistent, and the reasons we should all use boundaries and limits to improve the quality of our work. Original Recording Date: 04-17-2025 Joseph Griffiths is a tech industry veteran with experience across technical sales, enterprise architecture, and systems administration. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Joseph, check out Episode 327 – A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2) . Topics – Optimizing 1-1 Meetings with Your Manager, Priorities as a Manager, Observations from Managing Different Personas, Manager Preoccupations and Culture Indicators, Advice for Future Managers 2:55 – Optimizing 1-1 Meetings with Your Manager What would Joseph tell the individual contributor who isn’t used to 1-1 meetings with their manager or doesn’t know how to leverage them effectively? “Everyone appreciates a human perspective…. If I as a manager come to the table and say, ‘here’s my agenda for the 1-1 that I expect you to do every week,’ it’s going to be real hard to come to me and be honest about the things you’re struggling with. It’s really, really hard to talk to someone who’s only business. As a manager it’s a lot easier if I just keep it business because then if issues happen or stuff it’s less emotional entanglement. But I think it’s the wrong way to do it. My job is to serve the people. My goal for 1-1 was to first breed trust and comfort.” – Joseph Griffiths The secondary goal of Joseph’s 1-1s was to allow the individual to share items that require his help, encouraging honesty about the challenges. Sometimes, a manager does need to use the 1-1 to deliver specific information that is best shared 1-1 (i.e. compensation changes, policy changes, etc.). Joseph usually had 1 thing he wanted to cover with the individual per 1-1. The rest of the meeting was for the individual to control the agenda. Joseph would recommend we take 5 minutes before a 1-1 with our manager to think about the overarching challenge we’re having rather than what is top of mind. “It’s very easy to walk into there and come out of a bad meeting the hour before and go, ‘I just had a horrible meeting and this is why.’ But is that really the problem, or should we be talking about something that is bigger or wider or more challenging? I think spending 5 minutes preparing with a OneNote sheet or a Notepad or whatever and just writing down…these are the 3 things that I want to talk about…and I need either some guidance for them or I need you to knock down a wall. That’s another one. Ask your manager to knock down a wall.” – Joseph Griffiths, on 1-1s with your manager Every manager is different, so you will need to feel things out with your manager when it comes to knocking down walls. Joseph says we can also bring ideas to the 1-1 for things that might improve the health of the business. If our manager agrees with our ideas, they can support the ideas and give us greater visibility within the organization. Joseph mentions when we have an idea, it is unique and special. But it’s also something we are likely to spend extra energy and effort doing. Joseph consistently sought to support innovative ideas from his team members and promote them up to his leaders. This kind of thing makes both the manager and more importantly the individual contributor look good. People often bring only their problems to their manager, but don’t forget to bring ideas too. Nick says we could all use more practice thinking about those higher-level problems. Even front-line managers need to do this when communicating with their own managers (i.e. think a level higher). Joseph tells a story about a friend of his who is a CEO. This person goes to lunch with his team each Friday. Afterward, he gets a pencil and a pad of paper, turns off his cell phone, and goes to a nearby park to think about his business for a few hours. Anything that comes to him gets written on the pad of paper. On Monday morning, the CEO begins executing on the things he thought of while at the park. This exercise allows him to be more proactive. “I think we could all benefit from turning off the notifiers, turning off the noise, and spending an hour just thinking about where we are and actually making some plans. That proactivity is missing…. The notifiers in the world that we live in are very dopamine driven by trying to get you to react…. We get so busy that we’re reacting to everything that we don’t take time to think, and then we don’t prioritize the most important activities….” – Joseph Griffiths, on a CEO friend’s proactivity It’s easy to be overly busy. Someone once told Joseph, “Busy is the new stupid.” While he did not understand it at the time, he certainly does now. Take 5-10 minutes before 1-1s to think about what you want to say. These 1-1s are opportunities to expand your influence. Take advantage! What about 1-1s with a skip level leader? Joseph encourages us to get a human connection with them just like you would with a customer. This could be the sports team they like or something else. A human connection opens the door to more conversations in the future. “You don’t want to stand around and complain…not a good move. You want to have a conversation that leaves that person thinking, ‘this is a really smart person. This is a person who is doing really good work.’ So, the best thing you can bring to that are stories of things that are going well with your customers in sales or going well with your job function. Those stories are going to be something that they take away from that and share with other people. You’re going to be giving them value…human connection and value are the 2 things you want to provide in that skip-level.” – Joseph Griffiths Second-line managers have direct reports who are managers. They have heard about all the problems and know what is going on because they talk about them daily. Joseph says the skip-level 1-1 is not an opportunity to illustrate problems. 9:42 – Priorities as a Manager How do you optimize your tasks as a manager and focus on the right things? This is something from Nick’s perspective, Joseph did very well as a manager. “It is really easy to get engaged in lots of things and doing lots of things ok. It’s much harder to be engaged in a few things and do them spectacularly. In any company we work for we will have millions of opportunities to do things. We need to choose to do the things that are, number 1, aligned with the role that we have…what we’re getting paid to do…and secondarily the things that have the highest overall payoff for the effort.” – Joseph Griffiths As a technical sales manager, Joseph had a key performance metric – the quota. It’s the only measurement that matters in sales. Joseph also had a team, and he had customers (the company’s customers). He often had to ask how what he was doing helped him hit the quota. There is a natural quarterly cadence in sales. There are a number of activities which happen automatically as a part of this cadence. “It can get very easy to just follow the cadence like you’re riding up and down a hill. And cadence is actually good. What you need to do is understand what you have to insert into the cadence to achieve the results of your KPI.” – Joseph Griffiths If Joseph knew his team would need 60 days to perform a necessary task in the sales cycle, he would plan for them to start those activities 180 days in advance, so everything is complete before it’s time for deal management. Sales can be somewhat unpredictable, so you then focus on what’s most important. “For me, my first job as a manager is the people that report to me. They are the most important thing.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph shares the story of a former manager named Josh. Anytime Joseph would call Josh, he would pick up the phone and tell Joseph “I have as much time as you need.” It wasn’t that Josh wasn’t busy. He just made time for the most important things. We should prioritize things by importance and let other things slide by. Joseph could vacuum his floor every day, but he doesn’t. He puts up with dirt for a couple of days and then vacuums. That is prioritization. Prioritize by importance within your job function. This principle does not change regardless of your job level (individual contributor, manager, vice president, owner of the company, etc.). Delegate to others if it is their job, and let them fail if needed. Do we lose sight of what the priorities are because of having too many tasks? Joseph says it’s negative aversion. We don’t like to say no and are afraid we will be perceived negatively if we do. We can lose sight of priorities at times, but it’s challenging to say no to things. Joseph once had a manager named Adam who told him, “You need to learn the great art of no, however…. You need to learn that because everything to you is, ‘yes and I’ll do it myself.’” Joseph doesn’t suggest we directly say no. We can be helpful without taking on things as a personal challenge. People don’t want to be seen as the one who says no or that they can’t do something. People also don’t want to be seen as someone who is overloaded. Both are triggers to people telling themselves they are unreliable. “As a society, Americans are people pleasers.” – Joseph Griffiths 15:12 – Observations from Managing Different Personas At technology vendors, there is normally a team of salespeople managed by a sales leader and a team of sales engineers managed by a technical leader. At times in his career, Joseph as the technical leader has needed to help manage both teams. What were some of the nuances of managing the technical side and the sales side that Joseph learned? Joseph has needed to do this 4 times as a manager, and in every case, his business partners had incredible sales teams. “The people I was working with were really good, really mature, and knew what they were doing. For the most part, I don’t know that they needed that much management.” – Joseph Griffiths, on filling in to manage a team of salespeople Joseph says salespeople are often more willing to express emotion, frustration, and challenge. Contrast this with technical people Joseph worked with who would bottle it up and go take it out some other way. “It was not unusual for one of the salespeople to call me up and yell at me. I never had that experience with my technical sales team…. They would yell at me and just need to vent the emotion. And after they’d get that venting of emotion out, then we could have a conversation about what the problem is and how we can fix it.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph observed that when salespeople came to him, they had already tried a number of avenues to solve a problem with no luck, and they expected immediate action. His technical team, by contrast, would usually give more advance notice of a problem. What salespeople needed was for Joseph to understand the problem, assure them he would help figure out a solution, and then get them to a solution. Joseph also noticed salespeople were experts at using manipulation and emotion to get what they need. They approached conversations as a negotiation, which was not something Joseph’s technical team did. It took him a little time to get used to this approach. “That’s just my limited experience observations. I loved working with sellers. I have so much respect for them because they do some of the hardest jobs. They find 999 noes before they find a yes, yet they get up every morning and go find that yes. And they get up every morning and keep pushing…. I couldn’t be more proud of the people I’ve worked with and how hard that is to do every day because I can’t do it every day, but they did it. They are amazing, amazing people. Probably the most resilient people we’ll meet on this earth are salespeople. I don’t know anybody else who can get beat up that much on a regular basis from both directions, both their management and their customers, and still keep getting up every morning. But they do it.” – Joseph Griffiths How does this differ from the technical team Joseph managed? The technical team didn’t normally bring problems in an emotional state. It was more about communicating the logical problem and sharing a potential solution. “Technical people want to learn skills. Salespeople want to be inspired…. It’s interesting to see the difference in development models. What I really need to do is just inspire people that it’s possible and give them the tools to go inspire their customers. That’s what salespeople need. Technical people…they need to feel confident about the solution. They need to feel confident about the capabilities that we’re offering and how we’re doing it.” – Joseph Griffiths A salesperson practices their craft most of the time by doing their job. A technical person might practice their craft by tinkering in a lab environment, reading a book, or something else. Suppose you provide a great sales pitch to a salesperson. They can repeat it and sell it. A technical person will, after hearing a great sales pitch, want to know how the solution works. 20:09 – Manager Preoccupations and Culture Indicators How has Joseph built a positive team culture during his time as a manager, including when he first started and during times of uncertainty (i.e. a pandemic)? Joseph mentions a researcher who created a culture indicator and made the claim that “culture is set by the first-level manager and their preoccupation.” There are 3 preoccupations for front-line managers. They reflect how easily information flows within an organization. Power – gaining more of it Rules – following the rules Mission of the company – achieving it Startups, for example, are mission-based organizations. Communication is wide open from the CEO down, and employees have many different responsibilities. The US military is a good example of a rules-based organization. There are rules for how much water to drink, what time you eat and sleep, and other things that make up a day’s schedule, etc. Operating on rules brings consistency of operation at a wide scale. “Every captain of every boat in the sea knows exactly what they’re supposed to do and where their orders are supposed to come from. It’s a very good structure for executing the same everywhere.” – Joseph Griffiths The one we see most often in corporate America is the manager pre-occupied with power / progressing up to the next level of leader. “They (companies) have all these things that they do to try to promote their culture. None of that matters if your boss is pre-occupied with getting their next job because that culture does not exist for you under that structure. Yes, the rest of the company had that. You don’t. The interesting challenge is yes, CEOs can set culture, but I wish more companies would spend more time ensuring that they have healthy culture at the first-line manager level because that’s where it really matters. And the problem is the mission, the culture of the company, rarely becomes the mission of the individual managers, especially in larger corporations…. I believed that when I was a first-line manager, that was the best place to establish culture, and that culture existed in my team and couldn’t go wider than that.” – Joseph Griffiths Managers pre-occupied with power don’t usually want to expand their team culture wider. It is their own desire to advance. Power-based culture is based on controlling the information (a selfish scenario). Motivations for being pre-occupied with power could be due to fear, because it’s the only way the person has ever known, or that it’s the best way to gain the next job. “Individual motivation is individual. It’s about preoccupation. If you have a manager that’s only pre-occupied with making themselves look good, it’s pretty obvious to you pretty quickly. And you’re just going to hope they go away eventually.” – Joseph Griffiths Was it easy for Joseph during his time as a manager to observe these preoccupations in his peers who were also managers? Joseph says we can observe it in others this way, but he was fortunate to be surrounded by peers focused mostly on the mission of the company and creating great cultures for their teams. “A lot of that is because our manager at the time, at that first round of hiring, was incredible at building that culture. So that was the preoccupation of that manager, and it became obvious in the people that she was hiring. This is where it does matter is the preoccupation…as a first-line manager, my boss’s preoccupation also affects my experience. Same thing just one level higher…every level creates its culture. Are we a collaborative culture that we’re working together to try to win together, or are we in competition against each other for who can do best?” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph defines culture as a preoccupation with something. “What are you pre-occupied with every day? That’s your real culture. We have lots of things that we profess to be culture, but when you sit down and you don’t have anything else you have to do, what do you do? You’ll figure out what your culture is pretty quick.” – Joseph Griffiths The question about preoccupation is an interesting one we can ask ourselves. Joseph says a lot of time is spent worrying about company culture, especially in hiring practices. Some companies have a top-level preoccupation with making money and nothing else, while others may have a top-level preoccupation with selling products and trying to do the right thing for the world in which we live. “It’s very hard to be a great manager in a terrible top-level culture…. Experiencing in our local area is one thing. What do we have above us that’s creating an overarching pressure on that? It’s very hard if you’re in a highly rules-based organization…trying to build a culture of mission-based focus can be challenging.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph recommends 2 books by Mike Abrashoff describing how he revolutionized the Navy (one of the worst performing ships in the Navy) through changing the culture to a mission-based culture while still following the rules: It’s Our Ship: The No-Nonsense Guide to Leadership It’s Your Ship Joseph shares a story from one of the Mike Abrashoff books. On Sundays there would be a meal for the entire crew on the deck of the ship. The officers would cut in front of the lower ranking service people in the food line. Captain Abrashoff went to the front of the line and started handing out plates and was the last person to get his food that first Sunday on the ship. This was Abrashoff’s initial step toward changing the culture from the top level, changing a rules-based organization into a mission-based organization. 28:57 – Advice for Future Managers If someone is passionate about changing the culture of a team / organization, should they become a manager? “How about the inverse? If you’re considering being a manager, you should think about what kind of manager you want to be. And you should probably base it on…an investigation of the managers you’ve most liked working for and the ones you have not liked working for and figure out what those differences are…. For me, it’s do more of the positive. Don’t do any of the negative.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph remembers a discussion he had with one of his first managers at VMware. Here’s what Joseph wanted to know. What did all the good managers you’ve ever had have in common? It was a specific set of behaviors. What did all the bad managers you’ve ever had have in common? This was also a specific set of behaviors. Joseph’s daughter works at Taco Bell and is currently getting insights already into what she does and does not like in managers. The assistant managers at the store are also very young and inexperienced. “Think about the times when you’ve done the most work, when you’ve grown the most. You probably connect that, generally, with a really good manager…. Sometimes it’s just a situation where you’ve been forced to grow by discomfort, which also happens. But I prefer to grow by comfort, feeling trusted. Should you think that you want to change the culture and that’s why you should become a manager, teams have their own culture with them as well. Some teams have a culture of cutthroat let’s win no matter what individually. Some of them want to help each other out…. It’s going to take time to change one culture to the other, and you can’t get too frustrated by that. Mike Abrashoff didn’t fix the boat in 1 week. It took him 9 months.” – Joseph Griffiths Should people be thinking about the time and effort required to become a manager before taking on the role? Should we assume it will automatically be more than being an individual contributor? Joseph learned his manager Josh had many things to do but chose to give attention only to the most important things. Joseph shares a story from his time at IBM working as a consultant for a large, multi-tenant service provider. His wife came to an office lunch event, and it turns out people had a huge misconception about how much work Joseph was forced to bring home as a result of the role he had. Joseph’s wife told his co-workers he didn’t bring work home outside of handling critical outage situations. “We, especially since COVID, have consistently allowed our lives to blend.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph would work past 5 PM as a manager only for customer events (part of working in sales) and for total meltdown problems. There were very few total meltdown problems over the course of 3 years. Most days he was finished by 5 PM. Joseph would block 4-5 PM each day for administrative catch-up work, only accepting meetings during that time if they were critical. “I think that we get way more done when we give ourselves limits, when we have balance…. I’m a firm believer that we’ve got to create boundaries so that we allow for the things to happen that need to happen in our lives. And when those boundaries become blurred, we produce far less. We are less sharp. We’re less available. We’re less there. We do not get more done by more hours. We get less done.” – Joseph Griffiths In our previous discussions with Joseph about VCDX, he shared that 1 extra hour in his day helped him accomplish that goal over a 9-month period. Much like Josh, Joseph had to spend his time on the things that were priority. Since he worked in sales, customers came first over anything else, and that priority was the same for members of Joseph’s team. Nick says people seeking leadership / management roles need to learn to set the limits and boundaries as Joseph said, but they should also be modeling this for their team. Nick shares a story about how Joseph modeled this idea of boundaries and limits for him. You can hear more of this story in Episode 179 , but there was a specific year during which Nick had to work during a holiday. Joseph told Nick there was no need for him to work on a company holiday, and if something was an emergency, he should call Joseph and let him take care of it. “I do think that we will wake up after the 40 years of working and ask ourselves a question of who we’ve become, and I hope we like the answer. My answer is not going to be I’ve become a great sales leader. My answer is going to be the person, the character that I’ve developed. And part of that is learning to balance the priorities…. The challenging thing that we look at in our lives is balancing those things, and it does help when we are the same person at work as we are at home…. I think that there are times where we’re tempted to do things that are outside of our values and character in our employment in order to get ahead, and I think those are very dangerous things. Be true to yourself. I’m a big fan of character…. I encourage people to spend time thinking about the person they want to be at the end of those 40 years because you don’t want to be a 65-year-old retiree who doesn’t like yourself. It’s not a good place.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph recommends everyone strongly consider their motivations before becoming a manager. Being a manager is one of the most thankless jobs someone will have. It’s easy to measure the impact of individual contributor actions / behaviors like a presentation, a project, etc. As a leader, it is much harder to measure these things. “I measured my success as a leader in how hard it was to leave that job. If it was hard for me, that means I did it right. If it was easy for me to leave the job, I didn’t do it right. Think about that before you get into management because we need great managers who are dedicated to lifting other people up. We don’t need more managers that are dedicated to their careers.” – Joseph Griffiths Joseph would love to see more managers who lift others up and celebrate the differences people on the team bring. He appreciates how different the members of his team were and appreciates getting to learn from those differences. Mentioned in the Outro Are you having regular 1-1s with your manager? If you are, how regular are these meetings? Are they in-person or remote? Consider approaching these meetings mindfully, and put some thought into what you want to discuss during that time beforehand like Joseph recommended…especially if you are part of a large team and have limited time with your manager. Could you write down 3 things you’d like to talk about with your manager in advance of your next 1-1? Spend time thinking, even if it’s 15 to 20 minutes. This is also a time to bring ideas. Maybe you have an idea for how to do something differently or a project you’d like to work on. This time with your manager can help you determine the value of your idea to the team or the organization, and even if it is not, at least you know. It may just mean you haven’t clearly articulated the value of what you are proposing. Consider taking notes during these meetings. This discussion with Joseph aligns with what we heard from Leanne Elliot in Episode 238 – Managers as Culture Keepers with Leanne Elliott (2/2) about managers being culture keepers. Are you considering people management? Think about the actions and behaviors of both the good and bad managers you’ve had. Then ask several people you know the same question to get a nice list of what each type of manager looks like. For some examples of the actions and behaviors of good managers, check out these episodes: Episode 115 – High Flyers, Solid Players, and A Good Manager with Jeff Eberhard (1/2) Episode 138 – Apprentice, Amplifier, and People Developer with Don Jones (2/2) E-mail us the actions and behaviors of the best managers you’ve had, and we will read them on the air in a future episode! Contact the Hosts The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte. E-mail: nerdjourneypodcast@gmail.com DM us on Twitter/X @NerdJourney Connect with John on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @vJourneyman Connect with Nick on LinkedIn or DM him on Twitter/X @NetworkNerd_ Leave a Comment on Your Favorite Episode on YoutTube If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page .…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2) 39:58
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How well do your personal and professional life align to your passion areas? For returning guest Joseph Griffiths, seeking mentorship helped uncover his core passions (service, honesty, faith, and growth) and fueled the decision to pursue people management. This week in Episode 327, Joseph details his transition from solutions architect to business solution strategist and why he sought mentorship along the way. You’ll hear about the impact of storytelling in executive conversations and job interviews as well as the concept of a value hypothesis. Joseph shares a perspective on management interviews, leading seasoned teams, and the critical nature of interpersonal skills for career advancement. Original Recording Date: 04-17-2025 Topics – Joseph Griffiths Returns, Storytelling and Conversations with Executives, Discovering Passion Areas, Management Interviews and Interpersonal Challenges, A Passion for Growth over Technology, Leading a Familiar Team and Progressing as a Manager 2:15 – Joseph Griffiths Returns * Joseph Griffiths has worked in technical sales in some form for the last 10 years. Before that, he worked for a multi-tenant service provider and the state of Ohio as a systems administrator and enterprise architect. * Joseph last joined us as a guest in Episode 18a and Episode 18b . At that time, we spoke to Joseph about his experience as a solutions architect. We wanted to learn more about what made Joseph want to pursue people leadership within technical sales. * Full disclosure – Joseph was Nick’s manager up until about 4-5 months before this recording took place. But Joseph and Nick knew each other for many years before Joseph became Nick’s manager. Nick invited him to speak at Spiceworks user group events, for example. 3:55 – Storytelling and Conversations with Executives * Going back to when Joseph was a solutions architect, his role was focused on understanding the pain and gain from a business perspective for customers. * He would often run workshops to understand the current state (pains that exist) and build the future state (the gains a customer could get). * As the company changed over time, Joseph’s role changed to business solution strategist. While the role was similar, it had a greater focus on speaking to C-level executives. * Joseph recalls meeting some wonderful people on this team who taught him how to talk to executives and how to do value management. * What was the biggest lesson Joseph had to learn in order to communicate effectively with executives? * “You have about 30 seconds, and you better be talking about money. That’s the short version of it.” – Joseph Griffiths * A good friend of Joseph’s is an assistant CFO at a large corporation, and Joseph decided to pick his brain on how and why certain IT purchases get approved, and others do not. * “And he said, ‘it’s really simple – story and a spreadsheet…. You had better tell me a story that makes sense to my accounting brain, and you better have a spreadsheet that shows me how we’re going to make money, save money, or reduce risk with the spreadsheet…. Those two things put together…if the numbers make sense on the spreadsheet…I’m going to approve it. You come to me with a story about how you’re going to install some new widget, go find the money in your budget. You come to me with a spreadsheet, but the story doesn’t make sense, go find it in your budget. You want money outside of your budget? They better make sense in the form of dollars.’ And so, for me, the biggest thing to learn was I had 30 seconds with a customer to establish why th...…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 AI Mistakes: Focused Resilience and a Specialization Bet with Daniel Lemire (4/4) 36:38
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If you had something to share, what would you say, and how would you say it? Daniel Lemire asked himself the same question in the process of creating AI Mistakes. As it turns out, AI Mistakes isn’t just a platform for learning in public. It’s something Daniel must be doing. Want to know why? After completing the vision board and gaining more perspective on the layoff event that would change his direction, Daniel knew where to begin. But it took time to translate what he had written on the post-it note about his needs in a role to a role at a specific company. Through intentional mindset shifts, feedback from others, and additional help from a mentor, Daniel chose to make a bet on generative AI. Join us for episode 326 and the exciting conclusion of Daniel’s story. We’ll discuss how the specialized pre-sales role at ServiceNow really is a culmination of Daniel’s experience to this point and how he’s filling some of the sales and marketing gaps from back when he was an independent consultant. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes . If you missed parts 1-3 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323 , Episode 324 , and Episode 325 . Topics – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes, Gaining AI Expertise, Mindset Shifts and Greater Clarity, A Role in Pre-Sales, Transition to Working for a Technology Vendor 3:14 – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes * John wants to hear more about the genesis of AI Mistakes. * The timeline starts when Daniel found out that he was in the group of people being laid off. * “So, here I am…I think I’ve got things figured out. I’ve done really well. I think I’m going to get a really great appraisal for having taken care of business and done a good job, but actually, I got nothing…. Even now I still don’t know what anybody actually thought of my performance that year that I figured things out.” – Daniel Lemire, on not getting a performance review * Though Daniel’s role had been eliminated, he and others were asked to stay on at the company until sometime during the following year (required to get a severance). * Daniel recounts having to comfort his team about his departure. They had not learned to regulate themselves as Daniel had. * “You’re going to be fine. You know what you’re doing. We’re putting you into a position to be successful going forward. You don’t need me to be successful. You just need to know that you can do this, and you’re good at what you do…. It just means that my next thing isn’t here, and that’s ok. I would not have been capable of having that conversation even a year prior because I hadn’t done the work that I needed to do to understand.” – Daniel Lemire, on comforting his team when delivering the news of his role being eliminated * Daniel says this moment was a big confidence builder, and he feels he handled it very well with his team. * Many of Daniel’s colleagues who were also part of the layoff did not handle it well. They were very angry. He reminds us these kinds of events are very difficult to go through. * Having a severance package certainly helped provide Daniel time. Daniel mentioned his brother went through this kind of situation and did not receive a severance. * Years early,…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4) 45:42
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What happens when there is too much change at once after making a job change? Daniel Lemire had learned the principles of DevOps and combined it with his experience as an infrastructure architect to advocate for the adoption of new technologies and processes within a large enterprise. But when Daniel changed roles to focus on innovation and became a senior manager at the same time, there were many challenges for which he was unprepared. In fact, at times it was overwhelming. In the 3rd installment of Daniel Lemire’s story in episode 325, you’ll hear Daniel’s reasons for focusing on innovation in the first place, why he continued to persevere through challenges, the stress and impact of layoff events, and the unexpected way he found clarity amidst the ambiguity. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes . If you missed parts 1 or 2 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323 and Episode 324 Topics – A Personal DevOps Value Story, Planting Seeds of Innovation, The Challenges of Impactful Innovation, Progressing from Overwhelm to Clarity 3:33 – A Personal DevOps Value Story * Daniel needed a reset and to determine how he could contribute to the organization where he worked. That’s about the time he discovered DevOps . * After a recommendation from a colleague within the security organization, Daniel read The Phoenix Project , and it has changed his career trajectory for the better. He read the book not long after its release. * Reading the book also changed the way Daniel thinks so he is able to help companies create value. * “…When I read it, I didn’t understand what was so great about it. I just knew there was something there that I needed…. I read it and I got really excited about it. But I didn’t really know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Not long after reading The Phoenix Project, Daniel recommended the book to a colleague who worked on the security and compliance team. There was a character in the book named John who starts off being very stressed but for whom things improve greatly during the course of the story. * “After he finished the book, he came back to me and he’s like, ‘let’s do something with this….’ I still didn’t know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Daniel’s colleague recommended they start by meeting and having a conversation. * After their initial meeting, Daniel and his colleague started meeting on a weekly basis. They started talking about The Three Ways and how these could be applied to make things better. Daniel and his colleague gave a presentation to a large portion of the IT Operations team to share thoughts on the way people do work and how to improve it. * “It really helped them think through some of their organizational challenges and the things that needed to be done because that was also a difficult time across our technology organization because of the big changes that were being made. But the lightbulb didn’t really all the way come on for me until The DevOps Handbook came out and I got the concrete ‘these are the things that matter to a technology organization.…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Find the Missing Context: Perspectives and Observations from Enterprise Experience with Daniel Lemire (2/4) 56:03
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When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned. Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation? Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323 . Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy 3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience * Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education. * As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology. * In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world. * “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program * Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques. * Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things: * Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him. * Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree. * “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...…
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Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

1 Build a Career MVP: The Importance of Feedback and Iteration with Daniel Lemire (1/4) 46:42
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If your career was a product, what would the current release notes say? Just as product managers launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and enhance it based on customer feedback, Daniel Lemire unknowingly began building his career this way starting in high school. This week in episode 323 you’ll hear about Daniel’s early aspirations to be a pilot in the Air Force and the phone call that forced him to change directions. It was a reliance on his faith, his aptitude for computers, and an openness to feedback from friends and teachers that prompted Daniel to study management information systems in college. Follow along as we explore the timeline over which Daniel decided to become an independent consultant, gained technical expertise and experience through building systems to deliver value, and ultimately decided to pursue an advanced degree. With each decision along the way, Daniel chose to take a step forward very much like a product release adds features and enhancements. If you thought of where you are now as a MVP, where could you go from here? Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Topics – Meet Daniel Lemire, An Early Deviation from the Plan, Self-Awareness and the Gift of Explanations, A Tinkering Instinct and the Cycle of Confidence, Consulting and a Return to the Familiar, The System Builder, Thoughts on Product Management, Getting an Advanced Degree 2:31 – Meet Daniel Lemire * Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He gets to speak with senior leaders about the use of artificial intelligence in their organization specific to the ServiceNow platform. It’s a pretty popular topic of conversation these days. * Daniel enjoys driving influence and helping organizations create value, and throughout the course of his career, Daniel has learned to calibrate the use of technology against the creation of value. 3:39 – An Early Deviation from the Plan * How did Daniel get into technology in the first place? * Daniel’s middle school had a computer lab, and he and several others were part of a computer club. In addition to this, Daniel was fortunate to have a computer at home in the early 1990s and play games on it and discuss computers with friends. * Going into high school, Daniel wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to attend the Air Force Academy and eventually become an officer. Daniel was working to do everything he could to hit that goal. * Daniel tells the story of a phone call from an Air Force recruiter during his sophomore year of high school. During the course of that phone call, Daniel learned he was disqualified from serving in the Air Force because of his asthma. * “So immediately I found myself in this position of…if it’s not the Air Force, what are my plans? …Am I just going to go find a school to become a pilot and continue down that path with a different means, or am I going to do something completely different? …Honestly, I kind of threw up my hands, and I said a prayer. I said, ‘God, this is what I wanted to do, and this is not how I thought this was going to go. What should I do?’ And, over the next few weeks, the computer thing became increasingly an area of focus.” – Daniel Lemire * Conversations with friends and some teachers helped Daniel realize he had some talent when it came to computers. They encouraged him to spend time in that area. * From then on, Daniel would find ways to do different things with a computer because it was something he enjoyed. * “Any time you can take something you enjoy and turn that into value is really great.” – Daniel Lemire * As a senior in high school, Daniel took a computer maintenance course and learned all about computer hardware. * Taking this class provided things to Daniel t...…
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