Vox

Leitura de 35 min

Leading A Team During Difficult Times w/ Venkat Venkataramani (part 1)

Summary

In this first part of a two-part interview, Jonathan Cottrell speaks with Venkat Venkataramani, co-founder and CEO of Rockset, about leadership during challenging times. The conversation centers on the foundational concept of growth mindset, originally developed by Carol Dweck, and its practical application in building resilient teams and organizations.

Venkat explains growth mindset as the belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work, contrasting it with a fixed mindset where people believe their talents are innate and unchangeable. He emphasizes that true confidence in a professional setting often manifests as the ability to admit what you don’t know, secure in the belief that you can learn it. This creates psychological safety, a critical component for high-performing teams, especially among engineers who possess a strong “bullshit radar.”

The discussion explores how a growth mindset framework helps teams navigate different types of crises. For immediate, operational crises (like a SEV-1 outage), Venkat advocates for a blame-free, supportive environment focused on resolution, followed by a constructive, anonymized post-mortem process focused on systemic improvement. For longer-term, strategic crises (like a market downturn), he stresses the importance of transparent communication from leadership, openly admitting uncertainty and inviting the entire team to collaborate on innovative solutions.

Finally, Venkat provides practical advice for engineers evaluating company culture, highlighting transparency as a key indicator. He suggests asking during interviews about what information is shared company-wide, such as board meeting summaries or financial runway details. He distinguishes between necessary confidentiality (e.g., HR matters, sensitive deals) and unhealthy secrecy, arguing that a culture that celebrates raising red flags and involves employees in problem-solving is inherently stronger and more adaptable.

Recommendations

Books

  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success — Referenced as the seminal work by Carol Dweck that introduced the concepts of growth and fixed mindset. Venkat mentions it as foundational to his leadership philosophy.

Companies

  • Rockset — Venkat’s company, a real-time database in the cloud. Used as a case study for applying the discussed leadership principles, such as transparent all-hands meetings and blame-free post-mortems.
  • Facebook — Mentioned as Venkat’s previous employer where he managed online data infrastructure, providing context for his experience with large-scale crisis management (SEV-1 incidents).

Concepts

  • Psychological Safety — Briefly referenced as a known marker of healthy teams, based on a Google study. The entire discussion on growth mindset and transparency relates to creating this environment.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:01:15 — Introducing Growth Mindset as a Foundational Philosophy — Venkat expresses his wish that more people would ask him about growth mindset, the seminal work by Carol Dweck. He explains its broad applicability from personal life and parenting to team building and problem-solving. He introduces a key distinction: not confusing learning from failing, as both processes can feel similar but have fundamentally different outcomes for development.
  • 00:03:09 — Defining and Contrasting Growth vs. Fixed Mindset — Venkat provides a clear definition: a growth mindset involves persistence and commitment to learning when facing new challenges, while a fixed mindset leads to quick dismissal after initial failure. He makes a crucial point that admitting ignorance often stems from confidence—the belief that one can learn—rather than from humility. This confidence allows leaders to model vulnerability without fear of diminishing their stature.
  • 00:06:45 — Confidence, Expertise, and the ‘Bullshit Radar’ in Technical Teams — The hosts discuss how true experts often express more uncertainty because they understand complexity. They agree that engineers typically have a strong ability to detect insincerity. Jonathan posits that this may stem from job security and market demand, giving engineers leverage to speak openly. Venkat adds that an analytical mindset also contributes to spotting inconsistencies in culture or logic.
  • 00:15:07 — Applying Growth Mindset to Team Crises: SEVs vs. Strategic Shocks — Venkat categorizes crises into short-term ‘roof on fire’ scenarios (like service outages) and long-term strategic challenges (like COVID-19). For the former, he emphasizes shielding the team from blame during the event and focusing post-mortems on technical processes, not individuals. For the latter, he advocates for transparently admitting the severity of the situation to the entire team, which invites innovative solutions from all levels, not just leadership.
  • 00:24:28 — Red Flags for a Non-Transparent Company Culture — Venkat advises engineers to look for transparency during the interview process. Key red flags include secrecy around fundamental company information like board meeting discussions, financial runway, or share structure, especially in early-stage startups (<100 people). He shares that at Rockset, they review the entire board deck with all employees weekly, demonstrating their commitment to an open culture.
  • 00:30:45 — Drawing the Line: Healthy Confidentiality vs. Unhealthy Secrecy — The conversation distinguishes between necessary confidentiality (HR issues, sensitive deals, insider trading laws) and the gray area that defines culture. Venkat argues that a company’s culture is defined by what it celebrates versus what it treats as taboo. He stresses that employees who raise red flags care deeply and should be thanked and involved in the solution, as this process makes the organization stronger.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2020-11-09T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:33:06

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:00:06] My name is Jonathan Cottrell.

[00:00:07] In today’s episode, I speak with Vincat Aramani.

[00:00:11] Vincat is a CEO, he is a co-founder and a CEO at Roxette.

[00:00:17] We talk about ways to lead people through difficult times and man, have we had some

[00:00:23] of those this year, both in the United States and around the world.

[00:00:27] So I hope you enjoy this interview.

[00:00:30] This is a two-part interview, so make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss out on the

[00:00:33] second part if you enjoy this episode.

[00:00:36] Let’s get straight into my interview with Vincat Aramani.

[00:00:40] Vincat, welcome to the show.

[00:00:43] Thank you.

[00:00:44] Thanks for having me.

[00:00:45] I’m very excited to talk to you as a CEO of a successful company and really today we’re

[00:00:54] going to get into a lot of topics surrounding leading teams, especially leading teams through

[00:00:59] difficult times, but I want to start out with a question that I ask everyone who comes on

[00:01:03] the show.

[00:01:04] What do you wish more people would ask you about?

[00:01:08] What do I wish more people ask me about, really?

[00:01:15] I wish more people would talk to me about one of the foundational philosophies that

[00:01:21] defines a lot of what I do is around this whole concept of growth mindset.

[00:01:30] I think it’s almost cliché now, this is seminal work done by Carol Dweck.

[00:01:38] A lot of people would have probably read that book, The Growth Mindset Book.

[00:01:41] I wish more people would talk to me about it because it’s so applicable in so many different

[00:01:48] situations, both in my personal life, how I work with my kids, to boys we have, to how

[00:01:59] we build teams and how I approach problem solving.

[00:02:03] I think a lot of what I bring to the table is about the perspective and I think growth

[00:02:10] mindset is probably the best way to think about that and I wish more people would talk

[00:02:15] to me about that and not confuse learning from failing.

[00:02:24] I think that’s the essence of the growth mindset that I think if more people understand the

[00:02:29] difference and they feel the same when you’re learning something, you’re falling off a bicycle

[00:02:35] that you don’t know how to ride yet and failing, they kind of have a very similar feeling when

[00:02:42] you’re going through those motions and I wish more people would talk to me about that

[00:02:46] because I have some opinions about that.

[00:02:50] That’s good because I love talking about this topic so we’re going to talk about it a little

[00:02:54] bit here.

[00:02:55] I think I’d love to hear your short definition of a growth mindset and if you will contrast

[00:03:04] it to what isn’t a growth mindset.

[00:03:09] I believe Carol Dwight calls it the fixed mindset in her book but I’d love to know,

[00:03:15] can you contrast those two things and give an explanation especially for people who don’t

[00:03:19] know about this topic very much?

[00:03:22] Yeah, for sure.

[00:03:23] I think the way I understand it and I apply it is the way I think about growth mindset

[00:03:30] is when you’re doing something new and you don’t know how to do it yet and you have a

[00:03:36] growth mindset, you want to learn more.

[00:03:38] The challenging it gets, the harder you focus, the more commitment you show and you get better

[00:03:45] at it over time.

[00:03:46] The fixed mindset is the opposite which is when you try something for the first time

[00:03:50] or the second time and it doesn’t work and you’re like, well, I’m not cut out for it

[00:03:54] and you’re very quick to dismiss it and move on to some other things and you never get

[00:03:58] better at that particular skill ever because you think you’re not cut out for it and somehow

[00:04:05] your own mind becomes like a blocker that limits your growth and limits you to be able

[00:04:11] to unlock the potential that might be within you already and so that’s at a high level

[00:04:16] how I understand it.

[00:04:18] The flip side about attitude, one thing that I always say is, again, don’t confuse learning

[00:04:23] from failing.

[00:04:24] The other one is often mistaken as humility, like, oh, you need to be humble to know what

[00:04:31] you don’t know and admit it.

[00:04:33] I almost come, I say it’s kind of like should come from confidence that I can learn if I

[00:04:40] put my head together, if I can really learn something and get better at it and if you’re

[00:04:46] very confident about it, then you’re not really afraid to say, well, I actually don’t know,

[00:04:50] I have no idea how to do it and I think that’s kind of an important aspect of a growth mindset

[00:04:56] because it’s actually not humility.

[00:04:58] It often comes across as humility.

[00:05:01] It’s actually confidence that by admitting that I don’t know something, I am not suddenly

[00:05:07] becoming less of a person in front of my peers or anything like that because I’m pretty confident

[00:05:12] that if it’s really important, I will learn it and I can become good at it if it’s really

[00:05:16] needed.

[00:05:18] I’m kind of blown away right now because last night I actually recorded kind of a monologue

[00:05:23] episode about exactly this.

[00:05:26] It was exactly this idea, the idea of accepting that there are some things that I wouldn’t

[00:05:34] trust myself to do.

[00:05:36] I wouldn’t trust myself to go and play a game of pickup basketball because I’m just out

[00:05:42] of practice.

[00:05:43] I know I can confidently say that I’m not a very good basketball player and I’m okay

[00:05:48] with that.

[00:05:50] The interesting thing, what I asked listeners to do was accept two realities.

[00:05:56] One, that we don’t necessarily trust ourselves in every single endeavor possible.

[00:06:04] I wouldn’t trust myself to know every programming language as a simple example.

[00:06:11] The second thing to accept is that you can change it.

[00:06:15] There’s two kind of really important things and that the driver for this, the marker of

[00:06:21] somebody who is truly confident is someone who can stand up and say, I have no idea about

[00:06:29] that thing, but I really do know about this other thing.

[00:06:33] I really do have experience in this other thing.

[00:06:36] I can trust that more than I can trust somebody who appears to be experienced in everything.

[00:06:44] Do you agree with that?

[00:06:45] Absolutely.

[00:06:46] I think every expert in the field that I’ve had the pleasure of working, the more they

[00:06:55] know, the more the expert they become, the less certain they are with everything.

[00:07:02] If you ask a five-year-old, what’s going to happen if I have a glass of water and I just

[00:07:06] fling it in the air, the five-year-old will say, oh, duh, it’s just going to fall on the

[00:07:11] floor.

[00:07:12] If you go and ask somebody who studies chaos theory and fluid mechanics and whatnot and

[00:07:17] say, what’s going to really happen to this fluid that’s in this cup, and they’ll be like,

[00:07:22] no mathematical equation in the world can exactly predict what exactly is going to happen

[00:07:28] in the next 72 milliseconds or whatever it’s going to take from this to drop to the floor.

[00:07:33] Then he’d be so uncertain about that whole situation, and that’s what makes them the

[00:07:39] they actually know all the possibilities, and I’ve studied it deeply than anybody else.

[00:07:45] I think it’s really, really important to never confuse that, and I think it comes from insecurities.

[00:07:52] People are afraid to admit that they don’t know something because they’re like, oh, somebody’s

[00:07:56] going to judge me, and I’m going to come across like a fool, and they won’t trust me to be

[00:08:01] able to do the next big project, and whatever.

[00:08:04] I think this is why I say it goes back to confidence.

[00:08:08] I think confidence comes not just from within, but also from your mentors, your managers,

[00:08:14] people that you look up to.

[00:08:16] If you are the CEO of the company, and in all hands, you have no problem admitting,

[00:08:20] I actually have no idea what this is about, but I’m going to go find out, and you find

[00:08:25] out and you give a good response a week later, then that’s not a taboo.

[00:08:30] If it’s okay for Venkat to have his job, and the board hasn’t fired him yet, and he says,

[00:08:36] I don’t know a lot, okay, so maybe it’s okay.

[00:08:39] Maybe I don’t have to pretend that I know something, and so I think it actually comes

[00:08:43] from both self-confidence, but also the environment that you’re part of, where pursuit of excellence,

[00:08:51] you can never really learn something new until you admit that you don’t know it yet, otherwise,

[00:08:57] we’ll never actually learn something.

[00:09:00] I have a specific question about this, because I’ve certainly seen teams that agree with

[00:09:09] this, right?

[00:09:10] We’ve seen the study from Google, and we’ve talked about it on the show before, about

[00:09:13] psychological safety.

[00:09:15] We know that that’s a marker of healthy teams, and I believe that, you know, as these kinds

[00:09:20] of things kind of become stylish, in vogue, that leaders try to adopt them at face value

[00:09:29] in some ways without really understanding them thoroughly.

[00:09:31] So I want to ask you a specific question.

[00:09:35] Have you ever encountered a leader, whether they’re a manager or somebody in higher level

[00:09:41] leadership, who would say, oh, you know, I don’t know, and I have this kind of sense

[00:09:47] of humility, but they wouldn’t expect their team to be able to have that?

[00:09:53] In other words, it’s kind of like a privilege of leadership to be able to, you know, be

[00:09:57] the person who doesn’t know, and to act like that’s the ideal state, but then they don’t

[00:10:04] really follow through.

[00:10:05] They expect their, for example, their individual contributing engineers to always know.

[00:10:12] Have you seen that kind of leadership happen yet?

[00:10:14] I’ve definitely heard of them, I’ve seen in kind of secondhand circumstances, but I have

[00:10:20] to say, you know, like I’ve been extremely fortunate to be part of, you know, teams that

[00:10:30] never had that kind of attitude, just very fortunate through every part of my career,

[00:10:35] all the managers I’ve had and all the environments I’ve been part of, to never have that kind

[00:10:39] of like duplicity or hypocritical managers and whatnot.

[00:10:45] So I think, honestly, it’s a blessing.

[00:10:50] I know a lot of your audience are very, very technical, and I think one thing that goes

[00:10:53] with a lot of developers that I work with is they have an amazing Bullshit Radar.

[00:10:58] And so even what could fly in other teams, it’s not going to fly in when you manage a

[00:11:02] technical team, which is almost always what I’ve been part of.

[00:11:05] And so they have a, you know, they almost have a very cynical view in many different

[00:11:11] situations, often, rightfully so, if I might agree.

[00:11:16] And also, I think, you know, there’s just a very, very good Bullshit Radar.

[00:11:19] It’s just very common.

[00:11:21] And so I think, I think in these kinds of environments, especially engineering teams

[00:11:25] and technical teams, I think this is hard to get by, in my opinion, and I haven’t really

[00:11:30] seen it firsthand.

[00:11:32] But I can totally see in teams where it’s not about some technical, you know, back end,

[00:11:38] you know, like our engineering team.

[00:11:40] It’s like, you know, where there’s a lot more kind of nuance to decision making, you know,

[00:11:48] in other making strategic bets and what have you, I can totally see how, you know, all

[00:11:53] these things creep up where, you know, it’s okay for some, you know, the leaders to do

[00:11:57] it and not.

[00:11:58] I can see how an environment could easily be created, but I personally have not seen

[00:12:03] anything.

[00:12:04] I don’t, as far as I, you know, as long as I’m part of Rockset, that will never be part

[00:12:10] of our culture.

[00:12:11] It’s encouraging to hear, absolutely.

[00:12:13] I think it is something for leaders to stay aware of.

[00:12:17] The idea that, you know, these ideals that we espouse for our teams sometimes don’t get

[00:12:23] practiced or played out to their fullest extent, but I’m very glad to hear that you have seen

[00:12:28] it the other way, that generally, you know, developers have been willing to call it out.

[00:12:33] And I do agree.

[00:12:34] I think that engineers typically tend to have, you know, a little bit more of a free opportunity

[00:12:42] to speak their minds, partially because, you know, for the most part, engineers tend to

[00:12:46] have job security.

[00:12:48] And so, you know, since we can go and work at another company, for example, then if we’re

[00:12:55] not happy with what we’re currently experiencing, either we can leave or we can speak our mind

[00:13:01] and things will change.

[00:13:04] And so, I find it to be a unique scenario to be in because even though you’re not in

[00:13:10] a position of leadership, engineers tend to have a leverage point in some ways because

[00:13:15] they are in demand.

[00:13:17] Would you agree from your perspective that engineers are kind of in that seat?

[00:13:22] It’s a great, very, very interesting perspective.

[00:13:24] I’ve never thought of that before and it comes actually from a position of job security.

[00:13:28] I always associated that with like a more kind of like a very mathematical mind, you

[00:13:34] know, analytical mind that sees things for black and white and right and wrong and very

[00:13:41] quickly tries to like categorize things or see the world that way.

[00:13:48] And so, it’s easy to spot bullshit, you know, when you have that kind of a thought process.

[00:13:52] So, I always associated that with their thought processes as opposed to job security.

[00:14:01] But I think there is some truth to it.

[00:14:03] I think the more the way you say it, I think it’s probably a combination of a bunch of

[00:14:06] factors and I think job security is definitely one of them.

[00:14:09] Yeah, it’s a good point.

[00:14:10] It’s a good point.

[00:14:11] And I do believe, you know, that engineers have the opportunity to use some of that analytical

[00:14:20] bias maybe, right?

[00:14:21] A bias towards analytical or logical approach to point out when there’s inconsistencies

[00:14:28] in a culture.

[00:14:30] I’m curious, you know, with speaking of cultures, you know, one thing that we kind of discussed

[00:14:36] right before we started rolling is the idea that there’s all different kinds of stressors,

[00:14:42] all different kinds of crises that we can go through as teams.

[00:14:47] And what I’d love to do is to hear your perspective on how a growth mindset could help us kind

[00:14:57] of weather the storm.

[00:15:01] How can a growth mindset help you deal with a crisis on a team?

[00:15:07] Very interesting.

[00:15:10] Very interesting question.

[00:15:11] How do you help your team deal with the crisis?

[00:15:15] I think crisis comes at least in two different forms for a team, for a company.

[00:15:22] You know, one is like the roof is on fire.

[00:15:26] The service is down.

[00:15:27] You know, previously I was managing online data infrastructure at Facebook, and so anything

[00:15:32] that can take the site down is what we used to call a SEV-1.

[00:15:36] And so all SEV-1s are all hands on deck.

[00:15:39] Now we are building a real-time database in the cloud, ROCKSET, very similar, when there

[00:15:45] is any kind of a SEV, it’s kind of like a roof is on fire type of a crisis because production

[00:15:52] applications are affected and our customers will be affected by that event.

[00:15:56] And then there are crises like COVID, right, where our market crashes and things like that,

[00:16:01] where there are forces beyond your control that are working against you.

[00:16:07] And how do you help your team through that?

[00:16:09] And so for the first one, I think it comes down to really having the discipline in my

[00:16:19] mind of being able to support the team, shield the team, you know, when we are fighting a

[00:16:26] SEV and we have a kind of a war room, if anybody says, I told you so, this is why we should

[00:16:32] have done this in the first place and start postmortem, you know, starting doing postmortems

[00:16:36] before, you know, we are even in the clear, I kindly go and stand next to them and say,

[00:16:41] hey, I think you need to leave the room and you can come back later when we actually do

[00:16:46] a postmortem.

[00:16:47] And so keep the people, support them.

[00:16:49] There’s no finger pointing.

[00:16:51] There’s not, you know, blaming going around and support them in a way where you encourage

[00:16:56] and keep them, you know, get, you know, help the team to resolve the issue as quickly as

[00:16:59] possible because it’s an extremely stressful situation and you don’t want to be there for

[00:17:04] too long. And once it’s all done, then you also support the team where, you know, try

[00:17:10] your best to not create a, you know, this team is bad or that particular individual, you

[00:17:14] know, does not know how to write code or anything like that.

[00:17:16] It should be really coming down into this is what happened.

[00:17:20] This is how it should, you know, this particular component and this particular module or whatever

[00:17:24] should have been tested better.

[00:17:25] And here are the follow up items that we need to be able to do so that this kind of issue

[00:17:29] doesn’t happen again. And so we even try to write postmortems without people’s names to

[00:17:35] force ourselves to keep the discussion around what happened from a technical point of view

[00:17:39] and what can be done to resolve that.

[00:17:43] And so here, I think the growth mindset is kind of like baked into the process.

[00:17:46] If you were to like, think about it, right, we’re not really, you know, trying to, you

[00:17:51] know, say, oh, so and so is bad and they can’t do anything about it.

[00:17:55] And as opposed to really approaching this as a learning experience for how to make the

[00:18:02] company, the service and offer teams better.

[00:18:04] And if you have a process where every time you slip and fall, you get stronger, then

[00:18:12] you’ll stop slipping and falling, you know, very quickly and you’ll get stronger very,

[00:18:15] very quickly.

[00:18:17] But if every time you slip and fall, there’s a lot of, you know, blaming and kind of like,

[00:18:21] I’m stuck here, nothing can be done type of a fixed mindset, then you never get better.

[00:18:25] And so I would say that’s the analogies or the comparisons I see from how, you know,

[00:18:35] you deal with like short term, you know, roofs on fire, put it out as quickly as possible

[00:18:40] type of a situation and how you deal with crisis is when the crisis is more longer

[00:18:46] term and strategic, I think then in my opinion, it goes back to the growth mindset on, you

[00:18:54] know, going back to your team and saying, this is bad for us.

[00:19:00] And we have no idea how we’re going to face this and deal with it.

[00:19:03] Being able to even openly say that the reason is because the best ideas on how to cope with

[00:19:08] it might come from completely, you know, unexpected parts of your team, right?

[00:19:15] The best ideas could come from anywhere and from any member in your team, it doesn’t have

[00:19:20] to come from, you know, some CXX person, you know, some big wig at the top.

[00:19:25] And you don’t really, you know, can create a culture or, you know, if you don’t have

[00:19:31] a growth mindset, you’d be afraid to admit that this is bad for the business and this

[00:19:36] is going to have these kinds of ramifications.

[00:19:38] And being able to openly say, you know what?

[00:19:40] This could be bad and it could even get worse.

[00:19:42] And I have no idea how we’re going to be able to meet our quarterly goals.

[00:19:47] But if anyone have your ideas, please, you know, talk to me or talk to the other person

[00:19:52] and we can figure this out together.

[00:19:54] And so say this in confidence, you know, dealing with, you know, the crisis together

[00:20:00] as a team and having a very transparent culture so that, you know, everybody in your team

[00:20:05] understands what’s working and what’s not.

[00:20:07] I think would probably be, you know, help you find innovative solutions to deal with

[00:20:13] situations like COVID, which might not, you know, might be very creative and might come

[00:20:18] from anywhere in the team and not necessarily from the upper management or whatever, you

[00:20:23] know, call it.

[00:20:24] And so I think it helps, you know, in every one of these situations, I think, because

[00:20:29] you’re constantly looking at, you’re dealing with, in every crisis, you’re dealing with

[00:20:33] a lot of unknowns and again, a growth mindset would give you, would turn that into an

[00:20:39] opportunity to learn and get stronger along, you know, at the end of it, as opposed to

[00:20:43] weaker at the end of it.

[00:20:46] We’re going to take a quick sponsor break and then we’ll return to my interview with

[00:20:50] Venkat Ramani.

[00:20:52] Today’s episode is sponsored by Linode.

[00:20:55] Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure,

[00:20:59] you deserve simple, affordable and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to

[00:21:03] take your project to the next level.

[00:21:06] And this is so true.

[00:21:07] Linode allows you to work at pretty much any size on that scaling chart, all the way down

[00:21:13] to the smallest of compute instances.

[00:21:16] For example, you can simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode’s Linux virtual

[00:21:20] machines and develop, deploy and scale your modern applications faster and easier.

[00:21:24] And here’s the important part.

[00:21:26] You’re going to get $100 in free credit as a listener of Developer T.

[00:21:30] Head over to Linode.com slash Developer T to find out more.

[00:21:34] Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24-7 human support with no tiers or handoffs,

[00:21:40] regardless of your plan size.

[00:21:41] The translation of that is that you are going to be treated like a human, even if you are

[00:21:47] just paying for a small amount of services from Linode.

[00:21:51] If you’re just starting out, if you are a startup, you’re going to get the same support

[00:21:56] that somebody who is much larger will get.

[00:21:59] Go and check it out.

[00:21:59] Head over to Linode.com slash Developer T.

[00:22:02] You can host your website, build your app, store or backup media.

[00:22:06] It’s up to you.

[00:22:07] And it’s all free with $100 in Linode credit.

[00:22:11] Just make sure you click the Create Free Account button to get started.

[00:22:14] That’s Linode.com slash Developer T.

[00:22:17] Thanks again to Linode for sponsoring today’s episode of Developer T.

[00:22:20] You know, there’s kind of two perspectives that I’ve seen, and it’s more of a range rather than

[00:22:29] two discrete perspectives.

[00:22:31] But the one perspective is the idea that everything I say is going to control this

[00:22:37] group of people, right?

[00:22:39] This is kind of the dictator-style leadership, and that I am responsible for every step that

[00:22:49] we take going through this crisis, right?

[00:22:53] And it’s not in the sense that they want to take responsibility,

[00:22:57] but rather they believe that everyone’s actions are just responses to their own actions.

[00:23:04] And then there’s the empowering or transparent leadership that you’re talking about,

[00:23:08] which I think is so much more effective.

[00:23:12] And that is to say, hey, look, this is a hard situation.

[00:23:17] What do we do?

[00:23:18] Ask your people for input, right?

[00:23:21] Ask your team to be a team with you.

[00:23:25] If you’re controlling the information, if you are trying to play all of the psychological games to

[00:23:31] make sure that, for example, people don’t panic, then very likely you’re going to end up with

[00:23:37] people in the end, especially when they find out the truth about whatever’s happening.

[00:23:42] They’re very likely to be frustrated that you didn’t ask them for their input or that

[00:23:47] you were, you know, for whatever reason, manipulating that information or you were

[00:23:52] holding back from telling them the real truth of the matter.

[00:23:57] And so I believe that your point about having transparent organizations,

[00:24:04] I think a lot of people don’t even know what that looks like yet.

[00:24:08] And I really love to talk a little bit more about that.

[00:24:11] As a leader of an organization, I’m curious, what are the key,

[00:24:15] what is maybe a red flag that you would tell, let’s say, an engineer to watch out for that,

[00:24:23] hey, if your company is doing this, then they’re probably not a transparent organization.

[00:24:28] Yeah, I think you made a lot of good points.

[00:24:31] Like the panic, you know, oh, I’m just trying to like not make sure my team doesn’t panic

[00:24:35] or whatever. I think it’s, again, it’s almost a lack of EQ from the leader,

[00:24:42] if you were to say, because how you say matters, not just what you say.

[00:24:47] If you say it in a way that, or you frame it in a way that this is what it is,

[00:24:51] here’s what’s happening. Here are some ideas we’re thinking about

[00:24:55] and in a way to invite them to participate in problem solving.

[00:25:00] That’s a very different reaction people are going to have than say,

[00:25:04] you know, red flag, you know, you know, whole thing is doomed and you go and start

[00:25:09] ringing all the sirens, you know, it’s just how you say what you say and give people

[00:25:16] a way to participate and be part of the solution as opposed to just, you know, being, you know,

[00:25:22] panicking in their own little corner in their office.

[00:25:25] So I think that’s kind of really important.

[00:25:27] What are the red flags that engineers should look for?

[00:25:30] I think I have, you know, we have interviewed people that

[00:25:35] you know, have been part of startups and I heard that, oh yeah, you know, when I was there,

[00:25:40] a series B happened and so and so happened and nobody even knows who were the investors

[00:25:46] or what evaluation the company raised some more money and how, you know,

[00:25:50] you know, I think, I think again, it goes back to like, again, having

[00:25:56] it’s a lack of confidence, but not here.

[00:25:58] I think the founders of the upper management ends up being, it’s probably lack of confidence,

[00:26:03] it’s probably lack of confidence in the company and the future of the company as opposed to

[00:26:07] themselves, but it kind of manifests that way in a very similar kind of a fixed mindset type of

[00:26:12] reaction.

[00:26:14] And so what I would look for is, you know, like, I would ask for things like

[00:26:22] how many engineers know what was discussed in the last board meeting

[00:26:26] if you’re an early stage startup?

[00:26:28] What were the key topics and what was the main point of discussion?

[00:26:32] And if as an engineer, you can answer that in a company that this is what the last board meeting

[00:26:38] was about, then you have a transparent culture.

[00:26:40] Otherwise, you know, things, you know, people are hiding stuff with you.

[00:26:44] Like, you know, how many people know how many shares are outstanding in your company?

[00:26:47] How much money you have in the bank?

[00:26:49] And these are all probably less important in a much more later stage because, you know,

[00:26:54] the business is much more well established and you don’t have to worry about all of that.

[00:26:57] But, you know, when it is 20 people, you know, when it is like, you know,

[00:27:01] two people in the garage, it’s obvious that they will have, you know, both of them will have

[00:27:05] full understanding.

[00:27:06] But even when you’re around like 10, 20, 30, less than 100 people,

[00:27:10] this is really very, very important to, you know, that’s kind of like where you get to define this.

[00:27:15] And that’s where I would say that’s where Roxette is right now.

[00:27:18] You know, we are, you know, 30 employees strong and trying to grow as quickly as we can.

[00:27:24] And, you know, every time after a board meeting, the next all hands, which we do weekly,

[00:27:30] we go over the entire board deck and we go over every slide and look at, you know,

[00:27:34] summarize what discussions were had and what was presented.

[00:27:38] So, yeah, I think you have to really invest and be very thoughtful about creating that.

[00:27:44] It just doesn’t happen organically.

[00:27:46] And, you know, during the interview process, I think you can ask some simple questions like

[00:27:52] a couple of examples I gave that can easily help you figure out whether or not the company

[00:27:59] has a very transparent and empowering culture as opposed to something that

[00:28:03] controls the information flow and is quite suffocating.

[00:28:09] Yeah, I think that’s fantastic advice.

[00:28:13] And, you know, maybe a heuristic question that engineers could ask is,

[00:28:18] what do I not know about my company?

[00:28:21] To be fair, there are some things that you don’t know you don’t know, right?

[00:28:26] There’s certainly the possibility that things that are being kept from you,

[00:28:31] you wouldn’t even know to ask about, right?

[00:28:34] But there are, I think every company has some things that are kept kind of close to the chest.

[00:28:39] And for good, you know, for better or for worse,

[00:28:44] it’s at least worthwhile to ask what things are not being shared.

[00:28:50] So there are some healthy things to not share.

[00:28:52] For example, sharing highly personal information, right?

[00:28:56] You wouldn’t expect your manager to do that.

[00:28:58] That’s not the same thing as having a fiscally transparent company, right?

[00:29:04] Those are two completely different things.

[00:29:06] But it’s worthwhile to say, are the things that are being kept private healthy or unhealthy?

[00:29:13] That’s right.

[00:29:15] I think that’s a great dichotomy.

[00:29:16] I think there are things that need to be in confidence.

[00:29:19] If you’re doing your job properly, like HR information,

[00:29:24] if you’re doing a job properly, this is not public knowledge and it’s intentionally, right?

[00:29:28] Like health information or other comp information and things like that,

[00:29:33] that people think it needs to be kept in confidence.

[00:29:38] On the other hand, there could also be business development kind of deals that are happening,

[00:29:44] where the whole thing needs to be done confidentially.

[00:29:47] Otherwise, the whole thing goes up in flames.

[00:29:50] And the other partner will walk away the minute it becomes common knowledge

[00:29:53] and their competitors know that this is happening or whatever.

[00:29:56] So there are definitely situations where it’s required,

[00:30:00] confidentiality is required for the appropriate person to do their job properly.

[00:30:05] And that’s not what is under question here at all.

[00:30:09] It’s black and white.

[00:30:09] It’s very clearly stuff that needs to be kept confident with a few people.

[00:30:14] To the extreme example of this is insider trading.

[00:30:19] There are laws preventing from certain people knowing certain things at certain time.

[00:30:24] It’s illegal.

[00:30:25] So it’s not even a question of ethics.

[00:30:28] It’s a question of law and order and legality.

[00:30:32] And so I think those are not under real question.

[00:30:36] I think the real questions are the ones that are the gray area in the middle, right?

[00:30:40] Which is where I think you get to actually draw that line for every company.

[00:30:45] And that’s what defines a culture.

[00:30:47] What’s okay to talk about openly and what is not okay to talk about openly, right?

[00:30:51] And what is celebrated?

[00:30:53] What is cool?

[00:30:54] And what’s a taboo?

[00:30:55] If I openly raise a red flag and if it’s a taboo,

[00:30:59] and I’m always going to be alienated in the society,

[00:31:03] I’m not going to get included,

[00:31:05] then nobody will ever raise a red flag ever

[00:31:07] about even obvious things that are right in front of them.

[00:31:10] And so you get to define the culture by defining where you draw that line.

[00:31:14] And that’s what we intensely think about and talk about.

[00:31:18] And if somebody brings up a red flag,

[00:31:22] the first thing you say, if you want to encourage that,

[00:31:24] because that’s what either you believe that that’s making you stronger,

[00:31:27] even though immediate response for that is, oh, I’m uncomfortable.

[00:31:32] But if you really think about it, two things are true.

[00:31:35] A person wouldn’t bring up a red flag and put themselves in that spot

[00:31:38] if they don’t really care about the company or the culture.

[00:31:42] So they’re actually putting their reputation,

[00:31:44] maybe even their job and their happiness at work

[00:31:47] and their professional career at stake by raising that red flag.

[00:31:52] And you say thank you and you work with them.

[00:31:55] And if they’re motivated enough to bring it in almost every case that I’ve worked with,

[00:31:59] they’re motivated enough to be part of the solution.

[00:32:01] And you just have to empower them and support them.

[00:32:05] And actually commit to addressing the issue.

[00:32:08] And it invariably makes the company and the organization stronger

[00:32:12] if you have that mindset.

[00:32:15] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea,

[00:32:18] the first part of my interview with Venkat Ramani.

[00:32:21] I hope you join me for the second part of this interview,

[00:32:24] which will be the next episode of Developer Tea.

[00:32:27] Go ahead and subscribe if you are listening in a podcast player right now.

[00:32:30] For example, you can subscribe in that player

[00:32:33] so you don’t miss out on future episodes of the show,

[00:32:35] just like this one, including that second part of this interview.

[00:32:39] Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

[00:32:41] This episode was produced by Sarah Jackson.

[00:32:44] Of course, this episode was sponsored by Linode.

[00:32:46] Head over to linode.com slash developer tea to get started with a hundred dollars

[00:32:49] worth of free credit by creating a free account on linode.com.

[00:32:54] My name is Jonathan Cottrell and until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:33:03] Thank you for listening to this episode of Developer Tea.

Visão de gráfico