Author: jszeder

I conducted my second twitter poll to determine what to write about this week, and today’s subject was our winner. It was only a handful of votes. I must say I am not a very good Twit. It is still a work in progress.

Of all the things that I do, prospecting for leads is probably one of the things that makes my wife the craziest. I confess that I spend a lot of time doing this. They call it prospecting for a reason and if you ever tried one of those hokey panning for gold camps the futility of the process stares you in the face with the withering intensity of the Eye of Sauron.

It is also one of the things that I do that differs the most compared to my engineering leadership peers. I have tried to teach people to do more prospecting. I have tried various and multitudinous ways to encourage it. For a few years I even personally hosted expensive dinners trying to shock some sort of Frankenstinian habit to life in some people. Once you have one rough year, that becomes a harder expense to justify. I do not recommend the dinner party tactic as the person who foots the bill.

I am still trying to unpack why so few engineering leaders effectively network; especially some of the really really talented ones. I think it is because many of them feel it is a waste of time.

Let’s unpack this a little bit.

Engineers are in demand. Engineering leadership, doubly so. There is an ebb and flow of peers, past colleagues, and complete strangers constantly trying to lure you into their unmarked white van with bags of delicious smelling candy. There is so much unmet need to build stuff. It is very easy to stay afloat on the flow of opportunity without having to expend any effort. I have succumbed to this siren song too.

The challenge is that most of the time that you stay in a reactive mode to opportunities, it limits your upside. By the time someone wants to pay the ransom you demand in exchange for staring at their git repos, there are already ten people in line in front of you being sprayed with the equity hose.

Certainly, your downside gets drowned in an ocean of free coffee and your favorite flavor of sparkling water, but it does limit your ability to buy a different vehicle for every color of the rainbow. I am not saying this is how I would spend my misspent winnings should I ever cash out, but I will concede that it does at least have a place on my fancy imaginary list of ‘ways to flaunt extravagant wealth’. For now, I am lucky to own a week’s worth of clean 100% cotton t-shirts.

The “average” above-average engineering leader does not have to lean too far out of their comfort zone to participate in some level of hashtag winning. In fact, most are likely to get least one offer before they could even finish uttering the sentence “I need a new- ” House? Car? Laptop? Flavor of Sparkling Water? So many choices.

The amount of solicitation is somewhat of a misleading signal. I do not have to go very far in my own search to understand why.

I have been close enough to unicorn makers and unicorn riders to get into their social graph from observable distance. I am still too poor to get to go to some of their cooler parties, however I do get to see the photos online after the fact.

The truth is, most of the folks who have “made it” in high tech with exits tend to self-select out of normal society; there is some clumpiness to newfound wealth, and I have catalogued the emotional reactions of people who have transcended out of normalcy into the monocle-wearing cloud-people wealth of the World Of Tomorrow.

What is clear to me is that most will have a tightly knit tribe where they meet up and have an exchange of ideas and probably an exchange of opportunities. Some of this was a habit that they developed on the way up, and now it is a tool that is useful for taking a big pile of money and making it a bigger pile of money. It also has a nice smell to it, like the purest cocaine. Chasing unicorns this way is fun. There is so little downside to accelerating away from normal living with a group of really cool people.

So why doesn’t everyone do this?

Let’s talk about engineering mindset. Engineers like to make things. Engineers like to fix things. Engineers like to improve things. I would say without any gubbermint studies that the majority of engineers do not like to just talk about things. You do not get anything done. There is some fun in a booze-ey group-huddle where people explore the possible, but the calculus is also inescapable that maybe one-in-one-hundred of these really pays off well, if at all. This is an accepted number in the prospecting funnel for many people but it falls so far below the threshold of acceptable for our hypothetical engineer that it likely interferes with good digestion. I also say without evidence that the farther away you are from the pinnacle of the en-wealth-en-ed, the less the odds are that it is worth anything at all. The first rule of inexpensive supper clubs is that most of them lead to more inexpensive supper clubs. It smells like a downward spiral.

Which brings us completely anti-circle to the next question: Why would anyone do this?

Most engineers are working for startups in some capacity. Even if they are a profitable unicorn, they were likely a startup in a past life; you can Google this. The making of the things is desirable, rewarding, fun. This is the mindset of the a-star mental athlete. Firing the “ship it” gun in random directions for a high performer is difficult. The hit-or-miss rates of seeking MVP is confusing to someone who gets sprayed with a money hose on most weekdays, and whose boss has a calendar entry to remind themselves to tell their star performers what a great job they are doing. This is an anti-pattern to the average engineering leader whose wall no longer has any room for “Outstanding Work!” certificates.

That being said, I have watched this pattern repeat itself a dozen times now over the years. It is interesting to watch people transcend on the fruits of ideation; I will repeat that it is the purest of cocaine smells. It is a fun process and starting things and trying to see what works can be glorious. The hit-or-miss rates means that it is hard to be very successful at it. Those failures have a real “licked the hot stove” feel to them. Thus, it gets harder to make a number of tries at it for a successful builder; most will fail Because Reasons.

I am at least grateful that I get a lot of people calling me with their ideas. I like to think of myself as a good filter. I have heard some pretty good ideas. I have heard some pretty bad ideas. I have helped to create some good products when possible, and I have missed a few ships that are now on their way towards faster than light travel while I flap my arms furiously and pretend to be on them while running through muddy puddles. This is actually a statement of appreciation, not a statement of regret.

I consider it very important to try to do new things and to participate in ideation. And this requires a lot more attempts than your average baseball player’s three strikes. I envy those thirty percent success rates for the Most Successful Batters Of All Time. Accordingly, I will continue to try to encourage my peers to break their moderately successful habits for some significantly crazier ones. It makes sense to spend an hour at lunch reconnecting with people to see what they are doing. It makes sense to get on the phone for thirty minutes to learn what someone did at their last job before leaving, or what they should have done, or wanted to do. It makes sense to get together with people who are moderately compensated by much more successful people to figure out how to work together and be more successful. Individually our ancestors snatched rotting meat not fit for the jaws of better predators. As a group, they feasted on mastodons.

Our conversations will likely wind up being nothing more than the proverbial sound and fury of Shakespeare. But it is really important to develop this habit, even if the vast majority of them are just a waste of time.

I am very eager to discuss the possibilities of the future with you. So as I said at the tippity top of the article:

Please waste my time.

And while you are at it, why not click on a compelling Socials button or two for me? Retweet. Like. Comment. Snipsnap it.

I am assuming by the time you have gotten into this article, you have clicked on my profile. I am very sorry about that, I will admit that some of my professional experience looks like a train wreck.

At this point I am in my forties, a parent, and back to doing what I started 20 years ago, building products. In the span of that time, I have run my own company, been a part of a team as a builder, been a part of a team as a manager, and managed managers.

Through this all I have always been a very active participant in the hiring process at any company I worked at.

I want to speak to everyone on the most important question that I ask people, and I have already asked it in the title of this article.

Where do you want to be in five years?

I want to write about this subject because it seems like this is a question that you cannot really get wrong. I am writing because I seldom hear an answer that is right. Generally, I hire the people who have a good answer to that question, and especially if hiring them means that I can help them get to their five year goal.

It is really important to have a five year professional goal.

It is also really important that your goal changes based on new information.

My five year goal has generally changed every two years. Often based on new technology, existing professional experience, and advice from mentors.

When you are examining your career choices, you should figure out whether or not what you are doing is going to put you on the path to your five year goal.

You should also make sure your boss is aware of your five year goal. It will help you get more out of your current professional role. Also, it will give a good boss some homework to do. Every second that he can help you reach your five year goal is another second he doesn’t have to replace you.

Every second that your boss is not helping you, is another second you should spend finding a new job where you will find a boss who will.

Thank you for reading. I hope you found this helpful and constructive.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions about your own five year goals. I wish early on in my professional career that someone was around to help me with mine.

Yes, that is really how all software developers test things.