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At my last job, I was brought in by the then new CTO to make their company “cloud native” as they were both trying to bring development in house and pivot towar
by scarface74 4y ago
At my last job, I was brought in by the then new CTO to make their company “cloud native” as they were both trying to bring development in house and pivot toward selling access to our micro services to large health care providers. We aggregated publicly available (non PII) provider data from all 50 states and national databases.
I never had a formal interview. We met for lunch through a recruiter that was helping him hire. We just talked like adults. I had no real non theoretical AWS experience at the time. But I had led projects before.
He took a chance on me. After a couple of months and we got to know each other. I told him that neither one of us had time for “shit sandwiches”. We have a lot to do and we need to be able to be honest with each other.
After a while, when we were just talking alone he would just be blunt. He once asked me “why are you coming to me with this shit. You have admin access to everything. Come up with a solution and let me know how much it will cost”. I would also tell him “you know in your heart that’s a dumb move and isn’t going to turn out well”.
We had passionate technical disagreements. But if the argument was well made, either one of us would “disagree and commit” or change our opinions.
We got a lot of shit done. Two years later, I ended up at AWS in ProServe almost exclusively because he pushed me to be better, more articulate, stretch myself, etc and the company had an exit for 10x revenue (small company - $30 million exit). I probably would have gotten about $50K - $70K if I had stayed or about $30K if I had exercised my options - not life changing money. But my two year sign on bonus was more than that at AWS.
I still talk to him sometimes and he said one of the major motivating factors for the acquisition is how well my designs stood up to the growth and increase in traffic right after Covid and they could point at their cloud maturity - scalability, redundancy, etc.
- galangalalgol 4y agoI'm not sure what you are saying. Do you mean that calmly stating my position and reasons could perceived as a dishonest "shit sandwich"? If so, that is what my friends and I came to in the end. If they didn't give me reasoned argument, I would ignore them regardless of their passion, and if I wasn't sure enough of my opinion to act upset that it was being challenged, they would ignore me as well. I say act but it is more me allowing myself to become emotionally attached to my position for the purpose of truth finding. With maybe a few expletives added strategically if I know they value them. So a bit of acting too.
- scarface74 4y agoA shit sandwich is 1. Spend time saying something positive 2. “This is why you suck” 3. Spend time saying something positive. Let’s just get to #2. Don’t waste time trying to protect my feelings. Most of the time even for #2 you waste time trying not to be too “hurtful”. Only discussing #2 avoids wasting time and helped me improve and get to a solution. I can be diplomatic when necessary. But it’s like when you are learning a foreign language and translating everything in your head.
- galangalalgol 4y agoOh, yeah, I agree that tact is simply a form of dishonesty. I just don't really care if I am wrong or right, and I project that on to others. Since they don't care if they are right, they won't mind me calmly telling them all the reasons they are wrong. If they get upset at that when defending their position then my instinct is to assume they are irrational. But what my friends taught me is that passionate arguments, like most instincts can be used as a shortcut to bypass work. So becoming impassioned as I tell them all the reasons they are wrong, can help my argument.
- jason_pomerleau 4y agoSome people will respond well to this - I'm one of them - but many (most?) won't. > tact is simply a form of dishonesty Maybe it is, but our primate brains tend to get very attached to our ideas and opinions. People aren't rational. Tactfulness is one way to get the other side to see your argument without making them feel threatened. Is it manipulative? Sure. But in many cases it's the only path that will get results.
- galangalalgol 4y agoYeah, I hate playing that game. I kind of like playing the one where you lead someone to an answer instead of just telling them, so that it is their idea. It can be seen as teaching instead of manipulation.
- 4y ago
- roflyear 4y agoYou had a rare person there with that CTO. Most people avoid conflict at all costs, so as soon as the conversation becomes heated for whatever reason, they shut it down. My current CTO is like that, and it's an awful working environment.
- scarface74 4y agoIf it wasn’t a severe conflict of interest, I would love to work with him again as an independent contractor on the side. I wouldn’t work for him at his new company only because while he is having some similar challenges that we have worked together before to solve, I am not a good long term employee at any company these days except where I work now. I enjoy seeing a problem, helping to solve the problem, train the organization and moving on. I need to constantly be “putting myself out of a job”.
- roflyear 4y agoI am the same way in a lot of ways, if I don't have a "problem" to work on I get in a bad place. Amazon gives you this, or is the role just so drastically different in other ways?