Have you ever felt a work task was boring or a waste of time? It might be because you didn’t understand why you were asked to do it in the first place. Richard Russell, our guest this week in episode 318, struggled with this in his early role as a programmer. All he wanted was to understand more about the business problem his work was intended to solve. In that role, however, Richard never got those answers, and he would later move into systems administration.

Richard has developed a pattern of pursuing the things which he finds interesting – a pattern that began in college and has continued over the course of his career as a programmer, a systems administrator, and as a consultant. Each of these roles combined with his interest in the business prepared Richard for the role of team lead in the banking industry. Join us as we explore the team lead role and why Richard progressed to it, how he built trust as a consultant and as a sales engineer, and his genuine interest in people. Listen closely to learn strategies that will increase your ability to influence others, ask the right questions, and build strong working relationships with colleagues and customers.

Original Recording Date: 02-17-2025

Topics – Meet Richard Russell, An Interest in Mathematics and Computer Science, Moving from Programming to Systems Administration, Consulting and an Interest in the Business, Combatting Ego and Building Trust, Sharing Your Priorities, Progressing to Team Lead

2:43 – Meet Richard Russell

• Richard Russell spends most of his time coaching leaders who work in scale-ups, big tech, and other corporate environments.
  • Most of Richard’s clients have some executive responsibilities and come from a product or technology background. Many times, these clients are transitioning into product / tech leadership roles or CEO / founder roles.
  • Richard made the relatively recent transition from doing consulting work to focusing on coaching.
  • Richard resides in Luxembourg with his family.

3:29 – An Interest in Mathematics and Computer Science

• What prompted Richard to study math and computer science in school?
  • Richard’s father was an electrical engineer and was very enthusiastic about that career path.
  • Richard had a Commodore 64 as his first computer and tinkered with various others over time, even getting into programming.
  • In high school, Richard did very well in the hard sciences – math, physics, and chemistry. When forced to choose a non-science course during his senior year, he chose economics because it seemed the most mathematical.
  • Though he did start out studying engineering in college, Richard made some changes to focus on the things he found most interesting – mathematics, computer science, philosophy, cognitive science, theology, etc.
  • Richard found applied mathematics quite boring at first (just solving differential equations, for example). It was more interesting to him when physics and engineering teachers taught mathematics because there was a need to solve a problem.
    • Richard later went into pure mathematics and found it the most interesting of all.
    • Richard says computer science was something he got into primarily because of his talent in mathematics.
  • Nick remembers hearing physics majors in college echo the same sentiment as Richard. They learned more mathematics in physics courses than in their respective calculus courses.
    • To Richard, initial learnings in calculus seemed to be solving complicated problems that were not applied to anything, and it was a sharp contrast to the way problems were presented in physics or engineering.
    • In the sciences, Richard had an interest in the practical need. In pure mathematics, he had the interest in learning anything within that discipline.
• Richard started wanting to learn more about the applications of mathematics and became really interested in the abstract concepts of mathematics. Was it a similar pattern when Richard learned programming?
  • Richard says he gets interested in topics, and he wasn’t interested in the complications of applied mathematics (i.e. doing integrals, for example).
  • When it came to computer science, Richard was interested in how things worked and some of the theory behind it. He also liked the ability to express creativity and control what appeared on the screen through programming (which required no artistic talent).
  • Richard later became interested in businesses and how products are built. He had no background in product management and wanted to build games.
    • “The mathematics behind, especially graphics, was very complex, and it was exactly the stuff I didn’t like doing. Whereas the business games and business side of applications or programs or websites and so on…they are quite simple in many ways. The complexity is really about…what do I actually want to achieve as opposed to how do I achieve it. And so that became much more interesting to me. A lot of that is related to my interest in product management as I went on further and in business generally. I have this habit of obsessing over topics, whatever they are, whatever I’m interested in…so I got deep in whatever topic it is.” – Richard Russell

9:40 – Moving from Programming to Systems Administration

• Was Richard still obsessed with programming once it became his job?
  • Richard tells us within the last year he was diagnosed with ADHD.
  • “I tend to just find things interesting and obsess over them. When it’s work it’s not necessarily interesting inherently. It could be. It might not be. The decision on whether it’s interesting or not is independent of whether it’s work.” – Richard Russell
  • In his first job, Richard was doing software development but worked on a product that was very boring to him. The product was internally facing administration tool that did asset tracking for national parks. The product had only 6 users.
  • Richard would be given a user story and have to build something from it (a web page, etc.).
  • “I remember thinking…why are we doing this, and what problem are we actually trying to solve? Why haven’t I met any of these people who are using this thing? Why do I not understand what they’re trying to do? Is this even a good way of doing it? It’s just like we’re taking an old database system and turning it into a web application because that’s the thing you do. The whole thing…it was fundamentally…on a deep level boring because I wasn’t talking to the people who were having the problem. I didn’t know what we were solving. I didn’t know why we were doing it. I was just producing web pages.” – Richard Russell
• Richard then shifted from programming to systems administration. The goal was solving problems, and there was a person who had a problem, which made it interesting.
  • Sometimes Richard would need to go and talk to someone to solve a problem. But if a system was down or not performing well, Richard understood the impact to the user base. He was motivated to solve the problems because they impacted people who would then appreciate that the problems were fixed.
  • Richard also worked on patching for Solaris servers (again, a problem to solve).
  • Richard contrasts the work in systems administration to his work programming and building web pages. It would take a long time to create a release, and once the release was live, he would never find out if what he did was of any value to anyone. There was no feedback or ability to see the impact of work completed.
  • In his role as a programmer, did Richard express his feelings to his manager that the work was not making an impact?
    • Richard says he kept his feelings to himself but also does not believe he was aware of what was specifically frustrating him.
    • In that environment, developers were basically handed something to build and told to go build it. It was not obvious that developers would have an interest in the business. This has changed over the last 25-30 years, however.
• What were some of the challenges of moving from development to the systems administration side?
  • Richard thinks his advice for someone looking to do that now would be well dated.
  • But at the time, Richard had worked with Linux quite a bit and even ran a Linux Install Fest.
  • He also tried to start a startup based on systematic remote administration and patching hundreds of Debian Linux servers.
    • Richard mentions he had played around with Linux in his spare time because it was interesting. It became a hobby.
  • Richard feels that today software development is more connected to the business, while systems administration is somewhat removed from it.
    • Richard built a lot of computers earlier in his career and mentions people have moved up the stack. Doing this same thing now is an increasingly niche area (i.e. the hardware portion).
    • “From my own personal interests, I found it much more motivating to be with people and businesses influencing people and understanding how and why people buy things and what kind of things people buy. That’s much more interesting to me now…. Sysadmin type work is very much a service. If you look at any business, sysadmin or anyone doing IT infrastructure…it is a cost center. It will always be a cost center…unless you’re in a business where it is a business where it is the profit center, which is very rare. In most cases it’s a cost center. When you’re in a cost center you’re always one of the people who gets secondary importance in the organization…at best.” – Richard Russell
    • Nick clarifies that systems administration could mean hardware, software, the hypervisor layer, the virtual machine layer, the operating systems, administration of the pipelining tools that development teams use, etc.
    • Richard mentioned he’s not hands on with most of these things any longer but that levels of abstraction continue to rise. Ideally people would want to be in an area that has some demand for the specific type of work (i.e. a growth area). Think about businesses who make money from doing what you are doing as opposed to businesses where what you do would be a cost center.

19:15 – Consulting and an Interest in the Business

• How did Richard’s early consulting experience fit into the story?
  • After moving from developer to systems administration, Richard chose to go independent. He provided systems administration services to a number of small businesses in his hometown. Richard refers to it as freelancing.
  • Did Richard like working with multiple customers instead of just working in systems administration full-time for a single customer?
    • One characteristic of ADHD minds is the desire to have variety. Richard likes having variety in his work and the ability to learn something new.
    • Richard knows not everyone feels this way, and he’s had numerous colleagues who would rather go deep into something, own it, and build it over the long term.
    • When consulting with small businesses, you work as a peer or expert along with the people who have the business need, and in Richard’s opinion, the conversations are more interesting. Richard was able to discuss the business problems with his consulting customers and make a recommendation for a solution only after he understood what they were trying to achieve. When working inside a large organization on a team of systems administrators, he was removed from those decisions and focused more on task completion to solve problems, but the systems administration work was still more interesting than his work as a developer when given a spec to build.
    • The human relationship aspect was also very interesting to Richard. It wasn’t just working with colleagues but meeting people who were not experts in the same area and translating their need into the right technology recommendation.
• Nick feels like Richard’s move into consulting is a mirror of his move from the application of mathematics in the sciences to focusing more on the abstract concepts of pure mathematics. Solving a system problem could be thought of as the application part, and the business problems and challenges and translating back to a solution could be thought of as the more abstract part. Nick feels many people don’t naturally know how to ask the right questions to discover business problems and map them to technology solutions. Did Richard know how to do this or have to learn how to do it?
  • Richard says he’s always had an innate interest in these types of things, and this is the reason for his decision to study philosophy and psychology while in college.
  • It takes time to develop deep expertise in mathematics and engineering topics to be able to have an intelligent conversation about it.
  • Richard also had an interest in marketing and business but felt they were magical areas he didn’t understand well, usually feeling he was the one who knew the least about them in any room. But the interest in these areas drove him to keep asking questions about them.
  • “So over time I kept asking questions and learning stuff and eventually figured out that actually, it’s not that complicated. It’s not that hard…. I have a voracious appetite for reading books…and I read books about marketing and strategy and influence and psychology and management…. So, I’d read a lot of things and pick things up there…. It took me a long time to realize that…actually I do know quite a lot about this stuff now, and I don’t need to have the degree in that topic to be something of an expert in some of these topics. But I certainly learned from these books and from other people how better to go about certain types of questions….” – Richard Russell
  • Richard cites reading The Mom Test as extremely helpful in learning how to understand what types of problems people really have as opposed to the problems we might want to solve.
• When someone says they have a need or a problem, Nick says we often go to solutioning / presenting a solution before truly asking enough questions. Are people bothered less when asked more questions than we might think they will be in these cases?
  • Richard shares a story from his time at Deutsche Bank. He had moved from Australia to London to take the job and worked with a team who was developing software for trading foreign exchange (traders in banks would use it). At the time, he had little understanding of foreign exchange, banking, or finance and sought help from co-workers to understand the terminology.
  • “I did a little bit of analysis…. Looking at this…that means that every week we trade 2 Australian GDPs. That’s a lot of money…. So, I talked to my business analyst on the team…just asked him, ‘can you teach me about this stuff?’ …He just sat down and explained to me who is doing this, why they’re doing it, and so on. I remember looking at these things and thinking, ‘why does anyone want to buy that thing, this credit default swap?’ …It’s really interesting the way these things work. So, I learned all that from this guy who was a business analyst. He had been in banking for 30 years…. When I asked him, he was like, ‘cool – I get to explain my area. I get to explain what I know.’ …Most of the time…people are willing to explain to someone interested.” – Richard Russell, on learning the banking industry from an analyst colleague
    • The analyst above helped Richard understand the need for liquidity, why certain types of products and systems existed, why some customers wanted to buy specific products (i.e. balancing risk and reward, etc.), and why other companies might not be building the same thing as the bank. We should not be afraid of asking questions within our own company to better understand the business.
    • Richard says this was the exact opposite of his work building software. He remembers going to the trading floor to ask people what they do each day and why there were 9 different screens displaying information, for example.
    • Nick recently heard a personal development teacher talking about learning who recommended telling people we don’t have enough information to understand something yet when asking for clarification / explanation.
    • Richard says one of the worst things we can do is be shy about asking the seemingly dumb questions. Ask why something is being done or why people want a certain thing. These types of questions have an interesting nuance.
    • “Often, people are too shy about asking questions that sound like that. You never learn, and then you never have any idea…. The person on the other end can kind of figure out if you really don’t understand it, and what they want is for you to ask the dumb question so that they can go, ‘cool – now I get to explain the basics to you so you’ll understand. And now that I’ve explained it to you, I now trust that you understand it. Now I trust you more because you’ve asked the question.’ I often find in most of my work these days asking that question really helps.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard will sometimes ask questions he knows the answer to in order to get people to explain something to him in a way that they believe he understands. It’s a little counterintuitive, but then the person will trust him.

31:11 – Combatting Ego and Building Trust

• Do most people have to get past their own ego when asking these questions?
  • Richard says yes, especially if you come from an intellectual / academic kind of background. He came from an environment where it was important to be right.
  • This comes out in two specific ways for Richard – 1) when someone asks him a question and he doesn’t know the answer and 2) asking seemingly silly questions to get more information on certain topics.
    • In the early days when asked something for which Richard did not know the answer he might try to improvise or make something up (which did not add value).
    • Richard tells the story of getting some coaching from his manager when he was a sales engineer at Google. The advice was to admit he did not know but commit to finding the right answer for the customer. Also, Richard would share with the customer that his company has solved the problem for organizations with similar setups in the past.
    • “What I was doing in that situation as a sales engineer…is first of all acknowledging that I don’t know…but then also building their trust in our organization and my ability to navigate our organization and our ability as an organization to serve people like them…that they will get the result that they want…. I realized my job in that role is not necessarily to even answer the questions. It’s not to give information. It’s to create trust. That was my role. Some of it was about influencing and getting data and changing things…but most of it was about creating trust. Part of that was about learning that I have to create trust in my client…when I don’t know the answer…. There’s a great deal of pride in not knowing and saying you don’t know…very hard to come to terms with ‘I don’t know but trust me.’ But in a sense that actually does make a difference and it does help people, and it’s not misleading because we will figure it out and we have done it.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard recalls a different scenario not so long ago when he was speaking to a group of business and marketing leaders. At that speaking session, someone introduced Richard as one of Europe’s leading marketers just as he walked up on stage. He initially did not consider himself an expert and had to get over the impostor syndrome in that moment. Much of the knowledge gained for that talk came from asking those questions that seemed silly at first.
    • “When you do ask the dumb questions about whatever they are, you’re just getting people to talk about stuff that’s their expertise…. I don’t have much fear of asking silly questions anymore at all. I used to have a massive fear of it. I think just these various experiences of realizing that most of the things that are going on are not about whether I know or not. It’s about can I figure out the answer or can we find the answer or can someone find the answer…what do we need to move forward in whatever we’re doing? And how do we get that thing?” – Richard Russell

34:44 – Sharing Your Priorities

• Nick says when you tell someone you will find the answer and you go find it, you are developing a reputation that others can count on you to find answers.
  • “Funny enough also…a lot of these questions…they don’t actually need the answer…. Sometimes the question is a mechanism to find out ‘can I trust you?’ Sometimes they’re worried about something that they don’t actually need to worry about, and they learn something else along the way – they don’t need to worry about it. This is especially the case with e-mails. You have these e-mail requests that come in, and sometimes some of them come in and they’re urgent…. And sometimes, you ignore them, and they go away, and it doesn’t matter. Judging which ones are the right ones to do that with can be hard…. There’s a lot of things that come in that aren’t actually important.” – Richard Russell
  • Another aspect of getting back to someone with an answer is understanding why they need the answer.
  • Richard likes to share the list of things he’s been working on to get answers for with someone and then ask if the person still needs them. Sometimes the answer is no because trust has been developed.
    • This can be applied to e-mails by responding to ask if something is still needed (usually after a decent amount of time has passed since the request came in). It might save you time spent on something which is not necessary any longer.
  • By asking if someone still needs something we are showing that we care, that we remembered, and that we were listening to what the person had to say.
  • When something is deemed as still important, you can let the requestor know where it ranks on your priority list and then ask again how important it is / whether it is more important than other items.
    • “Having that active conversation about ‘how important is this’ is a really useful tool to figure out what the most important thing actually is.” – Richard Russell
    • This can work with managers, directors, customers, or other stakeholders. These individuals may have many requests but actually only care about a few of them.
    • We can do the prioritization and bring it back to them to help us decide if something should take prioritization.
• Nick says we need input on priorities from others and that we should not be ashamed when we ask for guidance.
  • “What I recommend doing, especially as you get more senior, is literally just maintain your own priority list…whatever you think is right. Use your own judgement on that. You might be wrong. And then share it with your managers or your stakeholders and say ‘here’s my priority list, and here’s my capacity. I’ll draw a line under what I think I can get done this week….’ And, have a conversation about it. It’s an opportunity for at least a good manager to educate you on how to make priority decisions…or for your stakeholders to explain ‘this is way more important than that because of…’” – Richard Russell
  • Sometimes the conversations about priorities and how long something will take can be very helpful.
    • Richard tells the story of a project he felt would take him 2 weeks just to develop a plan. Someone coached Richard that 2 weeks might be enough to finish the entire project and coached him on the way in which he was approaching the project. Richard said it helped him realize the project was not as challenging as originally expected.
    • Something similar happened on a large project when Richard worked at Amazon. Something that was expected to take 6 months only needed 2 weeks of time to complete, but the team only came to the realization after truly understanding what they needed to accomplish without letting the scope creep too much.
    • “But having that conversation and clarifying what the real need is, why it’s important, how you’re going about doing it…it was a bit of coaching, a bit of context setting, a bit of…just brainstorming together, a bit of collaboration…and presto – 6 months of work turned into 2 weeks…of a team of 4 or 5 engineers.” – Richard Russell

39:48 – Progressing to Team Lead

• One step between an individual contributor and manager can be team lead or technical lead. What would Richard say the team lead role really is and is not based on his experience as team lead for the bank early in his career?
  • The team Richard was on was somewhat like a DevOps type of team today, but at that time it was a mix of DevOps, 3rd level support, and systems administration.
  • There was a team of 6-7 people with variable levels of skill. Richard was among the most skilled on the team but in his opinion not the best.
  • “The reason why I got that role was because the people who were more skilled than me or better than me were number 1 not interested in it, number 2 quite difficult to deal with…and demanding and critical of other people when they didn’t get it right. And then thirdly, they weren’t that interested in the business, the customer. …My counterpart at the bank would say…the reason why they wanted me to be the team lead was because I’m the only one in the group that really cared about the business and asked questions about their business…. Everyone else was just doing work, whereas I was interested in understanding it.” – Richard Russell
  • Being a team lead isn’t just about rallying other employees, helping them focus, or coaching them. This is only a part of it. All of this is for one purpose – delivering value to the business or the customer.
  • “To me the difference between a team lead and a manager is probably more about the formal responsibility of performance reviews and the administrative kind of people stuff. The team lead is kind of like that person who is…doing the leading part and getting people in the right direction without necessarily assessing individuals’ performance or hiring and firing and doing performance reviews and so on. That was what my role was anyway.” – Richard Russell, on being a team lead
  • Richard was the person they felt they could trust for the business. His manager and others felt like the team respected him. Richard would coach the junior people and get the senior people working in the right direction. He calls the job “an influencing thing.”
  • Richard thinks being placed in this role kind of happened naturally. A specific dynamic formed, and then there were conversations about formalizing the role at some stage. Richard calls it more of a practical role more so than a formal role.
    • It was about caring for the client’s needs (the business) and being able to influence / coach people.
    • “It had nothing to do with me having the best technical skills. I was good, and I was able to teach people…able to coach people…. It had nothing to do with me being the best technical decision maker.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard mentions a member of the team who was extremely technical (more so than Richard) and was developing an architecture to solve a problem. Richard would help him understand the need for simplicity and getting things completed faster rather than engineering the perfect solution. It was about delivering short-term value.
  • What was Richard’s interaction with his manager like when he was a team lead?
    • Their conversations were more about how well the team was working, how individuals were doing, and if they were the right kind of people to put in a client-facing role. Richard had input on hiring / firing decisions as well.
    • Richard also acted as the main point of contact with the client to stay aligned on what the team was trying to achieve and why, communicating this in both directions (to / from client and to / from the team).
    • “The conversations in that role became much more interesting because I’m interested in the business and the people.” – Richard Russell

Mentioned in the Outro

• We talked about Richard’s progression to team lead in this episode. As a late celebration of International Women’s Day, go back and listen to advice from some of the ladies of Nerd Journey to get different perspectives on the role of team lead.
  • Episode 279 – Change Management: The Hardest Leap and Developing People with Marni Coffey (2/3)
  • Episode 246 – Learning to Lead and a Culture of Excellence with Dr. Sirisha Kuchimanchi (2/3)
• Admitting we don’t know is something we can learn to do. It’s learning humility, just like when you ask those seemingly dumb questions about things you don’t understand.
• Do you still need this?
  • This can certainly be great to help manage priorities. It could be a way to get someone to say they don’t need something as Richard mentioned. Asking this question could also be a way to discuss urgency and deadline if those have changed or just were not communicated.
• To learn more about what Richard does in his coaching business:
  • Visit his website
  • Visit his YouTube Channel – @richardarussell

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

Cruise ship captains rely on the expertise of a local harbor pilot to safely dock the ship at a port. What if we as the captains of our careers sought the expertise of a harbor pilot to help us navigate a potential employer and their processes? Not sure how to find one?

This week in episode 317 we explore this analogy of the captain, the harbor pilot, and how the collaboration between them makes for a safe docking event. We’ll talk through what a harbor pilot might look like, how you can be a harbor pilot for others, and how you can find one for yourself.

Original Recording Date: 02-20-2025

Topics – A Topic Idea from Taking a Cruise, Common Mistakes of the Captain, Understanding the Harbor Pilot, Finding a Harbor Pilot, Wrapping Up

1:01 – A Topic Idea from Taking a Cruise

• Today’s episode is just John and Nick. We’re taking a break this week from having guests and want to share a topic based on a personal experience Nick had recently.
• Nick and his wife like to take cruises, and on a recent cruise he attended a special panel discussion with the captain and other senior officers. After some discussion about the jobs and careers of the captain and his senior officers, someone asked a very interesting question, and the answer to it gave Nick the idea for this topic. Here’s the question:
  • What is the role of the harbor pilot that boards the cruise ship before we dock in every point?
  • The collaboration between the captain of the ship and the harbor pilot is what allows safe docking of the ship at a port. This concept gave Nick an idea of how this can apply to searching for jobs.
  • The captain in this analogy is the job seeker. The harbor pilot is a person with expert knowledge of a company who can guide you (someone who knows where you’re headed).
  • What is the split in responsibility of the captain and the harbor pilot?
    • The captain knows everything about the ship / vessel and is in charge of all operations. They know the capabilities of the ship. The captain knows the ship’s planned course of sailing and the approach planned for docking at a specific port. There is an entire bridge team working to operate the ship, and all are accountable to the captain.
    • The harbor pilot has expert knowledge of the port. They know the weather patterns. They have worked with many different ships and are there to help the captain dock the ship at a specific port.
    • Regardless of what the harbor pilot says or brings to the equation, the captain makes the final decision on what will be done. Even though their collaboration is a partnership, the captain has to be the one to give the orders. A captain has to take in the guidance from the harbor pilot through the lens of what the ship can do. The captain may choose to follow the harbor pilot’s advice or go against it in some cases.
  • John sees many implications here:
    • Am emphasis on collaboration between the 2 roles
    • The captain has ultimate responsibility for the outcome of the ship regardless of who they collaborate with. The captain has to own the decisions.
    • “You’re the captain. You’re ultimately responsible…just like if we are job seekers or managing our own careers, we are ultimately responsible for the outcome of that career.” – John White

4:55 – Common Mistakes of the Captain

• What are some common mistakes that a captain (or job seeker) might make?
  • John thinks of not taking responsibility or just handing over responsibility for docking the boat to the harbor pilot (i.e. becoming a passenger and just doing what you’re told rather than being the captain). What does that look like in greater detail in a job seeker?
    • Nick says maybe it is going wherever the wind blows you or only considering opportunities that come to you.
    • This could also mean you didn’t do any planning. The captain has to chart the course for the entire voyage including the selection of routes to take and the order in which the ship will visit ports.
    • Have you researched the company to learn as much about the culture as possible?
    • Are you prepared to answer technical or other kinds of questions?
    • Have you thought about the questions you want to ask in an interview, and do you know how to ask questions that suit the way you like to work as discussed in Episode 314 – Make Goals Inevitable with ADHD: Stressors and Entrepreneurship with Skye Waterson (2/2)?
    • “Here’s the part of the sea that I’m in. These are the potential ports, and I need to know if my ship is appropriate for that port. That’s some of the deep research, And then, once we decide as captains of our careers that we actually want to do some much, much deeper investigation of a specific port, of a specific career branch or an organization to go to…we need to actually navigate how to dock….” – John White
    • Other examples would be blindly applying to a company without doing any research or relying too much on a recruiter to help you navigate the opportunity (i.e. being too passive and not following up when a recruiter doesn’t respond in a timely manner).
  • At some point, the captain has to make a decision whether to take advice as it’s given by the harbor pilot or to adjust it / go against it because the captain knows the ship better than anyone just as you know yourself better than anyone.
    • Maybe a harbor pilot is used to more container ships, and a lot of the advice you get is geared more toward other types of ships. You as the captain have to know your unique capabilities and take customized action based on the advice.
    • Listen to Nick’s example of this scenario from a recent cruise. The captain knew the ship had a particular type of propeller that could be rotated to hold the ship close enough to the dock / pier so passengers could safely enter / exit after someone had parked a small boat in the path of the cruise ship.
    • “As the captain…the outcome that you need is not just docking, but you need…a way to get your passengers on and off…. It’s not just landing at the company. It’s landing with the right role with the right team.” – John White
    • Nick says an obstacle in your way at the pier may require a different approach like we discussed to dock safely, but in a different scenario it could also be a red flag indicating you (the job seeker) don’t visit the port at all. John gives the example of very non-standard job roles being a red flag at a company.
  • The other end of the spectrum would be ignoring all the advice about the port (a company) or not seeking advice in the first place. This assumes you are the expert but have also ignored local knowledge and local context.
    • How many times has the captain even visited that port compared to their overall time on the ship? Nick argues that we can’t be experts at the port where we’re trying to dock the ship. The harbor pilot helps ships dock at this port on a daily basis.
    • John feels like he has made this mistake before. About once per half, if a recruiter reaches out, he has a conversation with them to understand a specific role and practice interviewing skills. John stresses the importance of our need to maintain interviewing skills. At times John has approached these conversations without the same level of preparation as when he is seriously interviewing (i.e. not even looking for a harbor pilot).
    • Nick has made a similar mistake. Sometimes recruiters have reached out with an interesting role, and he was just too busy to dig deeper other than saying thank you. That’s kind of like disregarding the port as a possibility.

13:35 – Understanding the Harbor Pilot

• We said the harbor pilot has expertise on the port itself. What might the harbor pilot look like at any given company?
  • This could be anyone who currently works at a company or who has worked there in the past. This person would understand how the company runs internally and details of what a role is truly like.
  • Nick says connecting with a harbor pilot can help us set the right expectations when considering a job at a specific company. It sets expectations about docking the ship at this specific port and how you might do it safely.
  • John says the person acting as a harbor pilot may understand internal priorities and how to navigate those. It could even be someone who has gone through the interview process at the specific company for a similar role, even if they don’t work for the company currently. People who have gone through the interview process at this company in the last 6-12 months will be more helpful than those who went through it 5 years ago, for example.
  • John thinks the harbor pilot could be people at the company who interact with the specific role you’re targeting.
    • If you’re looking for a role in sales engineering, maybe you seek out someone in professional services or technical account management.
    • If you’re looking for a role as a cloud engineer, consider people in IT Operations, architecture, networking, or perhaps even cybersecurity.
  • If the company provides goods and services, what about finding someone who is a customer of that organization?
    • Ask the customer how their interactions have been with that company just in general.
    • If the customer works with representatives of a company on a regular basis (i.e. like working with representatives of a technology reseller), it provides insight into the responsibilities of different roles at the company.
    • Customers who are part of a formal advocacy group for a vendor’s technology solution may have even greater context to share on the roles and responsibilities of people at that vendor and the overall company culture of the vendor. Advocacy program members may also have good relationships with employees at the vendor and could be willing to connect you with someone to have a deeper discussion.
    • Loving the technology being used at a company (regardless of the role you are seeking) is one sign it might be a nice place to dock your boat (but not the only sign, of course).
  • Nick thinks we would turn to our immediate professional network first. Hopefully we have kept professional connections warm over time. Ramzi Marjaba had some great suggestions in Episode 307 – Sales Skills: Professional Networking and Continued Practice with Ramzi Marjaba (1/2) even if you haven’t.
    • If you reach out to someone, be honest about what you’re trying to do and the help you need. All they can say is no.
  • John realizes he has acted as a harbor pilot to others who have reached out to him in the past. Nick re-iterates that John was his harbor pilot for a particular job in the past.
    • Several years ago, when John was a harbor pilot for Nick…he referred him, explained the process, shared some of the expectations of the role, etc. But, in this case, Nick was still the captain.
    • More recently, when people have reached out to John, he has offered to have a conversation with them. John will provide context to the person on the organization, even if the open role is in a different group from where John works.
    • A harbor pilot might be able to give insight into the skills required for a specific role and how it has changed over time as a result of the company’s direction. Nick refers to this as some of the stuff that might not be in the job description.
    • John says the words on a job description may mean a very specific thing within the context of a specific organization. When he was at Google, one of the interviews was to determine how “Googly” a person is. It meant something very specific.
    • To take another example…if a company says it is looking for people who can embrace change, what does that mean for that organization? Does it mean job responsibilities might shift every 6 months, you have a different manager each year, that you might have to relocate, etc.? You need a harbor pilot to tell you.
    • The harbor pilot has more context on where you’re going.
  • Nick thinks a great recruiter could be your harbor pilot. He remembers in times past working with excellent recruiters who helped and guided him through every stage of the interview process.
  • Nick says some of it is going to be determined with how much rapport you have built with the person you want to be your harbor pilot. With good rapport established, people may be willing to introduce you to others they know perhaps without you needing to ask them to introduce you.
  • John gives the example of having systems engineer in your title. Sometimes you might be contacted by a recruiter for a role with the same name but in an industry that uses the term differently.
    • In manufacturing, for example, a systems engineer may be responsible for integrating the hardware manufactured with the software.
    • John will usually take the time to politely explain to a recruiter what his experience has been as a systems engineer (in this case working inside a sales organization) so the person understands the nuance in the role across different industries. Even this exercise builds rapport and could lead to future opportunities down the road from the same recruiter.
    • Recruiters in California are not allowed to ask candidates about their current salary. In addition to sharing that he is not interested in a role or that its pay range would not be enough to want to change jobs, John can make the recruiter’s life easier by sharing his salary requirements.
    • “The more vested a recruiter is in landing you, the better…harbor pilot they are going to be…. When they feel like now they’re a little bit more invested in you, that’s when they’ll be way more communicative.” – John White
    • John has also had recruiters give him additional context about why they reached out to him over others (i.e. a need for specific skills / experience, etc.) which might step beyond what the job description says. The key recommendations from John on this are building rapport, being open and transparent, and continuing with a conversation.
  • Nick reiterates that we shouldn’t discount our own ability to be the harbor pilot for someone else.
    • “Wherever you work, whatever you do, whomever you know…you could be this for someone else seeking a job. And perhaps, if you have done that for somebody else and they get the job or they have a good experience…you’ll understand the flip side of that coin.” – Nick Korte, on being the harbor pilot for someone else
    • John says we might reflect more on it if someone for whom we have been the harbor pilot gives us feedback on their experience and the value we provided along the way.

26:31 – Finding a Harbor Pilot

• There are many people who could be a harbor pilot for you, but how do you find them, engage them, and get them to help you?
  • The harbor pilot has a vested interest in your success. Crashing the ship can also be a poor reflection on them.
  • We mentioned it earlier, but immediate LinkedIn connections are one option.
  • Try looking through job descriptions for the top technologies listed as required competencies.
    • Look for community groups centered on these technologies (on LinkedIn or otherwise) in your area (or even outside your area). Finding and connecting with these community group leaders might be helpful to gain insight as to what types of companies use specific technologies. Community group leaders may even know someone at the company that has the job opening or help you make a connection that could help in some way.
    • John doesn’t recall looking for a Nutanix User Group or even a virtualization user group when he was interviewing for his role at Nutanix. He could have tapped the community to get their point of view on Nutanix as technology vendor, etc.
  • If you’re in a role at any company and deal with vendors or technology resellers, try asking them if they have worked with a specific company to get a perspective. Don’t do this using your work e-mail account, of course!
    • Resellers of a specific technology can speak to interactions they have had with employees of different vendors.
    • Perhaps the vendor you work with could introduce you to someone they know at a specific company who could help (i.e. someone who would be willing to do an informational interview). We discussed informational interviews with Mike Wood in Episode 169 – A Thoughtful Personal Sabbatical with Mike Wood (2/2).
    • John has both given and asked for informational interviews in the past. The purpose of them is to gain more information on the company and not an expectation of it being a formal interview with the hiring manager. John tells the story of having a good conversation with a friend of a friend at Nutanix before he joined that was extremely helpful.
  • Try to think through who to reach out to through the lens of what is most important to you in a job / employer.
    • Is it company culture, being paid well, great benefits, what managers are like, etc.? Your priorities might help you choose who you know that could speak to these points. GO back to the Must Have List created by the hosts of Real Job Talk.
    • If you are actively managing your network and genuinely listening to people over time, you will understand what different people in your network care about. If they care about the area you want to know more about, ask them if they know anything about the specific company where you’re interviewing (or even its competitors) that can help you.
  • John finds the analogy exciting and is starting to view some things we have discussed in the past through a different lens.
    • We’ve been discussing actively managing your network, reaching out to people, and the importance of getting people to help us navigate situations and organizations.
  • We spoke about being a harbor pilot for someone else. What if we reverse engineer that situation where we are a harbor pilot to someone else?
    • Think about the connection the person who reached out had to you. Understanding the connection might help you identify ways to find your own harbor pilot through similar connections. Maybe that’s another outside the box way to help yourself find a harbor pilot.
    • Be curious as to how people found you and why they reached out if you’re giving an informational interview.
    • You might have a blog, a podcast, or something in your LinkedIn or social media profile that makes you more approachable because your work is in the public eye. This applies to others you could reach out to for help.
    • Asking some questions of the people who reach out to you for help will make you a better interviewer and sharpen questioning skills for when you are in a job interview situation. By asking you for help, the person asking is interviewing you. Taking the time to have a conversation allows both them and you to practice interviewing.
    • One of the best books Nick has read in the last year is called Talk to Me by Dean Nelson. Nelson is a journalist who wrote this book about asking better questions and being a better interviewer. Nelson breaks down popular interviews and the questions asked, and it is fascinating. The concepts discussed in this book apply broadly across many fields. Reading this and internalizing the lessons will make you a better job candidate and a better job interviewer.

36:30 – Wrapping Up

• You are the captain. You make the final call, and you have to own the decisions. You should know everything about your ship (as much as can be known) and have a willingness to take advice from the harbor pilot.
• Seek expert guidance from a harbor pilot, and have a true collaboration with them. Accept that they are experts at something you can’t be an expert at (your ship at their harbor).
• We discussed what the harbor pilot might look like and how to find them. Maybe acting as a harbor pilot for others will help you find a harbor pilot in the future.
• In the maritime world, the harbor pilot has to come help the captain of the cruise ship. It’s mandated by law.
  • In the case of the job seeker, it is going to take some work to get the harbor pilot onboard. It likely will not be given to you. The responsibility and planning have to be there if you truly want a harbor pilot to help you dock.

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

How prepared are you for a career emergency like losing a job? Disaster recovery plans for your career, just like troubleshooting, start with good documentation of technical and business accomplishments.

David Klee returns in episode 316 to share the prep work required for building and testing a disaster recovery plan for our careers. You’ll learn how to use David’s technique of looking in the mirror (inside yourself) and out the window (out into the world / greater technical community) to quiet the fear and document and identify transferable skills that can be listed on a resume, on LinkedIn, or shared in a job interview. As we talk through each topic or recommendation, David shares concrete examples from his experience to illustrate how they apply.

Original Recording Date: 01-20-2025

David Klee is a returning guest and the owner and chief architect at Heraflux Technologies. If you missed part 1 of this discussion series with David, check out Episode 315.

Topics – Keep Your Eyes Open with the Mirror and the Window, Accomplishments as Repeatable Processes, Transparent Outcomes and the Hero’s Journey, Avoiding the Cold Start with Prep Work, Testing a Career DR Plan

3:28 – Keep Your Eyes Open with the Mirror and the Window

• We all have intentions of keeping disaster recovery plans for our careers and lives up to date, but we fall short.
  • “The tech side is arguably the easier part. DR for the career, especially in this day and age…if you get cut today…what are you going to do? What’s the next step? Are you ready to take an unplanned detour in life? Who do you know? What do you know? What have you done that you can talk about or reference to help you get the next leg up? What have you done that’s so proprietary that you can’t mention a spec of it or it’s so proprietary that it doesn’t transfer out of that job?” – David Klee, on disaster recovery for your career
  • David talks about his first job in college working for a market research firm. The firm had a platform with its own scripting language that could be used to build websites or surveys. David acted as an intermediary between the team that built the platform and the team that used it.
    • “I spent three years there. What did I learn? I learned how to script in a language that does not leave that company borders. That’s not a good career builder unless you intend to stay with that company for your entire career, and this is the 2020s. Good luck with that.” – David Klee
    • John says this could be something we could ask about in an interview. A company is basically asking for an employee to be a captive of that group because of the proprietary nature of the language. David says in most cases like this an employee will not know it until they are in the situation.
    • "It takes keeping your eyes open…no matter how much you enjoy your job…is the captivity of this job worth it? Is there job security? Do I enjoy what I’m doing? Am I growing, or am I just moving laterally? What’s worth it? " – David Klee
    • In this job at the market research firm, they found out David was a good troubleshooter, and they wanted him to fix bugs on the platform others had built. Even when David proposed that it would be faster to rebuild the platform on newer versions of software, they insisted he focus on patching the existing platform.
• What does David mean by keeping your eyes open?
  • “Keeping your eyes open involves looking at yourself in a mirror. And then, look out the window.” – David Klee
  • David says to look in the mirror we should think about what we want to do, what we enjoy doing, and what we do and don’t like about our current job.
  • Early in his career, he wanted to break out of just being an IT worker. He wanted to be a business driver rather than part of a cost center.
    • “Look at your value to the business. Am I there just keeping the lights on? And what about that do you enjoy?” – David Kleep
  • Looking out the window involves thinking about what you’re doing, what you’re getting paid, and how much you’re appreciated by the business. What are you doing that can be transferred to another business of any size, and how much satisfaction of doing your current job would be retained in making a move?
    • “You don’t have a lot of answers when you’re just starting out, but that’s where you start talking to people. Find people in that area of any specialty, be it IT or whatever, that you enjoy, and there’s probably a community around it. I got lucky. I found the SQL Server community in 2008…. Here’s a room of 50 other people that enjoy the same exact thing. This is cool, and I can talk about it with them.” – David Klee
    • Someone David knew well started a SQL Server user group in Omaha, Nebraska. David found out about the group and was there for the very first meeting.
    • David got to know the community around a specific technology. He would ask people where they work, what they did each day, what they did and did not like about their job, what they wished they could do more of, etc.
    • “You’re getting paid twice as much…interesting. So, there’s less that I don’t like in that role. There’s more of the stuff that I like, and your company gives you time to focus on the stuff that you like to do. Ok, let’s talk. Who do you know, and do you have an opening in your company? …or, I’m not there yet qualification-wise to be able to get that job, but hey, you do this stuff day in and day out. What can I do to learn more? What can I do to push myself? If the company that I’m at is just focused on keeping the lights on, what can I do on the side to grow? …it’s that want to grow and do more that not everybody has…. How can I learn everything that I need to know to go beyond an IT Operations lightkeeper kind of role? What can I do to help the company see the value in IT to invest further in it?” – David Klee, giving examples of what we might talk to others about at a community meeting
    • David considers himself a lifelong learn who wants to know as much about everything as he possibly can.

9:41 – Accomplishments as Repeatable Processes

• David talked about being a cost center compared to being a business driver. John says at the individual contributor level, the delineation may come down to what you’re working on.
  • Are the systems for the company or a specific product that is customer facing?
  • David says think about how much money the business makes per day because you kept a system up and running.
    • When David worked for a performing arts center, he saw the business need for improvement in volunteer management for each show. David also wanted to learn how to program in .NET and took it upon himself to build a volunteer management system. He knew nothing about .NET and worked on this project outside of his normal work week to beat the deadline for the next season opening.
    • “I built a volunteer management system. It integrated with the ticketing system. The house managers could hit a button, open a show directly from the ticketing system. It pre-filled and populated everything. They had templates for all the positions they needed…. The first week it went live it saved 55 staff hours between 2 people. That was cool…. That’s the resume builder right there, and that actually enabled me to get my next job…. That’s the resume builder because not only did you learn a tech skill…but it showed that you can think about the business and not just a tech feature.” – David Klee, describing the outcome of his work building a new volunteer management system
    • John emphasizes the need for quantification so the next person looking to hire you can understand your value to the organization. Saving that many staff hours per performance translates to dollars. David says this allowed 2 people working 80-hour weeks to work only 50 hours per week.
• Nick highlights an irony. Many companies do not have enough systems documentation to troubleshoot effectively when there is a problem. When we are applying for a job, we need documentation that indicates our expertise level to be deemed competent enough to go and work on a system which a company may not have documented well. But, if we do not document our own experience well, we have a problem!
  • We have to be able to prove our competence and experience to another company. We might be able to succeed in a technical interview by answering questions, but we need proof of our expertise.
  • Companies may want us to do and not document, but around performance review time documentation becomes critically important. This is at odds with the overall culture as it relates to documentation.
  • “And the documentation onus is on you. They’ll never give you the time to document your successes because they don’t want you to jump ship and bring that list of successes with you. So it’s on you. How much time do you have nights and weekends to keep up on this stuff? You have to make the time.” – David Klee, on documenting our accomplishments / successes
  • How detailed should the list of our own successes / accomplishments be?
    • David says it should be detailed enough to make it repeatable, keeping in mind we cannot take proprietary information from a company.
    • David says the knowledge of building a volunteer management system has stuck with him over time. He has built web applications ever since.
    • “The framework has changed. The foundation has changed. But the knowledge of how to take a business challenge, justify and quantify the impact of solving it technically, implementing it, and then measuring the outcome…if you can document that, that’s what you need for the proof…. What did you do and why did you do it? Give me 3 sentences on how you did it and then tell me the outcome.” – David Klee, on documenting accomplishments
  • According to Nick, getting the refined outcome statement for your resume for an interview takes writing down your accomplishments a couple of different times. Document everything in a brain dump format, refine it a time or too, and pull out those impact statements that are most relevant for a specific role.
    • David says we have to make the time to do it so we can stand out. He also shares the kinds of questions he asks a current mentee.
    • The guy David is mentoring mentioned he had built a web application to help track household finances. It was a PHP front end with a SQL Server back end that ran in his home test lab. QuickBooks may have been easier, but David’s mentee wanted the experience of building the application himself.
    • When asked how much time it took, David’s mentee said it took him longer than it probably should have, but he wanted to learn how everything worked. David will often give his mentee new ideas for things to explore, and the mentee will spend his weekends tinkering.
    • “The tech side of this is easy. Even just a lateral move in the business…how do you justify that you’re going to actually solidify a business need to fill a role? If it’s a promotion, how do you justify that? You have to keep track of those.” – David Klee
    • David gives examples of the outcomes of some of his consulting work – saving an airline over 30 million dollars in database licensing, added 500 million dollars to the valuation of an electric vehicle startup, worked with 4 of the 10 largest hedge funds in the world, migrated 140 terabyte SQL Server database across the country in 18 seconds, etc.
    • To go back one step, David has multiple sets of documents – business accomplishments and technical accomplishments, stressing that these are two different things. He spends one Saturday morning per month making notes on his accomplishments.
    • “And to be able to just rattle that off and say…we did that, and we can do it again. Not only did we have a good outcome with it, but we documented the process. It’s a repeatable process…. Anybody at that company could follow that process and not call me again to do that. And I’m happy for that.” – David Klee, speaking to the success of migrating a very large SQL Server database which came from not only doing it but training people at the company to do it next time
    • The above migration / process or recipe can easily be applied in a quick, useful way to help another company.

18:37 – Transparent Outcomes and the Hero’s Journey

• David shares the story of one of the most successful troubleshooting experiences that came from a SQL Server migration project with a 2-week timeline to get it onto new hardware after the SQL Server had been running for 8 years. There was no documentation of the environment, and no one at that company who had tried the migration previously could figure it out.
  • “We got this running 3 hours and 10 minutes into a 4-hour maintenance window. I didn’t sleep for a day after that because I was so jacked from nerves. But it worked. And the next morning, because I couldn’t sleep…I’m on a laptop on the couch documenting every single thing that I did and took all the screenshots that I’d been taking through the entire time, stitched them together, and built them a how-to document. They didn’t ask me to do it…but they now have the how-to for how to do this again down the road…. Nobody there had bothered to look into why the system stayed up and running those 8 years.” – David Klee, recounting a very difficult troubleshooting exercise
  • Because David knew infrastructure and coding, he was able to dig into all the right areas to make the project a success.
  • David documented the technical outcome and the business outcome from the troubleshooting session. He also did a post-mortem to explain why the business should have invested time and resources to understand that system before they attempted a migration. He also recommended they re-write a specific application because they no longer had the source code.
  • Nick says the technical and business outcomes David generated from his brain dump are evidence that he’s a good troubleshooter.
  • “The hilarious thing is that at the end of the day, for the business, nothing changed. That platform that they used thousands of times a second was still up and running, so literally sometimes the business outcome is transparent. To be able to tout that to the right people, they get it. But to the non-seasoned recruiter, they don’t know. So, you have to be able to spin that…. You don’t have to embellish anything, but you have to know what to bring to the surface to get them to actually understand the significance of what you’re talking about.” – David Klee
• John wonders if the right outcome for the business is that nothing went wrong?
  • David says this is how he got into virtualization. Nothing went wrong when he moved systems for the performing arts center from physical to virtual during a time when tickets were on sale. Not crashing was the success.
  • In other cases, database migrations for large companies have been minimizing downtime and disruption of the business (i.e. fitting into a tight maintenance window). Technical outcomes in these situations were things like completing a database upgrade, moving to newer hardware, successful patching, reducing future problems, etc. The business cares about uptime alone.
• A business might not understand a system is critical because of underinvestment, and they may not see the value of the system’s uptime as a result. When someone puts forth a ton of effort to reduce downtime for a specific system, people might not care because they don’t know.
  • David doesn’t have it in him to let problems / systems crash and burn. Not everyone operates at this level of moral standard.
  • John says a business demonstrates what is and is not important based on budget, time, and attention. It’s difficult as an employee to go on a hero’s journey and fix a problem (potentially sacrificing mental and physical wellbeing) for no recognition.
    • “I’m with you to a point. But at the same time, if the hero’s journey to fix something for no recognition means I’ve grown as a technologist with a transferable and portable set of skills that will elevate my next step, is it worth it? And in some cases no and in some cases yeah. That volunteer management system at the performing arts center…that was 600 hours of work in 4 months outside of an 80 hour a week job. That was a lot. But that skill showed that I can build tools to solve business problems. It gave me a more modern framework to implement that skill, and it gave me an industry standard means to demonstrate it. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment and a workaholic, so I come at this from a rather jaded perspective. But if your home situation and family situation allows you to do it for bursts, I claim it’s worth it. You don’t have to do it all day every day for 25 years, but to do it in bursts to hit a marker that you give to yourself…you’re not running an ultra-marathon by training for 20 minutes a week. There’s work that comes along with it, and there is sacrifice in a lot of this stuff because the knowledge isn’t just going to pop into your head. And work’s not going to give you the time to learn this stuff. They’re just not…not unless you have a truly special organization…. You’ve got to push yourself. It pushes your career. It pushes your ability to prepare.” – David Klee

27:25 – Avoiding the Cold Start with Prep Work

• What if the business you work for goes under / goes out of business? What will you do tomorrow? David says this has to be in our minds. From a business and technology perspective what do we do? How can we make the next step easier?
  • Nick thinks we would need to know
    • Where all documented accomplishments are (if that’s been completed)
    • Who to call and network with about job prospects
    • Understand / have a tight handle on our finances
  • “It’s a hard one, and that goes back to the loop of personal troubleshooting and documentation. Say you do a job for 5 years. Your last day on the job…are you going to remember all the accomplishments that you had during that 5-year tenure? No. Are you going to remember that monthly? Sure. Take a Saturday morning. Sit there with a good cup of coffee or something, and just write. Throw it in a Word document. Throw it in Dropbox or OneDrive or wherever…. It doesn’t have to be pretty…. What did you enjoy? What wins did you have? What problems did you solve? What did you learn? What did you do for the business? What did the business do for you? If the business did something cool for you and you liked it, maybe that’s a pre-requisite for hiring at your next job. A couple of the companies I worked for…they were nice enough to send me to some conferences. I learned a ton. Document it. Take the time. Yeah, it’s time out of your week. It’s not fun. It’s not enjoyable. But at the same time, it gives you a foundation to say, ‘I did this.’ And if you’re looking for another role, and if it’s a role dissimilar to what you’re doing today, how can you adapt what you’ve done to the new industry or the new role or the new vertical? And that’s a hard one for people to wrap their brain around. All this stuff applies. You just have to spin it the right way.” – David Klee
    • David shares that his brother finished a career as a music teacher at a high school and became a police officer. Transferable skills were things like working with crowds, training and educating, getting people to work together, etc.
    • David mentions a friend who worked for a database monitoring company and built software and tooling for that company. This friend later moved to the financial sector. Though the database being monitored might be different, the framework and the foundation for documentation / monitoring / quality assurance testing / user acceptance testing all still applies.
• John says the typical scenario is someone losing their job and needing to come from a cold start. The person has done no disaster recovery planning and needs to run their disaster recovery plan.
  • “Clear your mind, and start thinking. Give me the top 5 things about the current job that you really enjoyed, and then make a beeline and run…. If you like infrastructure, look to see who’s hiring in your town. Look for those user groups…. It doesn’t take more than a meeting or two if you’re comfortable around people to actually get to know some of these folks…. Dig in your heels. Get yourself out of your comfort zone and go to these things and start talking to people.” – David Klee
  • David mentions meetup.com and the Azure Data Community as great places to find technical user groups. Don’t rule out business user groups as well because it doesn’t have to be tech focused.
  • David says we don’t have to be way out of our comfort zone to say hello to someone at a user group, tell them what you do, and ask what they do.
  • Nick says we can even ask people if there is someone they know that we should meet.
  • “The worst thing you can do is nothing. Nothing will not move you forward. Even a basic conversation, if nothing else comes from it, you’ve still talked to somebody. You’ve still got a connection now.” – David Klee
• John says many of us have critiqued an employer for a lack of disaster recovery planning or business continuity planning, but at the same time, we haven’t done that same kind of planning for our own careers. We have to take accountability for that in our own lives.
  • “Nobody is going to hand you a new career or a job promotion on a silver platter…. It just doesn’t happen. And for all of the folks that sit around waiting and they just think that better things are around the corner…the odds are, if you don’t push, better things are not around the corner. It may not be any worse, but it’s probably not going to be any better Career paths in IT with a company that’s willing to invest in you are rare these days. They want you to do a job, and that’s what you’re there to do. There’s not a track for promotion or advancement. So, the convention in the US is to quit your job and find a better one to get that promotion. I hate to say it. I’d love to have career paths. It just doesn’t really exist all over the place, so it’s on you. What are you doing?” – David Klee
  • For David, his action was going independent and working for himself. It gives him the freedom to select technologies that have business value and learn them to the depth of being able to tell other people how to use them. This choice (business ownership) allows him to be flexible and change direction when needed.
  • If the world changes or shifts, we can pivot our careers. David was an infrastructure admin who became a software developer, a database administrator, a consultant, and a consulting firm owner / nerd of all trades.
  • “You can pivot, and it all just builds. And that list of accomplishments, that prep that you’ve done to build the foundation to make essentially disaster recovery for your career easier. Failing over a database to a different site that’s already been replicated is a right-click go kind of operation. If you’ve pigeon-holed 20 years of your life on a system that is totally proprietary and non-transferable, what are you going to do?” – David Klee
  • David tells the story of a friend from one of his first jobs who was laid off after 25 years of working on proprietary systems. The friend had not done the prep for career disaster recovery. It took 7 months to figure out what to do after that for a job with half the pay.
    • “The prep wasn’t there. It drives me nuts because the prep needed to be there.” – David Klee, commenting on the lack of preparedness of a friend who was laid off

35:47 – Testing a Career DR Plan

• Even for those of us who agree we need a DR plan for our career or have some form of one, what elements might we not be thinking about? What are some of the unknown unknowns?
  • David says if we were to take our company’s IT systems and fail to DR right now, something will not work because of an undocumented change, a software update, etc.
  • “No DR strategy is perfect unless you test it, and who wants to test a career DR strategy? …It goes back to…can you troubleshoot? Can you identify the things that are missing now that you’ve failed over and what isn’t working? …Go through the feedback loop. Can you improve and clean up and fix? And, arguably, don’t make it equal to where you came from. Make it better. Because then, the bar has now risen, and it’s just an uphill climb after that. There’s no downhill slide.” – David Klee
  • The only way Nick can think of to test a career DR plan is to follow the documented plan you have to see how fast you could get an interview and into the final round.
    • David says even if you’re content where you are, go look for another job. If you get an offer, that’s a pretty good DR plan if the job you looked for is something you want. If you try this and can’t make it past sending in a resume, you have a safety net because you do not have to leave your current job.
    • “You can start to look at the mirror. What am I not doing that’s making me less marketable to these folks? And that’s a hard pill to swallow…. If you’re not intent on leaving your current job, there’s really no harm in it….” – David Klee
    • Nick cautions about burning bridges. If you are going to interview for a role, really consider it. Be kind and courteous to recruiters and the people you speak to during the process, especially if you have to turn down an offer.
    • David says if you have a job and you’re looking for a new one, there is nothing wrong with taking a job that will better your situation.
    • “There’s a certain number of hoops you have to jump through to get a job. Have you even written a resume recently? Have you written a cover letter if you think that’s necessary? Have you submitted a job application and gotten a recruiter to call you back? …And, have you been able to get past that…recruiter screen to get to talk to whatever the next level is…? And if you are consistently getting to hurdle 5, maybe you don’t need to worry…. The vast majority of people don’t even start because they think about that last hurdle – what if they offer me somehting and then I need to make a decision about whether to leave or not? Well, that’s not the situation that you’re facing yet.” – John White
    • John mentions chats with hiring managers, skip level leaders, vice president level personnel, and even technical presentations as hurdles and levels in the interview process / road to getting a new job. Not taking that first step in the process is the mistake everyone is making.
  • As a consultant, David does consistent job interviews (5-10 times per week probably). He’s had a lot of practice.
    • “It takes some experience, so start the process. Because if you are just jittery, nervous, can’t speak a sentence to these folks…how are you going to make it to that next level? How are you going to get to the point where they’re extending you an offer? It’s hard. It takes time. It takes experience. It takes a feedback loop of improvement in yourself to understand how to approach those things. And I’m not saying just interview to waste somebody’s time, but if you are seriously looking, interview for things that may be tangential to what you’re interested in in the hopes that they may actually be better, a better fit, a better path…because the more experience you have with it the better.” – David Klee, on interviewing
    • David got a job as a database administrator (DBA) because he knew a lot about infrastructure and had some SQL Server experience. They made him a DBA, and David really enjoyed it.
  • A business doesn’t refuse to investigate disaster recovery because the disaster recovery target might be better than the existing infrastructure and present a difficult decision. John reminds us that people make similar statements about their career disaster recovery every day.
    • “If the poop hits the fan, what would you do today? What would you do tomorrow? What would you do next week? What professional network have you built up? What proof do you have in the industry of what you’ve actually accomplished? Who can you call to vouch for you? They always ask for references. What can you do? What can you reference? What can’t you reference? What can you make veiled allusions to? …I hate the phrase ‘brand awareness…’ but to have visibility and verifiable proof that you’ve actually done something – that’s powerful. You need to have that, and it goes back to the prep. Push the fear aside. That’s the hardest part. A lot of folks are afraid of the end result. A lot of folks are afraid of the process. A lot of folks are afraid of the act of change…because it puts you out of your comfort zone.” – David Klee
    • John thinks all of these fears are stand-ins that prevent us from facing the fear that losing our position is a very real possibility. Facing this fear of the possibility of losing your job could produce crippling indecision too, so people decide not to think about it (the worst thing you can do for disaster recovery).
  • David takes us back to that SQL Server User Group meeting in 2008 and says back then he did not like speaking in front of a crowd. He would help coordinate things from time to time but was always the guy in the back.
    • People at the user group knew the kind of work David did each day, but he didn’t think much about it as something to share in a presentation. In 2010, they decided to hold a SQL Saturday event in Omaha.
    • When a speaker backed out at the last minute, one of the leaders asked David to speak on SQL Server virtualization instead. David agreed to do the presentation and really enjoyed it.
    • There was someone sitting in the back of lthe room during David’s presentation that day, and it just so happened to be the author of SQL in a Nutshell Kevin Kline. Kevin e-mailed David 6 months later to ask him to co-present on the same topic at a very large conference.
    • In November 2011, David delivered his first big technical presentation at the conference.
    • “I figured there’d be 30, 40 people in the room. No. They closed the doors 30 minutes before the presentation because they hit the 500-person fire marshal limit. And we give an hour-and-a-half presentation in front of a packed room, and it turns out his role in the presentation was to be comic relief between sections and he wanted me to give 95% of the presentation. That was, right there, what let me get into consulting for myself…. That was the thing that showed that this thing that I leaned how to do on my own is something that not everybody could do, and it gave me te confidence to be able to run with it – both from a tech presentation perspective and a career perspective and literally make it work…. It was a topic that I knew. It was the unknown knowns. And from telling people about it I had the experience of being able to share it in a way that they could understand even though the topic was foreign to them back then. And it worked. It clicked. I would say that was the career disaster recovery to a better infrastructure. Things just skyrocketed after that. I spoke at 118 SQL Saturdays after that. It set the awareness in the community of what I could do so that in 2013 when I went independent as a consultant…we got our first customer day 3 all from somebody seeing me at a SQL Saturday event talking about this topic…. So unbelievably cool…it’s everything that accidentally came together in the whole career DR except I would say this was a proactive career failover for disaster preparedness…. We’ve been in business now 11.5 years…. I look at tomorrow. Where do I need to add stuff to the career? Where do I need to add more awareness to any of this stuff? Where do I need to be so that if the world shifts in a year, I’m ready? Every day I look at the mirror. You have to…because if you don’t, you’re going to be caught off guard. It’s the last spot you want to be in both for you and your family.” – David Klee
    • David still has the photo from that conference that someone took looking from the stage to the audience during his session.
    • David put himself in a position to be lucky by going deep in multiple areas, sharing his work, and learning in public.
    • “That one presentation in 2011 was 12 years in the works.” – David Klee, on all the events that led to the presentation that changed everything…or as John says, David became an overnight success 12 years later
    • David’s business is still running strong despite the pandemic, and he doesn’t have to market. The work comes to him because of the brand awareness he developed. For this, he is very thankful. And the accomplishments are documented in the public eye.
• To follow up on this conversation with David:
  • Visit davidklee.net or heraflux.com (the home site of David’s consultancy, Heraflux Technologies).
  • You can also contact David on LinkedIn.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Can you see the loop of personal troubleshooting and documentation now? After listening back to this discussion with David, Nick was reminded of Episode 284 – Draft Your Narrative: Writing and Building a Technical Portfolio with Jason Belk (2/2). We never used the word narrative in this discussion, but that’s what we’re building by doing the documentation. Documentation is an input to having a narrative in the first place.
  • We have to take the time to do the documentation of our accomplishments to avoid the cold start situation of needing a job having done no prep work.
  • There were so many questions David suggested we think through as we document.
  • David says we’re documenting repeatable processes. But it turns out the documentation process itself is a repeatable process that we can use for our work solving a problem and for our accomplishments.
• After listening to this, is the documentation of your technical and business accomplishments up to date so you can share them in interview discussions, promotion discussions, and even in conversation in community groups?
  • Look in the mirror and out the window, and find the communities that can help you learn!
• Special thanks to David on suggesting the topic and collaborating with us to create a create a great discussion. If you have an idea, please e-mail us or contact us on LinkedIn. Let’s collaborate and create a great show!

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

Can writing documentation beef up your troubleshooting skills?

This week in episode 315 David Klee returns to explore the connection between effective troubleshooting and documentation. We’ll discuss appropriate levels of detail for documentation and explore it as a skill building exercise. Listen closely to hear why good documentation can make all the difference in a regulatory compliance audit as well as in emergency situations. Also, we’ll talk through some interview questions you can ask to determine the value of good documentation within an organization.

Original Recording Date: 01-20-2025

Topics – An Exploration of Troubleshooting, Pre-requisites for Effective Troubleshooting, What Should Be Documented, Forms of Documentation and Emergency Preparedness, Interview Questions and Employer Perceptions

2:32 – An Exploration of Troubleshooting

• David Klee is a returning guest and the owner and chief architect at Heraflux Technologies. If you missed the previous discussions with David, you can find them below:
  • Episode 119 – Tinkering into Specialty with David Klee (1/2)
  • Episode 120 – A Time to Build with David Klee (2/2)
  • Episode 309 – The Consulting Life: Managing Travel and Becoming a Better Communicator with David Klee (1/2)
  • Episode 310 – Finding a Better Way: Contracting, Independence, and a Consultant’s Reputation with David Klee (2/2)
• David approached us about an idea for another topic to explore. After many years in the industry (11 of them as a business owner), David began to think about patterns he has seen and what has made him and many others successful.
  • “What has actually made this work? And it’s the art and the science and the luck of troubleshooting…. What makes some of the best technologists arguably some of the best troubleshooters in the world, and then how do you apply that to life? …There’s a lot more than just knowing a technical feature or two or being able to Google faster than the person next to you. I have a lot of fun with this topic.” – David Klee, framing our discussion
• Philosophically, David believes troubleshooting is as much an art as it is a science. There is a foundation one needs to be a good troubleshooter, and David tells us this stems from our childhood curiosity about why things do what they do.
  • David tells the story of learning to use a screwdriver at age 5, taking the family’s VCR apart, and successfully putting it back together again (which may or may not have landed him in trouble).
  • Over time some people have a constant need to know why something is what is / why it works the way it does. David sees this present in some people but not all people.
  • “When you look at those that are truly great at an industry…they want to know why, and they don’t stop until they know why.” – David Klee
  • David mentions the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which speaks to breaking up the things we know and don’t know into 4 quadrants:
    • Unknown unknowns are the things that get people into trouble because they think they know these but do not
    • Known unknowns – David considers this area enlightenment in IT and a way to know where the boundaries are
    • “Unknown knowns are the things that I consider you a master at a technology or a topic of anything because what you know becomes so integrated into your frame of reference and your being that you don’t know that you know it. You just do it. And, when you hit that point of a mastery of something…you may not be able to explain how you do it or you may not be able to tell somebody the steps to do it. But it’s just muscle memory. It’s just go. You do, and it works…. The truly good educators are the ones that can actually take what they know and dial it to the level of the people that they’re talking to. Some experts cannot do that, but they are so good at what they do. Others can. It’s fascinating…. It’s the unknown unknowns that gets people into trouble. It’s the unknown knowns that really separates people.” – David Klee
    • We did not mention known knowns, but it would be the final quadrant.
  • John says it’s the idea that you can master a skill or process but not have mastery of teaching or explaining that skill or process. Doing ang teaching could overlap, but they do not always overlap.
    • David comes from a family of teachers, actually. His parents were traveling road musicians who fell into education, but they have always continued some sort of musical pursuit on their own.
    • “It’s neat…to be able to explain to somebody how something works and why. I love it.” – David Klee
  • When Nick thinks about troubleshooting, he thinks about both high pressure and low-pressure situations when we’re trying to figure out why something is not doing what it’s supposed to do.
    • David says we’re trying to determine why there is an unexpected outcome and what we need to do to get to the expected outcome.
    • “It’s a formal methodology or informal methodology for understanding why something does not have an expected outcome and working through the process that is an iterative process – either elimination or identification. And you end up with essentially identification, review, remediate, rinse and repeat until you get the desired outcome. That’s about as formal of a definition as I can give you.” – David Klee
    • John thinks this may disguise the art in the troubleshooting process of knowing what issues may be more likely than others.
    • People might discover something is not working and change 10 things. If something then starts working again, how do we know which change (or combination of changes) actually resolved the problem? We are far less likely to undo the changes once something begins working again.
  • John mentions being good at troubleshooting in areas in which he has lost the fear of something going wrong.
    • While John feels comfortable troubleshooting computer systems and software, he’s not good at troubleshooting car problems due to limited knowledge and a feeling of high stakes. Someone with a better knowledge of cars may perceive the stakes to be far lower when making a recommendation for fixing problems.
    • David says it depends on what you are troubleshooting. There is a risk qualification element that needs to be considered with the process used in troubleshooting.
    • David shares the example of troubleshooting a payment processing system with a group of folks who didn’t know what they didn’t know. The process they had developed to troubleshooting ran the risk of preventing payment processing for the entire company. David describes determining the need to speak to the group of people who built the system in order to troubleshoot the system safely.

11:43 – Pre-requisites for Effective Troubleshooting

• Nick mentions we highlighted a pre-requisite for troubleshooting being knowledge of the systems we’re troubleshooting. What is the correlation between how good a troubleshooter one can be and how well one knows the systems involved in troubleshooting?
  • If we know our systems well, we know what is / is not possible within a given set of constraints. One example is knowing the ramifications of changing different database settings.
  • “You know what’s going to happen because you know the platform and you know your environment, and you know how they come together. If you know this stuff you can resolve these issues a whole lot quicker.” – David Klee
  • Knowledge of the platform and environment would mean we know the systems which interact with the one we are troubleshooting, the impact of the outage, the right person to call for help, and the questions you need to ask them.
  • It can be much harder when you inherit a system someone else built and no documentation on why it was set up the way it was or how other systems communicate with it. Likely you also don’t know what types of changes have been made to it over time (whether they were band aid type fixes or some other kind).
  • John mentions we’re highlighting domain knowledge of a system and its specific failure modes combined with what has happened in the past to diagnose and fix those things. A resilient system should have these things documented.
    • David says the flip side of this is being someone coming in from the outside who has never seen this machine before. Think about the scenario in which you are asked to troubleshoot a system which people with all the domain knowledge can’t fix. As a consultant he runs into this pretty regularly. It can be challenging, but David says it keeps him sharp.
    • Someone troubleshooting a system like this has to keep track of what’s already been done, what should have been done, and what questions need to be asked to extract domain knowledge from others when information hasn’t been documented.
    • One must also know the platform well enough to successfully understand a system’s current state (which might be different than what people tell you).
    • “Perception of a system’s state might be entirely different than the reality of the system’s state. That’s a hard, hard art to master right there.” – David Klee
  • John says someone who doesn’t know a system may have a better chance of doing effective diagnosis. The person who knows a system well is going to make assumptions someone who doesn’t know a system would likely not make (i.e. the database is running great, etc.).
    • David stresses the importance of quantifying performance when we’re troubleshooting. Preconceived notions about an environment might lead to subjective explanations.
    • When he walks into an environment to troubleshoot a problem, David wants to look at the raw data. This data can help provide the true nature of a system’s state and perhaps prevent finger pointing between teams.
    • “Show me the data. Show me why you think this. And most of the time, people cannot produce that data.” – David Klee
    • Even trend information on how past issues of a specific kind were resolved counts as data and may provide a nice starting point for troubleshooting.
    • David tells the story of a database administrator and a storage administrator getting into a shouting match over a specific problem. Each of them wanted to be right, but neither had data to back up their claims. In the end, both were right – the problem was somewhere in between the database and the storage in the network and operation system layers. Listen as David describes it in detail.
    • “But it’s ‘I’m right. You’re wrong.’ There was no ‘I understand that my telemetry is showing me this, but your telemetry is showing you something different.’ Put the data together, and draw a line between them. It’s the why is this showing 2 different things.” – David Klee on troubleshooting telemetry data from different systems

18:29 – What Should Be Documented

• What type of documentation would be helpful to have in situations like the one David described (the network and database administrators getting into an argument)?
  • David says it would have been ideal to have a diagram of the entire environment that highlights the data communication flow between systems.
  • “If we were able to literally have every single hop there, then you essentially start at both ends, and you start collecting the data until you meet in the middle. If you know the pieces involved, you can collect the system state and the telemetry behind it. That’s the easy part. You just have to know how to draw that line.” – David Klee
  • Should each hop in the flow of data be instrumented from the beginning or only when there is a problem?
    • David says you need data to baseline for good performance, and when there is a problem, you have to compare the telemetry for each part of the path to that of the baseline.
    • David feels like he spends 25% of his week benchmarking and baselining things for people and has developed methodologies for different types of systems across technology stacks.
    • “How can you tell me it’s running slow if we don’t know how it was running when everything is fine? You have no objectivity to gauge it’s slow.” – David Klee
  • John highlights the challenges of diagramming these types of systems or applications. We need to represent physical connections, virtual connections, and even API calls for example. There are many layers involved, each of which can change.
    • David thinks of a system he might be troubleshooting as an ecosystem rather than something static. He gives the example of a desktop computer and how a single software update can change everything.
    • “To me it’s document what’s in your domain. Document it the best you can. Imagine you get hit by the beer truck, and somebody else has to come along and follow you…. I want you to know everything there is to know about why this machine was setup the way it was, what it took to get this thing running stable including custom tweaks, the raw architecture behind it, the configuration, everything I can possibly think of…mostly because I’m probably going to be the one to upgrade this thing in 4 or 5 or 6 years. I want to know – what did I do to stabilize this thing? Why is it setup the way it’s setup? And if somebody else needs to come along and support this…” – David Klee, on the purpose of good documentation
    • David gets calls from customers during problem situations asking why certain configurations were made, and when this happens, he will send them the same, extremely thorough set of documents he produced and shared with them when the system was originally built.
    • David has high expectations for what good looks like when it comes to documentation. The output from a SQL Server and infrastructure health check provided to customers will be around 250 pages on average. The spirit behind this is so customers have the what and the why.
• David highlights some big successes from producing thorough documentation for customers.
  • David’s company saved a customer over $30 million in SQL Server licensing because of effective tuning, and due to this work, the firm later won a massive SQL Server migration project as a result.
    • “They liked the documentation. They liked the why and not just the what.” – David Klee, on thorough systems documentation as a differentiator of his business
• John says people often don’t want to document things for the next person, but many times the next person who comes along is you 6 months later.
  • These things need to be documented well or perhaps put into a knowledge management system.
  • David documents things so he isn’t forced to recall them from memory months or years in the future. He could be documenting a quick change or something that took 40 hours to find in the process of solving a problem. When making a change to something weird or nuanced, David will document it and make sure he and his customers have multiple copies of it.
  • “There are things all over the place with the kind of tuning that I do. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d have no clue. You’d just have weird symptoms here or there, but these things are so nuanced.” – David Klee
• How can we balance thorough documentation with the need to make progress and not impede it?
  • An organization has to be on board and allow technologists the time to document properly. If this doesn’t happen, the entire IT organization suffers. The technologists who made changes to solve a problem will forget what they did very quickly when forced to move on to the next fire immediately.
  • “I think that’s why I run into a lot of the states that I do out there…. Something broke. Nobody’s had the time to think about it or look at it or document it or review it…. Here, you figure it out.” – David Klee

25:25 – Forms of Documentation and Emergency Preparedness

• Is the documentation we’re talking about something kept in a change control system, a wiki, and asset management system, or just some large document somewhere?
  • If enough history is provided, David tells us the format doesn’t matter.
  • Some places use a formalized change control process with tickets and platforms like ServiceNow. It’s a process that works for those organizations.
  • Some organizations treat infrastructure as code and leverage JIRA tickets for tracking changes.
  • “As long as I have a list of what has changed and when and why and a reference document that shows why the system is configured the way it I, any nonstandard change, any reason why the system is in use, anything. What’s it talking to? What’s placed on it? What firewall exclusions, routes…? If I have that, I know 90% of what I need. It’s that last 10% that’s always…specific to a given machine. But if I know the why, the what, and the where…you can figure out the how.” – David Klee
• Make sure your documentation is retrievable even if a system or platform or datacenter is offline! David has one customer who prints out the documentation once per month and puts it into a fireproof safe to take one example.
  • There are many ways to ensure the documentation is retrievable in a critical situation. We need to make sure it’s available offsite somewhere (digital or printed copy).
  • Who should have access to the documentation?
    • David says more than one person for sure. Things can happen to people like getting hit by a beer truck or being in a natural disaster.
    • “If you have one copy…single point of failure; I don’t believe in that. Two, three, four copies – park it on a USB drive at a bank deposit box. Park it in a public cloud that key members of IT can get into. The odds that that goes down…slim.” – David Klee
    • Nick mentions the access to documentation (i.e. the run books) would need to be part of onboarding and offboarding new team members.
  • David tells the story of helping a trucking company build a DR plan several years ago. The company was in tornado alley and had around 800 virtual machines. Due to regulations in the trucking industry, there is a requirement for constant telemetry feeding back to corporate systems from the trucks themselves.
    • “I don’t believe in just testing a handful of pieces of DR every once in a while. We fail over and run from DR for 1 week out of every month…. They fail over the first Friday night of the month. They fail back on the second Friday of the month. Half of IT gets off the 3rd Friday of the month, and the other half gets off the last Friday of the month. I think it’s great. They love it…. Anybody in the room can fail over the entire company with the run books that are provided and maintained by every member of IT.” – David Klee, speaking to a DR plan for a company he helped architect
    • In this scenario, the company’s CIO chooses 4 random members of IT staff who cannot be part of the DR exercise (i.e. simulating that they died). If any member of the team has to call one of those 4 team members during the fail over or fail back, the DR exercise fails.
    • The company we’re talking about not only says they have DR. They demonstrate it to insurance companies and auditors, and their insurance is much less as a result. The full failover to / from DR takes about 43 minutes. The process took about a year to get right because of so many moving parts, but it works very well.
• How detailed should a company’s disaster recovery or business continuity plan be for the purpose of audits?
  • David says there are varying degrees of detail. Some auditors may be checking a box, only looking for backups and offsite copies of data.
  • Good auditors would ask to see the detailed process of how things failed over and how long it took.
  • Some companies do disaster recovery and only fail over one system (maybe even without all the dependencies).
  • “The good auditors are the ones that ask how long, when, not just what. Those are the auditors that most people in IT hate.” – David Klee
  • David shares the story of a database administrator friend of his who was, in an audit, asked about the disaster recovery process and if he could demonstrate it.
    • The auditor then noticed a 400-page book about SQL Server backup and recovery that David’s friend had written.
    • David’s friend mentioned the book was the genericized process, but he then produced a specific document of the process at that specific company. It answered the auditor’s questions in 5 minutes.

33:12 – Interview Questions and Employer Perceptions

• John is wondering if we may have uncovered some good screening questions for job applicants to use in interviews related to this topic.
  • We could ask about the company’s knowledge management strategy, the way they document how systems work, or the level of importance placed on documenting disaster recovery / failover processes.
  • David says the employer should have an immediate answer for this. If they don’t, it’s a red flag and may mean you are the one who has to do whatever it takes to get stuff up and running again.
  • Different parts of the business might document things in different ways (all of which could be effective), and processes might have different levels of importance when it comes to business resilience. John gives the example of documenting an employee onboarding process and where that ranks in overall priority compared to other things.
  • David shares the story of a company whose disaster recovery plan includes helping the families of the IT professionals who need to engage because of an emergency situation. This includes transportation, housing, and much more.
• What types of questions might David ask a prospective job candidate on this topic?
  • David would ask how someone documents why something works.
  • David also asks for a 5-minute technical presentation covering a facet of what they are working on and why they enjoy it.
  • “It’s an interesting twist because it tells me…can you talk to somebody who knows something about what you’re doing? Can you convey it in a way that people can understand? And it helps me get into their brain. Why do you like doing this?” – David Klee
    • These types of questions help David understand how much someone enjoys working in the technology field or they are in it solely for the money.
• Do most employers see value in a prospective employee having the experience in writing detailed documentation or disaster recovery plans, or is it a mixed bag?
  • “The company should love it. I can’t say they always do.” – David Klee
  • Some employers may think you are too deep in the weeds or that you spend too much time on paperwork and process to effectively get things done.
    • Companies could be solely focused on getting things done, which can be a problem.
    • Companies too focused on process may be very inefficient.
    • David says it’s an interesting balancing act and sees this play out differently inside different organizations. The approach may depend on the type of business and what they are trying to do.
    • “If a person’s process behind this stuff doesn’t line up with the company, you may not be a good fit.” – David Klee
  • John mentioned the good and the bad of systems being designed to prevent change.
    • “Database technologies are very evolutionary. I see people that can’t embrace positive change to be as big of a detriment as people that embrace negative change too haphazardly.” – David Klee
    • David highlights an example. This company needed a more highly available database environment but was too reluctant to migrate to one. The change was too much for them to embrace even though it would provide a great benefit.
    • This isn’t about a poor value statement for the change. No one wants to put their job on the line if something doesn’t work. David mentions a mandate from the top of a company for availability, but no one at lower levels is willing to make changes to achieve it. This is a case of a mandate not being enforced.
    • “It’s we’re willing to sacrifice what we know to move into unknown territory carefully, cautiously, one piece at a time…and they can’t start the process.” – David Klee
    • John says this may be due to cultural or political undercurrents not visible to someone on the outside of the system.
    • David references a previous conversation we had on the show about consulting and the level of exposure to politics. David reiterates one of the reasons he loves consulting – because he does not do well with politics.
    • Are consultants brought in because of company politics? The fun part of consulting according to David is when a company brings you in to tell them what they need to do. When a company brings you in and tells you what to do as a consultant, you have the ability to say no if asked to take an improper or incorrect approach (another reason David loves consulting).
• In environments where detailed documentation is seen as valuable, can this get someone a promotion or perhaps even save their job?
  • The answer is 100% yes.
  • David gives the example of a company which had a security incident last year. The database administrator was seen as someone who always said no to things, wanting to look at code before it was released to production or have changes happen during normal working hours, etc.
    • After the company was hit by a ransomware incident, the database administrator (or DBA), recovered the machines in 7 hours. It took 2 weeks for all other systems that used the database to get back up and running again.
    • The database servers had proper change control, use of service accounts, firewalling, etc. and were the most resilient because of that.
    • “Data was up all because…questioned everything, didn’t trust a bit. I trust you, and I trust your intentions. But prove it.” – David Klee, on the mindset needed for resilient systems

Mentioned in the Outro

• When creating system or change documentation, remember that one person you could be writing the documentation for is you in the future. You can also take the attitude of providing the right level of depth in documentation so that others can fix the problem without needing to call you.
  • Having appropriate levels of documentation in a place where everyone can find it can make it easier for team members to rotate in and out of certain areas and support taking uninterrupted vacations.
  • If your company or team isn’t documenting systems or changes at a deep level, maybe you can be the one to start the trend or help operationalize it for your team. Try speaking with your manager or team lead about the value of better documentation and ideas for getting there (maybe differently than it has been done in the past). Even making small improvements is progress, and it could be the kind of progress that helps you progress to team lead someday.
• For additional interview question ideas related to documentation and knowledge management, check out Episode 293 – Enterprise Knowledge Management: A Consultative Approach to Solving the Right Problems with Abby Clobridge (2/2).
• Troubleshooting is about drawing a line between two points and checking telemetry at every point in between, but when we are troubleshooting with others, it is an opportunity to show empathy, to collaborate effectively to solve a problem, and to learn from colleagues.
  • Maybe you can learn from the way colleagues on other teams document their changes and see how it compares to the way your team is doing it.
• Documentation lends itself well to ensure we are prepared for a business emergency

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

Does the ADHD brain experience stress differently in situations like being laid off, for example? According to Skye Waterson, ADHD coach and our guest in episode 314, stress actually has the potential to hit you harder after a crisis.

In this discussion, Skye shares practical tips for setting achievable goals as a job seeker or an entrepreneur and the importance of taking a long-term view throughout the process. We talk about the strengths of the ADHD brain in the tech field and how to determine if a work environment is the right fit when you’re interviewing. Skye also shares the reasons she decided to walk away from academia to start a business and some of the lessons learned along the way.

Original Recording Date: 12-29-2024

Skye Waterson a former academic turned entrepreneur and ADHD coach. If you missed the first part of our discussion with Skye for a slightly different perspective on the ADHD brain, check out Episode 313.

Topics – Stress and the ADHD Brain, ADHD Strengths in Tech, Setting Goals and Maintaining Accountability, Walking away from Academia, Reflecting on Entrepreneurship, Job Interviews and Finding an Environmental Fit

2:34 – Stress and the ADHD Brain

• Nick suggests we talk about stress in the context of the current job market. We’re seeing layoffs across tech and other industries continue. How do these stressful and traumatic situations affect the ADHD brain differently than perhaps those who do not have ADHD?
  • “There’s no conclusive thing that I can think of in the research that I’ve done that we experience stress in a different way…. What I would come back to with ADHD is that we have impulsivity struggles and we have executive functioning struggles. And so, it comes back to this idea that you’re ADHD all the time. When something stressful happens to you when you have ADHD…you have to deal with all of the emotional regulation, all of the thinking…all those things can mean it hits harder.” – Skye Waterson
    • People with ADHD can struggle with rejection sensitivity and self-criticism. Self-criticism could be partially due to receiving a lot of criticism when younger (positive or negative).
    • Stressful events can hit harder as well if you have PTSD or other mental health struggles.
  • Skye gives the example of getting into a car wreck. After it happens, you have to call the insurance company, figure out what to do with your car, and do many other things.
    • “And especially once the dopamine is gone…you might be good in the crisis, but post-crisis, you now have to pick up all of this executive functioning task work and do emotions. So, you might be struggling way longer than somebody else might be struggling…because now you have to deal with all this actual admin work as well.” – Skye Waterson, on experiencing stressful situations with ADHD
• If we put that same set of challenges in the context of someone losing a job, someone would need to figure out how to spend the time they have left at a company (could be some or none), update their resume, update LinkedIn, and decide what to do next.
  • “I’ve worked with a lot of people in that job space…. Essentially what you’re doing is you’re starting a small business called finding another job. It’s really complicated…. Really it does have to be a system that you break down…. What is my goal? My goal is to get this job. What are the steps that make this goal inevitable in a day? …Make it an achievable goal for you to hit those things and focus on that and give yourself dopamine for that rather than…my goal is to wake up every morning and try and get a job. That’s very, very difficult and not very fun from an emotional point of view.” – Skye Waterson
    • Some of the people Skye has worked with chose to begin a small business on the side after being impacted by a layoff. It’s certainly one option for people but not the only one.
    • Part of the system might include a specific number of people to message per day, a specific number of resumes to send per day, and a specific number of jobs to check in on. These goals should be achievable for you.
  • Would the amount of dopamine required to work toward getting another job each day be even higher because of the compelling event that put you into a stressed state?
    • Skye says yes but you also do not have to start immediately. We can sometimes go into crisis mode and use the dopamine of stressful events to push us forward. It can seem like a crazy burst of energy that propels you until you crash.
    • “In the moment when it happens…and if you knew that this might happen it can be good to prepare this in advance…you want to go ahead and do something grounding. Things you liked as a kid are very helpful. Give yourself Chinese food, watch a movie with a friend…things like that could be really good. But have a time in your calendar that you’ve blocked out that is ‘plan to find another job.’ Give yourself a 2-hour window. Put it in your calendar like you’d put a doctor’s appointment. Take yourself to a coffee shop if that’s going to help you stay motivated to do it, especially if you’ve been used to a working environment, and once you’re there, give yourself a really nice cup of coffee (maybe a chocolate biscuit with this one) and then go ahead and plan it out.” – Skye Waterson
    • Skye recommends an AI-powered app called Goblin Tools to help with planning / breaking down things into steps. This app is free and is designed to help people with ADHD. You could search for “find a job in X industry in X country” for example, and the tool will break it down into steps that you can convert into a daily rhythm (focusing on the input and not the output) and overall system for finding another job.
    • With ADHD one of the struggles with executive function is working memory. It can be hard to break things down into subtasks once you have a high-level task or goal. Skye likes to use the example of buying a new rug to show all the subtasks required (measuring, finding a new one, going to get it, deciding what to do with the old one, carrying it upstairs, etc.).
    • Nick has seen the challenge of breaking things down into steps firsthand through working with his daughter. It’s like there are dependencies that are missed. But once Nick’s daughter has the list, it’s easy to move forward and make progress.
    • “A list, a daily routine, a reward,…making it a realistic thing….” – Skye Waterson, on the elements of a good system for a job search
    • Goblin Tools can also provide a rough time estimate for tasks. They probably are not really accurate, but it can help you understand everything will not happen tomorrow and that it will take time.
• Is it easier for the ADHD brain to find closure after a stressful event (loss of a job, death in the family, etc.)?
  • Skye has not seen any evidence to suggest this is the case.
  • “It’s more the case that the admin of all of these things can tend to linger for a lot longer for people who are neurodiverse. So, they might still have boxes of things that they haven’t organized, for example, for years after other people would have organized them.” – Skye Waterson
  • Part of the reason Skye recommends using the prioritization filer we discussed last week was to account for things which might be lingering in someone’s mind for a long time (like things that have gone unorganized).
  • Some of the strengths of ADHD are creative problem solving, original thinking, etc.

11:53 – ADHD Strengths in Tech

• How might the strengths of the ADHD brain play out in the world of technology?
  • Nick mentions a great discussion from the ADHD Skills Lab podcast with guest Lisa Ballard about working in technology sales with ADHD.
  • “There are a ton of strengths. When I work with people who have ADHD it’s really about how do we mitigate the struggles so we can focus on the strengths. We’re not living a life of just mitigating the struggles, and sometimes people think that…. We know from the research that we’re original thinkers. If you give a person with ADHD a task and an example of the task, people who are neurotypical will tend to iterate around that example. People who are ADHD be fully left field…and completely originally redesign this thing…. You can sort of see how that would work well if you were in a workplace and you were solving a problem. One of the best things about ADHD in the technology space is that we are out of the box thinkers. We love pulling a solution to a complex problem out that no one else has seen before. And we’ll usually have an original perspective on why it exists, what we should do about it…. They’re great people to have in the room when you are ideating, when you are problem solving, when you are bug fixing even…all of those spaces.” – Skye Waterson, on ADHD strengths and how they play out in tech
• Would this support the theory that many entrepreneurs have ADHD?
  • Skye says ADHD is so common in entrepreneurs that people just assume entrepreneurs have it instead of the other way around.
  • Skye mentions two types of entrepreneurs:
    • The first type would be someone who has ADHD, never really worked on it, managed to focus without burning out completely, and became a very successful business owner with multiple employees. This person has not sorted out their own ADHD.
    • The second type is the entrepreneur with ADHD who is struggling (and maybe burning out) who seeks out strategies and support.
  • “Sometimes people will say ‘I have ADHD, but it doesn’t affect me….’ You should talk to the people in your office. It might.” – Skye Waterson

14:43 – Setting Goals and Maintaining Accountability

• How can the entrepreneur stick to the business they have chosen and focus on it without getting distracted or losing interest in it completely? One of the ADHD traits is losing interest in things after a time and abandoning them.
  • Skye says it’s very hard, and she’s spoken to other entrepreneurs with ADHD about this.
  • One way to combat this is to only do things that add to what you’re already doing. If you only help people in the technology space, you should only decide to do things that help people in the technology space.
  • Another way is to set a very long-term goal for your business (possibly a 25-year goal) and then smaller, shorter term goals or targets you’re working toward along the way (i.e. where you might want to be in 5 years or even 1 year, etc.). Ng
  • Having an EA or executive assistant can also be very helpful to hold you accountable and to be honest when you have added too much to your plate. External accountability can be very helpful.
• Can we have people hold us accountable in a way that we don’t feel the shame of not accomplishing a goal or abandoning a goal? With the challenges in emotional regulation that come with ADHD, does the sense of shame become greater?
  • Skye says yes it can be greater. But the problem may lie with the goal you have set.
  • In business, we often talk about the idea of a BHAG or big, hairy, audacious goal. It can be easier to not feel shame if the goal doesn’t have a strict timeline.
  • When working with an executive assistant, ask them about their goals to ensure their goal fits within yours.
  • Skye gives the example of having a goal to create a business that eventually becomes a media empire but at the same time is sustainable and will support balance with family life.
  • “If you said to somebody, ‘that’s my goal,’ and maybe part of that, because we do want some kind of measure, is ‘I want my business to hit 6 figures by the end of the year. That’s my goal.’ If you don’t hit 6 figures by the end of the year because something happened, it doesn’t super matter because you’re working toward a 25-year goal…a media empire 25-year goal. This was just a bit of a valley year. And so, you’re still going toward the goal but you’re just adjusting the goal posts when you get there. Don’t adjust them prematurely….” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye is advising us to take a longer-term view of our goals and to remind ourselves of the progress we have made, even if the progress was not as much as we wanted.
  • Don’t think about missing pre-defined targets as failures but rather as puzzles to solve while you make progress.
  • “This is a lot easier to do when you get out of the ‘I need to make enough money to survive’ part of business. But usually, when you’re in the ‘I need to make enough money to survive’ part of business, you have enough dopamine. It’s that middle piece that can sometimes be the problem when you’re scaling, you don’t yet have the finances to bring other people on to support yourself…to be able to get out of the things that you don’t love. You’re starting to do that, but you’re in that…complicated middle space.” – Skye Waterson, speaking to the dilemma of the solo entrepreneur
  • Nick says at this point effort has to go up because you are not quite big enough as a business.
  • “There’s that bit where…there’s no one, there’s no money, and it doesn’t super matter what the goals are because you’re just starting. No one will really notice. You can sort of play around in that space and figure it out. And I did this for years…. The middle piece is often where people find themselves stuck. They’ve got something. It’s making money, but they don’t know how to hand off those tasks and in what order and how to focus to do the thing.” – Skye Waterson
  • When you reach the point of being able to hire someone to help you, that can come with its own set of unique challenges according to Skye.
  • Before starting Unconventional Organisation, Skye helped her husband run a frozen foods business during which she learned a lot.

21:43 – Walking away from Academia

• Why did Skye become an entrepreneur, and how has she seen the challenges and strengths of ADHD play out during that experience?
  • Skye originally wanted to be an academic. Being part of that world involved a lot of short-term contracts and grant writing. It did not seem as stable or as free as she would have liked.
  • “I didn’t really know what to do about that, but I did start looking at entrepreneurship at that time.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye loved art and tried to sell a few paintings, but that didn’t really work well. She continued experimenting.
  • Skye’s then boyfriend (and now husband) who also has ADHD was starting a business selling frozen food in New Zealand. Skye helped him with the business and gained some experience, but the business fell victim to COVID shutdowns.
  • “It taught me a lot…. The thing I love about business is no one tells you no…and this kind of goes back to the idea of getting let go…. When you’re in a workplace, you can do your absolute…best, and you can still get fired, or you can still not get the promotion. There can be politics. There can be other things. When you are running your own business it’s sort of like a big giant puzzle. Yes, someone can say no to this thing, but maybe you just need to rethink what you’re doing, or maybe you need to talk to a different audience…. There’s often a solution. There’s something to do. And that for me was very good.” – Skye Waterson
  • When Skye started as an ADHD coach, she did not anticipate it becoming a large business, but she did hire a business coach. Skye knew from her previous experience how important this would be, and she also hired an executive assistant for a few hours per week. Skye highlights these two decisions as helping her grow and develop tremendously.
  • Skye would eventually decide to leave her PhD program and tells us it was one of the most difficult decisions she’s ever had to make after spending so much time pursuing that path. Skye found that her PhD supervisors / advisors were supportive of her decision to start a business and leave the program.
  • Skye is still involved in research and has a researcher on staff. Skye’s podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab, is a platform to discuss the current research which she can then turn into helpful teaching tools.
  • “In that way, it’s been great because businesses are like this little interesting engine that you can craft to however you want to work…. I still do the things I want to do. I just do them in a slightly different way.” – Skye Waterson
  • Nick thinks Skye has taken the things she enjoyed from academia and put them into a slightly different context.
  • Skye was at the dissertation stage when she left her PhD program, having already done the research that just needed to be written up. She also had a small baby at the time.
  • Skye said she was going to pursue a PhD and then didn’t finish it, but it’s ok that she didn’t finish. There is no shame in it because that was a small step in a much longer-term journey or goal. Skye is modeling for us that her own focus is on longer-term goals.

26:56 – Reflecting on Entrepreneurship

• What are some of the things Skye wishes she had asked about being an entrepreneur that she had to learn only after becoming one?
  • Skye wishes she had asked how to make money. That was definitely harder than it looked.
  • It wasn’t until after building a 6-figure business that someone told Skye how to do sales properly. She mentions she had been order taking rather than making sales.
  • “At the end of the day the number 1 thing you want to do is sell. Sales is super important, and I’ve had amazing business mentors throughout my career. That’s been the thing that has been most helpful. Do you know how to sell something to someone? …I knew how to do academia. I could talk for ages, but I didn’t know to sell something. That was big.” – Skye Waterson, on learning how to sell
  • Skye would highly recommend the book Spin Selling.
  • Skye has also found putting on her psychologist hat really helpful within the context of selling. People have a problem, and you may have the solution to that problem. But you need to understand the problem before proposing a solution.
  • “So, if somebody has this problem and you have the solution to this problem, then it’s…your job to make sure you understand all the objections to the problem…. I did clinical psychology in my undergrad, so if you think about it from that perspective, I find that much better than sales.” – Skye Waterson
• When selling a product or service, in many ways it’s like a bi-directional job interview. The entrepreneur can say no to the wrong kind of client / customer.
  • Skye tells us she has said no to potential clients before and that there is a qualification process one has to go through before working with her.
    • Often times saying no to someone is because the person may need more intensive mental health support.
    • Skye only supports clients (business owners) who do high ticket, high value products.
  • Skye mentions most of her work being centered on helpful content creation and development. Some people who have found the content helpful are potential customers and can then be taken through the qualification process to determine if they are a good fit for the product or service.
    • Skye says in this way, it feels less like what we expect traditional sales to be, but in reality, this process is what high-level salespeople are actually doing.
  • One of the patterns we’ve seen in the careers of previous guests is using content creation / public proof of work to stand out in the job market. Just as it helps entrepreneurs like Skye sell a product or service, it can help individuals land a new job opportunity (even if it’s unexpected).

31:41 – Job Interviews and Finding an Environmental Fit

• Within the context of a job interview situation, what are some of the things the neurodiverse individual can ask to pinpoint any red flags in a potential work environment?
  • The number one thing for Skye is to understand the options for flexibility in the workplace. When you are given the chance to ask questions, consider asking:
    • What are your different workplace options?
    • What are the different ways that people in your office work?
  • “Often times with ADHD the thing we’re looking for is an environmental fit…. What we want to know is are you going to get dirty looks every time you put your headphones on? …If you just said, ‘I’m really curious about the different ways people in your office work. Is everybody at their desk? Do people have their own offices? Do people work from home? What are the different options?” – Skye Waterson, on environmental fit in interviews
    • Some environments may have flexible working hours as well.
    • If the options for working sound like a fit, Skye would also recommend (if you can) speaking to someone else who works for the company (in the office or remotely) to get the inside scoop on what it’s really like.
  • Ask about whether the work is project based or repetitive. Will there be clear deadlines, or will new tasks come from multiple different departments every day? Either can be fine, but it depends on what you as the job seeker with ADHD want.
• Should someone share their neurodiversity openly during the interview process?
  • Skye says this is a very personal decision and that many people choose not to share it in an interview scenario unless it will have a big impact on the workplace.
  • It is more likely for people to share their neurodiversity once others get to know them as a person. This helps avoid stereotyping from others.
  • “Instead of saying, ‘I have ADHD,’ you might say, ‘by the way, I work best in these environments.’ So, you’re giving them the context, the information about what ADHD is without saying, ‘I have ADHD….’ You might say, ‘I have these characteristics,’ whatever it is that is important to you about expressing from the ADHD.” – Skye Waterson
    • You could say that you like strict deadlines, for example.
    • Nick suggests expressing what you want to express to multiple people throughout the interview process (recruiter, hiring manager, others on the team, etc.) to gauge responses.
    • Even though a company may not advertise the flexibilities an individual with ADHD might be looking for, the right manager and the right team could be the fit needed.
    • Skye says one challenge of the workplace is that it is team based, and different department managers may have different rules.
• To reach out to Skye or learn more about her work…
  • Visit the Unconventional Organisation website, and be sure to check out the blog section.
  • Contact Skye directly on Instagram @UnconventionalOrganisation
  • Be sure to check out The ADHD Skills Lab Podcast where Skye and others interview amazing people with ADHD like Lisa Ballard and share research recaps to educate the greater community.
  • Skye is currently working on a book called Focused, Balanced Days with ADHD that you can read on Substack.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Nick loves the idea of making your goal inevitable within a day or setting yourself up so it is a given that you will hit your goal. It does involve breaking things down into smaller steps and chunks that are parts of systems and processes, but it sounds a lot like we need to develop a routine we can use to work toward our goals (like finding a new job) during the time slot we have!
  • Have you tried Goblin Tools yet? If so we would love to hear how you use it! Send us an e-mail.
  • This development of a routine can translate to preparing for the interview process. For example, we can develop the go-to questions about the type of work environment that best suits our brain or working style.
• We’ve had a number of discussions with guests about deciding to stop doing something that once took a great deal of time and effort. Skye decided to walk away from her PhD, but taking the longer-term view helped her gain perspective on that single step in the journey toward something else.
  • Nick feels like he heard an episode of the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture Podcast that discussed the idea of no experience ever being a waste. That experience in academia wasn’t wasted for Skye. She uses many of those same skills and more as an entrepreneur and business owner.
  • Seth Godin as said deciding to stop doing something is a gift from our past self to our future self.

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

Are push notifications directing your day? While useful in some ways, push notifications can also become a huge distraction, especially for the ADHD brain. This week in episode 313 we’re joined by Skye Waterson, a former academic turned business owner and ADHD coach, to discuss practical strategies for staying focused in your work.

Since dopamine levels affect our motivation, we might need to make adjustments to our dopamine levels to help increase our focus whether we work in an office or from home. Skye will explore some of the unique challenges of working from home with ADHD, thoughts on the ADHD brain’s struggle with procrastination, and the importance of clarifying our daily priorities. We also discuss the purpose of developing daily routines that will decrease stress and support working memory.

Original Recording Date: 12-29-2024

Topics – A Different Perspective on ADHD in Our Careers, Baselining ADHD and Work Environments, Motivation and Dopamine at Work, Working from Home and Managing Distractions, Developing Purposeful Routines, Communication Preferences and Managing Push Notifications, Procrastination and Prioritization

2:11 – A Different Perspective on ADHD in Our Careers

• Skye Waterson is a former academic who found out she had ADHD at the beginning of pursuing a PhD. As a result, Skye decided to focus on ADHD research. After doing a bunch of research on ADHD, Skye posted her findings on the internet. Once the pandemic hit, Skye began coaching and loved it. She has grown her coaching practice into a 6-figure business and recently transitioned to working with business owners who have ADHD.
• We’ve discussed ADHD on the show previously with guests Jon Towles and Kristen Carder, but this time we’re going to approach it from a different angle. Here are the links if you would like to go back and hear those discussions:
  • Episode 129 – The Challenges of a Superpower with Jon Towles (1/2)
  • Episode 130 – The Excellent Advocate with Jon Towles (2/2)
  • Episode 216 – Experiencing a Neurodivergent Diagnosis with Kristen Carder (1/2)
  • Episode 217 – The Vulnerable Parts of ADHD with Kristen Carder (2/2)

3:15 – Baselining ADHD and Work Environments

• How would Skye define what ADHD is and is not?
  • ADHD is a persistent and pervasive struggle with executive functioning (an area where Skye is heavily focused), impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation. This comes from shifts in the brain as seen in the neuroscience.
  • Skye tells us the DSM-5 is most commonly used for diagnosing ADHD. The DSM-5 is a set of criteria and questions one would get asked by a professional (usually as psychiatrist but could be other professionals depending on your country) to diagnose ADHD. There are slightly different criteria to diagnose ADHD depending on whether you’re a child or an adult.
  • When diagnosing adults, professionals are looking for whether your struggles have been pervasive over time.
  • There are two primary types of ADHD:
    • Primarily Inattentive – it may not show up, but this usually means you are distracted
    • Primarily Hyperactive – driven by a motor internally / difficulty sitting still
    • There is also a combined type (which happens to be Skye’s diagnosis type).
• These types are going to play out in our careers. What might ADHD look like for someone who works in technology?
  • Skye says this can look like many different things. Work environments can look like Google, a place where there is a lot of flexibility and freedom. Environments like this also force you to manage your own time. Doing technology work for the government, for example, may not allow flexibility in the applications you get to use. In some cases, Skye has worked with clients who were employed by a government and were not allowed to use their phones at work.
  • Overall, it depends on the level of flexibility your work environment will allow.
  • “Mostly we’re thinking about how do you focus on the work you have to do? How do you prioritize that work when new things are coming in all the time? And how do you stay motivated to keep doing it consistently?” – Skye Waterson

6:17 – Motivation and Dopamine at Work

• Motivation is something we all need. What are some of the motivation challenges for the ADHD brain when hit with something that is not very exciting?
  • Skye tells us neuroscience and ADHD are areas of current active research.
  • The neurotypical individual, when starting a task, usually has some type of spike in the brain’s reward center for starting a task (i.e. a spike in dopamine). In the ADHD brain, however, this spike doesn’t really happen and might need some help.
    • Skye says people with ADHD will say they feel lazy as a result of this. In reality it is the brain doing different things in different ways.
    • People with ADHD need to add some dopamine to get to the same place. Skye equates this scenario to being underpaid in rewards.
• Adding dopamine certainly can help the ADHD brain with motivation, but it can be helpful on a wider scale as well. But how?
  • Skye worked with the New Zealand Intelligence Services and the District Health Board. After providing some strategies to help personnel with ADHD, these organizations recognized the strategies could be helpful on a much wider scale internally.
  • “Everyone has a down day like you said, but we struggle with it the most.” – Skye Waterson, on the ADHD brain and motivation
  • Skye took all of the research she’s studied and turned it into a program called Focused Balanced Days. The intent is to help people move from inconsistent to consistent.
  • Skye says at a high level we can add sensory things and stack them. It’s not about just rewarding ourselves with something to eat because taste is 1 of the 5 senses. We can often be understimulated across the 5 senses rather than overstimulated as many might think.
  • “If you’re talking about a workplace, for example, you might say, ‘ok, what can I bring to work that I can touch, that I can taste, that I can smell, that I can see that’s going to help…raise the level of stimulation to help me stay focused at work?” – Skye Waterson
  • If we take working in an office as an example, does strategically planning to get coffee from the break room help?
    • This is a start, but Skye would encourage us to think about what we can have at our desk in an office. This can be a little tricky.
    • Could you bring a fidget that looks like a key ring or even a Rubik’s cube?
    • Note taking can allow fidgeting also because it allows switching between doodling and taking notes.
    • If there’s a blank wall around you at the office, can anything be added to the wall?
    • Likely we cannot do much about smell in an office.
    • Can you use / wear headphones at the office? They can be used for noise reduction, adding in some type of different noise / sound, or for listening to something. You could also consider using earbuds and putting in only one of them. This works well when the earbud is Bluetooth connected to your phone. It allows one tap to turn on / off so you can have a conversation with anyone who walks up to your desk.
    • Skye mentions she has leveraged the single earbud strategy at times to provide a distraction from unpleasant things like going to the doctor. She will listen to music or a podcast.
• What about asking to sit in a different area because the area where you are now is too distracting?
  • Skye says this is definitely worth asking about but can get political at times. It will depend on how willing your management are to accommodate this kind of request. This is something to think about when seeking the right type of work environment for you.
  • Skye would encourage us to align what we want with the goals of the company in order to improve the chances of getting what we want. Sitting somewhere else would help you contribute to the company goals / mission better or faster, etc. because you are less distracted.
  • “You could be in a busy traffic area and just chat to everybody all day and get super distracted. It’s not going to be great for the workplace, so that’s kind of the key.” – Skye Waterson, on moving your desk to prevent distractions

13:48 – Working from Home and Managing Distractions

• How can we minimize distractions while working from home but also increase dopamine levels / number of sensations available?
  • “This is a tricky one because when you’re talking about the workplace, often you’re talking about external distractions. When you’re talking about the home, we can still be talking about external distractions, but we’re more talking about internal motivation…because everything can feel more important than the work.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye hears people talk about various tasks that keep them from accomplishing anything when working from home. Examples we discuss are cleaning a room, doing the dishes, etc.
  • At home, we are more susceptible to procrastivity, which is doing something that feels productive to procrastinate on doing something we don’t want to do.
  • Send Skye a message on Instagram with the words “Nerd Journey Focus” in the message body to get a document explaining some of the things we are about to discuss.
  • We have to step into focus at home. Part of this is working through the resistance we feel. At work, there are opportunities for “body doubling,” which can be very helpful to the ADHD brain. But at home, you likely will work by yourself and might have people in other rooms of the house doing other things.
  • Skye recommends having a dedicated space for work. You want to prevent the pull of needing to organize something. You don’t want too much clutter. Skye is not saying you need to organize a bunch of things before you can get work accomplished. Just keep it out of your sight and away from distracting you.
  • Stepping into focus means you’re moving yourself from being distracted and unmotivated to working and focused.
    • Especially when you’re at home, reward yourself for starting (some kind of dopamine reward). Maybe it’s reading an article, listening to music, and having a cup of tea. When people question giving themselves a reward, Skye might remind the person how much less time this will take than doomscrolling social media.
  • Should the music be instrumental only, with lyrics, or does it matter when it comes to stepping into focus?
    • Skye mentions there are a lot of discussions about the idea of a dopamine detox
    • With ADHD, Skye recommends dialing down your dopamine but not turning it off completely. It’s difficult for the ADHD brain to dial down dopamine from 100 to 0.
    • If we start stepping into focus by reading an article, Skye recommends switching to either a podcast or to music with lyrics next. At this point you would turn off any distractions and write down the task you want to complete during this time period (which supports working memory and is a very important step). Maybe then you feel less distracted than when you were reading the article but decide to switch to music without lyrics to prevent distractions while you open an application and start to use it.
    • “I like to imagine it as turning down the dial. You have a big dial, one of those old school dials that clicks, and you’re adjusting the dial…. This is my level of distraction, so I’m not going to suddenly try and sit in silence. That’s never going to work. I’m going to instead try listening to a podcast because I would probably do that. Once I’m more focused I might turn off that and switch to music with lyrics, etc.” – Skye Waterson
  • Check out this menu of ideas to increase dopamine, also called a dopamenu.
• What about number of monitors / screens? Is having 2 monitors too distracting?
  • Skye likes 2 monitors because of working memory.
  • People with ADHD really struggle with working memory. Switching between tabs can be a challenge (i.e. forgetting what was on the first as you switch to the second). Having 2 screens allows you to have multiple tabs open at the same time and supports working memory.
• Is changing your environment by going to a coffee shop a reward or too distracting for the ADHD brain?
  • “Some people find that over stimulating. The thing about ADHD I will say is that different scenarios are different levels of stimulation for different people. With ADHD it also depends on the task. My recommendation is have a toolbox of different environments you want to work in and adjust it based on you. But for a lot of people, working in a coffee shop can be really helpful. It can be the difference between getting something written and not getting something written. I know for me, I do all my writing in coffee shops because it’s too distracting to do it at home. But if I’m in a coffee shop and I have a coffee in front of me, I have the stimulation I need to step into focus.” – Skye Waterson
  • This is going to be different for everyone, but if going to a coffee shop helps you focus, Skye would encourage you to keep doing it. The price of the coffee is worth it!
• Maybe we should approach this with the mindset of experimentation. Would Skye encourage us to journal on how focused we feel when we experiment?
  • When people work with Skye, she asks them to commit to experimentation. The commitment is to try and then adjust once you know what is and is not working. This process is like untangling a ball of yarn / string.
  • It is challenging to experiment when you do not have the strategies and the systems in place to know and understand what went wrong.

21:44 – Developing Purposeful Routines

• A travel-heavy role certainly may require some experimentation. Travel could be local, regional, or otherwise. What can we do to help ourselves stay structured if we have to travel?
  • Traveling can be tricky with ADHD according to Skye. She suggests keeping your routine and adjusting it when you travel.
  • “I recommend people have routines they can stretch and squish down, so they can sort of stretch it out or squish it down.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye gives the example routine of waking up, doing some journaling, having coffee, having breakfast, and then getting in some movement.
    • Movement is a great way to support working memory.
  • In a travel situation, Skye might shorten the example routine above to journal only a few words, getting breakfast, and then doing ten jumping jacks.
    • “…so that’s kind of a very squished down version, but you’re keeping the routine. You’re not breaking the routine. This is also really helpful for the holidays.” – Skye Waterson
  • There’s also a planning element needed to avoid being late for things when you travel.
    • “Sometimes when people travel, they…decide to give up all of the ADHD strategies that they’ve learned that work. We’re always ADHD all the time. So, you want to be using those strategies whether you’re at work, whether you’re on holiday…it’s the same thing. You want to go ahead and schedule what you’re going to do in your calendar. And schedule transition times as well because with ADHD we really struggle with transitions. And we love to think we can teleport, but we can’t.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye recommends planning your prep time as well as your leave time (put time for each on your calendar). This can help prevent being consistently late or consistently too early, decrease stress, and make effective use of transition times.
    • Even if you are never late, feeling like you’re almost late can increase your stress level.
• Nick likes the idea of having routines each morning or even before certain activities. It seems to be very stoic. What is the purpose of the routine according to Skye?
  • The routine supports emotional regulation, addressing physical needs (like eating / fueling your body), and working memory. It also gives an opportunity to get some dopamine (a dose of fun in the morning).
  • We know from research that movement supports working memory, and this is especially important for those with ADHD.
• Does journaling increase dopamine as well if it’s part of a routine?
  • There’s a growing understanding of ADHD and emotional dysregulation. Things like relaxing, reducing, grounding, and calming all become important.
  • Skye personally likes journaling, but her podcast producer actually finds journaling stressful and would prefer to mindfully do something else. Skye recommends listeners pursue some form of mindfulness that allows a release or reduction of thoughts in our heads to bring a sense of calm. She would recommend everyone do something for themselves in this way.
  • Personal development guru and high-performance coach Brendon Burchard has spoken about the benefits of consistent journaling for stress reduction.
  • Is there a specific type of journaling the ADHD brain should focus on, like just writing your thoughts (more like morning pages) or perhaps choosing a specific topic?
  • On Skye’s podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab, they frequently discuss research topics, and as of right now, there does not seem to be a specific type of journaling that suits the ADHD brain best.
  • On a personal level, Skye likes using the morning pages system.
    • It’s all just about getting to a place where you have a little bit more distance between your thoughts and your actions. Because when you have ADHD, we are more impulsive…. And so, we just want to take a minute in the morning if we can and just remind ourselves about that separation. And that’s really what the purpose is." – Skye Waterson

28:07 – Communication Preferences and Managing Push Notifications

• In communication, is there a medium that a working person with ADHD might prefer over others? Is it e-mail, text, phone call, instant message / chat, etc.?
  • Skye says there is no one medium that is particularly good for everyone with ADHD, but most people with ADHD will have a strongly held preference for one particular communication medium.
  • There are other learning difficulties that can be connected to having ADHD like dyscalculia, dyslexia, or something else. This could be part of the reason people with ADHD have a strong preference.
    • Some people will need to write things down, some will need to say it out loud, some will need to hear it, etc.
    • Usually, people will have 1 or 2 communication mediums they really appreciate, but it will come down to the person.
  • Skye often works with people supporting entrepreneurs. If she were coaching someone on how to communicate to a team, consider the following…
    • Slack, for example, allows audio messages to be sent and will include a transcript of the audio messages. Platforms with a transcript option can be very helpful if people who need to receive the message are not auditory receivers.
    • Platforms are making it easier to communicate with different types of people like transcribing uploaded videos as well.
• Should we expect colleagues with ADHD to tell us their preference of communication medium, or should we get better at asking them what they need?
  • People with ADHD may not be able to pinpoint what works the best for them. Skye says it’s about understanding people and paying attention. For example, does someone never respond to your written messages?
  • We might have to share some observations with a colleague and make a suggestion based on our observations.
• What about handling push notifications from the applications we use? How can the ADHD brain prevent these from being too distracting?
  • Skye says push notifications are terrible for the ADHD brain, and they should be removed immediately.
  • Overall, Skye encourages people to have a rhythm to their day. The reason Skye concentrates on focused balanced days and focused balanced business growth is to make it easier to remember when things need to be done.
  • “Decide your rhythm for checking things, and then turn off all other notifications except for the emergency contact…. That would be my recommendation when it comes to push notifications…just aggressively remove them from every single app you get.” – Skye Waterson
    • The above applies to checking e-mail (which you might do at specific times of day, etc.) and all other notifications.
  • Even with notifications turned off, you might find you reflexively open a specific app on your phone or computer. To stop yourself from checking it as much, try putting the shortcut to the app in a different place on your phone / computer (i.e. not on the home screen or bookmarks bar).
  • How does the shift to no push notifications look to other people you work with? Maybe some people manage this transition better than others?
    • If you’re planning to do this at work, you may need to have a conversation similar to the one about moving desks. Skye says this is the digital version of moving desks.
  • When Skye works with clients, detailed advice in this area is also about what their job role requires from a communication standpoint. If the person needs to respond to e-mails within 10 minutes, that is going to look different than needing to respond within 24 hours might.
    • For example, being unreachable for 2 hours to focus on a specific task or set of tasks unless someone calls you is probably going to be fine.
    • “The biggest problem you’re actually going to have is that now, the source of dopamine that you were using and justifying, which was checking your e-mail, is now gone. So, you might have to dial down your dopamine. The most stimulating thing you might be doing all day is checking your e-mails.” – Skye Waterson
    • Perhaps you could listen to more podcasts in the background while you work. Once you start checking e-mail less, as Skye and many others have learned, you might realize that checking e-mail or other analytics was your way of procrastivity (avoiding other things).
    • If you spend all your time looking for the perfect app for something, it might be procrastinating!

36:06 – Procrastination and Prioritization

• “You could almost call ADHD struggles with procrastination. That could almost be an alternative title for ADHD. Because when…you’re talking about the general idea of working memory and time blindness and all of those things…one of the reasons we procrastinate is…the thing is too boring, the thing is too emotionally salient…or it’s too confusing. So sometimes rather than addressing or understanding the reasons I’m not doing this project, we will just go off on a million different side quests and never come back to the project.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye tells us there’s no formally agreed upon definition of executive functioning.
  • All the side quests mentioned in the quote above make us feel like we’ve accomplished something.
• Send Skye a message on Instagram with the words “Nerd Journey Prioritization,” and she will send you a doc on this topic.
  • There is a prioritization filter which can be optimized when Skye works with clients as a way to keep them from procrastinating.
  • “I’ve done this prioritization filter so many times with people…. If you have more than 5 things to do today and more than 10 things to do this week, you’re probably not prioritizing correctly. Most of us only have that number. We could have some subtasks maybe, but for most of us that should be the number we’re working at. Ninety percent of people I haven’t seen go over that number once they do the filtering.” – Skye Waterson
  • If your task list seems too full, Skye would advise you to consider the following:
    • What can be delegated?
    • Can something you took on from someone else be given back to that person (i.e. a catch and release)?
    • “What needs to be done today or there will be a significant external negative consequence? And if that’s not the case, it doesn’t have to be done today. It could be done today. It might be that it’s important and you want to do it today. We can bring it back in. But we don’t have to run around with this, ‘it has to be done today or everything’s gonna fall apart’ because it doesn’t have a significant external negative consequence.” – Skye Waterson
  • Skye struggled in this area quite a bit, especially when she was in academia. She tells the story of telling people she would complete things by Friday and then work late into the night on them. When her husband asked who the work was for, Skye began to realize she was trying to complete too many things by Friday that had manufactured deadlines (the ones she made for herself).
    • Nick says some of this could be because we said we would do something by a certain date, and we want to be seen as reliable.
    • “And it’s a real trap with ADHD because we have time blindness, so often the deadlines we’re creating were unrealistic to start with.” – Skye Waterson
    • One of the most effective things we can do in the workplace is put a clock in a visible place so that people in meetings or at their desks can see time passing and be less susceptible to time blindness.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Did you turn off your push notifications after listening to that episode?
  • Skye is encouraging us to manage notifications and distractions so we can have more periods of focus throughout our days.
  • Getting more periods of focus each day aligns with the principles of Deep Work that Cal Newport write about and that we reviewed in Episode 141 through Episode 147.
  • Dopamine hits from checking e-mail and other notifications sound like the hiding places Jon Acuff mentioned in his book Finish. We discussed hiding places in detail in Episode 273 as part of a 4-part book review series of Finish.
  • Remember also the managing of notifications and prioritization filter will depend on the responsibilities of your job. If you need help refining these 1-1, consider getting a coach.
• The Unconventional Organisation site has a number of fantastic blog articles you can find here.
  • Getting Help With ADHD and Routines
  • Email Management Tips for ADHD Brains
  • Three Tips for Better Communication with ADHD
• Remember to check out Skye’s podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab.

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

How should we use our influence as technologists? For Julia Furst Morgado, it’s not about increasing followers on social media or hitting some kind of metric. It’s a focus on educating and helping others…being a bridge into a technical community for someone else.

This week in episode 312 you’ll hear more about Julia’s role as a global technologist for Veeam. We discuss the realities of traveling heavily for work and attending events while continuing to learn and build community. We’ll explore Julia’s involvement in the open-source community as a CNCF Ambassador and how she overcame impostor syndrome as a public speaker. Part of being an ambassador and a bridge to technical communities is also acting as a technical translator, making complex topics easier to understand. Listen closely to hear the full story.

Original Recording Date: 12-19-2024

Julia Furst Morgado is a global technologist at Veeam. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Julia, you can find it here.

Topics – Public Speaking and Acting as a Bridge, CNCF and Open Source, Finding Balance and Focusing on Helping Others, Work Travel and Community Building, Global Technologist and Translator, Parting Thoughts

2:28 – Public Speaking and Acting as a Bridge

• Did Julia know there would be a large component of her work in the role at Veeam that was public speaking?
  • Julia did not realize this would be a big part of her role at Veeam. She was excited to be offered the job even before finishing the boot camp but had also heard one’s first job in tech can be hard when you are changing careers / coming from a non-technical background.
  • While Julia had a strong professional network already, she knew the role would be an exciting challenge.
  • “I said ‘yes, count me in.’ And I love what I do. I love what I do. My team is amazing. I couldn’t dream to do something different. It was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for something different.” – Julia Furst Morgado
• How did Julia prepare to give public presentations?
  • Julia tells us she used to be more introverted but learned to get out of her shell and not fear judgement from others. It was the same with public speaking.
  • She tells us being prepared helps us be confident to deliver a public presentation.
  • “The problem for me was impostor syndrome. The problem wasn’t getting on stage and presenting and not stumbling or…forgetting the slides. For me it was impostor syndrome because I never worked in production. Even to this day I never worked in production…. And I’m up there talking to engineers, senior engineers, even CTOs, CISOs…. Who am I to be up there without experience? That’s what really bothered me for a long period, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on impostor syndrome
  • Julia says it took some self-talk to shift her mindset going into these presentations. She told herself it was ok to be up there speaking. She may not know everything about a topic but can still present confidently on the topic. If someone asks a question Julia does not know how to answer, she can find the right resource to get the person’s question answered.
  • “But I’m just that bridge. I’m a very good bridge from the technical to the external audience…so communities at conferences and events.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • John highlights the feeling that people expect a presenter to be an authority. He calls what Julia has done being a gateway to other resources like product management or solution architects. To do this, you have to be honest with yourself about what you know and what you don’t and at the same time be willing to direct someone to the right person to get an answer.
    • “I can tell you about this technology, but if you want to go deeper, I can tell you who you can talk to.” – Julia Furst Morgado
    • Julia isn’t ashamed of saying she may not be the right person to answer specific questions that pop up during a session.
  • Julia considers herself a generalist and tells us she doesn’t want to be “just technical.” Her desire is to bring business value into the technical discussion to become a gateway to CTOs and other C-level executives.

7:09 – CNCF and Open Source

• A lot of what Julia does is organizing events. Julia organizes both the Kubernetes Community Day (or the KCD) and the AWS Community Day in New York. She also organizes the CNCF meetup in New York.
• Julia is involved in the CNCF community and AWS community. She is a CNCF Ambassador, and an AWS Container Hero.
• Julia also mentions being an ambassador for Google’s Women TechMaker Program, an ambassador for GirlCode, and also an ambassador for Civo. All of these achievements came over a span of 2 years.
• Many people want to know how Julia achieved so much without having the previous technical background. She is trying to show people they don’t have to be only technical and that they can add value with other skills. Becoming a CNCF Ambassador doesn’t require someone to be a senior staff engineer, for example.
• What is a CNCF Ambassador expected to do and be?
  • A CNCF Ambassador is a spokesperson for the CNCF and may give talks about some of the open-source projects (a presentation at a conference, a YouTube video, etc.). Julia says it’s like being a subject matter expert on the CNCF. People can come to her and other ambassadors if they have questions about open-source projects.
  • There are certain perks to being a CNCF Ambassador like discounts on certifications, a discount and special room / lounge at KubeCon, etc.
  • An AWS Hero is similar to a CNCF Ambassador. They are experts and thought leaders who create content and try to build community around a specific topic.
  • The CNCF Ambassador program requires people to apply for it. This would be similar to the Veeam Vanguard program. John describes it as being recognized for creating a portfolio of work that you need to keep working on to stay in the program.
  • The AWS Hero is not something you can apply for but rather something you must be nominated for by others. Julia says you can apply for the AWS Community Builder program, for example, but being a “Hero” is a higher status because you cannot apply for it.
• Where can people begin if they want to get involved in open source in some way?
  • If you’re not sure, you could reach out to Julia or another ambassador for guidance. She says the answer of where to start depends on a few things.
  • Think about how you would want to contribute to open source and how much technical experience you have.
    • What type of technology are you using? Passion for a technology you’re using can be channeled via contributions to an open-source project.
    • Contributing to code may not be something you have the techncial experience to do yet. Try contributing to documentation or translation / localization.
    • Other ways to contribute could include triage or fixing bugs.
  • After thinking about how you would like to contribute and the technology you want to target, you can filter the list of potential projects. Take a look at their documentation. The majority of projects have documentation that tells you how to get started as a contributor.
    • If there is no documentation on how to contribute, reach out to the project maintainers.
    • Often times open-source projects will have their own community within Slack or Discord.
  • Don’t be afraid to express your interest in contributing. Julia tells us all these projects need contributors.
    • “If you’re curious, and you know a project, go for it.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on contributing to open-source projects
  • Julia also has a blog about contributing to open source that can help if you don’t know where to start. She also has posts about how to get started in cloud or just in tech and continues to act as that bridge.

13:22 – Finding Balance and Focusing on Helping Others

• How does Julia keep herself from getting overwhelmed or taking on too much?
  • Julia isn’t sure she has a good answer to this one. It’s been 2 years, and she has been putting in tremendous effort at a fast pace.
  • Julia is scared of burning out and tries to slow down when possible.
  • At the time of this recording, Julia already has a number of events booked for 2025, including being invited to do keynote speaking engagements and to be on other podcasts.
  • “It’s just really hard because I’m trying to surf that wave, you know? …I can say no, but I don’t want to. I love what I’m doing, and the opportunities are coming my way. So, it’s really hard, that balance…work-life balance.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Right now, Julia says things are going well. She is trying to learn how to say no. Will it help?
  • Instead of answering 10 messages about how people can get into tech, Julia wrote a blog post and will send people the link.
  • Maybe in a year or more we can talk to Julia again and see if she has a different answer.
  • What about community interactions and balancing participation in several of them?
    • Julia has friends who are learning serverless technologies and want her to do the same.
    • She tells the story of giving a talk at AWS re:Invent about running containers on AWS. Julia is now working to learn Lambda and serverless.
    • Sometimes Julia wonders if she should keep going or if she is going too deep in an area.
    • “I’m still learning. I don’t know if what I am doing is right, and I tend to try to do a lot, put a lot of my plate, and want to learn everything.” – Julia Furst Morgado
    • Julia also mentions she has ADHD and has lists of many things to learn.
  • John highlights the difficult balance between following everything you are interested in, developing a passion, and burning yourself out trying to do too much.
  • Nick says there are many positive indicators about what Julia has shared. She’s still excited about what she is doing. She is learning the things which are interesting. None of this feels like a chore from the way she described them.
  • Part of Julia’s job is traveling to attend events, and that might be for half of each month. She loves meeting new people and talking about different technologies but also works to prepare demos or write blog posts. The majority of what Julia has to do from a responsibility standpoint is fun, so she has no complaints.
• John mentions one of the things he noticed about Julia’s social media profile before we conducted this interview was the way she posts on social media at conferences. She often goes to different vendor booths at the conference and interview people.
  • At the last KubeCon, Julia did an interview with people from every booth for an open source project within the project pavilion. Conference attendees can take a tour of the project pavilion (led by a CNCF Ambassador) to learn about the different projects.
  • Many people cannot afford to attend KubeCon, and Julia wanted to record with each project maintainer to educate more people and encourage participation.
  • Julia would like to do more of these interviews at other conferences perhaps related to challenges people are facing or some other topic. Short videos are quite popular right now. It’s a good style, and she will need to select a good topic for the discussions.
• Julia isn’t concerned about followers or the metrics on views of a social media post. She is focused on educating and helping other people, and maybe this focus is the reason she has not burned out.
  • Many people are only focused on gaining more followers, and they keep posting only for this purpose.
  • Julia knows people are getting something out of her content. They write messages to her with their appreciation.
  • Julia keeps a brag folder (much like Ramzi Marjaba’s mention of a brag file in Episode 308) with screenshots of the feedback people have sent to her on the usefulness of her content. The feedback fuels her to keep going.
• It seems like Julia has found a community in which she feels like she belongs in the technology industry. Even though she was not exposed to strong communities in law or marketing, was she exposed to community during other times in her life?
  • Julia says no.
  • There are probably marketing meetups, but it’s unlikely they will share a repository to work on a project together as people in tech might.
  • The tech community is very different.
  • John mentions The Cathedral and the Bazaar paper by Eric Raymond about the structure of open-source software (the bazaar) and how it contrasted with the previous methods of developing software (represented by the cathedral).
  • On the surface it may seem like the makeup of the bazaar is many people with competing interests, but the uniqueness comes from the openness and sharing.
  • Law and marketing may not have anything akin to the open-source community because open source is more idea driven than profit or goal driven.
  • Maybe other professions or even multiple professions can organize communities around ideas in a similar manner. But on the surface, the legal and marketing professions don’t seem to have anything like what you see from an open-source community.

22:41 – Work Travel and Community Building

• How does Julia manage this aspect of the job? Traveling for work is not as glamorous as people might think.
  • Julia does not fly first class. She has layovers and wait times at airports.
  • Arriving early somewhere requires her to wait to check in.
  • Julia is grateful to have the opportunity to travel and doesn’t focus on the hardships of that travel. Other people working in developer relations may complain about the need to travel, for example.
• John mentioned the goal of teaching the people following behind you as a mitigating factor against the travel required for a job.
  • Many people think a role in tech marketing or developer relations is glamorous because you become “nerd famous.”
  • John says people might aspire to obtain the “nerd famous” part of this not understanding some of the things that can get you there – the drive to teach, the drive to educate, the desire to give back to a community (all part of investing in other people’s success).
  • “I totally agree with you. It’s about helping others, lifting others up because by lifting others up they are going to come with better ideas and then they’re going to share them with you…. If you’re selfish and you just focus on you, you can definitely build something. But if you share your ideas with others, they are gonna definitely improve that with you. I’m all for uplifting others, helping others, and not just keeping to myself. That’s why I think I’m so good at building communities and engaging with communities.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia’s intention is also to have interesting conversations and to help fix problems. It’s not about showing up and taking selfies with people.
  • The fame part that may come in this type of role from the type of exposure you get is not the fulfilling part.
  • Julia has people who follow her, see her in person, and may want to take a selfie with her. John mentions likely these are the people who are getting value from the content Julia has created and shared.
  • People can see that Julia is genuine and authentic. She feels like this is the reason people come to ask her for help. When people ask for help, Julia helps them. Other people can tell when you’re doing something just for the numbers to gain influence.
  • “I’m just another human like you. I write that on my blog posts. I struggled as well. If you want to reach out, I’ve been in your shoes.” – Julia Furst Morgado

27:26 – Global Technologist and Translator

• Julia’s role is truly global in scope.
• Remember Julia speaks 4 languages fluently (including English).
  • Julia’s mother’s family is French, and she studied in a French school in high school in Brazil. She also spoke French at home.
  • Julia speaks Portuguese because she was born in Brazil and Spanish after living in Spain for over a year.
  • Julia lives in New York but attends events all over North America and Canada. She also supports Latina America (the LATAM region) in her role.
  • Julia’s family now resides in Portugal. She visits them frequently and helps with the local AWS User Group when in town.
  • One of Julia’s proudest achievements is giving a presentation in Monaco in French.
  • Julia has not yet delivered a presentation in the APJ region, but maybe she can do it in 2025.
• Does the desire to bring more business value into presentations align well with being a part of a product strategy team?
  • As part of the product strategy team, Julia and her colleagues talk frequently about product roadmaps, receive feedback on the functionalities they should add to the products in the near term and longer term, and discuss the business value of the solution.
  • Julia and her colleagues attend meetings with customers as thought leaders. In those discussions, someone like Julia would speak to the business value of Veeam’s solutions (i.e. value of backup, using deduplication and compression, having a disaster recovery plan, etc.).
  • Technical people may not be thinking about the big picture, but Julia and her colleagues bring a perspective on the big picture to customer meetings.
• Do most members of the community not really know how to communicate with product teams in an effective way?
  • “Technical people, they know how to talk technical things. You have to translate it so product managers can understand and so other teams can understand as well…. Technical people…they don’t even realize that what they write, the way they speak, is too technical for other people…. I think some of my value is translating that into less technical terms.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia knows people who write very technical content. She shares the story of finding a blog post and not being able to follow some of it because it was too technical. Julia wrote a version of the same blog post breaking down the steps into more detail.
  • Communicating something in less technical terms is about explaining it in a way so that you meet the audience where they are. We can do this for customers, product managers, a beginner in a community trying to learn something new, etc. This is part of the reason Julia calls herself a bridge.
• Does Julia have a blog post on CNCF projects and the order in which she might recommend people learn and understand them?
  • No, but Julia says it’s a great idea and is something she can work on in the future.
  • Julia loves feedback and ideas from her audience. John provides more context on what led him to ask the above question. Someone had asked John about Falco and Knative, and these projects probably are not where someone should start when thinking about cloud native.
    • Julia’s guidance is to start learning containers, maybe Docker, and then work up to Kubernetes. Tools like Falco and Knative are built on top of Kubernetes.
    • Getting to Kubernetes might make someone think twice about choosing to continue on this path because it is conceptually difficult.

33:21 – Parting Thoughts

• The best way to follow up with Julia on this conversation is on LinkedIn. But if you connect with Julia on LinkedIn, be sure to send her a message and not just a random connection request.
  • Julia learned this from her boot camp. When you add someone on LinkedIn, you should send a message. It helps you remember where you met that person.
  • Julia is also on Twitter, Blue Sky, and others, but LinkedIn is the best way. You can find Julia’s blog here.
• And if people are hesitant to jump in and join a community, what advice would Julia give them?
  • “Start with one person. Try to find one person that is in that community…. Got to them and say…‘I want to join. I’m new. What can I do? I’m a little overwhelmed.’ Be honest. Don’t be afraid of being vulnerable…. Try to find one person, and that person will probably help you, guide you, or put you in touch with the right person to get involved in a community.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia recently re-read a book by Brené Brown on vulnerability, and being new to a community requires a little vulnerability.
  • Find that bridge into a new community!

Mentioned in the Outro

• Special shout out to Al Rasheed for recommending Julia be a guest! I hope you could hear the enthusiasm in that story like we could.
• When Julia writes a blog post to help answer some frequently asked questions and shares it with people who reach out to her, it aligns with the idea of becoming hard to reach from our discussion of Deep Work in Episode 147. Having a document with the answers to common questions allows Julia to help more people.
• If you’re looking for more stories of guests being involved in the open source community, check out these episodes:
  • Tom Hatch was the creator of Salt.
    • Episode 154 – Find a Balanced Life with Tom Hatch (1/2)
    • Episode 155 – An Open Source Career with Tom Hatch (2/2)
  • Max Kanat-Alexander did bug triage for the Bugzilla project before later working on it as a contributor and eventual maintainer.
    • Episode 285 – Contribute Back: Embracing the Open Source Spirit with Max Kanat-Alexander (1/3)
    • Episode 286 – Succession Planning: Delegation Skills and Technical Ownership with Max Kanat-Alexander (2/3)
  • Ken Collins is a self-taught programmer who eventually got into the open source community to boost his career.
    • Episode 241 – A Self-Taught Programmer’s Banyan Tree of Knowledge with Ken Collins (1/2)
    • Episode 242 – Modalities of the Staff and Principal Engineer with Ken Collins (2/2)

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

What would you do with a free pass to a tech conference? Julia Furst Morgado had to decide whether to attend KubeCon without ever having been to a tech conference. After deciding to attend, she came back from the conference with a new perspective and a job offer. While this looks easy on the surface, there’s much more to the story.

In episode 311 we’re joined by global technologist Julia Furst Morgado. We’re going to explore Julia’s early career in law, the shift to marketing, and how that ultimately led her to the tech industry. Julia will tell us her reasons for attending a boot camp and how informational coffee chats and “hallway track” networking at tech conferences were instrumental in building her professional network. If you’ve heard the phrase “learning in public” but have never done it yourself, get ready for some inspiration from Julia’s story and tips on how you can get started helping the greater technical community.

Original Recording Date: 12-19-2024

Topics – Meet Julia Furst Morgado, Life before Tech, Learn in Public, Pursuing a Boot Camp and Building a Professional Network, Tech Conferences and the Hallway Track, Details on 100Devs

2:37 – Meet Julia Furst Morgado

• Julia Furst Morgado is a global technologist at Veeam.
  • Julia’s role is as a community-facing technical evangelist. She is heavily involved in the technical community and shares feedback with product managers to improve future product functionalities.
  • When new product releases happen, Julia also gives presentations, hosts webinars, and writes blogs to educate the technical community.
  • Though not directly part of her job, Julia organizes a number of events that benefit the greater technical community.
  • Would Julia’s role be classified as technical marketing?
    • A more appropriate classification would be developer advocacy or developer relations.
    • Julia works within the Office of the CTO, but many times these roles can sit within a marketing organization or even inside a sales organization (which ultimately depends on the company).

4:35 – Life before Tech

• How did Julia get interested in technology in the first place?
  • Julia transitioned into the technology field about 2 years ago and has achieved a great deal in a short time.
  • Julia is from Brazil and was born in Sao Palo and went to law school there. Julia had a sister studying law, and not knowing what she wanted to do after high school, Julia pursued law as well.
  • Julia later moved to the US after getting a student visa and studied business at the University of California at Berkeley. She went on to work in marketing as a marketing manager at an MSP (managed service provider).
  • Before working for the MSP, Julia never would have considered a transition into technology.
    • Working with the engineers at the MSP taught Julia quite a bit. As the only marketing person at the MSP, she had to do a number of things.
    • “It sparked that want to be more technical. And during the pandemic I got laid off, and I did a coding boot camp. And that’s how I transitioned into tech.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on working for an MSP as the spark that got her interested in tech
• What did Julia not like about law?
  • Julia describes the law field as a different world. People wear jeans and t-shirts at technology conferences, but you won’t find that in the legal field. People wear suits and are very formal just like we see on Netflix and other television shows.
  • “I worked at an office that was very toxic, and I just decided that’s not what I want. And to begin with, I wasn’t even sure…that I liked law.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on pursuing a career in law
  • Julia then moved to the US to study business, feeling it would open up a number of possibilities for her.
• What specifically drew Julia to marketing?
  • Julia is a very creative person and recently heard from someone she might have giftedness.
  • During her business studies in school, the marketing classes challenged Julia to find alternative ways to solve problems, and she really liked that aspect. Julia pursued a job in marketing right after finishing her business studies.
  • After starting the marketing role at the MSP, Julia worked with software engineers, IT support, and people in DevOps focused roles.
  • Julia was tasked with rebuilding the MSP’s website, creating white papers, and writing corporate blogs. She also worked with SEO (search engine optimization) and analytics.
    • All of this ended up being relatable experience for what Julia does now as a global technologist.
    • “I had to be in contact with engineers to make sure what I was writing was correct…. Because I’m so curious I would always go to them and ask more questions and research on Google and go down the rabbit hole on something…. My job was…write that blog post. Don’t learn about that technology. Just write the blog post. But I did indeed….” – Julia Furst Morgado, on spending extra time to learn technology even when she was a marketer
    • The extra time Julia spent learning was not wasted. It provided her with a background of knowledge. Learning at a deeper level prevented the content Julia was creating from being superficial.

11:16 – Learn in Public

• Julia’s job as a marketer was heavily focused on writing and creating content.
  • We’ve advocated on the show for people to blog about the things they are learning. It sounded like Julia was able to do that as a job.
  • When Julia started the boot camp, she learned the term “learn in public” or “learning in public.” She cites a blog post that details the idea.
  • “Whatever you’re learning…share it with others because it builds credibility. One, you’re teaching others. You learn it even better. So I applied this concept, and I would share it on social media. I created a blog, and I also created not one, not two, not three, but four YouTube channels because I speak four languages and wanted to do one YouTube in each language.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia stresses the importance of being consistent in creating content and sharing it.
  • “I started creating a lot of content, since the beginning, without being afraid of showing…my weaknesses. I think this is important…. Everyone should write or do a live stream or YouTube. It doesn’t necessarily have to be written content. There are other alternatives.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • People are fearful of showing that they are not an expert in a specific topic area. Regardless of your level of expertise, the content you create can help others who are learning and are not at the same level as you.
  • John references Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. Many times people want to learn from someone who has not mastered a topic but someone who is documenting the journey of gaining expertise over time (starting from novice, for example, to competence and beyond).
    • Documenting the journey can give someone an authentic voice because you are writing for an audience, even if that audience is only you. Perhaps you can also find a community of others from which to learn along the way.
• Did Julia like to write when part of her job as a marketer was writing blogs for the MSP?
  • She did not like it. The content was marketing and very salesy. Julia did not feel it was authentic.
  • “Nowadays I write a different type of content…more authentic – what I think about the tool, the challenges I’m facing…. Now I write the real deal, the real thing.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia likes to write about the things she’s passionate about, and it allows her to be more authentic.
  • People may not know what their authentic voice is or the way in which they prefer to write until they are in the midst of the writing process.
    • This is an indirect reference to the phrase “writing is thinking” from Episode 156 with guest Josh Duffney.
  • “You can only find out by doing it. People get stuck in that planning phase, and they never execute. And I’ve been there…. We will only find our voice. We will only find the topics that we want to create content or to write about if we start.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on creating content
  • Julia wants to start a podcast and right now is in the planning phase for it.
  • Julia encourages people to start creating some kind of content, even if it isn’t perfect.
• When Julia began writing blogs and sharing her content, was there a pressure to keep doing it because it was done “in public?”
  • Julia feels like there is pressure once you start sharing content on social media, especially if people find it valuable. When someone re-shares something you wrote or sends you a message telling you it is helpful, it can make you feel like you should do more.
  • Julia encourages us to be consistent with our content. If you are releasing something once per week and for some reason miss a week, people may decide to place their attention elsewhere.
  • The consistency in creating content needs to be something that is sustainable for you. You don’t need a blog post every day. Julia suggests starting off with a target of once per month.
• How did Julia’s skills in digital marketing shape the way she approached sharing content on social media?
  • Julia writes with her audience in mind. Her intention is to solve a problem for the audience.
  • She always includes a call to action (or CTA) at the end. This may encourage people to comment, like the content, or attend an event for example.
  • Julia structures her post in a way that people will want to read it. Writing in a single block isn’t as easy on the eyes. People might not read your post based solely on this format choice.
  • Blog posts should start with a “hook” to get the reader’s attention. You should follow this same guidance for social media posts. On LinkedIn, for example, only a couple of sentences show up with a link for people to “read more.” Will your first 2 sentences be powerful enough to make people want to know more?

20:56 – Pursuing a Boot Camp and Building a Professional Network

• While working for the MSP, Julia was already looking at boot camps in New York City. A boot camp can cost $10,000 or more, which Julia was willing to pay.
• Julia wanted to learn technical skills and software development. At around this same time she was laid off from her role at the MSP.
• Julia saw a post on Reddit about someone starting a boot camp in January 2022. It would be live streamed and focused on web development (JavaScript, Node.js, React, etc.).
  • She attended the live stream twice per week for 3 hours. The instructor had office hours and required homework.
  • “The thing is the boot camp wasn’t just a coding boot camp. He said his goal was to get us a job in tech, our first job in tech.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on the uniqueness of the boot camp she joined and the instructor’s goal
  • As part of the homework for the boot camp, Julia and other attendees were required to do coffee chats with others in the industry. They were to reach out to people already working in the tech industry to ask for a 15-minute coffee chat.
  • Julia conducted over 100 coffee chats during this time, and she built a professional network. She kept a spreadsheet to track the people she spoke with and notes on the conversation for future reference.
  • “And I built my network very easily. Because when you’re starting out, and you show people you’re putting in the effort, they will help you. They won’t help you if you just say, ‘I want a job. Can you give me a referral?’ …If they show you that they’re putting in the work, yes, I’ll give you 15 minutes of my day to tell you about how I got here where I am and give you some advice. And that’s what I did, more than 100 times.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on doing coffee chats with other technologists as part of a boot camp assignment
  • How many of the coffee chats ended after 15 minutes?
    • Most of the conversations ended up being longer than 15 minutes. Julia says she was able to find mentors through these coffee chats. Most people were very open to speaking with her.
    • Three of the coffee chats became recurring coffee chats.
    • Most of the coffee chats were with men. Julia advocates for helping and supporting more women in tech, just as she had supporters and many people who encouraged her during this process.
    • “It was great. It was amazing. And I hadn’t seen that in marketing or law. This I think is more particular to tech. Because of open source people want to collaborate and help each other to achieve the same goal. They don’t mind telling you what they did, their path to success…. It’s one more that is going to help the cause or collaborate together. That’s one of the things I love about tech.” – Julia Furst Morgado
• Did anyone give Julia advice on career options in tech before she attended the boot camp?
  • “No…. I went to the boot camp thinking mostly that tech was software engineering.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Even though she had worked with IT Support and DevOps folks at the MSP, Julia thought to say you worked in tech meant you were a software engineer. She learned there is so much more than that under the tech umbrella.
  • In the coffee chats Julia spoke to software engineers, program managers, DevOps engineers, platform engineers, data analysts, etc. from an array of different companies of various sizes (including large companies and startups).
  • During this process, Julia was learning about different job roles and what those entailed. But until she worked with some of the tools needed to do these types of jobs, Julia did not know which one might be best suited for her.
  • Julia tried building websites and decided she did not like front-end work. After working with APIs, she found she did not like back-end work or even full stack work. Julia enjoyed working with cloud technologies from AWS and eventually gravitated toward Kubernetes. It was her network that took her there.
• Julia shares the story of someone she met on social media in the greater tech community. This person gave her a lot of guidance and advice and then a free ticket to KubeCon.
  • Julia was presented with the free ticket while she was still doing the boot camp.
  • “And by the way, I wasn’t sure if I should go because I thought it would distract me from software development. My other mentors…they said, ‘Julia, go for it. The homework you have for the boot camp…you can do it after or before. But go. This is a great opportunity.’ I went, and I met a lot of people. I saw there is a different world besides software development – DevOps and platform engineering and infrastructure…all of that. The community is amazing there.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • At the conference, Julia met Michael Cade (a now colleague at Veeam who she knew only from Twitter then) in person. Michael said he wanted Julia to come work on his team.
  • Veeam had a booth and a number of events at the conference. Julia spent a day going to all the Veeam events and talking to a lot of people. Michael wanted Julia to come work at Veeam and put her in touch with the hiring manager.
  • “I had two interviews. They weren’t technical. It was more like a chat. He wanted to get to know me. And I got the job.” – Julia Furst Morgado

29:44 – Tech Conferences and the Hallway Track

• While getting the job at Veeam might have looked easy, Julia had put in the work to develop a background in advance.
  • Julia’s social media presence and the willingness to learn in public is part of what made others want to invest in her (i.e. the free conference pass).
• During the second interview, Julia told the hiring manager she had never worked with backup, servers, infrastructure, or hardware.
  • “It’s ok. We can teach you that. But we can’t teach someone this hunger to learn and adaptability. You take initiative. We don’t need to hold your hand to teach you something.” – hiring manager to Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia calls the above the soft skills. While technical skills are important, soft skills are very important as well.
• John says learning in public can often be individual and solo. Learning at a conference is learning in a group or learning from someone broadcasting information in a session. What thoughts does Julia have about the contrast in learning styles?
  • “When I go to conferences, I don’t learn a lot. I learn after I get home from conferences because at conferences, I focus on networking…. It’s basically just meeting people and building those relationships.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • When at home…Julia will study, work on personal projects, read books, or watch YouTube videos. When she is at a conference, Julia will talk about what she is learning and ask people for help if needed.
  • Julia has a lot of friends in the tech industry now. She’s seen them multiple times at events and will comment on their posts.
  • After coming back from a conference, Julia will watch announcements and recorded sessions from the conference to catch up, learn, and put things into practice.
  • At conferences, Julia would advise listeners to focus on networking (or the “hallway track”). You can go to sessions if you would like to meet the speaker in person or ask specific questions.
  • John says some people may have trouble with the hallway track due to introversion, but he has seen a number of people attack the hallway track with some vigor.
  • Julia says this is part of developing soft skills like effective communication.
  • Many people in tech may be shy or introverted. You have to learn to talk to other people by doing it. Julia says we can practice at the grocery store by talking to the cashier. It’s a small step toward meeting new people at a conference.
• After getting the free conference pass, did someone give Julia advice on how to approach the conference?
  • No. Julia came up with what she did at the conference on her own.
  • “I didn’t know what to expect. I was shocked at the beginning. It was so big. I think there were…around 10,000 people. I didn’t know anyone.” – Julia Furst Morgado
  • Julia went to the booths and conference events. Someone she knew introduced her to someone else, and it went on from there.
  • Julia enjoys talking with people, and it was easy for her to meet a lot of people.
  • By the second day Julia felt pretty comfortable.
  • “I didn’t know what Kubernetes was yet. I was trying to understand, but Kubernetes is very hard. But I knew people and they were willing to help me…. That’s what I love about tech.” – Julia Furst Morgado

36:29 – Details on 100Devs

• Is the boot camp someone can do on their own time, or does it depend?
  • The free boot camp Julia did was put on by Leon Noel is called 100Devs. See also the main 100Devs site.
  • Check out Julia’s videos on 100Devs below. Her advice after being asked by many people is get started, and keep going. Do not stop when things get hard!
    • Free Coding Bootcamp – 100Devs
    • Everything you need to know about 100Devs.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Special shout out to former guest Al Rasheed for recommending we have Julia on the show!
• The coffee chats were a great idea for professional networking. In in these 15-minute discussions (many of which went longer than that), you are interviewing the person about their experience, the tools they use, what they are learning, and what their job is like.
  • This goes well with Ramzi Marjaba’s advice on professional networking in Episode 307 – Sales Skills: Professional Networking and Continued Practice with Ramzi Marjaba (1/2).
  • Tracking the coffee chats was a great idea to remember who Julia spoke with and their area of specialty.
• Talking to many people and getting advice from all of them might make one wonder which path to take in the tech industry. Julia had to do some tinkering with different tools before uncovering an interest in cloud technologies and Kubernetes. Julia decided to learn these in public. Is there something new you want to learn?
  • Maybe it’s something in your area, outside your area, or just something that is interesting. It could be a certification you want to get.
  • Suppose you book a certification test and take a course to help you study (with plenty of time to complete it). But as you work through it, consider documenting the following items in blog form to share as evidence of learning in public:
    • Why you chose this area / what interested you in the first place
    • The notes you took on hard concepts or some of the items you learned in the process
    • Whether your preparation was adequate for the exam / if you would have prepared differently if you did it all over again
    • If pursuing the certification made you want to go deeper in the area or revealed it wasn’t as interesting as you thought
  • Maybe you publish 1, 2, or 3 posts. It’s a small start to learning in public that can help others and help you at the same time. And it’s not a huge commitment to create content. It’s worth thinking about!
    • This is proof of work and proof of learning. It also shows your thinking process.

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

Does a successful consulting career mean you should only work for yourself? David Klee insists you first need to become a skilled consultant with the right kind of reputation. In episode 310, part two of our focused discussion on the nuances of consulting, we dive into the realities—and the pros and cons—of contracting, working full-time for a consulting firm, and the independence of running your own business. These represent 3 of the 4 ways someone could work as a consultant. Building on last week’s conversation about what makes a great consultant, we discuss the importance of developing a reputation and some tips for how to do it. David also shares his approach to assessing consulting talent, highlighting the key traits that make a consultant stand out. And we’ll also hear why, after 11 years owning a consulting firm, David can’t see himself doing anything else.

Original Recording Date: 12-18-2024

David Klee is the founder of a niche consulting company called Heraflux Technologies. If you missed part 1 of this discussion with David, check out Episode 309.

Topics – Contract Work as a Consultant, Working for a Consulting Only Firm, Starting a Consulting Firm / Doing Your Own Thing, Keeping Consulting Enjoyable

2:25 – Contract Work as a Consultant

• Another way to do consulting work is to be a contractor. How does this work differently than full-time employment?
  • Full-time employment could be 1 project for 40 hours per week, but it is unlikely. It will more often be a certain number of hours per day working on a few (or even several) different projects.
    • “Things just kind of float to where you’re juggling anywhere from 3 or 4 to 20 projects at the same time. A contract is going to be a tightly defined scope for a block of time for either per day, per week, whatever. And it’s going to run a duration such as 2 months, 6 months, a year…something like that where you’re able to refine what you do. It’s generally speaking going to be a task or a set of tasks, and that’s what you do.” – David Klee, contrasting being a consultant working full-time for an employer that does more than just consulting with being a contractor
  • A project you work on as a contractor is controlled. You know when it starts, what to expect, and when it ends.
    • A contractor has to line up the next project once one ends. Knowing the endpoint can help you understand when it’s time to begin looking for the next project.
    • Contracting might allow focusing or going deeper on the work you are tasked to do instead of getting too broad. David gives the example of needing to build a data warehouse for a specific ERP system within 6 months.
    • David says contract work is safe and sustainable. In fact, one of the first projects after David started Heraflux was a contract engagement which required travel to Connecticut and working 5 days per week at a customer location for 6 months.
• Where can people find contract job openings? Are these on company websites, on LinkedIn, only available through headhunters, etc.?
  • David says it works best if you can go through a headhunting entity. Companies may post contract positions on LinkedIn or popular job sites, but a headhunter can evaluate someone’s skill set and share a set of projects that align to that skill set. The candidate can then select which projects they would like to interview for, and the interview may be with the headhunter, with the end customer, or possibly both.
  • “It’s a way where instead of you looking (and there may be phantom jobs or people just fishing for who is out there) the headhunter is usually going to be a lot more serious. If it’s through a headhunter, the right might be a little lower than if you would go direct; however, the headhunter might also be able to provide you healthcare…and that goes a long, long way…. There are some benefits like that that really do help.” – David Klee, on contract work through headhunters
    • A headhunting firm could potentially provide the healthcare benefits for 6 months or 12 months while you are working on a project so you don’t have to look for it yourself.
    • The headhunting firm may also be able to handle tax withholdings from your paycheck so you don’t have to handle it after the fact. Contract workers would likely be paid via a 1099 form in the United States.
  • What type of headhunters should people who want to do contract work seek out? Are there big names to be aware of?
    • There are national chains that do this as well as regional and local. Each one will have benefits.
    • A national chain may be more likely to offer you interviews for projects that require air travel to a customer location each week.
    • Regional headhunting firms may have some travel, but you can easily get a feel for their reputation. You can speak to people who have worked with them as contractors as well as companies who have worked with them. This can help you get an idea as to whether the firm is a fit for what you want to do as well as a cultural and a people fit.
    • “The national chains will almost certainly have more opportunities. You may have to travel for it. The regional stuff you’ll be able to get to know them a little bit better, and after enough time they may actually know to call you if they have a project of a certain type…. And there’s no reason to say you only have to work with one headhunter.” – David Klee, on contracting and working with headhunting firms
      • David mentions he has gotten to know a number of good firms in the Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska area.
      • When a project ends and the headhunting firm you have been working with doesn’t have more projects that fit you, nothing is stopping you from working with a different firm.
      • Working with the headhunting firm can help spread your reputation to multiple end customers because of the reach of the firm.
• Would a headhunting firm or end customer pay for travel if you are working on a contract basis, or would the contractor need to pay for it themselves?
  • David says it should be that someone else pays for the travel, but this can work in many different ways.
    • Sometimes the headhunting firm may book all your travel arrangements as part of any travel you do. If this happens, beware of getting placed in very inexpensive accommodations.
    • Sometimes you may be given a travel budget, and it’s up to you to figure out how to use it. Exceeding that budget would come out of your own pocket, but if you come in under budget you may get to keep the difference.
• Some people may do contract work as a side gig in addition to their full-time job in the form of moonlighting.
  • David says you have to ensure your contract for your full-time job does not prohibit you from doing this kind of thing.
  • For some full-time employers, doing extra work on the side is not a problem as long as there’s no conflict of interest.
  • “…The side stuff should never get in the way of the full-time job…. Some companies out there, including some big ones, they’ll let you moonlight as long as you disclose it and as long as there’s no chance that it could ever conflict and hurt the mission of the full-time job.” – David Klee, on doing part-time contract work in addition to your full-time job
  • David says moonlighting is a great way to gain experience consulting, but you need to make sure no one expects you to be available during normal business hours. This can be challenging as many companies might want things fixed during the day.
    • David gives the examples of database index tuning and custom programming that should be fine to work on after hours. But you should always make sure the company you’re moonlighting is ok with your hours of availability.
• What about the stability and volume of contract work during difficult economic times?
  • Contract work according to David will ebb and flow usually with what the economy is doing.
  • In difficult times, companies will pause projects that involve outside contractors or maybe just slow them down / decrease the hours.
  • David cites a customer he worked with who leveraged contractors and consultants for 75% of the IT workforce. During tough times this company would pause or suspend the projects, making sure they never had to lay off full-time employees.
  • Being on a time-bound project as a contractor does not protect you from difficult economic times. Companies can still pause the project or end it.
  • “A lot of people I knew were on contracts during 9/11. And boom. A lot changed, and these projects were just done. Within a couple of days a whole bunch of stuff changed, and a lot of people were out of work. Now it didn’t last that long for them thankfully. But, there’s always a clause in there that says these contracts can be terminated at will.” – David Klee, on contract work
  • David shares the story of leading some SQL Server migration projects for a large airline and the changes that happened when the pandemic hit in 2020.
    • “I get an e-mail at 10 o’clock in the morning saying, ‘stop what you’re doing. Document everything you can through the end of the day. That’s it.’ …Because the airlines shutdown, it was cost savings panic mode, and every external project with external people suspended immediately.” – David Klee
• How do hiring managers for full-time roles look at candidates who have done a lot of contracting?
  • David doesn’t see someone doing contract work as a bad thing, but it depends.
  • He would want to know why the person was choosing to go back to full-time work somewhere. Did the person get a poor reputation from doing contract work, or do they just want benefits like healthcare, paid time off, a 401K, etc.?
    • “Those are a lot of reasons why a lot of folks get out of consulting and go back to being an FTE. There’s stability. There’s job security. There’s benefits. If you’re tired of the constant churn of different projects, you now have a controlled environment, and you know what you’re working with there. And there is nothing wrong with that.” – David Klee
• How is the interview process for contract work different from full-time employment? Is it shorter?
  • David says usually it is shorter, but it also depends.
  • Interviewing for a full-time role might be 5 or 6 interviews because the company wants to make sure you’re a cultural fit in addition to just being a technical fit.
  • When interviewing contractors, people might be more concerned about the ability to get the job done rather than the cultural fit. When interviewing for a contract role proof of competency and ability to get the job done are going to be the most important things.
    • David says the contractor may have 2 interviews as opposed to 3, 4, or 5.
  • Thanks to his reputation for doing good work in the industry, David’s average interview / pre-sales call is 30 to 60 minutes. After that it’s either a fit or it isn’t (on both sides).
    • “People know what we do, and by the time it gets to us, they know we’re qualified for what they’re going to ask us to do. The question is…how long is it going to take? When are we going to start? Thankfully, after being in business 11 years, we’ve finally gotten to that point where we can say…we can do this, and you know we can because you know us.” – David Klee, on developing a reputation

17:14 – Working for a Consulting Only Firm

• Another option for people who want to do consulting is to work for an established consulting firm (i.e. a company whose sole business is to do consulting). Are there things to look for in a consulting firm to work for?
  • Talk to people in your professional network about the firm’s reputation in the industry.
  • David would also recommend speaking with consultants who work there already (i.e. future teammates).
  • David would advise considering the following questions. Some may be the same as what we have previously discussed, but some are very different.
    • Are current employees of the firm happy?
    • Are projects a “bait and switch” approach or are they completed to meet and exceed expectations of everyone involved (customers, consulting firm employees, etc.)?
    • What is the caliber of the firm’s customers? What size companies are they, and can the client hold up their end of any project?
    • What kind of travel is required?
    • Will you need to serve as part of an on-call rotation?
    • What’s the breadth of customers you should expect to work with, and how many projects should you expect to work on in a given week? If this firm does remotely managed services, for example, you could be working with 20 different customers in a single day. Are you ok with context switching like this?
    • Are you responsible in any way for pre-sales as well as delivery / post-sales? What does the split look like?
    • What will you be expected to do?
• Is working for a consulting firm in one specific niche ideal, or should someone target a consulting firm servicing many areas?
  • “If a consulting company has a super tight niche, are they changing with the times? It gets really interesting. If the company has enough business to do XYZ and that is all they do and then some revolutionary technology comes out of the woodwork…guess what? They’re done.” – David Klee
    • David shares the story of someone he knew in college who was a talented Adobe Flash programmer and didn’t want to learn anything else.
  • David mentions being on-call 24/7/365 for most of his employers (including holidays).
    • Ask a consulting firm where you might want to work how hard they push this and what constitutes an after hours call.
    • If you take a vacation, will they call you while you’re on vacation? Are you expected to check e-mail on vacation?
  • What will the firm do to help keep your technical skills current?
    • Do they want you to get certifications?
    • Will they send you to conferences?
    • Will you be given time each week for professional development?
    • Some firms might just expect you to keep up with the technology on your own but may not encourage it or support it, while others may be very good in this area.
    • David knows many people in the SQL Server community who would support someone attending a conference or a SQL Saturday and ensuring that person can be present to learn and network with people (i.e. the workload would be covered by others at the firm).
    • “They benefit. You benefit. You’re happier. You’re not going to jump ship to somebody else that’s going to do this.” – David Klee, on training and professional development
  • Could training employees / allowing them to get certifications be looked at as just making them more expensive?
    • David says the firm can justify billing more for a person because the person has increased capabilities.
• Do consultants have insight into how much the consulting firm is charging compared to how much the consultant makes?
  • David says this is rare.
  • “When I was consulting for somebody else, I would always see the technical details of the paperwork. I would never see the money side. You knew what companies were capable of charging. You never knew what they were actually doing.” – David Klee
  • There is another layer. The company you work for may be a subcontractor to another company. The markup to the end customer of your company’s services can be considerable.
• Is it a safer choice to work for a company whose main business is consulting (i.e. it’s not just something they do in addition to selling technology)?
  • David says it depends.
  • “If you’re working for a company whose sole mission is consulting, that’s their revenue stream. If you’re working for a company who sells software and then consults on the software, if things slow down, they still have the revenue stream from selling the software…. So that’s the safer route. However, if a company is solely purposes with selling you and they’re good and the rates are reasonable and they know how to market, you shouldn’t be concerned…because they should have enough…to say, ‘if we don’t have a project for you for a couple weeks, it’s ok. We’ve got the money banked, and we’ve got another one coming soon.’” – David Klee
• Is there a natural progression for the consultant through the options we’ve discussed so far?
  • David doesn’t see people move away from roles at companies that do more than just consulting very often.
  • Usually, those folks who do contract work tend to enjoy it and consistently move on to the next contract without too much trouble.
  • If you are a consultant working for a company that only does consulting, there are a couple of paths forward:
    • Progress through the ranks and outgrowing consulting
    • Those who get tired of the grind will likely go to contracting, to a full-time employer somewhere, or choose to do their own thing / start their own business.

25:14 – Starting a Consulting Firm / Doing Your Own Thing

• When should you seek to go out on your own? Is it only if some of the other options aren’t possible?
  • “I would say you should do one of the other 3 to prepare you to be a consultant for yourself.” – David Klee
  • Owning your own consulting firm juggling multiple projects means you are responsible for everything – pre-sales, delivery, marketing, paperwork, and much more.
  • Projects may not last as long as if you were doing contract work. You need to be ready for this as a consulting firm owner.
  • David says you have to know how to talk, how to sell, how to deliver, and how to upsell.
    • “You need to know where your next project is coming from.” – David Klee
    • David tells us upselling is not to be taken in the used car salesman sense. It’s about spotting legitimate problems within the realm of your expertise and pointing them out to your customer.
    • “It’s other problems that you can solve that you know how to do, and you have to know how to say, ‘I’m better than the other people at being able to solve this problem. And I already know you. I already know your environment. I’m better suited to solve this because I’m already here.” – David Klee, on upselling
  • When people like the work David’s firm has done, they call them back for return projects. Because he trains people to solve their own problems internally, a customer generally does not call him back for the same problem.
    • This goes back to reputation.
    • “But the hard part is…how do you get the reputation? Consult for somebody else. Get the contracts, and get to know people. And put yourself out there…. The biggest fallacy is that you might be good at something technically. And a lot of people…I don’t know where they get it from, but they seem to think that they can just hang a sign on their front door that says ‘I’m good and I’m open for business’ and that people will just come flooding in…. It unfortunately doesn’t work like that…. That’s what a lot of folks think, and then they go 6 months and they’re barely making minimum wage or less. People run into trouble with that, and it’s tough…. I’m good. I know what I’m doing. Why can’t I get the projects? People don’t know that you’re there.” – David Klee, on going into business when you don’t have an established reputation
  • Doing presentations and going to user groups is good marketing just as we discussed earlier. Nick encourages people who have been laid off to attend user groups to build connections with new people.
    • David mentions he recently won a project because someone remembered a presentation he gave several years ago at a SQL Saturday event. This was about word-of-mouth reputation.
• If I’m a consulting firm owner who has developed a reputation and needs to expand the firm by hiring more people, is it more attractive to hire contractors or full-time employees?
  • David says it varies. You need to consider your project flow and revenue first. Do you have enough to support bringing someone on board and to train them to do the project work needed?
  • Can you find someone with the skills you need, and can you charge enough to afford the person? Will you have enough to pay for the person if at any point you do not have enough work to keep them busy?
    • “Take whatever you think you make. The employer is paying about 40% more between healthcare and taxes and all that stuff. They’ve got to be able to cover that bill, and some people are not cheap.” – David Klee
  • David has developed a ring of contractors and consultants he works with now (meaning the paperwork is in place to do so as schedules allow). Though the cost is more per hour for these people, he does not have to pay to keep them on the bench as full-time employees if there are no projects for them.
    • David did try the full-time employee approach at first, but people were recruited away.
    • The other side of this is David cannot dictate a contractor’s time like he could a full-time employee.
    • If the projects that you work on are flexible, David tells us there are a lot of independent subcontractors who are really good. But it also goes back to who you know that does the type of work fitting the help you need.
• What is David looking for in contractors and consultants who work for / with him?
  • “I look for people that genuinely love what they do. It shows in the work.” – David Klee
  • David likes to ask people things like:
    • How much of your free time is spent keeping up with technology?
    • What was the last new technology you picked up and learned, and how long did it take you? And why did you do it?
    • What kind of a home test lab do you have?
    • Name people in the industry who publicize how-tos and training videos and blog posts.
    • “Tell me the last time you did a technical presentation. What was the topic? How many people were there? Did you enjoy it? What did you learn from doing the presentation? What could you have done better on the presentation? And when are you giving it again so I can watch you do it?” – David Klee
    • A video link of you doing a technical presentation is a great thing to have ready to share with someone!
    • How long have you been working in this?
    • Why are you in this industry? Is it something you enjoy?
  • “It’s that want to know, the want to fix, the drive to do better and learn and grow and contribute. That’s what I look for.” – David Klee, on what to look for in consultants he would hire or work with
  • Has David spoken to anyone who struggled to articulate why they enjoy working in this industry or why they work as a consultant?
    • David says yes.
    • “If they can’t tell me why they want to be or stay as a consultant, it tells me they may not be really invested into it. So, they are just there on a 9 to 5 basis. For some jobs, that’s perfectly fine. It really is. If I need an operations person to keep the lights on, keep stuff running, that’s fine. But if I need somebody to say, ‘we’ve always done it this way, but here’s a new way. And it’s a better way. And I figured out how to do this.’ That’s what I want…. Do you enjoy finding a better way? I think that’s the one succinct statement I can say right there that makes a great consultant instead of a good consultant.” – David Klee

35:47 – Keeping Consulting Enjoyable

• After all of his experience in consulting and now after owning a business for many years, how does David keep the enjoyment despite the stress and all the obligations?
  • David likes doing new things and gets bored easily.
  • “As a consultant, you can choose to spend non-billable time that’s business oriented.” – David Klee
    • When there is an emerging trend or technology, David can spend time learning to deepen his expertise.
    • David gives the example of clearing his calendar for 2 weeks to go deeper in some specific technologies. A full-time employee is unlikely to get this type of opportunity. The consultant can use the learning to widen his reach and to provide more value to customers.
    • “To be able to say here’s a new technology; I think it could compliment what I do and adapt and grow and broaden what I do and sharpen what I do…. The more you know, the more you know the failings and the positive things about the stuff that you already do. Database technologies, infrastructure, cloud…they are more tools for the toolbox. It makes you a better consultant….” – David Klee
  • David can also say no as the owner of his consulting firm. He can avoid accepting projects which are not a good fit or are destined to fail.
    • “The consultant…you can say no. The contractor…you may have to work out the remainder of the contract, but you know it will end at some point. Being an FTE or a consultant for somebody else…you may be kind of stuck…which, that’s difficult.” – David Klee
    • “If you’re willing to put in the effort and work it and it works, you’re doing this for you. You’re not doing it for somebody else…. It’s a massive shift, and it’s not why you want do it. But at the same time, if it works, that is a good motivator…. You’re the one building the reputation for you. You’re the one building the professional contacts that stick with you through thick and thin. It’s for you. And you and enjoy it. And you can’t trade that for anything.” – David Klee
    • Working for yourself means you don’t bring on the wrong person, don’t bring on the wrong project, and you don’t keep customers who are not a good fit for you.
    • “The biggest power you have is you can say no. It’s empowering. It builds confidence. It strengthens your convictions on why you continue to do this. Because after being in business for 11 years and being in consulting for 14, will I ever go back to working for anybody else? No way. I’m having too much fun.” – David Klee
    • David recounts the story of recently saying no to a customer. It can be unexpected and hard to hear.
• If David could go back and do it all over again, would he still go into business for himself?
  • David says yes – without hesitation.
  • He also might have done it a couple of years earlier.
  • “I’m having too much fun. I know it sounds cliché, but most of my day is solving problems for folks…. Call me weird. I know we’re unsung heroes in IT, all of us. I get a personal thrill out of being able to make that kind of a difference. Even if it’s saving somebody ten grand on database licensing or making this report that they have to run every single day over lunch…to be able to make that run quick…they curse the machine less and they can do more of the job that they enjoy. And that’s fun. I thoroughly enjoy that.” – David Klee
    • David shares some examples of the ways he has made a difference in the lives of his customers -fixing a recent SQL Server performance problem, helping a customer save millions on licensing, making improvements that added to the valuation of a company, etc.
• If you want to follow up with David on this conversation, you can
  • Visit Heraflux.com.
  • Visit DavidKlee.net.
  • Connect with / contact David on LinkedIn – davidaklee.

Mentioned in the Outro

• The way David assesses consulting talent, especially those he might work with as contractors, was extremely interesting.
  • Asking about why someone does what they do and how much they enjoy the work gives you insight into whether this person is likely to remain valuable in our industry over time. The consulting firm owner wants to work with people who will continue to be valuable over time.
  • Try asking some of these questions of a co-worker. What are they learning, and why are they in this industry?
• David talked a little bit about upselling. This is not something exclusive to selling a product or service. Full-time employees of any company do this all the time.
  • Think about the last time you added to the scope of a project because it was interesting or you spotted something that needed to be fixed.
  • We might do this to provide more value to the company, to show we’re taking initiative, or something to help you gain expertise in a new area. We might need to sell the idea of spending more time or resources on something to our management, especially if we’re not usually in control of our workload.
    • Remember to provide details on what will be done and the value something will provide (i.e. decrease risk, increase revenue, etc.).
• If you’re looking for more stories of those who have pursued consulting, check out our website’s consultant tag, or listen to some of these recommended episodes:
  • Tad Reeves had a lot of experience doing contract work and spoke to us about the things he liked as well as how there came a time in which it no longer fit with his life circumstances. Check out [Episode 297 – Consulting and Content Management: Blinking Lights and Big Impacts with Tad Reeves (2/3)(https://nerd-journey.com/consulting-and-content-management-blinking-lights-and-big-impacts-with-tad-reeves-2-3/).
  • Marni Coffey shared her experience as a consultant, spoke to the glamour of consulting, and shared why she didn’t like it. But we also found that this made her a better leader later in her career. Check out Episode 278 – Uncovering Empathy: The Greatest Skill of an Inclusive Leader with Marni Coffey (1/3).
  • Both Dale McKay and Erik Gross shared their respective thoughts on the role of a consultant and how to be successful. Check out these episodes:
    • Episode 289 – Enhance Your Personal Brand: Feedback as a Catalyst for Change with Dale McKay (2/2)
    • Episode 295 – AI and Automation: Repeatable Patterns for Learning, Consulting, and Growth with Erik Gross (2/2)
  • Justin Kelly has experience doing contract work, moonlighting, and is a business owner like David.
    • Episode 271 -Moonlight Business Ownership: Inside and Outside the Hurt Locker with Justin Kelly (2/2)
  • Abby Clobridge was another recent guest who owns a consulting firm. She has some great thoughts on what it means to take a consultative approach in these episodes.
    • Episode 292 – Library Science: Information Architecture and the Synthesis of Details with Abby Clobridge (1/2)
    • Episode 293 – Enterprise Knowledge Management: A Consultative Approach to Solving the Right Problems with Abby Clobridge (2/2)

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

What does it mean to be a consultant? We’ve explored the consultant role as part of the career path of previous guests, but this episode kicks off a focused two-part discussion on the nuances of consulting. In this first part of the discussion, episode 309, returning guest David Klee shares practical insights for managing business travel, enhancing communication skills, and excelling in the consulting profession. He explains how great consultants adjust the information they communicate (and the level of detail) to resonate with people in different roles within an organization. Whether you’re considering consulting, already in the field, or collaborating with consultants, this conversation has actionable advice that can help.

Original Recording Date: 12-18-2024

Topics – David Klee Returns, Focusing on the Consultant Role, Consulting as a Career Path, Job Descriptions and Interview Advice, Travel Expectations and Being Productive, Working for a Company with a Consulting Arm, Presentations and Communication Skills

2:23 – David Klee Returns

• David Klee is the founder of a niche consulting company called Heraflux Technologies. They do performance tuning and availability architectures for SQL Server and everything underneath. This spans on-premises, in the cloud, virtual, and physical instances. David has worked on some of the biggest SQL Servers in the world.
• This discussion series is meant to be focused on the life of a consultant. If you missed the previous episodes, we recorded with David that include his origin story in technology, check out these discussions:
  • Episode 119 – Tinkering into Specialty with David Klee (1/2)
  • Episode 120 – A Time to Build with David Klee (2/2)

3:22 – Focusing on the Consultant Role

• We’ve heard the term consultant used in many different interviews and contexts. How would David define what a consultant is?
  • “I have a whimsical definition of it. A contractor is somebody you tell what to do. A consultant is somebody that tells you what to do.” – David Klee, on the definition of a consultant
  • Hire a consultant to solve a problem you do not know how to fix, engineer something you’re uncertain of, or to handle tasks you may not have the skills in-house to do. Some of these tasks might be routine health checks, platform assessments, etc.
  • We may have worked in an environment daily for many years, but a consultant brings the unique background experience of working across many environments over time.
• With the right background knowledge and experience, why do consultants get a bad reputation?
  • “There are a lot of really, really good consultants out there, and there’s a lot of really bad consultants out there. And there are a lot of really good consultants out there that charge a ridiculous amount of money for what they do, and there’s a lot of bad ones that do as well.” – David Klee
  • People remember the bad consultants they have worked with more vividly than the good, and this shapes their perception of what a consultant is.
    • People might develop their own persona of a consultant as someone who charges too much, doesn’t do a good job, and then leaves. David tells us this spans across industries and is not unique to technology consultants.
• When people seek to hire a consultant, they might not know what to ask to vet that consultant’s experience before hiring them. Are references a nice way to do this?
  • David says he gets asked for references pretty often, but speaking to references can be a challenge as well. You might talk to a reference and find out they are related in some way to the consultant, for example.
  • “You just have to be careful when you talk to these folks on the other side of the table…. It’s not that all consultants are bad. It’s just there’s a lot of average consultants. There’s a few bad ones. There’s a few really good ones…same thing with normal hires.” – David Klee
• A consultant could be brought in to help for a short time, for a medium term, or for a long-term project.
  • David mentions a friend of his who has worked on a block of hours that has renewed for 12 years.
  • In this specific case, the person is basically part of the company and treated like family. This long-term nature of the engagement makes it easy to take time off when needed.
• How can listeners work better with consultants during the hiring phase and in collaboration with them after hiring?
  • David says it is important to understand and convey what you want a consultant to do or the direction you want them to steer you. We should convey what we want from a consultant in as much detail as possible.
  • Suppose you told someone to build a car for you. The skillset to build a semi-truck is totally different from that needed to build a Formula One car.
  • “If you tell somebody something and their background is building racecars and what you really need is somebody to tow a trailer…if you just say go build me a car, guess what? Out comes some really cool high performance sports car that’s not what you needed. And you’re disappointed. They’re unhappy. Nobody wins.” – David Klee
  • David says plan to give the consultant as much of the detail up front as we have. If you don’t have all the detail, communicate there is some ambiguity, that you need help choosing a direction and filling in gaps. This helps a consultant scope the product and understand what you really want instead of what you say you need (which could be 2 different things).
  • A scope of work defines what a consultant does and whether they perform hands on keyboard work or not. Can people just purchase a number of consulting hours without a clear deliverable?
    • “There should always be some kind of deliverable…. If somebody walks in the door and you say do task X and then they go do task X and then they disappear…if you don’t have a record, do you know what they actually did? And if they get hit by the beer truck, can somebody repeat what they did tomorrow? …The scoping is one of the hardest pieces.” – David Klee
    • Scoping can be challenging and varies by project. David gives an example of a SQL Server migration project. In this case he would provide reference material to help build a new machine. David could build the new machine and show someone how or let them build it while he walks them through it.
    • There are a number of elements of scope in addition to performing the tasks. Scripts might need to be run or problems fixed before a migration can happen to continue the example above. Once the work is complete, David will provide a document describing the new machine, how it was set up, why it was set up that way, and any fine tuning needed to run a specific application.

9:55 – Consulting as a Career Path

• Why do people pursue a career as a consultant? What makes it attractive?
  • For some people it is not the right choice, but for others it is the clear choice.
  • Consulting might be a good choice for you if…
    • You are bored with the tasks of your normal job
    • You want to do something different
    • There isn’t any training
    • You like dynamic work environments
  • David tells us if you’re pursuing a role as a consultant, be prepared to learn!
  • David likes consulting because every day is totally different. This can also be a downfall sometimes.
  • Full-time employees of a company can end up working in an environment with a boss they don’t like or a co-worker with which they clash. David mentions working a short consulting engagement in a less-than-ideal environment is more tolerable knowing he will move on to something else once it’s complete.
  • Consulting can keep things fresh, allow you to see new types of problems or environments, or give you the chance to do something new.
  • Being a consultant can remove you from some of the politics within companies. David, for example, doesn’t deal with corporate politics very well.
    • If politics get in the way of getting something accomplished it can be frustrating because the roadblock is not technical. The consultant would prefer to just be able to do their job.
  • David, as the owner of a consulting firm, can say no to taking on a project.
    • What can a full-time employee do if they are told to do something that is the wrong approach? David feels the employee cannot realistically say no.
    • David shares an example from one of his first jobs out of college. He worked on a specific application’s programming language and was asked to fix all the bugs. After presenting the people in charge a choice between rebuilding on the latest software version (3 months) or patching the existing version (9 months), they chose the 9 months. It was not the right approach because of all the new bugs that were found which took longer to fix based on that decision.
    • A consultant may have to present options and make a recommendation, but it is the customer who makes the decision on what is to be done. If a consultant feels like it is the wrong approach or not in their best interest and they are empowered to do so, they can decline the project.
• Does a consultant need to bring a deep expertise in one or more areas into the role, or are there other qualities one might possess that can make up for this?
  • It’s ok to not be as deep, but you must be willing to ramp up to meet or exceed the expectations of the employer.
  • “A lot of people can do the technical work. Can you talk to the people in the business in a way that represents their role in the organization? Talking to a CFO is totally different than talking to an application owner and totally different than talking to an infrastructure engineer or software engineer. That’s one of the biggest things…understanding how to take what you know and interpret it to what you need out of that individual role and convey it in a way that matters to them and a way that they can digest and actually comprehend. It’s a hard art…and I’ve been working on that for a very, very, very long time. It took being placed in a number of quite frankly uncomfortable situations to really understand how to talk to those people easily, naturally.” – David Klee
  • Consultants can learn communication skills over time. David says a good consultant is ok at this, but for a great consultant, it’s natural.

14:46 – Job Descriptions and Interview Advice

• What types of roles do consultants have before they become consultants?
  • There are many possibilities here – generalist systems administrator, network engineer, storage engineer, etc.
  • David knows people who consult in areas such as:
    • Project management
    • Social media marketing
    • Offering a fractional or virtual CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)
    • Virtualization / infrastructure
  • You don’t have to be the master of all things to get a project, but you do have to be able to deliver.
• Do job descriptions for consultant roles read similarly to those for full-time employees inside a big company?
  • David says sometimes they do. But sometimes you see job descriptions asking for experience that isn’t possible.
  • David shares the example of a company wanting 5 years’ experience with SQL Server 2016 in the year 2016. David told the company SQL Server 2016 had only been out for a month and that he had worked with SQL Server since 1995. That wasn’t good enough. The person doing the interviewing also was not the most technical.
    • This kind of thing is a red flag in the interview process and a sign that you probably don’t want to work there.
• How can the consultant better understand what they are about to sign up for before taking the job?
  • Pre-sales discussions around consulting are as much you interviewing them as it is them interviewing you.
  • David likes to ask questions that give him information about how a company or team operates. He might ask about emergency protocols, documentation for their virtual machines, change control processes and records, and scheduled maintenance windows.
  • Can a consultant stay out of pre-sales conversations and stay post-sales exclusively?
    • David feels you should be part of the pre-sales process to validate the project is a good fit. Even when working through a headhunter, it is likely you will get to speak to the end client customer to determine project fit.
    • “You shouldn’t be expected to just walk into a project blind.” – David Klee, on being a consultant
    • If you’re working as a consultant for some kind of consulting firm and have projects passed to you, there should be some kind of a project acceptance process to brief you about what you’re about to walk into.
    • If a consultant comes in and asks a lot of questions that have already been answered by the end customer, it sets the entire project off in a bad direction.
  • Are consultants afraid of being involved in pre-sales conversations?
    • “Think of it like a job interview you do 12 times a week. That’s hard…. You’ve gotta get real comfortable thinking about everything that you know and understanding how to answer what they’re asking you in a way that is not arrogant but confident. And if you don’t know something, it takes a certain level of experience to say, ‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find out… I’m going to get you the right answer.’” – David Klee
    • David said it takes practice to figure out how to answer the questions in these types of discussions.
    • David shares the story of interviewing for a 6-month contract at one of the largest hedge funds in the world. When they asked a specific technical question, David admitted he did not know. David knew where to find the answer and said he would get back to them once he found it. After doing that, David got the job.
    • We should not claim to know more than we do. People with experience can easily detect it when you are trying to fool them.
  • Why is it hard for people to admit it when they don’t know something?
    • David mentions the Dunning-Kruger Effect as one reason.
    • Ego may be another reason. People do not want to be perceived as not understanding.
    • “When you hit a certain point in any mastery of a certain topic, I call it enlightenment because at that point you know what you don’t know. And you’re not afraid to admit it. But because you know what you don’t know and you know enough about the platform, you know how to go learn what they need pretty fast. And that’s the fun part.” – David Klee
    • David has won a number of projects that were similar to other things he has done but not exactly the same. In these cases, he has asked for one week to create the scenario in his lab. After that time, David shares with the potential customer what he did and confirms it is what they are looking for / that this will meet their needs.
    • Listen to David’s story about solving a problem related to SQL Server Integration Studios for a customer by tinkering in his lab. It was a situation where he explored a product he did not know well and ended up solving a problem.

22:12 – Travel Expectations and Being Productive

• In our previous discussions with David, he mentioned travelling 150 to 250 days per year for 11 years straight. How much travel should someone new to consulting be expected to take on?
  • David has cut back to no travel ever since the pandemic. Sometimes he misses the travel, but he really likes sleeping in his own bed each night.
  • The amount of travel is going to depend on the nature of the work.
    • If you are consulting for someone else and the expectation is that you will travel, someone else is likely paying for that travel. The amount of travel depends on the contract and type of project.
    • If you are working for yourself (like David), it also depends. You might need to be physically on site to meet or get to know people, especially if a customer expects it. You might need to do it to build trust first and transition to more remote work later on once the customer knows your reputation.
    • David says before 2020, everyone wanted him to come on site, and over time it got old. He tells the story of being flown across the country only to sit in a conference room on a Zoom call and logging into a server located across the country to perform a migration. The company wanted him there as an insurance policy.
    • “The means of doing this stuff remotely have been demonstrated and confirmed. It goes back to the company culture at that point. If the culture wants you on site because they want to physically see you, it is what it is, but some companies are a lot more open to letting people work remotely than they ever used to be…. My days are quite busy. Every bit of it’s remote.” – David Klee
• Should you expect to get paid more if your role requires travel?
  • It will depend on the company, the type of project, and it will depend on whether you work for someone else or are independent. Being independent might get you more money or higher per diem / travel reimbursement.
  • If working for a consulting firm, hopefully your salary takes the travel into consideration. If you were expected to be on site working 40 hours per week, you might be traveling on Sunday night or very early Monday morning. The travel to and from the customer site is not part of the 40 hours.
    • David doesn’t live in a hub city, for example. Because of this it might take him between 5 and 16 hours to get to a specific destination traveling by plane. That would not count transit time to and from airports (time to rent a car or catch a ride share, etc.) or any extra time due to flight delays.
    • After 1400 nights on the road over the course of 11.5 years, David tells us there have been plenty of travel delays.
  • Hopefully the amount of travel required is clearly stated in the job description, but it can always change at any company based on the needs of the role.
    • David mentions a previous role that started as 25% travel but became closer to 75% travel by the time he left. David says the job dictated the amount of travel.
    • “You have to make sure that if you sign up for travel…for just that rate of travel, is your family ready for it? That means potentially missing family events and late nights and early mornings. It’s not just you that has to be prepared for it. It’s them. If you take any kind of a consulting role that requires even a small amount of travel, be prepared for that, and have that discussion with your family just to make sure. Even if they say they’re ok with it, really press hard. This is real. I’m not going to be here for a while.” – David Klee, on preparing your family for travel
    • Your family might not understand that you are going to come home exhausted every week, need recovery time, and then have to do it all over again.
    • David remembers many times when he would get home late Friday night and then be back on a plane Sunday afternoon.
    • “I enjoyed being at the destination. I hated the journey of getting to the destination.” – David Klee
• How can people use their travel time to be more productive?
  • David says we should understand how we work and if there are things we can do offline (with no internet connection).
  • It’s important to learn how to work on a plane or in an airport and focus on what you’re doing. Can you block out the world / all distractions?
  • David bought an 8" Ultrabook in his travel days to be able to work on PowerPoint presentations on a plane with room for a mouse. It was small enough to fit in his pocket. A Microsoft Surface was too big and would slip off the back of the tray table.
  • “I figured out I could get a lot of quality time working on presentations or catching up on tech material all on this little tiny thing, so I splurged…. And it actually worked well…. If you don’t work well with distractions…if you can’t sleep on a plane…you have to understand those limits before you even try. Just don’t lie to yourself.” – David Klee, on getting the right device to be productive on an airplane.
• Is the travel involved in being a consultant something that attracts people to the role?
  • David says yes and that this was one of the reasons he started doing it. He had not traveled to a lot of places before getting into consulting. After over 11 years on the road, he has visited 47 states and 13 countries.
  • Through this experience David developed confidence in his ability to get up, pack quickly, travel to a foreign country, get transportation, and go to a restaurant and order food.
    • David learned to do the planning in advance for his travels after a lot of trial and error. There was no executive assistant to do it for him.

30:51 – Working for a Company with a Consulting Arm

• We’re going to pivot to discussing the different environments someone could work in as a consultant because they are not all the same. Let’s start with being a full-time employee of a company that does more than just consulting. Maybe it’s working for a technology company or a value-added reseller.
  • This was the entry point into consulting for David, joining a company that was doing Oracle consulting. David provided SQL Server consulting services to the same group of customers.
  • David had a lot of fun with this and got to see a number of different environments. He even got to help the company expand into new markets and bring in a lot of new customers.
  • Is this type of environment the optimal entry point for most people?
    • David says it depends on what you really want to do.
    • “If you’re the kind of person where you need to do 1 thing and 1 thing well…where this is your system or your database or your application, I would say that kind of role might not be the best fit…. You may not be tasked with doing one thing well. You may be tasked with doing a bunch of things at more of a higher level or not as deep.” – David Klee, on working as a consultant full-time for a company whose business model is not just consulting
    • For those who like to do just 1 thing very well, you have the option to look at contract work through a headhunter (i.e. almost being a full-time employee through them).
  • If someone is part of the consulting group or branch of a company that does more than just consulting, how much control would someone get over the work they are given?
    • David says most of the time you don’t have a lot of control. It is often based on customer need, the available people, and the skill sets of those people. Someone would be assigning the projects to you as a consultant.
  • If a consultant brings a specialty to the role, should they expect to change it over time based on customer needs?
    • David says yes, and this concept should apply to everyone in IT. He gives the example of people who began as COBOL programmers (which we don’t see much of today).
    • “In IT you should be expected to evolve with the technologies and your own interests. Let’s say AI is just now magically everywhere. What if that’s one of your interests? Take your foundational skills that you enjoy, and bolt on this new technology and explore it. But don’t get rid of your passions…. It’s a logical progression and extension, but you have to go out of your comfort zone to learn something new…. You’re not discarding anything from the past. You’re just building on top of it. But if you don’t do this, you’ll be considered a dinosaur. And you may have a decent job for today, but if that technology evolves to the point where you’re no longer useful and the company is moving past that technology, you’re in trouble.” – David Klee
    • David was an infrastructure administrator who dabbled with databases. He became the database administrator and introduced virtualization when his company did not have enough physical servers to run the systems they needed to run.
      • David expanded his knowledge base from virtualization to cloud technologies (virtualization in someone else’s datacenter with really good automation).
      • David named his company Heraflux technologies because Heraclitus coined the phrase about the only constant being change.
    • “As a consultant of any kind, if you’re working for somebody else, they may pay to give you some training. You still have to keep up. If you’re doing it for yourself, the keeping up is only on you and you have to keep doing it.” – David Klee
• What can someone ask in interviews to sort out whether this is a good environment for them? David provides some suggestions:
  • Are you expected to be in an on-call rotation?
  • How many people are in the on-call rotation?
  • What’s the amount of travel required?
  • Am I compensated for part of the travel time?
  • What are the policies for the travel itself?
    • For example, do I have to fly standby to keep costs low?
    • Do I have to stay in cheap motels, or can it be at least a Hilton of some kind?
    • David shares the story about some consultants who were given a $20 allowance for dinner in New York City. The rest came out of their own pocket.
  • Am I expected to be on call for products I am not skilled at or don’t want to work on?
    • When David worked for the Oracle consulting shop, he and others were expected to help with Oracle support calls after hours. David did not know Oracle well and needed to know who he could call for help.
  • What are the hours?
    • Is it expected that you be in an office every day?
    • Do you have the ability to take off early if things are slower? Is there some flexibility in the schedule?
  • What are the benefits?
  • How much PTO (paid time off) and sick leave are personnel given?
    • What are the holidays the company takes off?
  • What kind of training opportunities are there?

38:29 – Presentations and Communication Skills

• Before David became a consultant, David only got to go to a conference because a vendor wanted him to present a session based on a problem he had solved that made their CRM solution easier to use. His first technical presentation was in front of 2200 people!
• Does being a consultant lend itself well to presenting at a technical conference or user group?
  • David says yes.
  • “As a consultant, the easy part most of the time is the tech. The hard part – showing people around you what you did and talking upwards and laterally to say ‘here’s the value of what I just did.’ So, you have to understand how to present something in a nontechnical manner…at which that person would best receive it. And if you can learn the art of talking to people at the level they are at, be it nontechnical or ultra technical / absolute guru…if you can figure that out, you can do a technical presentation in front of 10,000 people and you’ll be perfectly fine…. And be it a 5-person user group or 2000 people at a conference, the only thing that’s different is can you see the back of the room and are you blinded by spotlights.” – David Klee
  • David has given presentations to audiences of various sizes over time. He says if we know our content and how to speak to an audience in a way that “clicks” with most people, it can be a lot of fun.
  • David says the presentation to a very small group compared to a large group is not that different. You likely will get more nervous speaking to the large group but are talking about the same topic.
  • The visual aids / slides might be more polished for a larger audience.
  • “But the core flow of the presentation doesn’t have to change just based on the size of the audience. You still want to do a good job even presenting to 2 or 3 people.” – David Klee
  • In part, a presentation will sell the value of what the consultant has done on a project or sell the solution that best fits a problem.
    • “If you’re confident in that, they won’t question the fact that you know what you’re doing. They won’t question the what and why. They’ll just question the how.” – David Klee
  • Nick thinks the biggest difference in being on a conference call compared to being at a technical conference is that the conference talk can make it more difficult to be interactive.
    • Nick likes to get feedback from the audience during a presentation when possible because it helps calm his nerves.
    • David says you can still make it personal for the audience and make eye contact with them.
    • David shares the story of arriving an hour early for a presentation and answering questions. It might not make more people ask questions during a presentation, but it could encourage people to continue the conversation with you after your presentation.
  • For the consultant listening to this, consider doing a presentation at a user group or conference.
    • David suggests doing a 5-15 minute “lightning talk” on a topic of interest. It does not have to be unique and can be something you put your own spin on when you give the presentation.
    • “You can enjoy it. You can have fun. People will benefit from it. And if you can learn presentations like that, it makes you a better communicator…because the tech side of consulting is arguably the easy part. It’s the people skills, it’s the communication that’s arguably one of the biggest things you need to be comfortable with. You don’t have to be good at it. You don’t have to be perfect at it. But if you can be comfortable with it, it makes you a better consultant.” – David Klee
• How do we tell how comfortable someone is with communication skills during an interview?
  • Pay attention to a person’s body language and whether they look you in the eyes.
  • David would encourage us to watch their face as they think through the answer to a question.
  • If the person is sure-footed in their answers and overall communication, it can help the interviewer understand the job candidate’s level of experience.

Mentioned in the Outro

• Learning new things to add onto our body of knowledge is a great thought David proposed. Looking at what we are interested in keeps us engaged motivated to continue learning.
• Great consultants are also great communicators. A lot of this comes through interviewing – customers interviewing a consultant before hiring them, consultants interviewing customers to get more detail about a problem and the customer’s environment, etc. When you are interviewing someone or they are interviewing you, someone is doing discovery like Ramzi Marjaba spoke about in Episode 308 – Probe and Discover: Coaching for Impact with Ramzi Marjaba (2/2).
  • Maybe great consultants are really just great interviewers!
• If you want to hear more episodes about consulting, try searching for episodes based on the consultant tag on our website
• If you’ve been a consultant, what do you love about being a consultant? Send us an e-mail or share this post and tag us on LinkedIn.

Contact the Hosts

• The hosts of Nerd Journey are John White and Nick Korte.
  • E-mail: [email protected]
  • 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_
• If you’ve been impacted by a layoff or need advice, check out our Layoff Resources Page.

What does it mean to coach someone? Is that the same or different from being a people manager? Ramzi Marjaba is back to delve deep into the process of coaching. This week in episode 308, we discuss the roles of mentors, managers, coaches, and how their skills might overlap. Ramzi will share the reasons he is passionate about coaching others and the qualities of an effective coach. We also talk about how making tasks look easy can mask the hard work behind them.
Original Recording Date: 12-07-2024
Ramzi Marjaba is a returning guest and the man behind We the Sales Engineers. If you missed the first part of this interview with Ramzi, check out Episode 307.
Topics – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File, Defining Coaching through What Coaches Do, The Skills of a Coach, Managers as Coaches, Parting Thoughts and the Future of We the SEs
2:51 – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File

* A software developer would practice building software every day. A sales engineer, on the other hand, is not practicing doing demos every day. They might do a dry run before a customer meeting to prepare, but that is likely it.
* Ramzi shares a story of preparing a customer demo to illustrate how salespeople and sales engineers might not truly understand each other’s roles and the work each requires.

* A salesperson scheduled Ramzi to do a “quick and easy” demo to show interoperability with other solutions a customer was using.
* Ramzi met with the customer before the demo happened to make sure he understood the customer’s expectation.
* “I went in. None of their products worked. So, if we’re doing an interop, and their product doesn’t work in the middle of a demo, whose fault is it? The sales team, more specifically, the SE.” – Ramzi Marjaba
* Ramzi did some interoperability testing with the customer, and they decided Ramzi would do a demo just to show how the product works and ignore the interoperability part.
* Ramzi prepared a demo based on the prep done with the customer, and it went great.
* On the way out of the meeting where Ramzi did the demo, the salesperson asked Ramzi why it took so much preparation to do a demo that was just a few clicks.


* Nick references David Zweig’s book Invisibles about highly skilled people who, if they are doing their job, you might not know even exist. Likely this is how workers in IT feel when they’ve put forth large amounts of effort to accomplish a task that seems simple.

* “That’s the big thing. If you’re good at your job, you make things look easy. And one of the things engineers or technical folks in general struggle with is letting people know about the work that they’ve done.” – Ramzi Marjaba
* Ramzi provides the contrast between former colleagues who would work on the hardest problems that came to the team and someone who would close the most tickets due to finding known issues. The person who closed the most tickets would send out e-mails to let people know how many tickets were closed and would also get all the praise.
* Ramzi was speaking with an SE manager recently who suggested keeping a brag file in which you document your accomplishments and the impact they’ve made on your company. This can easily be shared with your manager to demonstrate the work you have done and make a business case for a raise or promotion.
* John likes the emphasis on practice and quantifying the level of effort we put in to make something look simple.

* We can quantify the level of effort in retrospect for a career ...