Author: duanne.obrien

When employing staff I’m looking for my teams (and myself for that matter) to finalise things with a 1 over interview; an interview with the hiring managers’ manager. Recently we were hiring another 2 new senior engineering managers and I had 1 over interviews with them which ultimately caused me to jot down these thoughts.

Although 1 over interviews are a pretty normal practice nowadays (for a load of good reasons), I strive for consistency, simplicity and repeatability so I go into these 1 over interviews with a specific approach in mind, best in a relaxed mutual environment over something like a coffee or tea.

My context and opening gambit is simple, we are here because I have strong trust in my hiring managers. My hiring managers also understand that my time is a precious commodity and don’t use it sparingly, so we don’t need to repeat the discussions and vetting been done to date.

The thumbs up has already been given and endorsed by others, so this is really about two things, why am I here and why are you applying.

The why am I here is an important frame in my view as I want to clearly outline the challenge and opportunity that I saw and very much personalise it. Joining is personal. I think it’s also important to lead the contribution to this conversation because not only do I have more exposure to the environment and context, it gives the candidate an opportunity to speak into the same frame using their own perspective.

If the two why’s are aligned, we are in a good space. We are going to be rowing in the same direction, if not… you know.

All going well, this leads further into a conversation around curiosity and things that only the two involved will shape in realtime.

Ultimately I really do trust my hiring managers and work hard to attract and retain them, and in that these have to be their hiring decisions that they are accountable for. At the same time it’s important to me that potential new team members hear from existing senior staff as to why they are here, in their own words.

The measure of success of this is candidates feeling more inspired to join and hiring managers being endorsed for great hiring decisions.

I’m currently recruiting for a couple of roles: Head of Engineering and Head of Products. In chatting to the exec, recruiters, my mates and wider network, something that’s come up a lot is who am I looking for? It’s a damn good question because working with and for good people is really important to me. Like really important.

I thought I’d share.

Firstly I really really don’t want to do your job for you, that’s why I’m looking for you. Sure I (think I) was a pretty decent software engineer, sure I’ve spent like forever architecting highly scalable real-time platforms, but I’ve got different (not bigger, but different) fish to fry. This is a really important point to me because we certainly have different levels of accountabilities and abilities to affect the outcome (both in success and failure), but we all need to play our part outwards, not top down or any other fashion.

No BS and politics. Period, as in period, period.

What I need is for you to be damn good at what you do, own the function, lean towards a bit of a servant-leadership style of things and be super present. Oh and being a top person is a bit of a must, you’ve just got to fit into a team and be a team player. If you can’t enjoy some humour at and from people above, below and beside you (in the HR org chart), you’re probably need not read on. And if you can’t have a beer (figuratively, or not so) with the team, again, need not read on. But if you can, put your company card behind the bar (figuratively, or not so again) and show some love to your folk. Make sure you can enjoy.

You know when we get put under pressure or new / unexpected things come up, there are going to be cracks and gaps that appear, most noticeably ones that no one knows much about, something totally new to the team and outside the comfort zone. You’re gonna need to feel cool to step in and own some of those for us. Take point, and I’ll not only personally appreciate it, we’ll back you and give you whatever you need.

I’ll be sharing the outcomes we need and why we need them, I’m gonna need you to work out the best method and why we need those. Win the minds and hearts, speak clearly, openly and sincerely and if all else fails, make the call. No call is the worst call, don’t make that call.

You’ll also need to be open to new stuff yourself, and not always have the answers. Someone you never expected may have the idea or answers and you’re gonna need to be not only good with that, but champion it and praise it.

If you can run stuff well and have genuinely happy and engaged staff, I can get on and do what I need too. If all my DR’s are doing the same, well actually you probably don’t need me there a lot of the time, which is just as well because I probably won’t be. I’ll be facing into some other storms, selling what you’ve done and built or hey, even might be on vacation from time to time.

I’m gonna ask that you never surprise me and I’ll do the same, let me know early, let me lend some thoughts / experiences over to your side and I’ll see how I can help. But don’t let something fester, and bring it to me when it erupted. Eruptions aren’t good.

I commit to all my staff and I extend the same to you: I’ll communicate all that I can, as soon as I can, as complete as I can. I’ll take any and every question and answer it honestly and completely, the only caveat to that is if there is a degree of confidentiality around it, in which case I’ll tell you exactly that. 

You’ll need to bring something in with you though, and please be prepared for that. You’ll need to pack some energy each and every day. It’s my view that real energy causes something awesome in a team or relationship and you can’t create magic without it. Energy is your mandatory entry ticket.

In terms of the role, come on, you know its a guideline and will need flex. We’re all gonna have some cross-overs, hell we may even have opinions on things that aren’t in our remit. Lets not all be too precious about the 10 point font in your position description. Lets draw upon each other to get the best results, we actually do win and lose as a team.

Beware though, you’ll need to put in a decent shift. That doesn’t have to mean time, it means quality. But what’s very very important is that you’re gonna need to be able to ease off when you can too, soak up the calm and spend it with friends and family if you get a moment. If you travel for a week overseas for us, come home and your child is receiving a certificate at the school assembly, get to the damn assembly and beam as they beam at you. School camp? Get on the the school camp!

To much to ask? I don’t think so. I’ve met many people in my professional and personal life who easily fit the bill, I’m proud to say I have some who work with me right now. I’d like a couple more.

Lastly, be bold, be really bold. Nothing awesome is done without some good old boldness. Don’t tell me you’re not ready, you’re always ready, you just may not know or be comfortable with it yet. The only thing that might be holding you back is you, so get some boldness and move forth. Oh, and don’t leave the handbrake on while you’re at it, if it’s on yes you’ll have higher overall success rate, but you will slow us down, potentially all the way to failure. Don’t slow us down now!

Lastly, lastly, if you come on board, never ever ever (ever!) throw your role on the table. Never ever say ‘As the <INSERT ROLE HERE> I am’… Don’t bring your User Story form into your team engagement. That would be poor form (everyone knows who the hell you are), disrespectful and just totally unnecessary. Just get on board, lend some muscle and lets crack into it.

Who am I looking for? I think you might know by now.

Note: I originally posted this as Who Am I am I looking for on LinkedIn in April 2018 as a tongue in cheek recruitment message for character needed and slightly tweaked for this post.

Today I was considering the news around Atlasssian waving the white flag on Stride & Hipchat via an IP acquisition from Slack and I was like, that’s some real courage right there.

I’m referring to: Atlassian exits business communications space, surrenders to Slack

For context, this was nothing about the platforms in question, frankly I’ve never used Stride or Hipchat but have heard pretty decent things about them. Ironically I’ve previously switched my teams to Slack, but that’s a total coincidence and pretty much irrelevant to this piece.

I’ve personally been a big fan of Atlasssian for quite some time, plucky Ozzie company once punching above their weight to now being a seriously quality heavyweight and doing that in some style. I think this latest decision speaks volumes of the leadership style within the organisation.

Stopping something can take the most courage.

Being a technology exec I am very familiar with the seeding of ideas, shaping of business cases, building of teams and leading the implementation of the products / platforms that they promise. In my experience to really succeed the team needs to believe in what they are building and why, care about their crafting and feel a real sense of pride in the outcomes. In this comes a real momentum and without a shadow of a doubt, coming to a dead stop at these speeds can have catastrophic consequences.

But in this case and for the bravery of Atlassian, catastrophic consequences hasn’t occurred, quite the contrary to a point where their share price soared close to 17% in after hours trading on the news. Too right it should. This is where companies like Atlassian get well deserved respect and increased confidence. They know when to change tack / pull the plug / refocus and do more of what they do well. They make the courageous, painful and hard calls because they are the right calls. They face into things like this.

But alas Atlasssian is in the minority in this space. We really don’t tend to see this kind of courageous leadership very often I’m afraid. Instead we tend to see companies wasting massive amounts of their shareholders money continuing to drink the company Kool-aid on failed strategies and doomed products, spanning years, sometimes decades… think Windows Mobile Phone. Chasing, chasing, chasing when the ultimate demise is pretty much already clear to most externals.

Stopping doing something that you’ve lobbied for, you’ve built teams for, you’re burned serious cash and / or political capital on can be the most courageous move you will ever make. On the outside it’s dollars and opportunity cost, on the inside it’s personal and professional pride, reputation, <INSERT LOADS OF OTHER SHIT HERE>.  The challenge and stakes of the decision often correlate to the courage required to making it.

In the case of canning Stride and Hipchat I’d say this is one hell of a courageous decision by Atlasssian. Given the current business communications platform landscape I would also say it’s the right one. More great stuff from Atlasssian.

Note: I originally posted this as stopping something can take the most courage on LinkedIn in August 2018 and slightly tweaked for this post.

I’m big on internal promotions. However, unfortunately I’ve witnessed that bogus situation of talented internal staff being overlooked many times, often because at best a bias of familiarity, at worst toxic office politics. This is something that has frustrated the hell out of me at times.

My thoughts are pretty simple on this, promoting people internally should be actively pursued without hesitation and that’s why I look to encourage a ‘1 up, 1 in’ policy in which wherever possible we look to promote someone internally in tandem with bring a new face and fresh ideas into the organisation. Healthy balance.

Earlier this year we promoted 8 people into what we call engineering managers, others may call them team leads or technical leads. These are our staff who help run product delivery teams (designers, product managers, architects, engineers, testers etc) writing our products and often having come from a software engineering background (although not always).

Even in these difficult covid-19 times we are expanding our workforce and recently we opened up 3 new senior engineering manager roles, staff who have the aforementioned engineering managers reporting into them.

Interestingly 2 of the 8 engineering managers who were promoted earlier in the year were re-promoted up into these new senior engineering manager roles. Awesome outcome! For me, that’s good a pretty good litmus test of whether internal promotion is a starter.

Any placement absolutely has to be warranted and be rooted in character and talent, internal promotions included. That said, support for internal promotions should be on the must do list, not on the should do list.

Wherever possible I’m looking for 1 up & 1 in promotional pairs, creating opportunities, rewarding and acknowledging awesome staff and freshening up the team with an equal balance of new staff. As leaders if we aren’t going to do this, who is?