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Leitura de 27 min

Tech Titans: Why Accidental Managers are the Best Leaders with Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian

Summary

Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian, joins Joel Beasley to discuss his approach to building world-class engineering organizations. He begins by explaining Atlassian’s shift from focusing purely on developer productivity to cultivating ‘developer joy’—ensuring engineers can maintain flow and creativity by removing blockers, exemplified by tools like Atlassian Compass for component discovery.

Rajan outlines the three pillars of world-class engineering at Atlassian: customer trust (security, reliability), people (attracting and retaining top talent), and developer productivity enabled by great architecture. He emphasizes the importance of having clear, parallel career paths for individual contributors (ICs) and managers, noting that the best coders don’t necessarily make the best managers. Atlassian actively interviews first-time manager candidates to uncover their true motivations, looking for a desire to coach and grow people rather than seeking control or faster career advancement.

The conversation delves into Rajan’s personal journey as an ‘accidental manager’ who initially resisted management. He shares how leadership scales at different team sizes, requiring a complete change in playbook as one goes from managing three engineers to twenty-two. He introduces practical leadership frameworks like ‘managing through people vs. process’ and the ‘conduction, convection, radiation’ model for communicating and connecting with large organizations.

Rajan connects his parenting experience to his management philosophy, highlighting the balance between guidance and autonomy. He concludes by discussing how he stays connected to Atlassian’s thousands of engineers through deep-dive sessions, small group meetings, and maintaining accessibility, ensuring he understands the reality on the ground rather than operating in ‘abstract land.‘

Recommendations

Concepts

  • Servant Leadership / Selfless Leadership — A leadership philosophy Rajeev Rajan believes in, where the manager’s role is to work for their team, not the other way around. It’s contrasted with a top-down, control-oriented management style.
  • Conduction, Convection, Radiation Model — A framework Rajan uses for organizational communication. Conduction is direct contact, convection is through an intermediary, and radiation is broadcasting. It’s presented as essential for leaders to connect with large, distributed teams.

Tools

  • Atlassian Compass — An Atlassian product mentioned as a key tool for enabling developer joy. It’s described as a registry for every component and microservice in a company, allowing developers to self-serve, find APIs and documentation, and unblock themselves to maintain flow.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:29 — Defining Developer Joy vs. Productivity — Rajeev Rajan explains Atlassian’s shift from focusing on developer productivity to cultivating ‘developer joy.’ He describes joy as the state of flow where engineers aren’t blocked by missing components, unclear APIs, or timezone delays. He cites Atlassian’s product Compass as an example tool that helps developers self-serve and find documentation to maintain their creative momentum.
  • 00:02:45 — The Three Pillars of World-Class Engineering — Rajan outlines his goal of making Atlassian’s engineering world-class. He breaks this down into three core pillars: 1) Customer Trust, built through security, reliability, and support; 2) People, meaning attracting and retaining the best engineers and leaders; and 3) Developer Productivity and Great Architecture, which enables engineers to do their best work. He states work has been done across all three areas in his two-year tenure.
  • 00:05:00 — Dual Career Paths: IC vs. Manager — Discussing career transitions, Rajan shares his own early resistance to becoming a manager at Microsoft. He stresses the importance of companies offering strong, parallel paths for individual contributors (ICs) and managers, so advancement isn’t tied solely to people management. Atlassian has hired distinguished engineers to model the senior IC path and ensures both tracks can lead to high levels within the company.
  • 00:06:40 — Interviewing for Manager Motivations — Rajan reveals that when interviewing first-time manager candidates at Atlassian, he often tries to convince them not to become managers. The goal is to uncover their true motivation. Positive signs include a genuine enjoyment of coaching and seeing people advance. Red flags include wanting the role for control, power, or because they believe it’s the only way to advance their career faster.
  • 00:09:15 — Parenting as a Leadership Model — Joel asks how being a parent has influenced Rajan’s leadership. Rajan, a father of three, draws parallels: like parenting, management involves wanting the best for your team, finding a balance between guidance and autonomy, and learning when to step back. He acknowledges that his children have taught him to avoid micromanaging, making him a better manager.
  • 00:11:50 — The Accidental Manager Journey — Rajan shares his story of becoming an ‘accidental manager.’ His manager assigned him performance reviews for three engineers without prior discussion. This forced him to assess code with a new lens. He describes how the manager’s role fundamentally changes at different scaling points (e.g., from 3 to 4 to 7 to 22 engineers), requiring a complete evolution of one’s playbook to avoid failure.
  • 00:14:25 — Leadership Frameworks: People vs. Process — Rajan introduces a key leadership principle: deciding whether to manage an area ‘through people’ or ‘through process.’ If you have a trusted expert, you manage through that person. If responsibility is diffuse across multiple leaders, you institute a regular process or meeting framework to stay informed. This helps leaders operate effectively at higher levels of scale.
  • 00:15:27 — Conduction, Convection, and Radiation — Rajan explains a physics-inspired model for connecting with large organizations. ‘Conduction’ is direct, one-on-one interaction. ‘Convection’ is influencing through an intermediary (like a direct report). ‘Radiation’ is broadcasting to many, such as through a blog post. To lead thousands, a leader must skillfully use all three methods to ensure their message reaches and their presence is felt by everyone.
  • 00:16:50 — Staying Connected to Engineers at Scale — To connect with Atlassian’s 5,000-6,000 engineers, Rajan travels extensively and hosts small, deep-dive sessions with 10-15 engineers. They review code on a whiteboard, discuss components, and hold Q&A. He finds this more energizing and informative than large town halls. He emphasizes the leader’s responsibility to be accessible and make an effort, especially for newer engineers who might be hesitant to approach senior leadership.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Modern CTO
  • Author: ProSeries Media
  • Category: Technology Business Management Careers
  • Published: 2026-03-05T12:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:21:19

References

Podcast Info

  • Name: Modern CTO
  • Type: episodic
  • Site: https://moderncto.io
  • UUID: 509a1ca0-c507-0135-9e60-5bb073f92b78

Transcript

[00:00:00] Today, we’re bringing you our most timeless advice for a 2024 conversation with Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian.

[00:00:08] We’re covering the real reasons people shouldn’t become managers and how you can cultivate developer joy.

[00:00:15] You’re listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

[00:00:22] We get caught up in dumb things. We need to make sure our team is productive and joyful. How do we do that?

[00:00:29] So that’s a great question because when I came into this role a couple of years ago, one of the big goals we had was developer productivity.

[00:00:38] And obviously, everyone talks about we want developers to be more productive and we did a bunch of things and we have done a bunch of programs to make developers more productive.

[00:00:46] But as we thought about it, we actually leaned into what we call developer joy.

[00:00:52] And because, you know, productivity and efficiency, these are all goals. They sound very businessy.

[00:00:58] But as engineers, as developers, we want joy in what we do because that’s what we do. We write code. We want joy.

[00:01:04] And what does developer joy mean? And to us, as we thought about it, it meant, you know, when you’re writing code and you’re in the flow of writing code, you don’t want to get blocked.

[00:01:14] The thing a developer hates the most is you don’t know what to do next because you want to use a component.

[00:01:19] You don’t understand that API. You have to wait for some engineer to wake up in a different time zone.

[00:01:24] And you’re writing code at 3 a.m. in the morning. And, you know, there’s no one to talk to like that.

[00:01:29] That stops your flow. That stops your creativity.

[00:01:32] And so we’ve done a bunch of things to make it so that you can actually find that component.

[00:01:36] You can find that API and unblock yourself and keep going.

[00:01:40] And we actually have a product Atlassian sells a product called Compass.

[00:01:43] Compass is like a place where you can register every component, every microservice in your company.

[00:01:48] And so anytime you start to go to Compass, find the component, find the API, find the documentation, and boom, you can get going and you can self-serve yourself and get unblocked.

[00:01:58] And so we’ve done a bunch of things like that.

[00:02:00] That’s just one example where we want to make it so that the flow of creation, the flow of writing code isn’t hampered.

[00:02:08] And that’s how we have leaned into the joy part of it.

[00:02:11] And so you took over for Sri?

[00:02:14] Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, this was about two years ago.

[00:02:16] How did that transition happen? Was Sri like, hey, Rajiv, I’ve got something for you.

[00:02:21] No, Sri is great. He was the CTO for about five years, I think, before me.

[00:02:26] And he took Atlassian from, you know, on-premise to the cloud and AWS and a whole bunch of transformations.

[00:02:33] And then, you know, as I came into this role, the founders, you know, Mike and Scott and the leadership, they were looking for someone who could help take Atlassian to world-class engineering.

[00:02:45] And what we mean by that is Atlassian is a good, solid company, and we have a great aspiration to be like a top tech company.

[00:02:54] Like we think we could be in the top 10 and we could be a huge provider for knowledge workers.

[00:03:00] Our mission is to unleash the productivity of every team.

[00:03:03] And if you want to get to that, we believe that, hey, we need world-class engineering.

[00:03:08] We need our engineers to be the best in the world, like some of the other, you know, top tech companies.

[00:03:13] And so that was the goal coming in as I took this role on was like, okay, now what does that mean?

[00:03:18] What does world-class engineering mean?

[00:03:20] And as we break it down, there are three different buckets to it.

[00:03:23] There is customer trust.

[00:03:25] How do you build products?

[00:03:26] How do you build software that earns the trust of your customers?

[00:03:30] And that is through security, through reliability, through customer support.

[00:03:33] Like your products have to work well for your customers.

[00:03:37] The second pillar of world-class engineering is people, honestly.

[00:03:40] Like you need the best engineers in the world, okay?

[00:03:42] You need 10x engineers.

[00:03:43] You need amazing senior ICs and engineering leaders and architects, you know,

[00:03:48] and tech leads who can build great software.

[00:03:50] So that’s the second pillar.

[00:03:51] And I spent a lot of time on that.

[00:03:53] And then the third pillar is you want world-class engineering through developer productivity,

[00:03:58] great architecture, and things like that.

[00:04:00] And so that’s the third component of it.

[00:04:02] And so we have done work in all three.

[00:04:05] In the couple of years I’ve been here to kind of build up towards world-class engineering.

[00:04:10] So world-class engineering is customer trust, people.

[00:04:13] And what’s the third thing?

[00:04:15] The third thing is basically developer productivity and great architecture,

[00:04:21] you know, which feeds into developer productivity, right?

[00:04:24] If you have the right architecture, if you have modern code bases,

[00:04:28] then developers are more productive.

[00:04:31] So a lot of the people that listen are trying to advance in their technology career.

[00:04:35] Maybe they’re moving from IC to team lead or team lead to leader of leaders

[00:04:40] or to VP or CTO, CIO, CXO type deals.

[00:04:44] Transitionary periods, right?

[00:04:47] How do you feel about individuals who are individual contributors on a team

[00:04:52] and they think that they might want to be a leader of a team?

[00:04:57] That’s a topic that’s very close to my heart

[00:05:00] because when I started out as an engineer at Microsoft,

[00:05:03] I remained at IC, senior IC, for as long as I could.

[00:05:06] In fact, I explicitly avoided being a manager.

[00:05:09] They tried to make me a manager many times and I was like, no,

[00:05:11] and I don’t want to be a manager.

[00:05:13] Partly I got some really good advice from senior leaders who said,

[00:05:16] early in your career, just try a lot of code, go deep, get technical,

[00:05:19] understand things really well.

[00:05:21] And at some point you can switch to being a manager if you want to.

[00:05:25] Or you can continue on the IC path.

[00:05:27] In fact, Microsoft and many other companies have a path

[00:05:30] where you can become a distinguished engineer or a technical fellow

[00:05:33] or something like that.

[00:05:34] You don’t ever have to be a manager if you don’t want to.

[00:05:37] In fact, going back about 30 years, in tech,

[00:05:40] we made the mistake of making our best coders managers.

[00:05:43] And we quickly found out that that doesn’t work.

[00:05:47] You could have people who are awesome coders but really bad managers.

[00:05:51] Over time in tech, I think we have figured out a better way to go do this.

[00:05:56] But in a good company, you would have a great path

[00:05:58] both as an IC and a manager.

[00:06:00] You wouldn’t have to decide that in order to grow in my career,

[00:06:03] I have to manage people, I have to become a manager.

[00:06:05] That’s not a good thing either for the team being manager

[00:06:08] or for the person who’s trying to advance in their career.

[00:06:11] So that’s what we’re doing at Atlassian as well.

[00:06:13] In the last couple of years, actually,

[00:06:15] I’ve hired two distinguished engineers to Atlassian

[00:06:18] who are really setting a role model for,

[00:06:21] this is what a senior IC looks like in engineering.

[00:06:24] And we have really made it very clear that you could grow as an IC

[00:06:27] or a manager, and both paths can take you as high up in the company as you want.

[00:06:31] And so to me, that’s very important that we have those two paths available

[00:06:34] so that people can choose.

[00:06:36] And if you really want to be a manager,

[00:06:38] we actually make you, the first time you become a manager,

[00:06:40] we put you through an interview process

[00:06:42] to really understand what is your true motivation.

[00:06:44] And one of the things I do when I speak to candidates

[00:06:47] is I try to convince them to not become a manager.

[00:06:49] I’m like, why do you want to be a manager?

[00:06:51] You’re writing code, you’re having fun.

[00:06:53] Don’t go down this path.

[00:06:55] But then you get into the true motivation of why they want to be a manager.

[00:06:59] And usually it comes down to, I really enjoy coaching people.

[00:07:02] I really enjoy seeing people advance and helping them out.

[00:07:08] And you get the right motivations.

[00:07:11] And then you’re like, okay, this person can actually be an amazing manager.

[00:07:13] Because we don’t want average managers.

[00:07:16] We want really amazing managers and leaders or really amazing ICs.

[00:07:20] We don’t want people who are not doing a good job at either.

[00:07:24] Yeah.

[00:07:25] So that would be a positive thing that you’re looking for

[00:07:28] is someone who wants to coach people and grow them.

[00:07:32] And that’s what you’re looking for in your managers?

[00:07:34] Yeah.

[00:07:35] Yeah.

[00:07:36] And you got to be willing to do whatever it takes to help the team succeed.

[00:07:41] And at the same time, you also want people who are like,

[00:07:43] I still want to be technical.

[00:07:45] I’ll pick up the bug that no one wants to fix or that nobody is able to fix.

[00:07:49] So I continue to stay as hands-on as I can,

[00:07:52] even while helping guide my team and so on.

[00:07:54] Because we don’t want the other thing.

[00:07:56] We don’t want people to become pure managers where they lose touch.

[00:07:59] We all joined to write code and to build things.

[00:08:02] And so you don’t want to lose touch with that.

[00:08:04] If I’m an individual contributor and I tell you that I want to be a manager,

[00:08:09] what’s something that I would say that would show you

[00:08:11] that I’m not right to be a manager?

[00:08:14] Oh, I mean, usually it may not be said directly,

[00:08:18] but it’s sort of like I feel like I can advance in my career faster by being a manager.

[00:08:25] Or I will have more control if I’m a manager.

[00:08:28] Those are words that are flags for me,

[00:08:32] because it’s like we expect you to be able to influence things,

[00:08:36] whether you’re a manager or not.

[00:08:38] And if you think that just because you’re a manager,

[00:08:41] you can control what people do, then that tends to be a flag for me,

[00:08:45] because engineering is a very tenuous thing where you want to have bottoms up energy

[00:08:51] and you don’t want managers who are trying to drive things too top down.

[00:08:56] In fact, I believe in what’s called selfless leadership or servant leadership

[00:09:00] where it’s not that they work for you, you work for them.

[00:09:03] Like if somebody reports to you, you are working for them,

[00:09:05] and you want managers to have that kind of feeling.

[00:09:08] But if they’re wanting to do it because of control, then that’s not the right flag.

[00:09:13] Are you a parent?

[00:09:15] Yes.

[00:09:16] I have three kids.

[00:09:18] How has being a parent helped you be a manager and a leader of others?

[00:09:23] More than anything else.

[00:09:25] Me too.

[00:09:29] You want the best for your kids.

[00:09:31] At the same time, you don’t want to micromanage them.

[00:09:35] So you find that balance between telling them what is right and wrong,

[00:09:40] but also helping them find their own way and not being too prescriptive about things.

[00:09:45] And because they’re your kids and you want the best for them,

[00:09:48] as parents we always sometimes are doing too much parenting,

[00:09:52] and then of course at different ages they’ll tell you to back off,

[00:09:55] and you learn so much at each stage of their life as well.

[00:09:59] I can say that I’m definitely a better manager leader because of being a parent for sure.

[00:10:03] What’s the age ranges of your kids?

[00:10:05] My older one, he graduated from college a year back,

[00:10:09] and now he’s just in a new job,

[00:10:11] and my younger one, she’s in college.

[00:10:14] Oh wow, dude, you don’t look that old.

[00:10:16] How old are you?

[00:10:18] This is just you and me hanging out.

[00:10:20] Let’s put it this way.

[00:10:22] I told you, I gave you a hint.

[00:10:24] I was an intern on Windows 95.

[00:10:26] 1995, yeah, that’s right.

[00:10:28] Alright, alright.

[00:10:30] Yeah, so management for me was an interesting thing,

[00:10:34] because if you were to talk to me back before I was managing people

[00:10:38] and I was just an individual contributor,

[00:10:40] I’d be like, I’m going to be doing this forever.

[00:10:42] This thing brings me maximum joy.

[00:10:44] I love solving a problem.

[00:10:46] I love the explicitness of dealing with these problems over dealing with human problems.

[00:10:51] You know, humans don’t have output logs telling you everything what’s going on.

[00:10:55] And so that’s what I would have said.

[00:10:57] Until I was put into the position where I was running,

[00:11:02] I built a piece of software that was doing well,

[00:11:05] and I needed to hire people to help me build that software because I was making money,

[00:11:09] and it just had to grow from single developer project to multi-developer project.

[00:11:13] Then I realized it wasn’t for control as much as it was for impact.

[00:11:18] I thought it’s cool that I can now direct swarms of engineers towards an outcome

[00:11:23] that no individual can achieve on their own.

[00:11:25] And to me, that was cool.

[00:11:27] And so that mixed with working with people to achieve some sort of higher level outcome

[00:11:32] became the new thing I was addicted to.

[00:11:35] And if I were interviewing you right now for a manager position,

[00:11:38] I would hire you because that’s exactly the answer I wanted.

[00:11:42] Well, thank you. I’ll accept the job.

[00:11:44] We’ll connect me with HR.

[00:11:48] But you know, that was my journey too.

[00:11:50] I was an accidental manager.

[00:11:52] In fact, what happened is, like I told you, I tried to avoid being a manager.

[00:11:56] And then at one performance cycle, my manager came to me and said,

[00:11:59] you are doing the performance review for these three engineers.

[00:12:02] I’m like, wait, hold on.

[00:12:03] I never said I’m a manager.

[00:12:05] You never told me this.

[00:12:06] Like, I’m not doing this.

[00:12:07] I was like, no, Rajiv.

[00:12:08] Like, we really need you to do it.

[00:12:09] Like, we basically think of you as a manager for these three people and do it.

[00:12:14] And so I spent the whole night, like big part of the night at least,

[00:12:17] going through the code of every one of them with a different lens.

[00:12:20] Like, so far they were like colleagues writing code.

[00:12:23] We’re writing code together.

[00:12:24] And now I’m like, OK, I need to go and assess the code.

[00:12:26] So let me understand what’s the design, how is the code laid out.

[00:12:29] And I came up with some ratings and I forgot about it.

[00:12:32] But like over time, as I did take on manager responsibilities,

[00:12:36] I found that there are these different scaling points.

[00:12:39] You know, when you go from managing three engineers to four engineers,

[00:12:43] I found my code production came down.

[00:12:45] When I went from four to seven, I was doing more code reviews.

[00:12:48] When I went from seven to 22, I was not even familiar with every line of code.

[00:12:54] And so at every sort of number of engineers,

[00:12:58] I had to change the playbook of what I did as a manager,

[00:13:02] you know, going all the way from line level to skip level to director level.

[00:13:07] It just changes.

[00:13:09] So to your example of going from an ice cream factory to a marathon,

[00:13:13] like even as you go up in leadership levels, it changes completely.

[00:13:18] Like there are these breaking points.

[00:13:20] And if you don’t realize that you’ve gone past a particular scale point

[00:13:24] and you’re trying to run the old playbook, you’ll fail.

[00:13:27] Like you literally, it won’t work.

[00:13:30] To your point, when I see people ask people right in from the show

[00:13:35] or they ask questions online that I see,

[00:13:38] and whenever I see somebody asking the question about this is the job title,

[00:13:42] what are the responsibilities?

[00:13:44] Like I’m trying to determine what I need to be doing based off of the job title.

[00:13:48] And I’m like, well, it’s going to be different inside of every different business

[00:13:52] because every different business.

[00:13:55] The skill is to understand the needs of the business

[00:13:58] and how you’re able to help the business achieve those outcomes that it needs.

[00:14:03] And that’s going to change constantly.

[00:14:06] That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

[00:14:08] And you have to be thoughtful about it.

[00:14:10] You have to think about what is the job I’m doing for the company?

[00:14:14] What are the outcomes you want to get?

[00:14:16] And therefore, what is the playbook I’m going to use to go do it?

[00:14:20] One of the principles I have is when I look at things, I think about problems.

[00:14:25] I’m like, should I manage this through people or should I manage this through process?

[00:14:30] And by that, what I mean is in some cases I have a problem, let’s say security,

[00:14:36] and I might go and hire or I might have a person who is really amazing at security,

[00:14:40] and I know this person well, I trust the person, so I manage through that person.

[00:14:44] I keep in touch by talking to that person.

[00:14:46] They are going off managing different things, but I keep in touch with that person.

[00:14:49] And that’s how I manage it.

[00:14:50] In some other areas, I may not have a person.

[00:14:53] It might be like two, three different leaders.

[00:14:55] So then I create a process.

[00:14:56] I’m like, okay, let’s meet once a week or twice a week,

[00:14:59] and let’s go through these different things so that I understand it myself.

[00:15:03] I don’t have a single person I can rely on,

[00:15:05] but I have a process or a framework through which I can manage that problem.

[00:15:09] Ooh, that’s good.

[00:15:11] And these principles, these are the things that help you work at these higher levels?

[00:15:16] Yeah, you sort of have to evolve a rubric of things.

[00:15:19] So manage through people or manage through processes is one such thing.

[00:15:23] The other one is a physics example I learned from a leader at Microsoft,

[00:15:27] and it’s like I call it conduction-convection radiation,

[00:15:31] which is conduction is when you touch a person directly

[00:15:35] or you interact with a person directly, that’s conduction.

[00:15:38] When you do it through another person, it’s convection.

[00:15:40] When you do it by just sort of like trying to reach a bunch of people

[00:15:45] through a blog post that’s radiation.

[00:15:47] So if you’re managing 10 people or 100 people or 1,000 people,

[00:15:52] you can’t just say, oh, I have a 1,000-person org.

[00:15:55] I’m just going to manage it through my direct reports.

[00:15:57] It’s not going to work.

[00:15:58] You have to find a way to get to know all 1,000 people.

[00:16:01] You can’t literally get to know all 1,000 people

[00:16:03] because there’s not enough time in the day,

[00:16:05] but you’ve got to find ways to open yourself up

[00:16:09] so that you meet as many people as you can,

[00:16:11] you interact with people through blog posts,

[00:16:13] you do skip levels, you do group meetings,

[00:16:15] you repeat your message so that everyone understands it,

[00:16:18] but you have to take the effort as a leader to really actually impact

[00:16:21] and through conduction, convection, and radiation,

[00:16:24] you touch everybody in the organization.

[00:16:26] By the way, I love that. That’s brilliant.

[00:16:28] How do you find a way to get to know 1,000 people?

[00:16:33] In my case, in Atlassian, I have about 5,000-6,000 people overall

[00:16:37] in my organization in terms of number of engineers.

[00:16:41] I traveled a lot. I went to Sydney a lot.

[00:16:43] We have a lot of people in Sydney. I went to India.

[00:16:45] I went to Seattle. I’ve come to B area.

[00:16:48] When I am in these locations,

[00:16:50] I set up literally a lot of meetings with small groups of people.

[00:16:54] You can do a town hall or you can do a big event,

[00:17:00] and you can do Q&A and things like that.

[00:17:02] That’s a good way, but I find more energy from meeting groups

[00:17:06] of 10, 15 engineers in a room and we take a component

[00:17:09] and let’s deep dive through the component.

[00:17:12] Literally, we pull up some code, we go to the whiteboard,

[00:17:14] we talk through things, and I get a really good sense of

[00:17:17] I learn things and then I give some time for Q&A

[00:17:20] so that they can ask me questions.

[00:17:22] I come away from those meetings getting to know some people

[00:17:24] but also getting to know about the area.

[00:17:27] I do a lot of those through the year

[00:17:30] or as I travel and I visit different locations.

[00:17:34] That tells me a lot about different folks.

[00:17:38] Just as a leader, you have to be accessible.

[00:17:40] If somebody slacks you or messages you,

[00:17:43] being open to that and being able to connect

[00:17:46] with different people in the organization and being accessible

[00:17:48] I think is an important thing.

[00:17:50] As an engineer growing up, I remember how my leaders used to be

[00:17:54] and who was accessible and who was not.

[00:17:56] I always felt like if I were going to a leadership position,

[00:17:59] I wanted to be connected with engineers

[00:18:01] and really connected with the reality on the ground

[00:18:04] as opposed to being high up there in abstract land.

[00:18:09] You also realize that you have to make an effort

[00:18:13] because they’re less mature in their career often.

[00:18:17] There are people at all various sizes, shapes, and steps of their career.

[00:18:21] But with the newer people, you have to make more of an effort

[00:18:24] to just constantly remind them

[00:18:26] because by default, when you’re newer in your career,

[00:18:29] you look up at the person at the top and it’s scary almost.

[00:18:32] I don’t know, they’re busy, they won’t talk with me.

[00:18:35] You have to be like, hey, the door is open, we’re here.

[00:18:38] That’s right.

[00:18:40] When you’re doing the Q&As, when you’re going around

[00:18:43] and doing the Q&As, obviously you’re getting questions

[00:18:46] about the specific components you’re talking about.

[00:18:48] But what type of career growth or leadership questions

[00:18:52] do you hear a lot?

[00:18:54] I think some of it is like,

[00:18:57] what are your leadership principles or what are your values?

[00:19:01] I hear the values question a lot nowadays.

[00:19:04] Honestly, when I started as an engineer at Microsoft,

[00:19:07] there was not so much about values and mission

[00:19:10] and vision statements and so on.

[00:19:12] My values are very simple.

[00:19:14] Write code, make sure it has no bugs,

[00:19:16] check it in and don’t break the bills.

[00:19:18] But we didn’t have as many value posters on the board

[00:19:23] and the walls and things like that.

[00:19:25] That seems like a more recent thing.

[00:19:27] In the last 10, 15 years, I see that a lot

[00:19:30] of people ask me about it.

[00:19:32] So I talk a little bit about my values

[00:19:35] as I have learned them over time.

[00:19:38] And then people ask about projects that failed

[00:19:42] or how would you learn from those kinds of things,

[00:19:45] things like that.

[00:19:46] And they’re also interested in how did you scale

[00:19:50] your leadership over time,

[00:19:52] some of the things I talked about just now.

[00:19:55] Well, Rajiv, man, I appreciate it.

[00:19:57] We made a podcast. How do you feel?

[00:19:59] I feel good. I loved talking to you.

[00:20:01] I thought this is a fun podcast to do.

[00:20:04] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:20:06] And if you found this episode useful,

[00:20:08] please share it with a friend or a colleague

[00:20:10] who you think would get value from it.

[00:20:12] And if you have topics that you would like to hear

[00:20:14] discussed on the podcast,

[00:20:16] either add me on LinkedIn

[00:20:18] or send me an email, joel at moderncto.io.

[00:20:22] Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message,

[00:20:24] it absolutely makes my day

[00:20:26] and inspires me to keep going.

[00:20:28] I’ll see you next time.

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