Vox

Leitura de 74 min

#180 - Becoming a Distinguished Engineer, Public Speaking, and Early Retirement - Kelsey Hightower

Summary

Kelsey Hightower returns to Tech Lead Journal to reflect on his career journey from self-taught entrepreneur to Distinguished Engineer at Google. He emphasizes the critical distinction between activities (like writing code) and impact (the business effect of that work), arguing that focusing on impact is the key to career progression. Hightower shares how an entrepreneurial mindset—thinking about the business in totality, taking calculated risks, and constantly acquiring new skills—shaped his path, even within large companies.

He details the progression from engineer to principal to distinguished engineer, illustrating how the work is essentially the same but ‘repackaged’ with increasing scope and influence. A distinguished engineer, he explains, operates through vision-setting, building consensus, and leveraging community trust to drive impact across organizations, as exemplified by his advocacy for Go support in Google Cloud Functions and his early prediction about container images in AWS Lambda.

The conversation covers practical advice on public speaking, which Hightower demystifies as simply communicating naturally about things you care deeply about, and on building a personal brand through authentic community engagement and learning in public. He concludes by explaining his decision for ‘early retirement,’ which he frames not as stopping work but as ‘buying his time back’ to focus on the aspects of work he enjoys most, like advising startups and learning new physical-world skills, while maintaining financial independence through minimalist living.

Recommendations

Concepts

  • Activities vs. Impact — The central framework of Kelsey’s career advice. Activities are tasks like writing code; Impact is the business effect, like generating revenue. Focusing on impact is key to career success.
  • Entrepreneurial Mindset (within a company) — Thinking like an owner by understanding how the business makes money, identifying high-impact work, and being willing to cross role boundaries and take calculated risks.
  • Buying Your Time Back — Kelsey’s philosophy on early retirement. It’s achieving financial independence (often through minimalism) not to stop working, but to gain the freedom to choose work based on passion and impact rather than necessity.

Practices

  • Learning in Public — Sharing your learning process, struggles, and successes openly (e.g., through blogs, talks, social media). This builds your personal brand, helps others, and creates opportunities.
  • Natural Public Speaking — Speaking about topics you care about in your authentic voice, as if telling a compelling story to friends, rather than adopting an unnatural ‘presenter’ persona.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:01:34 — Introduction and Kelsey’s non-traditional background — The host welcomes back Kelsey Hightower. Kelsey begins by describing his self-taught, entrepreneurial start in tech, opening a computer store instead of going to college. He explains how this mindset set the foundation for his career, teaching him to learn multiple skills and cross boundaries to get the job done, which later translated into his approach within larger organizations.
  • 00:04:45 — Exercising an entrepreneurial mindset within a company — Kelsey addresses how engineers in traditional companies can think entrepreneurially. He states most companies don’t reward this mindset financially, so the payoff must be in skill acquisition and career setup. The key is to think about the business holistically—how it makes money and what’s most impactful—rather than just completing assigned tasks. This often requires getting out of your comfort zone and potentially switching jobs to ensure your skill investments pay off.
  • 00:08:16 — Taking calculated risks at work — Kelsey defines risk in a corporate context as making suggestions that challenge the status quo, like proposing a shift to a native iOS app based on business metrics. He outlines the process: research, creating a plan, building consensus, and being on the hook for the work. The payoff for a successful risk is increased trust and ‘political capital,’ while failure is a learning opportunity. He emphasizes that risk doesn’t have to mean leaving to start a company.
  • 00:12:28 — The core principle: Activities vs. Impact — Kelsey distills his career wisdom into one key concept: learning the difference between activities and impact. Activities are tasks like writing code or deploying pipelines. Impact is the effect of that work, such as generating revenue or securing customer data. He argues that focusing on impact is strategic and requires zooming out to a longer time horizon. Engineers should always ask about the impact of their work to guide their efforts and career decisions.
  • 00:16:40 — Career progression from engineer to distinguished engineer — Kelsey explains that progression from engineer to principal to distinguished is about ‘repackaging’ the same core work with increasing scope and influence. He uses examples from his time at Google: starting with technical contributions and speaking, then influencing product direction (like serverless Kubernetes), and finally achieving global influence by building consensus across teams and predicting industry trends (like container images for Lambda). The distinguished level is about trust, consistency, and cross-organizational impact.
  • 00:25:02 — Perspective on AI and its role for engineers — Kelsey views AI as another significant technology wave, similar to past innovations. He notes its excitement stems from a more natural, human-like interaction model. His advice for engineers is to see AI models as future standard libraries or tools to be imported and used, not as a distraction from core engineering principles. He encourages participation but maintains a balanced perspective, valuing real human intelligence and creativity alongside technological advancement.
  • 00:31:48 — Demystifying public speaking and effective communication — Kelsey asserts that everyone already knows how to speak publicly; the problem is people change their natural communication style on stage. The key is to talk naturally about things you genuinely care about and have experienced. He illustrates with a vivid story about buying bread to show how compelling, natural storytelling works. Effective communication is critical for engineering success, from building consensus to explaining how to use a product.
  • 00:38:21 — Building a personal brand and contributing to community — Kelsey states everyone has a personal brand, whether curated or not. In a competitive job market, your public work and community interactions can make you stand out. He advocates for ‘learning in public’ and investing in your brand through authentic actions, like answering emails from strangers or creating educational content. This builds a reputation that can lead to opportunities where companies seek you out specifically. It also serves as a tool for self-reflection on who you want to be.
  • 00:44:23 — The philosophy behind early retirement — Kelsey explains his decision to retire was not due to burnout but a conscious choice to ‘buy his time back’ after achieving financial independence through minimalist living and intentional spending. Retirement for him means focusing on what he cares about most: paid speaking, advising startups, and learning new skills like home renovation. He frames it as dialing down the parts of a traditional job he liked less and amplifying the engaging parts on his own terms.
  • 00:51:23 — Maintaining engagement and shaping your career — Kelsey shares how he stayed engaged throughout his career by constantly seeking to learn new skills and switching roles or projects every few months. He viewed companies as different departments of one ‘global company’ and moved to where his motivation and impact would be highest. He advises that early career engagement comes from skill acquisition across companies, while later it’s about proactively shaping your role, with the ultimate responsibility for engagement falling on the individual.
  • 00:57:56 — Final wisdom: Don’t be a junior human being — In closing, Kelsey offers a piece of wisdom reflecting on life balance. He cautions that spending all your energy trying to be a senior engineer might come at the cost of being a ‘junior human being.’ He emphasizes there are seasons for slowing down, like when he prioritized time with his newborn daughter, and that this holistic success is more important than pure technical advancement in the long term.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Tech Lead Journal
  • Author: Henry Suryawirawan
  • Category: Technology
  • Published: 2024-06-24T12:00:00Z
  • Duration: 01:00:30

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Learn the difference between activities and impact.

[00:00:04] Those ain’t always the same thing.

[00:00:06] Activities are writing code, testing things, deploying to production, setting up Jenkins pipelines.

[00:00:13] Those are all great activities.

[00:00:15] But impact is very different.

[00:00:17] Impact is like, what was the effect of that?

[00:00:20] Most companies do not reward entrepreneurial mindset.

[00:00:25] They may say they want it, but they don’t reward it.

[00:00:27] And what do I mean by that?

[00:00:28] If you start doing extra stuff, there is no guarantee you’re going to make any extra money.

[00:00:34] And that’s not necessarily alignment with someone being entrepreneurial.

[00:00:38] Everybody knows how to publicly speak.

[00:00:40] When you go talk to your friends, when you go talk to your family, public speaking.

[00:00:45] The thing that’s weird is when people get in front of an audience, they want to do something different all of a sudden.

[00:00:50] I didn’t retire because my body gave out.

[00:00:52] I didn’t retire because my mind gave out.

[00:00:54] I just bought my time back.

[00:00:56] And it turns out there are still things I care about.

[00:00:59] What are you good at?

[00:01:04] I’m not acting like this is a company.

[00:01:11] I’m just an evolution.

[00:01:12] Hey everyone, welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast.

[00:01:15] Today, I’m very happy.

[00:01:16] So I have a repeat guest.

[00:01:18] This guest appeared in episode 18, kind of like a hundred episodes and three and a half years afterwards.

[00:01:24] So that was a pretty long time.

[00:01:26] So Kelsey Hightower is back with me for another episode.

[00:01:28] Hi, Kelsey.

[00:01:28] episode so thank you so much kelsey for coming and looking forward for our conversation awesome

[00:01:34] happy to be back kelsey i know that you have actually retired so to speak right in one of

[00:01:40] your tweets maybe we’ll cover that later on but also one of the aspects that i would like to learn

[00:01:44] from you is about your career journey which i think can be very inspirational for some of the

[00:01:48] people and software engineers widely so in the first place i think maybe tell us a little bit

[00:01:53] more background about kelsey hightower for those of us who probably don’t follow you very closely

[00:01:58] yeah when i think about my kind of we used to say non-traditional background but i think so many

[00:02:04] people in tech these days are self-taught that maybe this is the traditional approach i’m

[00:02:10] interested in technology around 18 i decided to get a plus certification instead of going to college

[00:02:16] and honestly at that moment i decided to open a small computer store i’ve talked extensively

[00:02:22] about this but i think starting with the entrepreneurial mindset really kind of set

[00:02:26] my career up really nice because instead of

[00:02:28] thinking look it’s nothing wrong with being an employee but i think a lot of times when you

[00:02:33] apply for a role and you’ve never thought entrepreneurially about things you just say

[00:02:38] hey that’s not my job and i think if you’ve ever spent any time as an entrepreneur you know that

[00:02:43] you try to learn as many skills as possible to get the job done and when you’re on a team even

[00:02:48] though you may have a role nothing wrong with that but sometimes you got to cross those particular

[00:02:52] boundaries so a lot of my career early on was just kind of after doing the entrepreneurial thing i

[00:02:58] worked in a large data center i worked in a google data center in like 2000 i don’t know five i’ve

[00:03:04] worked in web hosting i worked for financial institutions but there was some point in my

[00:03:09] career where i was really attracted to open source just looking around the tools we’re using

[00:03:14] at work we’re using things like python we’re using things like puppet and i decided that when those

[00:03:20] things had problems like a bug or i ran into some issue or a feature that i wanted i just really

[00:03:28] in the case of puppet it was written in ruby and i was just like as long as i can contribute to

[00:03:33] these code to these tools i can make them do anything that i want and i think that was a

[00:03:37] pivotal transition point in my career i went from kind of applying for jobs and hoping for the best

[00:03:43] to really participating in how technology works and that middle part of my career where i’m

[00:03:49] contributing to open source kind of leads to my final chapter which was joining google cloud after

[00:03:55] having almost 18 years of experience

[00:03:58] and then finishing my almost eight year career at google i think that combination of open source

[00:04:04] working in enterprises and really just understanding the impact of being out there in the community

[00:04:08] giving talks and educating people the same people that i used to learn from so it all came full

[00:04:14] circle thanks for giving us a snapshot of the whole career of your journey so far so i think

[00:04:20] one interesting thing that i picked from your introduction just now is about the entrepreneurship

[00:04:24] mindset right i think this is different from many

[00:04:28] people’s career path in which they graduated from school probably and they started a job right

[00:04:34] sometimes some people went into entrepreneurship but for people who are like just engineers working

[00:04:40] in tech companies what can they do to actually exercise their entrepreneurial real mindset

[00:04:45] well so step one to be honest most companies do not reward entrepreneurial mindset they may say

[00:04:53] they want it but they don’t reward it and what do i mean by that if you apply for a job let’s say it

[00:04:58] is a hundred thousand dollars and they just want you to write code if you start doing extra stuff

[00:05:03] there is no guarantee you’re going to make any extra money and that’s not necessarily alignment

[00:05:09] with someone being entrepreneurial right it’s like if i do more ideally i should be able to

[00:05:14] reap the rewards and profit from my efforts so i think that part is challenging so when i say

[00:05:19] entrepreneurial here there’s a bit of setting yourself up for something later so if you are

[00:05:25] like come out of college you get a job what is the

[00:05:28] entrepreneurial mindset would be number one you would actually think about the business in totality

[00:05:33] how does that business actually make money what’s the most impactful thing to be working on where

[00:05:39] should you invest your time because your time isn’t free i think as an employee sometimes we

[00:05:45] get a little complacent you’re like hey this company has lots of money they can obviously

[00:05:49] afford to pay me i do my job i need my check on time on friday that’s it and so at some point you

[00:05:57] just kind of get into this mode that

[00:05:58] money just comes from somewhere you’re going to get paid you probably feel like you’re underpaid

[00:06:03] i think everyone feels like they’re underpaid and so you just kind of get in this trap of just

[00:06:07] looking for the next job and so a lot of times you tend to only deliver the expectation and for

[00:06:15] a lot of people they don’t work in roles with high expectations they just do what their manager

[00:06:20] asked they do with the tickets that are assigned to them and so at that moment if that’s how you

[00:06:26] operate long enough you’re going to have a lot of money and you’re going to have a lot of money

[00:06:28] you will just become very robotic right there’s this saying like some people have 20 years of one

[00:06:33] year experience and that’s like a trap so the entrepreneurial mindset would be really looking

[00:06:38] above and beyond your job title gaining a set of skills that’s necessary to operate and honestly

[00:06:43] when you’re in the entrepreneurial mindset you may have to get out of your comfort zone

[00:06:48] and that may mean switching jobs a little more often to make sure that the investment you’re

[00:06:54] making in yourself has the payoff that you want and that can be scary for a lot of people but if you’re

[00:06:58] a lot of people and when you do look for those other job roles you’re not always just looking

[00:07:02] for a lateral move if i was a linux system administrator here i just want another linux

[00:07:07] system administrator job now maybe you do something that pays a little bit more or you

[00:07:12] stretch yourself and try to get a return on the investment of skills that you put in so that would

[00:07:17] be my mindset around entrepreneurship act like you own the place but in reality you may not be

[00:07:22] rewarded like you do but that doesn’t mean that you can’t adopt that same type of attitude and

[00:07:27] mindset and it may not be the same type of attitude and mindset that you have in your

[00:07:28] business but it may actually turn out to be in your favor both financially and in terms of your

[00:07:32] impact that you can make right i think those are some pretty good insights right because looking

[00:07:37] at the business in totality sometimes this is something not many people exercise right so maybe

[00:07:42] they just focus on the team or focus on their departments but looking at in totality and also

[00:07:47] understand the impact that you do i think it’s really really critical moving out of comfort zone

[00:07:51] is also something that not many people would be willing to do i think these days there are a lot

[00:07:56] of startup opportunities as well for a lot of people and i think it’s really important to

[00:07:58] us to exercise more entrepreneurship mindset plus there will be some rewards if the startup

[00:08:02] succeed i guess you know with all these equities portion so maybe for some people who would love

[00:08:08] to probably take some more risk what advice do you think you would give to them risk do not have

[00:08:16] guaranteed payoffs that’s why they call risk it’s risky and so you know when we think about this

[00:08:23] in concrete terms what would a risk be like you’re a software developer what is a risk

[00:08:28] a risk would be hey how does this company make money right if you don’t know the answer you can

[00:08:35] ask someone maybe ask someone in the finance department ask someone that’s on the business

[00:08:40] side of the house and they’ll say hey this is how we make money so now you can do something risky

[00:08:45] you can make suggestions right you can say hmm i know the product works like this but based on how

[00:08:52] we make money based on the goals of the company i want to suggest something else i think

[00:08:58] we should have a native app for ios and not use a generic platform that makes them just work the

[00:09:04] same i did some research people engage deeper with native apps than just things that have a web view

[00:09:11] so the reason why no one’s really interacting with their app because it’s not great now that’s

[00:09:17] a risky thing to do the easy thing to do is just keep working on the app just use the framework

[00:09:21] the company’s chosen don’t make too much noise do a good job but being risky is saying i think

[00:09:28] if we were to put a little more investment on the mobile app we can probably get a lot more

[00:09:34] interactions maybe more signups maybe people will do and sign up for this new thing that we have

[00:09:39] and so you have to put together a plan and so that means you got to write it down

[00:09:43] and now you got to convince people so it’s one thing to be right but it’s a whole nother thing

[00:09:49] to get consensus right everyone agreeing someone on the team is going to say hey we tried that

[00:09:53] already this is why we just do the same thing for android and ios it’s too much to maintain

[00:09:58] we don’t think it’s worth it and so you’re going to have to try to find that courage that evidence

[00:10:02] to convince people that it’s worth another try and then usually if people agree you’re probably

[00:10:07] going to be on the hook for the majority of the work and so there’s a huge career bet here because

[00:10:12] guess what if you are wrong and the company is now heading in the wrong direction the payoff

[00:10:17] could be you’re fired or maybe you’re embarrassed but there’s going to be some consequence for big

[00:10:24] things but let’s say you’re right and the risk pays off and the conversions are going to be

[00:10:28] where they need to be and you kind of push forward and they can see the actual impact so

[00:10:33] there’s one thing where you ship the ios app and nothing changes there’s another thing where you

[00:10:37] ship it and all the things you thought about and maybe some things you didn’t think about

[00:10:41] become true and everyone’s like wow man you really went above and beyond on that one and

[00:10:47] more than likely at least from experience people will tend to show up with more things for you to

[00:10:51] try or people will give you a little bit of political capital internally that when you do

[00:10:56] have another big idea and it doesn’t work you’re going to have to think about it and you’re going to

[00:10:58] work they know that okay at least you got it done at least you’re trying something and failure is

[00:11:04] going to be part of pushing boundaries right that’s a very practical tips right so i think

[00:11:09] taking risk doesn’t mean that you just go entrepreneurship or you know set up a company

[00:11:13] or maybe change from nine to five to totally something different like consulting maybe or

[00:11:17] something like that but also could be internal right taking risk in suggesting ideas proposing

[00:11:22] it getting it done i think it’s also very very important not just proposing idea but not doing

[00:11:27] anything

[00:11:28] about it and i think a lot of things people think about taking risk is like yeah i mean they could

[00:11:33] go total failures like catastrophic things so i think from what you mentioned sometimes you know

[00:11:39] the risk is there but it doesn’t mean like total catastrophic right thanks for sharing that so a

[00:11:46] big part of your career journey is about what you mentioned self-taught journey right like

[00:11:50] self-taught developer many people these days like what you mentioned learn programming or maybe

[00:11:55] technology through internet or those kind of resources and i think that’s a very important

[00:11:58] process because i think university itself is not enough so i think at the last stage of your

[00:12:04] career you actually became a distinguished engineer at google some people find it like

[00:12:09] maybe a dream chapters you know for your whole career journey in your point of view maybe as a

[00:12:14] self-taught developer what do you think are the critical mindsets or critical skill sets that you

[00:12:20] think you would like to share with people so that they can probably get inspiration from your

[00:12:24] journey honestly if i had to sum it all up it’s just two big things

[00:12:28] learn the difference between activities and impact those ain’t always the same thing

[00:12:34] activities are writing code testing things deploying to production setting up jenkins

[00:12:41] pipelines those are all great activities but impact is very different impact is like what

[00:12:46] was the effect of that you know this code i wrote converted to some revenue this code i wrote

[00:12:53] prevented something bad happening to our customer data those are

[00:12:58] hackable things and i think sometimes we all spend our career trying to get really great at

[00:13:03] activities i am the best python developer ever great i have a lot of activities for you and i

[00:13:09] will assign you all the tickets and you can write all the python code but impact is a little more

[00:13:14] strategic you almost have to zoom out and look at a longer time horizon so an activity tends to

[00:13:22] end with the check-in checking the code the activity is complete but the impact requires a

[00:13:27] little bit more thought and a little bit more time so i think that’s a really important thing

[00:13:28] you have to track it hey we did a design doc and our vision was that this thing we’re about to build

[00:13:35] should have this type of impact and for a lot of companies the impact is very simple

[00:13:40] does it lead to more revenue or not all right let’s say you’re working on the e-commerce front

[00:13:45] end you think you want to change the checkout button from the top to the left and if you think

[00:13:50] about that you’re saying that’s a very simple activity yeah it is you can go into the framework

[00:13:56] and shift it 600px and you can go into the framework and shift it 600px and you can go into

[00:13:58] the other way and yes it’s now in the left hand and if that’s all you did right you just got a

[00:14:04] jira ticket and you moved in that’s it then that’s a really cool activity but if you said i think

[00:14:09] that we can get more sales if the checkout button’s on the left side and will impact the

[00:14:16] business by growing revenue by seven percent boy that’s a lot of impact if you do that no one cares

[00:14:23] who wrote the code it could be you it could be a junior engineer it could be a senior engineer

[00:14:27] it could be one lines of code it could actually be swapping out the whole framework to next js

[00:14:33] so you can do it there no one will care they will only care about the seven percent because that’s

[00:14:39] the actual impact so it’s really it can be a very small nuance but if you learn the difference

[00:14:45] between activities and impact your career is going to be successful at every level actually

[00:14:50] and it’s going to be the thing that kind of helps you start to decide when to move on from

[00:14:56] a particular skill set

[00:14:57] if all you do is write code all day and no design docs then you may be really good at the activities

[00:15:02] but not having enough team-wide impact so you may have to start to bring on new things so if you’re

[00:15:08] ever confused always ask yourself what is the impact of the work i’m doing now look there are

[00:15:13] some times where all you need is the activity someone picks you know has the bug you reproduce

[00:15:18] the issue and you just solve the problem great sometimes all you got to do is update your jvm

[00:15:23] so you can be compliant no problem but one thing you can start to ask though

[00:15:27] is for some of your work ask what is the impact of this if you get assigned a ticket from a pm

[00:15:32] or from the team lead or anyone ask them like hey what’s the impact of this if we get this done what

[00:15:38] happens and they might tell you something like this is for our biggest customer they’re going

[00:15:43] to renew their contract for 20 million dollars and this is one of the two features that are

[00:15:48] required for us to close that deal so now at least as an engineer you can say hmm this thing i’m

[00:15:54] working on it’s not the biggest part of the whole renewal but it’s the biggest part of the whole renewal

[00:15:57] it’s part of that renewal and just knowing your impact i think goes a long way and makes us

[00:16:02] appreciate our work right i think this also may come back to what you mentioned in the beginning

[00:16:07] right understanding the business in totality and you know relating it back to the impact that

[00:16:13] you’re doing as part of the daily activities and i think impact is definitely sometimes very tricky

[00:16:18] for some people they can only look within their own team but some people can look at a different

[00:16:23] level so from your progression right you seem to progress from like stuff

[00:16:27] engineer principal engineer and latest is becoming distinguished engineers maybe you can

[00:16:32] give some examples how you actually think maybe in terms of bigger impact on those kind of roles

[00:16:37] so i’m going to tell you a trick here’s what i learned from going through that progression

[00:16:40] it’s the same work repackaged all right so let’s say i joined google and i used to be a contributor

[00:16:47] to kubernetes coming from coral west i’m really good on the technology side if you assign me an

[00:16:52] issue i can probably figure out how to do it given enough time and so i make an

[00:16:57] injury activities in addition to my engineering work i can speak on a stage and talk to people

[00:17:03] and explain to them things now if i do that as let’s say a level six engineer or someone that

[00:17:09] works in dev rel or operations what would the activity be so if i was level six and i go to the

[00:17:15] product team and say there’s this bug that every customer has we should fix it and they’d be like

[00:17:20] no problem and it gets fixed and hey we like working with kelsey he helps us prioritize the

[00:17:26] roadmap

[00:17:26] he even invited him to my project even if the project was bad he would still give him

[00:17:27] to the roadmap meetings.

[00:17:29] And so at that point you’re doing a really good job

[00:17:32] and now you might actually start bringing

[00:17:34] new ideas to the team.

[00:17:36] So new ideas would be,

[00:17:38] I think we need to go in a slightly different direction.

[00:17:40] We need to have serverless Kubernetes.

[00:17:42] Like the nodes can’t be there

[00:17:44] because as long as the cluster’s there,

[00:17:45] lots of people are gonna have a hard time onboarding,

[00:17:48] which slows adoption, which slows revenue growth.

[00:17:51] So I think what we need to do is this,

[00:17:52] and then I go test it.

[00:17:53] So having influence is also a big component of this.

[00:17:57] So if I go on Twitter,

[00:17:58] I’m not just tweeting for your entertainment.

[00:18:01] I’m also thinking out loud,

[00:18:03] hey, what if there was serverless Kubernetes?

[00:18:05] What if we hid the nodes so we can focus on the workload?

[00:18:08] And that gets everyone thinking.

[00:18:10] It gets competitors thinking,

[00:18:12] it gets the community thinking,

[00:18:13] it gets my team thinking.

[00:18:15] And when you respond and interact with me,

[00:18:17] I’m also fleshing out the idea.

[00:18:19] You may say, well, if you get rid of the node,

[00:18:21] how will we deal with custom device drivers?

[00:18:23] Or how will we deal with multiple zones and regions?

[00:18:26] Will we still be able to take

[00:18:27] that stuff?

[00:18:28] You’re helping me flesh out the design doc

[00:18:30] with real world people and potential customers as well.

[00:18:34] You’re also validating the idea, right?

[00:18:36] Like, oh, this is a good idea.

[00:18:38] Hmm, Kelsey’s onto something.

[00:18:40] So we ship it.

[00:18:42] And so now you start to do promotions

[00:18:43] and you’re doing very similar things like this.

[00:18:45] So now you’re level seven.

[00:18:47] You’re a principal engineer.

[00:18:49] So now the expectation is a little different.

[00:18:52] People are expecting you to come

[00:18:53] and collaborate across organizations.

[00:18:55] So you can’t just do Kubernetes anymore.

[00:18:57] You need to go check out some serverless stuff.

[00:18:59] What about metrics?

[00:19:00] What about logging?

[00:19:01] What about the big picture?

[00:19:03] Also, that’s good for shipping products.

[00:19:05] But what about the business?

[00:19:06] How do you impact cloud revenue?

[00:19:10] And so that means I got to be doing some executive type

[00:19:14] of work, meaning if we have a large account,

[00:19:16] what is your contribution to making

[00:19:18] that large account successful?

[00:19:20] Do you help them architect their setup in a way that gets them

[00:19:24] to move into cloud and really make it work for them?

[00:19:26] Yeah.

[00:19:27] Or do you find something that they’re trying to do

[00:19:29] and you find a novel way from the work around it?

[00:19:31] So you’re like, hmm, if you use VPCs this way with the way

[00:19:36] Kubernetes networking model works and give me a moment,

[00:19:39] I’m going to make a small prototype.

[00:19:40] If this was all in place, we could make this work.

[00:19:44] At that moment, you’re moving the bar for the business

[00:19:47] and you’re kind of now leading on the product side.

[00:19:50] Those prototypes, like the one I just described,

[00:19:52] it turned into a feature in Apigee, our API gateway

[00:19:56] component.

[00:19:57] And so those are the things where now you’re

[00:19:59] starting to impact across the org.

[00:20:01] And so now how do you go from that to level eight?

[00:20:04] So level eight is this weird thing

[00:20:05] because as that kind of staff principal engineer,

[00:20:09] level eight for a lot of people is kind of like the end game.

[00:20:11] It’s great.

[00:20:12] When you get there, you’re fine.

[00:20:14] You could probably do a good job and make a lot of impact

[00:20:17] across the org.

[00:20:18] But I think distinguish is different.

[00:20:20] I think distinguish is when you get to the point

[00:20:22] where you’re influenced and trust that you’ve built up.

[00:20:26] You’re consistent.

[00:20:27] You’re consistently earning the trust of your peers.

[00:20:30] You’re working with very smart people.

[00:20:31] These are other principal and distinguish engineers.

[00:20:33] They also have good ideas.

[00:20:34] They also have the ability to execute.

[00:20:37] But why do they listen to you?

[00:20:39] Why are you so good at building consensus?

[00:20:41] It’s no longer, look at me, look at the code that I wrote.

[00:20:44] It’s really about saying, if I can get involved

[00:20:47] with six different teams, I think I can ship something,

[00:20:50] three things that are impactful every year.

[00:20:52] Some will hit, some will miss.

[00:20:54] And I think that global influence is a big deal.

[00:20:57] I’m going to give you one clear example.

[00:20:58] I remember when I started contributing

[00:21:00] to the serverless side of the house.

[00:21:01] I learned a little bit about App Engine.

[00:21:03] I wrote a tiny bit of code for Go serverless functions.

[00:21:07] But I had this whole plan.

[00:21:08] When we’re sitting at the table deciding what next serverless

[00:21:11] language to support, I think at that time,

[00:21:14] we probably had Python.

[00:21:15] We probably had something like Ruby.

[00:21:18] Who knows?

[00:21:19] And the team was like, we should have Java next.

[00:21:21] And I was like, Java?

[00:21:22] Maybe.

[00:21:23] Look, there are a lot of enterprises that use Java.

[00:21:26] But that doesn’t really align.

[00:21:27] With the serverless movement.

[00:21:29] JVM is pretty heavyweight.

[00:21:31] Enterprise developers have so many other things

[00:21:33] to worry about.

[00:21:34] Execution startup time isn’t necessarily one of them.

[00:21:37] What about Golang?

[00:21:39] And the team was like, what do you mean, Golang?

[00:21:40] I’m like, number one, this is Google’s programming language.

[00:21:45] We should at least support the thing that we created.

[00:21:49] I’m just saying, as a priority.

[00:21:51] Number two, it’s a compiled language.

[00:21:54] The startup time and all these things are fast.

[00:21:56] There are dependency graphs.

[00:21:57] The graph is nice.

[00:21:58] We have a lot of impact that we can do with Golang.

[00:22:01] Also, I’m speaking at GopherCon in about three or four months.

[00:22:04] If we reprioritize this roadmap, we

[00:22:07] can have a serverless talk already for GopherCon.

[00:22:10] And look, hey, PM, if we ship it on time,

[00:22:13] how about you come to GopherCon with me,

[00:22:14] and then we’ll launch the beta at GopherCon?

[00:22:18] So we do all the work behind the scenes,

[00:22:20] make sure everything works, interact with the Go team,

[00:22:22] making sure that we’re getting the style right,

[00:22:24] we’re thinking through things, because there’s

[00:22:26] going to be an API that needs to be done.

[00:22:27] It needs to be stable.

[00:22:28] And it’s just good to have the Go team on board

[00:22:30] with our approach to serverless for Golang.

[00:22:33] And we launch it, and then people sign up for it.

[00:22:36] And now the PM is doing a good job.

[00:22:38] Hell, they may get promoted for a nice launch,

[00:22:40] so launches versus landings.

[00:22:42] We’ve landed Go support in the product.

[00:22:46] And so now you’re doing this, this is your track record.

[00:22:49] Then you go online and say,

[00:22:50] you know one thing that I’ve learned

[00:22:51] in the last two years working on serverless?

[00:22:53] Lambda, at some point, will eventually add container images.

[00:22:57] This source code and this function

[00:23:00] doesn’t make any sense from an actual engineering standpoint.

[00:23:03] Because the moment you connect to a database,

[00:23:05] the moment you connect to a cache,

[00:23:07] that little function becomes big,

[00:23:09] just like all your other code, right?

[00:23:11] It just becomes function main.

[00:23:12] And then the startup routines aren’t right.

[00:23:15] It doesn’t really work well with things like sending logs,

[00:23:17] because the CPU will stop.

[00:23:19] It’s just incompatible.

[00:23:21] I think container images, maybe not Docker,

[00:23:25] but images will complement.

[00:23:26] So you tweet that.

[00:23:27] I predict that by something, something, something,

[00:23:31] Lambda will have support for container images.

[00:23:33] Look, I don’t know if the Amazon team saw that,

[00:23:36] but I’m pretty sure the community did.

[00:23:38] I’m pretty sure some customers did.

[00:23:40] And whatever happened, one day they went to re-invent.

[00:23:44] They said, we are adding container image support to Lambda.

[00:23:48] And I looked around the room.

[00:23:49] I was like, boy, boy, boy,

[00:23:51] I might’ve been onto something.

[00:23:53] But as cool as that story is,

[00:23:55] that is what it means by,

[00:23:57] not impact vision setting,

[00:23:58] having the trust of the community.

[00:24:00] And it’s not because you’re the smartest person in the room.

[00:24:02] It’s because you’re listening.

[00:24:04] You’re watching people work.

[00:24:06] You’re studying the work that you’re doing.

[00:24:08] And then it becomes a little easier

[00:24:11] to think about what the next step’s going to be.

[00:24:13] And so you do that long enough,

[00:24:15] then I think you earn that spot as a distinguished engineer,

[00:24:18] because your impact is clear.

[00:24:20] I think that’s pretty good illustration

[00:24:22] of how you’re thinking bigger things, right?

[00:24:24] And I think one thing that I also learned

[00:24:27] from you just now,

[00:24:27] I think is to listen, right?

[00:24:29] Test it with the community, talk to people.

[00:24:31] And also another thing is actually have something

[00:24:33] like a vision, like dream bigger, right?

[00:24:35] So just like your example of function as a service,

[00:24:39] you think what’s the next step for function, right?

[00:24:41] It could be a container image.

[00:24:43] So I think dreaming big is something also

[00:24:45] that some people could exercise

[00:24:46] and relate that to the impact

[00:24:48] that could drive for the business.

[00:24:50] I think that’s pretty good story.

[00:24:52] So these days, there are a lot of advancement in AI.

[00:24:55] If you would have to look back,

[00:24:56] and think about the impact of AI to your career,

[00:25:00] maybe you have some views on this.

[00:25:02] It’s another technology wave.

[00:25:03] You know, we’re focused on software development right now,

[00:25:07] and there’s someone having a medical breakthrough

[00:25:10] that’s gonna keep people alive.

[00:25:11] There’s some breakthrough happening in aviation.

[00:25:14] There’s a energy breakthrough.

[00:25:15] I think people are getting close to fission

[00:25:18] to compliment nuclear and solar.

[00:25:20] Innovation is happening.

[00:25:21] There’s 9 billion people in this world.

[00:25:23] And so look, you’ll be lucky to participate on some

[00:25:26] of this innovation.

[00:25:27] So in our field, AI is all the rave.

[00:25:30] And so for me, look, I’m 43 years old.

[00:25:33] I’ve had a 25-year career.

[00:25:35] And I look around and I see all this stuff,

[00:25:37] and I’m like, you’ve had AI in your pocket

[00:25:40] for a very long time.

[00:25:41] Google Maps, Search.

[00:25:44] ML is a very big domain.

[00:25:46] And so when you see something like ChatGPT launch,

[00:25:49] and then people get excited,

[00:25:51] and you ask yourself, like,

[00:25:52] why are people excited even more this time?

[00:25:55] We’ve gone through this for 30 years.

[00:25:57] There’s been starts and stops and starts and stops.

[00:26:01] But honestly, humans like getting excited about anything.

[00:26:03] They get excited about Bitcoin.

[00:26:05] They get excited about Docker, Kubernetes.

[00:26:07] We just like getting excited about stuff.

[00:26:10] And then it dies off.

[00:26:12] So in this current trajectory, when I ask myself,

[00:26:14] why are people so excited about this?

[00:26:17] And you go take a look at it.

[00:26:18] So I’m curious, I’m not a machine learning expert.

[00:26:21] And I’m like, okay, you have a large language model,

[00:26:23] which is maybe a different technique.

[00:26:25] And some people will look at it like a fancy search engine.

[00:26:29] Some people look at it as like knowledge compression.

[00:26:31] Some people will be excited by like a billion parameter

[00:26:33] and all the weights.

[00:26:35] But when you interact with this thing,

[00:26:36] I think the thing that’s most impressive is,

[00:26:38] number one, you get to interact with it

[00:26:41] the way real intelligence.

[00:26:43] I’m going to say humans are real intelligence.

[00:26:45] We walk around and we give each other prompts all the time.

[00:26:48] Hey, go clean your room.

[00:26:49] And the room gets cleaned, right?

[00:26:51] Like your child has this very elaborate model

[00:26:53] on what it means to clean the room.

[00:26:55] You don’t even have to apply it.

[00:26:55] point to where it is you don’t even have to help them right you don’t even have to plug in nvidia

[00:27:00] gpus it just does it and so we’ve been doing this type of thing for all of our lives and maybe for

[00:27:06] the first time siri and alexa was kind of a hint at this but now you type into this thing and it

[00:27:13] has enough context has enough training data that it’s starting to produce things that you know you

[00:27:18] can’t do on your own it’s like using photoshop for the first time you just get the magic eraser

[00:27:23] and it’s like oh i can remove the background and so now you get this new set of capabilities

[00:27:28] like take all the sports data and organize it by the top athlete that’s great and now you have a

[00:27:35] tool that’s getting closer to doing that but at the same time though that stuff was kind of possible

[00:27:41] before but maybe not in this way so you have to respect where we are but at the end of the day

[00:27:46] i don’t want to just be a consumer of these type of tools i don’t want to just install these things

[00:27:52] and just do it for fun i don’t want to just do it for fun i don’t want to just do it for fun

[00:27:53] do a bunch of prompt engineering and sit back and hopefully the results are correct maybe they are

[00:27:58] maybe they’re not i would like to be the person on the other side of this equation i like to be

[00:28:02] the person creating the training data so i want to go outside and walk around take a picture

[00:28:09] meet people be uncomfortable smile learn something new explore and if these tools can aid in that

[00:28:17] should i touch this plant or not that’s stuff i like as an assistant this idea of replacing

[00:28:23] things with new tools and i like to be the person creating the training data so i want to go outside

[00:28:23] or we should all put every dollar we have into agi i’m less interested in artificial i’m more

[00:28:32] interested in real intelligence so i like hopefully this whole thing becomes a renaissance

[00:28:37] and we restart to appreciate things that humans do so look will it work yes will this stuff be

[00:28:43] able to generate code yes your compiler can generate code too this stuff will make some tasks

[00:28:47] much better and give more people the ability to do things that only experts can do in the past

[00:28:53] this is amazing and it continues the trajectory we’ve been on for a long time but i also hope it

[00:28:59] just reminds people that it’s worth interacting with other people and i don’t want the artificial

[00:29:06] version of everything in my life thanks for the reminder of being real intelligence take the

[00:29:12] humanity aspect right and just create something like more creative rather than just you know

[00:29:17] using the prompts to generate whatever that the machine is generating based on the training data

[00:29:21] so i think ai is definitely a good idea and i hope that you guys have a great day and i’ll see you

[00:29:23] soon

[00:29:23] here but it has always been here anyway like what you mentioned right but somehow this time it’s

[00:29:28] different so i think for us engineers right do explore ai use that as part of your tools

[00:29:35] but don’t make that as the thing can i be a little bit more clear about what i mean here

[00:29:39] if you think about a standard library like i like to program in goling and if i want to do something

[00:29:44] like generate an ssl certificate i don’t want to do that from scratch and i also need it to be

[00:29:49] accurate so i don’t want to have any predictions i go to the standard library and i’m like oh

[00:29:53] that’s a really good library i import x509 and i basically can say generate private key and rip out

[00:30:00] the public key part and use it for a web server right i can do that that’s a really good library

[00:30:04] when i think about ai the end game so yes there will be people creating these wonderful models

[00:30:10] and trying to figure out the right data sets to get the right results but at the end of the day

[00:30:16] you as a software developer you will import these things like libraries you want to translate

[00:30:23] some speech from one language to another import library that will interact with some model you

[00:30:30] will take some input some large context window the speech that they’re giving you and you will

[00:30:34] send it to this thing and it will look like a web server and the web server will be backed by some

[00:30:41] model and the model is going to return to you a result and you’re going to respond and if that

[00:30:46] sounds familiar because it is most computation that we do we make put something in the data

[00:30:53] base run a query get back a result we may want to resize the image for a web page we send it to a

[00:31:00] library it resizes the image and it gives us back the right pixels and we display them so this is

[00:31:05] all great stuff i don’t want to downplay the significance of it but i also don’t want to make

[00:31:09] sure that we all don’t get distracted from reality right thanks for the additional context there i

[00:31:15] think yeah just like any other tools we can give an input we can get an output but what do we take

[00:31:20] out of that i think is something that is very important

[00:31:23] so another part of your career journey that is big is actually about deaf rel or public speaking or

[00:31:28] you know giving this awesome cool demos on stage right so some people find it inspirational as

[00:31:33] well so they always say that kelsey is kind of like the superstar of this deaf world so maybe in

[00:31:38] your view what could be some of the key skill set or mindset for people to also learn public

[00:31:43] speaking because i think some people find it natural but some people find it also difficult

[00:31:48] to actually do what you do is there something special about kelsey or something that actually

[00:31:53] can be trained everybody knows how to publicly speak when you go talk to your friends when you

[00:31:58] go talk to your family public speaking the thing that’s weird is when people get in front of an

[00:32:03] audience they want to do something different all of a sudden they want to talk like some college

[00:32:08] professor they want to talk like someone else they believe that there’s some right way of talking

[00:32:14] stand like this make sure you pronunciate everything you have to say weird things like i

[00:32:19] am so excited you start doing things you would never do in real life

[00:32:23] so it’s very unnatural for the audience it’s unnatural for you because you’re pretending

[00:32:27] you’re going up there to be something you’re not and so now you got to ask yourself can i pretend

[00:32:32] for the next 15 minutes that i am this thing that i’m presenting so that is unnatural so you

[00:32:38] actually have to put a lot of effort in being unnatural when we fall back to the natural

[00:32:42] component it feels different for you and it feels different for the audience so typically i only

[00:32:49] talk about things that i’m either working on or care about so if you don’t

[00:32:53] care about something and you just like oh i really want to speak at a conference let me figure out

[00:32:56] a topic okay you don’t even care so why does the audience care right so maybe you’re just a good

[00:33:02] speaker you could talk about anything that’s fine but when you take away to me for me when i take

[00:33:07] away the care part then it just it’s not worth doing so then there’s another component of the

[00:33:12] work become before the talk i’m not just making talks all day i’m doing work and when the aha

[00:33:19] moment comes for me i’m trying to give you the

[00:33:23] same aha moment and like in your real life if you’re walking if someone says hey go to the store

[00:33:27] and buy some bread you can go to the store buy some bread if nothing happens you come home and

[00:33:33] you just put the bread up and that’s it but imagine if you go to the store and you get

[00:33:38] pulled over by the police and they think you just robbed the bank and they put you in the car

[00:33:43] and they do a background check and then the people who really robbed the bank drive by and the police

[00:33:49] realize that you are not the one who robbed the bank it’s those other people who are the ones who

[00:33:53] are the people so they make you get out of the car really really quickly and you’re out of the car

[00:33:57] and you’re looking at the police drive and chase the people that who actually robbed the bank

[00:34:01] when you get home you’re going to have a very compelling story to tell and you’re not going

[00:34:06] to say it in powerpoint you’re not going to do some rigid boring thing you’re going to say you

[00:34:12] won’t believe what happened to me i was on the store to get the bread right you know the one on

[00:34:17] the corner and man i was on there and you know the little light between this street and this street

[00:34:23] next to the bank here’s the thing i’m stopping and i see the police and i’m thinking that i was

[00:34:28] speeding so i checked the radar like speeding had my seat belt on everything is fine and i know my

[00:34:33] insurance is good and then they start pulling guns on me yes like the movies they’re pulling

[00:34:37] guns i’m scared i don’t know what to do and to be honest i did cry a little bit but not too much

[00:34:42] and then they just put me in handcuffs they didn’t even tell me what was going on they dragged me in

[00:34:46] the car and then when i’m in the car they’re saying that i robbed the bank but i didn’t rob

[00:34:50] the bank and this is the funny part

[00:34:53] while i was in back of the car the guy that robbed the bank drove past us he had a ski mask

[00:34:58] on gun and money’s flying out of the car it was insane i was like see it’s not me it’s him and

[00:35:04] the police is like sir get out of the car and they took the handcuffs off and they didn’t take

[00:35:08] this one off so the handcuff is still on but they let me go but i forgot to get the bread

[00:35:13] you’re gonna tell that story to everybody because it was interesting right you’re gonna tell it and

[00:35:20] all of a sudden you’re a comedian you’re funny you’re funny you’re funny you’re funny you’re

[00:35:23] funny everyone’s gonna be able to relate they’re going to be laughing they’re gonna call parents

[00:35:28] and say you wouldn’t believe what happened to kelsey he got put in a police car just buying

[00:35:32] bread but you understand this is natural everyone knows how to do this but when you go on the stage

[00:35:37] you would say hey slide one uh what what what is this so to me is the moment you can find your

[00:35:46] own voice how you talk how you present how you dress that will bring

[00:35:53] context to whatever you’re talking about so if you’re going to talk about kubernetes you don’t

[00:35:57] have to focus on being accurate 100 with every bullet point and having cat pictures like what

[00:36:03] what is that who’s doing you don’t need to do that too what you could do would just say ask a

[00:36:08] question why do i like kubernetes what was i doing before maybe it made my life so happy that i was

[00:36:14] just smiling at my desk and whatever that moment was it could be downloading it for the first time

[00:36:20] running kubectl for the first time

[00:36:23] or preventing an outage because the app moved to another machine for the first time

[00:36:27] that feeling you got to capture that feeling and once you capture that feeling

[00:36:31] if you’re a engineer you will have to learn how to communicate you can just write an email

[00:36:37] you could send someone a slide deck but that’s not very compelling what’s compelling is when

[00:36:42] someone believes that you believe in something they may just believe in it too and so whether

[00:36:47] you want to go talk at a conference talk at the team off-site talk over lunch with the

[00:36:53] team either way being an effective communicator is how a lot of engineering actually gets done

[00:36:59] before you start writing code you got to get consensus on what to build once you build it

[00:37:03] you have to convince people on how to use it and then you have to learn how to listen to feedback

[00:37:08] and so i think this is such a critical component to every developer’s journey if you want to learn

[00:37:14] how to actually build stuff for people you got to get really good at communicating with people

[00:37:20] i think just by listening to what you mentioned

[00:37:23] just now right i think some people will see you really natural in you know giving this kind of

[00:37:27] stories being authentic i think that’s a very key part of what you just mentioned right so be

[00:37:32] natural in conveying your message don’t be some pretending to be something different right just

[00:37:37] trying to mimic somebody else that you probably admire so also another thing i find it very

[00:37:42] interesting is that you go through the journey like you’re not giving a talk just for the sake

[00:37:46] of giving talks and bullet points but actually you did the work you capture your moments right

[00:37:51] the aha moments

[00:37:53] you share it with everyone as if like you are sharing it for the first time i think that is

[00:37:57] really really powerful as well because not many people prepare up to that level they just talk

[00:38:02] bullet points and things like that so i think thanks for sharing that another big part of your

[00:38:06] journey is actually sharing to the community and learning in public so i think this is also

[00:38:10] something different that people can learn from you like how do you think we should contribute

[00:38:14] to community maybe even like building a personal brand out of your learning in public so maybe if

[00:38:19] you can give some views on this as well

[00:38:21] i mean you have a personal brand and you have a community and you have a community and you have a

[00:38:23] personal brand whether you like it or not when people interact with you they will form some

[00:38:29] opinion about you that’s just how it works so even if your job is like the recycling person

[00:38:35] you come and you pick up the recycling and you see someone outside and you smile at them i’m going

[00:38:39] to form an opinion about who you are like man that person really likes their job and so you have

[00:38:44] one now the question is should you curate it or not should you work on it or not should you think

[00:38:49] about it or not should you invest in it or not and right now there’s a lot of people that are like

[00:38:53] i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know

[00:38:53] a lot of layoffs happening into tech and a lot of people are struggling and for the most part

[00:38:57] it’s no fault of their own but as companies start to cut back globally and everyone’s rushing to

[00:39:04] apply for whatever jobs there are left what makes you different than the other person y’all all have

[00:39:09] resumes you all have the same keywords you’re smart you know what i want to hear so of course

[00:39:15] you’re going to write those things down so now i have a thousand people to choose from how am i

[00:39:20] picking maybe i’m picking the person that’s closest to me and i’m going to pick the person that’s

[00:39:23] closest to us maybe i’ll pick the person that pays we got to pay the less money to maybe this is

[00:39:27] the person who has the most skill but either way i will take you or the other person doesn’t matter

[00:39:32] i’ll take what i can get and so how do you then separate from that who are you so if you’re just

[00:39:38] applying for the job then you are a candidate but when someone says hey i’ve seen your work

[00:39:45] i think i know who you are we would like to hire you specifically you we will find the right role

[00:39:51] we just want you on the job

[00:39:53] team so whether we have a current job posting or not it’s not important we want you to be here

[00:39:58] so then who are you what are you advertising to the world one component could be you really like

[00:40:06] python you like it a lot so what are you going to communicate to me about how much you like python

[00:40:11] and so for me there’s like the low-scale stuff which i prefer there today there’s been two people

[00:40:17] from different countries that email me about their own career progression they’ll just say

[00:40:23] hey kelsey i’m not sure if you’re going to see this email but this is where i am in my career

[00:40:28] if you happen to see this any advice would be great and i wish i’d tell people my career is

[00:40:33] a product of a lot of luck a lot of brute force i don’t have some magic formula that i can just

[00:40:38] give to everybody but you know what i’ll make time if you want to call we can jump on a call

[00:40:45] and i’ll try my best to listen and maybe be articulate about what i would do if i was in

[00:40:51] your situation that’s slow

[00:40:53] i can’t do a million of those but i’ll tell you this over 15 years i’ve probably done at least a

[00:41:00] thousand at least a thousand and those thousands of people remember you putting effort into their

[00:41:08] life and their career sometimes you will give great advice that actually pays off for them

[00:41:13] so to me that’s worth doing even at the very very small scale and then some of the bigger things that

[00:41:19] you don’t even realize has impact like some of those videos i would just

[00:41:23] make some of them because i would just want to share what i’m learning but for some people that’s

[00:41:28] when they start their career from that one video they watch the video i’m like you know what i’m

[00:41:31] doing whatever he’s doing i want to do that he looks like he’s having fun i feel like i understand

[00:41:36] it now i’m all in that stuff is important so some people would say kelsey’s brand is this person

[00:41:44] who likes learning in public they might say he just does a bunch of conference talks or i don’t

[00:41:51] know he just likes being on social media

[00:41:53] but what am i doing when i’m doing those things i’m educating people i’m learning in public and so

[00:42:00] if i had a personal brand that’s the only one that i care about and if you ask enough people

[00:42:04] they will say he is who you say he is that’s it so that’s my brand that’s who i want to be

[00:42:11] and i try to just back it up in my real life and so those things align then no one can ever accuse

[00:42:17] me of being a fraud so a lot of people say hey i have imposter syndrome some people it’s a real

[00:42:23] thing look i don’t want to get into that but some people are literally walking around pretending

[00:42:27] you’re lying on the resume you’re lying on twitter you’re talking about stuff that you

[00:42:32] don’t have an idea about and so you’re trying to approach these things from a position of authority

[00:42:37] instead of from a position of questions people are okay if you ask a question

[00:42:42] some people will be helpful and they’ll choose the answer so you all have a personal brand

[00:42:47] i think it’s worth investing in it and honestly it’s good for self-reflection

[00:42:53] am i the person that i want to be seriously am i that person like lots of people will complain

[00:42:58] about what other people are doing people complain about the world being mean but then you ask

[00:43:03] yourself like are you the person that you actually want to be and if the answer is no

[00:43:08] then work on that person and sometimes it’s helpful to say that out loud who you want to be

[00:43:14] and when you’re not who you say you want to be and other people correct you it’s like hey

[00:43:18] you’re not very helpful thought you want to be a helpful person you’re not being very helpful

[00:43:23] and you say you know what thank you because i was getting off track now i’m back on and there we go

[00:43:29] wow the last part there self-reflection i think is kind of deep right so i think you just mentioned

[00:43:34] a key message for all of us right am i expected to be the kind of role that we always think about

[00:43:40] and is your brand actually associated with that kind of thinking right so i think be authentic

[00:43:45] don’t try to again pretending to be someone else in the impostor syndrome and actually also like

[00:43:53] it’s not like you just assume you have a brand but it’s like somebody else’s who actually create

[00:43:58] the brand for you i think you should invest time and effort to actually build the personal brand

[00:44:03] so i think thanks for sharing that the next thing that i want to talk about is about your

[00:44:07] retirement i think this is kind of like surprising for some of the people especially

[00:44:11] looking at your career journey you have gone through a lot of things and you have kind of

[00:44:16] reached the peak of your career right and what made you decide to actually retire kind of early

[00:44:23] i think for some people this is probably a peak of their career so tell us a little bit more how

[00:44:27] you decided on that particular decision i mean at some point during all this self-reflection

[00:44:33] you think about like what do you go to work for some people will say i love my job and there were

[00:44:38] periods of time where i definitely love my job but why did i love my job if you had a trillion

[00:44:45] dollars what would you actually be doing most people don’t have a great answer for this because

[00:44:50] we don’t even spend that much time thinking about this and i think that’s a really good point

[00:44:53] right it’s almost like an impossible thing to imagine for yourself if you had a trillion dollars

[00:44:58] what would you do but there’s lesser numbers where you could probably come up with a pretty

[00:45:03] satisfactory answer if you thought about it so as i was growing in my career i spent so much time

[00:45:08] trying to be the very best i could possibly be at any piece of technology then there became a period

[00:45:14] of time where i was like man if i could just be in like the top 100 in terraform or goblang or

[00:45:23] netty’s what would happen if i would have pushed the bar there for myself and then at some point

[00:45:28] you start saying why am i what am i doing and to get to this point people have to realize and when

[00:45:32] i’m in my early 20s i decided to be like a minimalist meaning really be intentional about

[00:45:38] the stuff that i’m buying be intentional about the stuff that i’m doing i’m literally trying

[00:45:43] not to impress anybody and just trying to be honest with myself so that leads to maybe a

[00:45:48] reduction in material possessions and when you don’t have a lot of money the

[00:45:53] way that i discovered at that time was if you just don’t want this stuff then a lot of tension

[00:45:59] disappears if you’re like man i gotta get the fancy car so people can see it and say nice things

[00:46:05] about me if that’s what you like no problem but that can also lead to a lot of pain mental anguish

[00:46:12] just thinking about how am i going to get the money to buy all of these things and then sometimes

[00:46:17] we’re fraudulent well we’ll go buy that even though we can’t afford it just to give the appearance

[00:46:23] these things that whole thing is just stressful so i decided like why do i even care about this

[00:46:28] stuff like i used to ask this question do i actually care about this stuff or have i just

[00:46:33] been watching all the ads and the videos and making myself pretend that’s what i care about

[00:46:39] and i came to my own conclusion to my financial benefit i don’t care about jewelry i don’t care

[00:46:47] about fancy car i don’t i’m not saying i don’t appreciate it when i see it but i’m not paying

[00:46:53] for it or am i saving for it so then people would ask then what are you working for what do you why

[00:46:58] you every time you get a job you want even more money or you make sure that you make the most you

[00:47:03] can get it’s like well if i’m gonna buy anything i just want to buy my time back and sometimes i

[00:47:09] want to use the word freedom there but it’s probably not the right word because at some

[00:47:14] point in my career i felt like i was very free to choose the work that i wanted to do i could

[00:47:23] i could work at core os i felt like there was a point in time where i would say at least half of

[00:47:28] my career i had a lot of say in what i was going to work on and who i was going to work with for

[00:47:34] most people that is the pinnacle of success choosing who you work with and choosing what

[00:47:41] you work on that’s the gold standard but then i started to ask this other question was man these

[00:47:47] people are paying me a lot of money why are they paying me all of this money

[00:47:53] what value am i adding and if i had enough money would i do the same thing would i buy my time

[00:48:00] back and that’s a whole different question and so when i got to the point where you know you have

[00:48:06] some number that you have in mind and you maybe you get more that number but at some point you

[00:48:11] get to a point where you can afford it so do you buy it or not so i chose to buy it meaning i’m

[00:48:18] going to leave money on the table i had lots of opportunities when i say look enough is not

[00:48:23] enough i have enough to thrive i am fine and so i bought my time back but here’s the thing when

[00:48:30] you retire i didn’t retire because my body gave out i didn’t retire because my mind gave out i

[00:48:36] just bought my time back and it turns out there are still things i care about i still like learning

[00:48:41] in public so i do paid speaking engagements i still like the process of a problem and solving

[00:48:48] the problem so i still advise startups and working with startups

[00:48:53] brings me back to the thing i love the most about having a job which is this idea that people have

[00:48:59] problems and you can get together a team and solve them and so i get to tactically do that across

[00:49:04] about 10 companies right now at the same time and so all of that stuff i get to keep the parts i

[00:49:10] like the most dial down the other ones and also in retirement remember that thing we said about

[00:49:15] what you want to work on i am fascinated with just like the real world and how it works

[00:49:21] like if you look around your house

[00:49:23] look around the place you live that building that structure has so many subsystems that sustain life

[00:49:29] like the roof protects you from the weather you have plumbing for drinking and sewage we have

[00:49:36] electricity so we can power all these devices there’s so many systems in your own house washing

[00:49:42] machines some of this stuff is like you can learn so much physics by just studying the things in

[00:49:48] your home so for me the things i’m learning now like i have a fancy tool bag i have a

[00:49:53] tool bag where i’ve just been collecting all the tools so i can do the electrical work and i’ve done

[00:49:58] some you know i bought a new house but there’s some parts that i didn’t like so just like software

[00:50:02] i remodeled some of it i got help from people who’ve done this for a long time but boy did i

[00:50:08] learn the codes i learned how to use all these different materials and the dope part about it is

[00:50:13] when you’re finished you get to step back and be like i built that i made this the way that i

[00:50:19] wanted it and so that’s where i am with retirement i just need to be able to do it again and i’m

[00:50:23] now get more time to work on the things that i care about the most i think the concept of buying

[00:50:28] your time back is a very deep kind of a meaning to me at least right because some people maybe go

[00:50:35] through their career their life just going through the motion and actually depends on other people to

[00:50:40] actually pay for your time right so i think buying back your time giving yourself more options to what

[00:50:46] you care more i think it’s really really important i think statistically in the job market these days

[00:50:53] people are disengaged so maybe they don’t care so much about their work maybe they don’t care about

[00:50:57] the company or their mission i think it’s really hard to actually bring back those kind of engagement

[00:51:01] for a lot of people in their career so maybe in your view even though probably this is a luxury

[00:51:07] for many of the people right how do you actually advise people to get more engagement even in the

[00:51:13] current state right maybe a lot of layoffs maybe a lot of uncertainties in life the ai scare that

[00:51:18] people are having now so how do you get back your engagement at work

[00:51:23] well maybe i’ll just share what i did in my own life because things are very different in 2024 the

[00:51:27] variables are different the scenarios are different but when i kind of started again i did the

[00:51:33] entrepreneurial thing for a number of years and so i collected lots of skills and i was very

[00:51:37] engaged i mean i was learning and being exposed to everything but when i got into my first job

[00:51:43] was a contractor three months to perm and it was for google at a data center so i’ve worked at

[00:51:48] google twice and so in this data center i walk in and you’re seeing all of these things and i’m like

[00:51:53] i’m talking about i don’t know hundreds of thousands of servers in the server farm

[00:51:57] everything neatly aligned the cabling the power underneath the floor i mean we even had little

[00:52:04] scooters where you drove around that data center and when i looked at it i studied every component

[00:52:09] how the trays work while we use breadboards the way we troubleshooted bios the way we swap memory

[00:52:15] and cpu the top of rack switches how to provision with tftp i’m like man this is amazing i want to

[00:52:21] learn everything because it’s so important to me and i’m like man i want to learn everything because

[00:52:22] it’s so important to me and i’m like man i want to learn everything because it’s so important to me

[00:52:23] have this mindset that the more skills you acquire the better then maybe about three months

[00:52:27] i looked at the job was like i don’t know if i want to do this for the rest of my life

[00:52:31] so about three months in i switched to another job doing something different and you get there

[00:52:37] and you realize that a lot of skills are reusable a lot of skills are transferable and you realize

[00:52:42] that it didn’t take me very long to figure out how to do the activities and then how to make an

[00:52:47] impact and once you get that formula it just keeps working so i went to a voice over ip company

[00:52:52] right after that and that voice over ip company was like hey we’re using asterisk which is an

[00:52:58] open source telephony platform people were switching over from heartlines these software

[00:53:03] systems and i was like i don’t know anything about this this is perfect so i’m learning

[00:53:08] everything how to update firmware on these handsets how to connect them to these pbxs

[00:53:14] what is asterisk what is open source why does this even matter and i did that for a little

[00:53:19] while so for me that i would say the first part of my career i was hopping around the world and

[00:53:22] i was hopping around like people take classes in college what is that that looks interesting

[00:53:28] and i remember i would show up to these interviews and i think my passion was contagious people say

[00:53:35] hey you hopped around a lot i was like i will stay here as long as you can keep me motivated

[00:53:40] and the pay is good so while you have me i think i can deliver results and i think a lot of people

[00:53:46] who hired me in those early phases they knew what it was i’m more like a mercenary i’m coming

[00:53:51] to learn everything

[00:53:52] and your benefit will be some impact but i do agree that it does take a little while sometimes so

[00:53:58] middle of my career i was working at this company for almost three years it was a financial

[00:54:03] institution because i started to mature it was less about gaining new technical skills

[00:54:08] but then i learned how to actually get things from idea to production that can take a long time

[00:54:14] how to get more consensus and also how to make other people better not just me and that’s just

[00:54:19] a different set of skills and it took years

[00:54:22] to really explore all of those boundaries but also during that time period that was the open source

[00:54:28] contributions that’s when those began and i was contributing to projects many of them but one of

[00:54:33] them in particular was puppet and so during those contribution time i remember they were like hey

[00:54:38] you want to come speak at the very first puppet conf in portland oregon 2012 and so i’m giving

[00:54:43] this talk but what was dope is a lot of people who worked at puppet labs those are the people i

[00:54:48] was contributing with so they knew who i was like i was a member of the team

[00:54:52] so what i realized is that all of this stuff that i was doing you’re almost setting up your next

[00:54:58] job so your current job sets up the next job and so what it turned out was i was shaping the next

[00:55:06] job the next perfect job i didn’t have a resume for that job they were like kelsey we know who you

[00:55:11] are would you like to come work here we can definitely find something for you to do and so

[00:55:15] i made that transition and i think after that my whole career has been communicating well to what

[00:55:21] i want to be when i was at popular upstream i was basically like hey dude i just want to do this job

[00:55:22] and then as i started my pay relating later to it i think that’s why i started

[00:55:22] Puppet, everything was written in Ruby. Golang comes out. Docker comes out. Guess what? I am

[00:55:29] curious. And this is kind of something to all the employers out there and all the managers.

[00:55:34] If you can’t keep smart people engaged with the things that they care about, not necessarily the

[00:55:39] stuff that’s on your roadmap, you also have to know what’s on their roadmap. Because at my point,

[00:55:44] I had this phrase that I say, different company, same team. I started to look at companies like

[00:55:50] Red Hat, Puppet Labs, Coral West, Google, Amazon, even though they’re competitors. It’s kind of like

[00:55:55] one big global company with different departments. And I’m going to move to a different department

[00:56:00] if that’s where I think I’m going to have the most motivation or impact. And the reason why I was at

[00:56:04] Google for almost eight years, Google is so big that if you’re bored at Google, it’s probably

[00:56:10] your fault for sure. This is not something where it’s like, oh, we’re just doing basic stuff. No,

[00:56:14] no, no. When you work at a place like Google, I’m pretty sure there’s other companies that are the

[00:56:18] same. There is.

[00:56:20] There’s no way you can explore all the things. And the reason why I had a pretty good career there,

[00:56:25] every three to six months, I didn’t switch companies, but I was switching projects,

[00:56:30] finding other areas of impact. And I got really lucky because my manager at the time,

[00:56:35] Greg Wilson, he was a director, he became a partner. So at some point, we were actually

[00:56:39] peers. And as peers, he knew that he could support me and I could support him. And so

[00:56:46] whenever I started to feel like it was time for something new, he would always support me in

[00:56:50] that because he knew I understood the difference between activities and impact. So I think the

[00:56:54] answer to your question, a lot of it falls on your own shoulders. Early in your career, the best way

[00:56:59] to do this may be to switch around different companies, get a broad set of skills, but make

[00:57:03] sure you actually learn something. Maybe make sure you do some impact so you can have a story to tell

[00:57:08] when you go to your next job. But then at some point, you realize that no one’s going to push

[00:57:13] you above and beyond except for you. And that’s how I stay engaged. Right. I think it’s very,

[00:57:18] very important for us to

[00:57:19] actually shape our own career, right? So we don’t just take activities that is given from your

[00:57:24] employer, but actually you take the investment to actually shape your job, just like what you did.

[00:57:29] Skills acquisition, be curious, learning about staffs, right? Changing roles a few times and

[00:57:34] actually do the things that you care about. So I think maybe what we should reflect is actually

[00:57:38] look back in our current role, what things we could be more curious about, what things we could

[00:57:42] learn more and what things that we could do to actually shape our next job. I think that’s a

[00:57:46] very important reflection. So thank you, Kelsey, for your time.

[00:57:49] Thank you for your time here. And as we reach the end of our conversation, I asked you this

[00:57:53] question last time, which I call the three technical leadership wisdom. Maybe in this

[00:57:56] episode, you can give a new version of your three technical leadership wisdom. Think of it just like

[00:58:01] advice that you want to give to us. I don’t know what I said last time, and I’m always not sure

[00:58:06] what I will say this time, but I do think that we’re really fortunate to work in this type of

[00:58:11] industry. I mean, there is not a lot of industries where we can work sitting down. You can be

[00:58:15] intellectually curious. Things are always changing.

[00:58:19] And you can decide what pace you want to operate on. And sometimes the pace is to slow down.

[00:58:25] I know we talk about all this new stuff, the stuff that’s exciting, but there are seasons in your

[00:58:30] life when the objective is to go slow. Like when I had my daughter who is now 17 going to college

[00:58:36] herself, that time when she was born, I decided to slow down, not to chase the next hot job,

[00:58:43] but to find a job that will let me spend more time with her because that was the right thing to do

[00:58:48] during that season. And so maybe you can give a new version of your three technical leadership wisdom.

[00:58:49] Maybe I’ll say this time is that if you spend all your time trying to be a senior engineer,

[00:58:55] you may make the mistake of being a junior human being. And that is probably the wrong trade-off

[00:59:01] if you really want to be super successful long-term.

[00:59:04] Wow, that is pretty beautiful and deep. So I think that’s kind of like a reminder as well,

[00:59:09] right, for us not just to take care about our work, but how we want to represent ourselves

[00:59:14] as a human being, or maybe invest in other parts of your life, like family and things like that.

[00:59:19] So thank you again, Kelsey. I hope to see you again, maybe later in the next episode. But for

[00:59:24] the time being, if people want to follow you or maybe reach out, is there a place where they can

[00:59:28] find you? Yeah, I’m still on Twitter. And if you look at my bio, my email address is there. So

[00:59:34] if you want, you can email me and I try my best to email as many people as I can back.

[00:59:41] Yeah, on behalf of those people, I would like to thank you for all your contribution and also help

[00:59:45] and your effort to actually make an impact to so many other peoples as well.

[00:59:49] So thank you.

[00:59:49] Thanks again for your time.

[00:59:51] Thank you.

[01:00:19] Thanks again for your time.

Visão de gráfico