October 28, 2024 • 72 mins
In this conversation, Dan Tudorache discusses his journey in the tech industry, from starting as a system administrator to becoming a solution architect. He emphasizes the importance of self-leadership and understanding one's own passions and strengths. Dan also highlights the need for continuous learning and development, both in technical skills and soft skills. He shares his insights on career development strategy and the importance of aligning one's career with their personality and interests. In this conversation, Dan Tudorache discusses the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in career development and leadership. He emphasizes the need to understand one's strengths and weaknesses and develop a strategy to achieve career goals. Dan also highlights the significance of soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, and negotiation, in leadership positions. He shares his personal experience of burnout and the importance of managing emotions and taking care of one's well-being. Dan's passion lies in combining human development and technology, and he aims to support individuals and companies in their growth and success.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
As I was staying. So if I if I miss
pronouncial last name, please correct men.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The rack Uh yeah, my, the pronunciation in Romanian is
to the rack to. It's like you put on kay and.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The right right. All right, Well, then if you don't
mind introducing yourself, and it's just kind of like telling us, uh,
you know, just briefly, like what what do you currently do?
How you operate right now?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes, first of all, thank you for your invitation, miracle.
I'm happy to meet you, Reggie Ebony. It's a pleasure
to be here. And it's our second attempt to record this,
this this podcast, and yeah, I'm done to the right kid.
(01:01):
My My actual current role is a solution architect and
the technical product manager. And uh, I can't take no loss.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I don't even know where they cross hit the ground
then to go off chah hit the ground then and
go off chat.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I can't take no loss.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Ye, I don't even know where they cross hit the
ground the inn and go off chat hit the ground in.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And go off cham chat.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Absolutely all right. Well, welcome back everyone to another episode
of Them Tech Folks. I'm gonna go random one of
your hosts, and I'm joined by two other hosts, Ebony
and Reginald SA Hi Avenue and Regional no specific order.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hi, Hi original.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
All right, you know what, There is no.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Way I can say that without making it, without giving
someone room to make some kind of corny joke. The
corny jokes are for me. Let me alone. But go ahead, Ebony,
Are you doing sad to hide everyone? Ebony?
Speaker 4 (02:04):
I thought I just said, Hi, I think your video
phones for a second. Actually, yeah, I think it did.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
So, Ebany's tell them where you are because you're in
the conference and that's probably why you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Have some Yeah, is that what that is? I thought?
I thought I thought you always had antennas.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I mean, honestly, I constantly wear a crown. It just
so happens that these are also antennas attached. And I
know that that's where you got confused. So this week
I'm at Hacker Summer Camp in Vegas. And so besides
Las Vegas, their theme this year was Halloween theme, So
everyone has costumes on, and so I'm a queen Bee
(02:45):
and all of my worker bees and antennas, all of
my volunteers.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Awesome, Dan, if you don't mind introducing yourself, And it's
just kind of like telling us, uh, you know, just
brief briefly, like what what do you currently do? How
you operate right now?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yes, first of all, thank you for your invitation, miercle.
I'm happy to meet you, Reggie Ebony. It's a pleasure
to be here. And it's our second attempt to record this,
this this podcast, and yeah, I'm down to drag my
(03:24):
My actual current role is a solution architect and a
technical product manager and I'm working on a diverse business
unit to say like that, but not only tech but
(03:47):
also human development. We will get more into more details
about what human development means for me because it was
a journey and I started with tech, but I switched
and mixed in the journey of my career.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Cool. Cool, I mean, shoot, you've already kind of like
made it easy segue. So if you if you don't
mind like dropping us back into like how you first
got introduced into or you know, working in technical and
technical space, all.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, right, I mean I graduated from high school around
two thousand or something, and it was the Internet hype
back then and everything everybody it was the Yahoo, M I,
R C or other channels we used back then, and
(04:46):
it was for me I was in contact with technology
way back back in time and got that from my
father actually, but he was on the technical electrical side,
and I was on the programming and other things. And
(05:10):
we always had clents about, yeah, what you're doing there,
because yeah, you need to put your hands to see
how wires are connected and how everything is working, and
not only to to code. But somehow I mixed up
with that and went to a computer engineering university and
(05:31):
I've studied also hardware but also computer science, and yeah,
it became a passion. It was a passion, but it
became a full time job in the end. Uh. And
I love I love doing this and I love working
(05:53):
with technology and being exposed. But more than that, I
love working with people working in technology.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So, so you were at the university studying, right, how
did you end up getting your first job, like once
you left the university or were you working in while
you were in the university.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah. I started to work while I was in the university,
and I don't know, a friend of mine worked for
a big games room or not room company or something
like that, and they had almost one hundred PC's game
(06:37):
stations in that yeah company, And I was hired from
my third year, I guess as a system administrator and
network at mean, and yeah, this part to handle the
games installation systems units and so on. So I started
(07:01):
that during my university years. And yeah it was physical
of course, and from the morning I was going into
the to work and after that going to classes after
four pm or something like that.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Uh did you keep did you sneak some gaming in
while you were while you work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, because I was. My responsibility was to create the
counterstrike servers and all the game servers that the people
were playing in the network. And yeah, it was my
also job to test it. And I also had experience
(07:46):
with with gaming from back my university years. Yea testing
right right right? Uh, but yeah it was good.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Then where's there we need there? I'm testing.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Right right, I need to start a patch, but it's
not working. Yeah, So it was a great job to
start from the university years. I mean, it was not
very much pressure. It was not that serious sales we
(08:30):
have right now and big corporate clients. But it was
released and yeah, I enjoyed it. And my after I
finished on the university or before starting my master it
was something I got. I got hired on real programming,
(08:54):
starting with front end HTML, SSS, JavaScript and after that
moving to PHB, framewores and PHP language. Back then, Uh,
it was that spaghetti code we had back into the
twenties if any of you remembered that period or I'm
(09:17):
the oldest from here.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
So so is that kind of like where you're so
are you a coder by trade? Or is that like
a passion you have?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Is that any the coding part.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, He's a lot bigger than that though, because yeah,
I mean we're gonna talk. Yeah, yeah, you started that afually.
Your ruths are right because Evan is also you know,
in that in that in that space as your roots
are in code, right An Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I have a computer science degree, so I have a huge,
huge shane of programming in general.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, so I also started with with that, started with PHP.
My first company that I worked for, it was a
company that developed streaming services and streaming applications. And guess
what those streaming applications. A few of our clients were
(10:19):
the adult industry, and I got.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
Exposed from the starting the adult industry. And yeah, I'm
not proud of that, but.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Because the industry, I'm gonna tell you right now, That
industry is typically first and technology. They're typically prioritized security,
They integrated quickly, and they are always trying to be
on the cutting edge of how they delivered to their
customers because the most important.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
I'm gonna tell you a funny story. I love you
guys know this or not.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
But the back when Blu ray and HD DVDs were out,
the main reason why Blu ray was adopted over HD
DVDs adult industry. They industry went Blu Ray, and that
forced the hands of the industry to go away from
HD DVDs over the Blu Ray. Big mistake for a
(11:21):
lot of gaming companies because they want ahddvds, so Blu ray.
Now we have Blu rays over ad DVDs. But yeah,
nice industry story.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yes, and now everything is online, right, So yeah, that
was my first exposure with software development and started with
the front end technologies. After that to go into back
end the databases, caching, PHP frameworks and so on. And
(11:58):
it took me a while to realize that not the
industry that I want to work on. And yeah, it
was something like enlightening for me because I also put
I was put in a leadership position after just one
(12:19):
and a half for two years of development, and I
faced with the clients back then, and I didn't have
the skills. So what do you do when you don't
have the skills and you are facing also with the clients. Yeah,
and the clients from that industry were not nice at
(12:40):
all to work with.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Is that still any adult industry?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Or yes?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
So I say I got into born out. I didn't know,
but back then, what's that burnout and what's the continuous
stress and could lead to? And I got my I
treach you. I changed the jobs and got hired into
(13:17):
a travel company. It was something from Portland, this one,
and yeah, it was a big great change for me because, yeah,
the mode of working it was more relaxed and we
(13:37):
had doing different different things. The technologies were the same somehow,
but yeah, it's how you feel in where you work
with the people.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Who did you no longer have the burden of being
in a leadership position.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Or yes, yeah, I also got that of my plate
because I felt like I didn't have the support and
when I was put in that position and the clients
were very pushy and I didn't have the skills to
negotiate properly, to communicate all the things that I needed
(14:18):
to which also with the team but also with the client.
So yeah, I said, Okay, it's not yet, maybe the
time or this is not the company that I want
to be a leader right now in so I took
a step back and get also in coding, back in coding,
(14:42):
although it was I was doing more than a half
of the time coding when I was a technical leader
back too, but it was that continued stress and the
bone out and me not having the skills to overcome
this and to cope with all the things that were
(15:06):
thrown to me. So I was somehow forced, But it
was a good option for me that I took, because, yeah,
I took time to learn, I took time to develop
my skills, and I took time to understand what I
want to do in the future and what are the
(15:28):
companies were industries that I don't want to work with.
So yeah, yeah, this was my beginnings in software development
and actual coding. And yeah, since then, I've moved to Python,
to machine learning AI, I've developed, I developed IoT systems
(15:54):
and Homo automatic systems as a tech leader, and I
also moved into more leadership position and so on until
a point that I decided to get into more client
facing role, into pre sale solution architect solution architecture more
(16:21):
like discipline lead on on Python. That helped me also
to understand and.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
To be.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
In how to put it, to be up to date
with everything that gets also changing in the business side.
And that was my first exposure to business because it
was something that I felt that I was missing. So
(16:53):
when we are young, we are getting into software development industry,
we are saying to ourselves where we got this persona
that we need to focus on the technical part, we
don't care the business side, and those product managers or
business people need to send us the requirements and we
(17:16):
just God, but I realized that it's a wrong approach
and it doesn't work this way. So since then I
try to get a complete way overview over the technologies,
over the business, over the clients, over what's happening there
(17:40):
in order to get the decisions.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Wait a minute, so you said that clients aren't supposed
to give you requirements and then.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
You do what you do?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, yeah, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they
just say okay, we need a system, and we need
to act like this and we need somehow these kind
of features. But there are other people that are staying
to put everything into actual features, to understand correctly what's
(18:17):
in the tech industry, what's in the web development industry.
To understand, Okay, how do you create a login page,
for example, because estimating a gain page could take I
don't know, from two hours until one week. Maybe because
(18:38):
you can have a lot of different use cases. You
can have login with multiple APIs from Google or from
a Gmail or other from Facebook. I mean, now those
are those APIs are easy to integrate and use, and
some of the frameworks are already heavy this. But back
(19:01):
in the day, we don't have that, so we need
to build everything from scratch. So that's why when a
client come and says, okay, we want this this set
of I don't know features to say that that, but
you need to understand that it's not only that, and
(19:24):
the code and the architecture and the testing. Everything is
taking a lot of time besides what was decided with
the client in the first place. So when you take
a project, maybe you are a freelancer, and I'm pretty
sure there are feelings that are watching us right now,
(19:45):
when you take project, you need to understand that there
are more than what the client requests, and you need
to understand and to explain them what those other side
tasks that need to be done are and how are
(20:07):
those impacting the quality of the project? Rightility? Uh and
so on? And security. A lot of clients said, okay,
we don't need security back in the days. So right
now everyone is mad about the security and they need
(20:28):
to integrate when they see like Microsoft having security bridges. Sorry, Regy,
that's right.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
It wasn't our fault. That was crowdstruck.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Tell someone who cares that was crowdstruck.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
That was crowdstruck.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, I was not talking about the growls like that.
When then without having the actual testing, right, So the
testing part is also a thing. I mean, there are
a lot of companies still working on that thing that
(21:10):
we don't have staging. We don't need to test on
staging because we know that everything is it's rock, I
don't know, but not solid yid.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yeah, the words you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, that's why, thank you. And it's not like that.
There can be a lot of cases that you don't
think of in developing a system of application in terms
of security, usability, performance, uh and so on. That you
need to test. You need to have a proper unit testing.
(21:53):
You need to have integration testing, and also other types
of testing and performance tests and stress test all those things. Right,
you learn those in time, but you learn if you
want to get better. So doing this and having this
mindset of growth, right, it will help you to develop
(22:19):
more skills and to understand better the industry that you
are working on and so on.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So what's the what do you feel is the best
way to go about learning that? You do? You feel
like a person should say, hey, I want to be
a developer right in in one of those languages are
multiple languages you've already named. Do you feel like they
should already know? Okay, well I need to I need
to develop in this way using this you know, methodology
of theory, and then I also need to you know,
(22:47):
stresses and do or do you feel like It's just
like you get into a project and then you learn
as you go and you build your experience as you
go as it a combination like what do what do
you feel is the better model to take on for
a person that's trying to walk in the footsteps that
you've already you know, laid down an industry.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Well, it depends now, I mean for any of us,
it's important what we want to do. And I can
get back into my other passion, which is psychology and
human development. But we are doing our best when we
are loving what we're doing. So when this happens is
(23:35):
we have the motivation and we have that energy by
learning new things and being curious and doing and experimenting things.
And it's like that in also in the coding industry
and so on. So when you say, okay, I do
(23:59):
want want to do software development coding right, and I
choose for that this particular language I don't know, Python,
not yes, JavaScript, Java or CHRP or other languages. From there,
it is important to understand what that role implies. What
(24:23):
responsibilities do you have and what do you feel like
when do you feel the best in what type of tasks,
roles and so on. I mean, there are a lot
of extroverts people that are liking are want to be
(24:45):
in the middle of other people, or want to be
in the center of attention, would want to be in
I don't know, different other situations that only not to
be alone in one room with a computer and doing coding. Right, So.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
There's a lot.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
So first of all, there's a lot I want to
unpacked there. But yeah, I'm going to kind of stick
to what you're talking about currently. But there's some things
I want to ask you about that you went over earlier.
But you know, do you is there a particular methodology
or some kind of reading that you prescribed to to
come up with your process of approach for this type
(25:27):
of stuff. I mean, there's a lot of books that
I read, but I'm just wondering if there's anything that
you have in particular, like you know, I'm a pro
si or there's a mountain of things out there, right,
So it's kind of give me your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
On that, right, right. So with with that, I can
go back a little time in during my uh college
years or something from there, and it was always my
passion to read about psychology and the human nature and
(26:04):
human personality, and I never took that step. I also
was passionate about technology, and this was giving the ways
of living and the salary and so on, and I
was all in technology and back when I don't know,
(26:25):
eight years ago, seven years ago or something like that,
when I was in a leadership position. I realized that
I don't have the skills to mentor people, right because
I was good at tech. I knew how to write code,
I knew how the systems work, how I can help
(26:49):
clients and so on, but I didn't know actually how
you motivate people to learn what they love, how you
make people to understand what love in the first place,
and after that to give them the motivation and the
resilience to start learning on that path and following their dreams.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And that's why I went and get into god the
coaching certificate, and I was in the coaching school just
to get my skills into mentoring people. It was something
that I realized that it helped me a lot because
(27:38):
it not only tech. In tech, you can have and
you have all documentation all over the place. Now you
have CHUG, you have AI, you have everything. But what
you don't have is the mindset to help you get better,
the mindset to help you understand than the things that
(28:01):
you don't see.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And this is I think I think you actually started
answering the question that I was going to ask when
Reggie asked this question, which is kind of related to
that question because you talked about responsibility, right, and you
also talked about enjoying what you do, right, And my
question was is it on the tech to find a
(28:28):
way to enjoy what they do or is it on
the leadership above the tech to facilitate the environment that
creates that enjoyment? Like, what are you what are your
thoughts on that? Yes, because you were talking about I
think Reggie was asking about like books maybe and you
(28:49):
correct me if I'm wrong. You asked my books on like,
you know, developing technical skills and stuff like that, maybe,
and you were answering the question on developing yourself as
a leader to enable these people to develop their technical skills.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
That kind of sounded like the direction that was going.
But correct me I from wrong.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yes, that's the direction. So before being a leader for
other people, you need to understand and you need to
learn how to be the leader of your own life.
Self leadership. So self releadership is when you realize, Okay,
I want to do that. I have the energy, I
(29:33):
have the motivation, I have everything I got I need
in order to learn and develop myself and get into
the world I want to be. I don't know what
project management leadership roles and so on.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
I just want to interject right here a real quick
point for those that are listening. You understand what they
did talk right there? Was that was that was really great.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes, I didn't discuss on the tech talk about this,
but technical actually it was my story in entrepreneurship and
that's another way, other story than different tech and so.
But getting back into self leadership is the first step
(30:26):
of a leader that needs to take so a lot
of time. It happened to me when I was younger
and I was actually pushed into a leadership position, into
a technical lead to team lead position, right, And I
didn't have the skills and nobody trained me for the
skills to be a leader. Right. So what you said
(30:48):
right now, Marico is yes, you need to develop your
skills to lead people, but leading people by actually giving
them freedom to choose what they love to do, to
give them the motivation and the vision where the company,
(31:10):
the team, I don't know the project is going, and
for them to choose to be there and not to pull,
because it's a big difference in performance in the team
performance when you pull and when you push, right, So
everyone should have the options to be there on their
(31:30):
own will, and everyone should have somebody to give them
the vision, to support them to grow and to have
their own vision for their own career. Because I'm the dept.
And my strategy, my career development strategy is actually like this,
(31:51):
to think of your own career like it is your
own company. So in a company, you have all the departments,
you have sales, you have marketing, you have research and development,
you have people in culture, you have clients, and you
have skills. You have everything. So it is the same
(32:16):
when we think about our career because we need to
understand that we need to develop a lot of other
skills and not just the technical ones if we are
technical people. Right. So that's why I'm going and getting
back into a READI question what's my strategy and how
(32:39):
do I approach the career growth and mindset and develop
yourself going and choosing a path for yourself right, because
you need to understand who you are in the first place.
That self leadership comes from self awareness. Understanding who you
(33:00):
are in the first place, what you want to do,
what you love to do, Where do you feel better
in what type of situation or roles? Discussing with people, coding,
doing testing. I mean, there are a lot of different
roles in tech right now, network right so there are
a lot, and you need to understand what do you
(33:25):
love to do? Because if you are that extrovert, people,
maybe it's okay to go into tech sales or sales
or marketing or other type of roles. You don't need
to stay there and do coding. It's a waste of
time and life, if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
But I think I think I saw a coin b
ilestrious coin B nine. But I want to pause just
to kind of get that stamp of approve. Do you
approve is a message coin.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I do?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
And I actually had a follow up question because I
take this approach with a lot of my teams because,
as you said, it's really important to love what you do.
And if you don't love what you do, you're not
going to perform well, You're not going to want to
be there, your attitude is going to be poor, and
the semblance of separation that we have between our personal
life and our professional life is non existent. It's like
(34:26):
those are the same.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
So, earlier in your journey, you mentioned that you had
found yourself burnt out. How did you realize that you
were burnt out in the space that you had initially
started to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
A right, great question. So I realized that when I've
seen that my relation, my home romantic relationship didn't work
as well. I didn't have time to dedicate to my friends,
to my passions I was before that, I was playing football,
(35:10):
European football or soccer or how you said, and I
didn't have the chance. I was not doing any sport
at all, and I was the sporting guy. So everything
from my passion, from my well being, how I reasonate,
and how I discuss with other people, what's my daily mood.
(35:34):
You understand that if you are in a constant pressure
and a constant stress, it will get you to burnout
in the end if you don't try to get either
out of that situation or get support. I didn't new
(35:56):
to get support back then, but I knew that it's
not okay what happens to me. So I got out
of the situation had So yeah, that's how I knew
back then. But meanwhile, I also uh finished the psychology
(36:16):
university because I was also a lot into human development
and a lot into human psychology and profiling, and I
do I did the psychology university and after that I
got a master in business business Psychology and profiling. And
(36:44):
to understand that we have a personality type, all of us.
Right at a certain point, that personality is based on
I know three key factors. Those factors can move in time.
We can change our personality, but we need to understand
(37:07):
what we need to change and where we need to go. Because,
for example, and I will give you a short example
on this, if you are, for example, or if you
have people in your team which are avoidant, are afraid
to discuss with the clients, They don't have trust and
(37:29):
confidence in themselves, They are dependent on others to take
decisions right, and you put that person on a leadership position,
what you will get right?
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yeah? Yes, it's almost in fact that bad. That bad,
what is almost affecting the organization from the time right.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And it happened a lot of time. Yes, And that
is the sad part because it happens.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
It happened.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
In time too. And I've seen a lot of examples,
and I was one of those examples because I was
not ready yet to take a leadership position and get
them back into personality. To understand the human personality and
to understand what you need to change if you really
want to get a leadership role, a management role, client
(38:31):
things in roles or something else. When you need to
understand that you need to grow your self confidence in
the first place, you need to update your communication skills.
You need other skills to update in terms of technical
skills to say that, but also in terms of personality,
(38:54):
that your personality needs to change in order to feel
good when you are doing the presentation, when you are
in the middle of your team and you are driving
that vision of the company. So those things are quite important.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
So if you I just want to take a month
to Paul's here, if you listen to our podcast on
a regular basis, you're seeing a theme here, right, the
theme of the importance of soft skills and development. Right,
this isn't the first time we've heard this from leaderships
and from leaders leaders in the industry, all thought leaders
in the industry. Development of soft skills, you know, is
a highly underrated skill set, especially in technical in the
(39:36):
technical field.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
So you know, for those of you.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Guys that listen, just re emphasizing that same point that
we talk about a lot. But it's weather is that
the brain or.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
What is that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Something's going on.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I think it might be that time was like, what's
going on here?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So, Dan, this is the time in our show called
Jim Lightning Lessons. Wow, this is when we ask our
guests to teach us something in sixty seconds or less.
So you're going to tell us what you're going to
teach us. Reggie's going to start the timer at sixty
(40:31):
seconds and then you have sixty seconds to teach us
whatever you want. It doesn't have to be technically, it
can be culinary, it can be whatever you want. All right,
floor is yours?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Okay? Great? So if I'm choosing a subject, it will
be career development strategy and how do you develop your
career development? How do you develop a strategy for your career?
It is like this what Reggie said, eveloping your personality
(41:02):
and developing your seft skills or human skills.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Right, so let me know when, but let me know
where you want to start or all right?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Right? Because as I said earlier, first one is the
self awareness because we need emotional intelligence. Those self skills
are based on the emotional intelligence. Self awareness is the
part where we recognize ourselves. We know who we are,
(41:43):
what are our strengths and what our are our weak
points or improvement points to say like that, and starting
from that, we need to understand what we need to change,
we need to grow, what are the topics and areas
from our life that we need to improve in order
(42:05):
to be better. So taking into the career this part
into career development, we are getting into the strategy. How
do you make yourself a career strategy? Right? And this
is how after you realize who you are, you understand
that you need to you want to take a position
(42:28):
in five years or ten years time, right, I need
or I want to be a technical manager or cdo Okay,
let's take the cito role. What do you need to
do to get to a cituo opposition? Start from the start,
you need to understand that you need to get to
(42:50):
code or something in that direction. You need to understand, okay,
learn few technologies, learn networking, network and everything regarding the
communication and this the physical part of computers and the networks.
(43:10):
And after that, learning how to use that and get
some money, get hired, get a position in a company,
grow and that that position, get to a team leading position.
And when you want to get to a team leading position,
you need to understand that you need to grow your
soft skills soft skills which are communication, collaboration, leadership, vision,
(43:37):
and also increase the emotional intelligence skills. What that means.
What that means. It means that you need also to
work on your personality type, how you see the resilience
and what that resilience. How you grow the resilience right
(43:59):
by by implementing method strategy to cope with everything that
is coming into your way. To get that part mentally
to be strong, mentally strong, right, because you need that
if you want to be a CEO, you need to
be mentally strong, because you will have meeting with the clients,
(44:21):
you will have teams, you will have stakeholders, You will
have a lot of a bunch of people which are
getting to see only their vision, on only their interest.
And you need to understand that how you mix everything together,
the technical part, the budget part, and the stakeholders two
(44:45):
be there. So for that you need to understand how
to negotiate right. Negotiation skills. Chris Voss, It is a
great book because I also see it on your website too,
and I I look at, Yeah, that man in the
book he wrote but this is no emotion intelligence to
(45:09):
understand what you feel sometimes to understand how you can
control and manage your emotions if you see the inside
out one and two. It is a great movie which
I'm watching with my daughters to tell them from the
(45:31):
young ages. Okay, these are emotions and sometimes you can
face any of those, and it's important how we manage
those and how we manage our behavior when something happens.
You can get mad at everyone and the shout and
(45:51):
scream in a board meeting, or you can become and
you can be a self aware of that of those
emotions and you can be present. And everything goes into
emotional intelligence, soft skills and so on and communications communication.
(46:13):
It is a skill that you need in a every
leadership management position. If you don't know how to express yourself,
if you don't know how to be there when the
people need you to be empathic, it is something that
(46:34):
it is a game changer for your career. So that's
why I was discussing about career development strategy, getting a objective,
getting all the small parts, all the small steps that
you need to be to take until then, and all
(46:56):
the skills you need to learn before getting to that position,
not after you get there so so much.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
So I'm saying like he was he was, he.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
Was ware with sixty seconds. But I didn't have the
heart to stop him. But because he was, he was
on the road. Yeah, he was on the road.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
He was.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
I thought I was no, no, no, I didn't listen
like so, so I didn't.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
He was on a roll.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
I didn't have the heart to stop him. It was good.
It was good stuff.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
I didn't want to be like, oh, stop teaching everybody
how to be great because of the timer was really good.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Chris. I don't know which one you're talking about. The
only one I've read was Never Split. The difference is
that what you're about that that's a great that's great.
So those of you that don't know who Chris is
that I never heard the book. He was a hostage negotiator,
if I if I remember correctly, But that's a definitely
look that book up, check it out. That was great, man.
(48:06):
That was that you're you have a lot of great
information and it is telling you know that that you
went into like the psychology stuff, and you really did
the work that requires that's required of a person that
wants to understand the people that are under the charge, right,
and that's that's that's huge. Man Like you, you got
(48:29):
into a leadership role, you knew you wasn't ready for it,
it burned you out, you doubled back, and then you
you you you, You made it a point to fix
the deficiencies that you knew were there that caused you
to fail earlier in your career, and then you bounce
back ten times as strong. That's huge. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, And I didn't mention that. When I was in
that stressful situation, I also did pneumony or how we
did it called lungs disease, and I got almost twenty
days in the hospital, and one year after I couldn't
make any sport. Because everything we feel when we are
(49:19):
in stress and continuous stress and bornout, we will feel
in our body. And if we don't take care of
our emotions, our feelings and how we cope with them
will experience and the body will show us. Because when
(49:39):
we are in those positions, when we are only maybe
after the money that role requires me to be, I
don't know twelve hours or I don't know many hours
a day working, and we ignore what our body said
to us. And that's when we really experience body problems, diseases,
(50:06):
I don't know a lot because the immunity system goes
weigh down and our energy, our flow and the energy
state is below sea level to say, and it is
important how we increase and how we learn to get
(50:28):
our energy from and to understand what are the things
that makes you feel good, makes you pleasure, going to
the gym, going I don't know, meeting with friends, playing
a sport or any other instrument, I don't know. Those
(50:49):
are the things that are filling us with energy and
are giving us the actual power to go and build
something more from there. And it was the same for me.
I mean, I got into a disease and I got
one year of without sports because I wasn't allowed and
(51:14):
I actually couldn't breathe to better. And after that I realized, Okay,
I need to change everything. I need to learn how
to manage my emotions. I need to learn how to
express I need to learn how to stay no, because
(51:34):
a lot of people actually have problems saying no. Yeah
a lot of time because yeah, we say, and in
our head we have those images Okay, I will not
be loved, maybe I will lose my job, I will
lose my friends or something like that. And we always
(51:56):
let others decide for us, and it's not okay. We
need to be self leaders. We need to take the leadership.
We need to take responsibility for our own life. The
others might have some different agenda, and you might not
always like that agenda. What's in it for you? And
(52:19):
everyone is following their their I don't know their goals.
But if your goals are not a match with the
others goals their friends, either family, either a company, then
you should get out of there. You should take your road,
(52:40):
get into what you want to do. Where do you
want to get and so on and yeah, this is
why I developed a self development program. I will write
a book on that pretty soon I will finish it.
But it is how to get the best of your
(53:01):
life and how to get the best of your career
and your personal life too, because those are hand in hand.
You will not be happy in your life if you
are not happy in your career and the other ways too.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
When you bounced back from the health situation, you have
we kind of reverse those the damage.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
I guess, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I had a huge
spot on my left lung. Yeah, and I couldn't actually
breath to well, and yeah, doctor said, okay, we don't
know what it is. It may be cancer. I was happy.
(53:49):
I was actually hoping to not be and I've stopped
going to doctors. I finished the medication they gave me,
and I just changed my way of living, getting out
changing the stress with more calm, and changing my behaviors
(54:11):
to on how I approach those things. When somebody says
something that you should do or they wanted to do,
you should think critically for yourself if you want to
do that in the first place, and if that will
give you actually something good more than I don't know money,
(54:37):
but will take something from you. What's the price you
need to pay?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Dan? I had a quick question for you earlier. You
mentioned that it's really important to have some form of
self awareness and to work on yourself skills and to
understand what your body in your mind are telling you
about the position that you're in. But you also mentioned
that at one point earlier in your career, instead of
(55:06):
finding the support that you needed, you decided to leave
to try to take care of yourself. What are some
things that people in leadership positions can do to better
support their existing teams so that they can become more
self aware.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, first of all, they need to get the skills,
the emotional telligence. It's the first row. Well, it's the
first law. If you want to support, if you want
to be the support for your team, you need to
learn that. You need to learn how to be empathic.
(55:46):
To listen, you need to learn to listen. A lot
of people don't know how to listen. I mean it
is a great skill to stay there and listen. There
is the five second rule, so only after the person
in your in front of you finished what they needed
(56:08):
to say, give them five seconds five to to seven seconds.
That's somehow the limit. But you need to give them
the space to add something more and to feel that
they are listened because a lot of people just talk
about themselves or talk over or talk about what maybe
(56:34):
they think the other want to hear. But maybe sometimes
they don't need advice. It's crazy to want advice.
Speaker 4 (56:45):
Now is still moving.
Speaker 5 (56:48):
Everybody. Everybody's loving the show though a lot of people
are pretty happy.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
With the show.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
I want I want some recommendations on how I can
maybe fix my face when I'm listening.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
After these you.
Speaker 5 (57:03):
Gotta do something. You gotta do because that is one
thing that somebody said in the chat was, Hey, I
love Eboney's facial expressions. I feel like I can make
a drinking game off of it, just so you know
that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
That thing we can do that, we can bring that in.
Speaker 4 (57:27):
I love this playing for all of us a drinking
game off of Ebney's face.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Although I don't make the same ones. So I don't
know how you're gonna how are you going to plan
that out? But let's see how it shakes.
Speaker 5 (57:40):
We can get a general we can get a general
emotion based on your face. We can get like, you know,
the frustrated, the angry, the say what face.
Speaker 4 (57:52):
I get mult No, they're not always angry because you.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
Have real hard flavors of anger.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
I'm just letting. I'm just saying, you laugh really hard,
but does it meet my eyes? You laugh pretty hard
on the mark on the on the security breach that
you laughed a long time.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
I mean that guy deserved it. Then he has perfect
timing and look and he's back right like perfect and.
Speaker 4 (58:22):
We're back guy, welcome back. Then we missed you, man,
we missed you.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
I appreciate thank you. I actually forgot that. I do
have my wireless yeah, rotor to re start to the
certain point cetain hour.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Yeah, because it's like it's like four in the morning
right where you are.
Speaker 1 (58:50):
You have your rider restart on schedule. Yes, you running window,
you run the windows on it.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
No, we don't have to do that.
Speaker 3 (59:01):
But they kilo, Now see I was just I was
just entertaining our guests piling off here.
Speaker 4 (59:09):
Do you see how they how you treat me on
the show.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
I'm just saying, you don't have to restart learning.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
You should restart your rider pretty often just to get
those bad those bad folks off of there.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Okay, especially if you have.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
To get those bad es.
Speaker 5 (59:30):
Hey man, you know, somebody can hook in and you
just be like, oh what happened? So but like I said,
it's four o'clock in the morning where Dan is, So
four o'clock in the morning reboot is not a crazy suggestion.
Most of the time you were sleeping or like you know,
but again, thanks again for coming on at four in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (59:49):
Your more impressed with your outfit, knowing.
Speaker 4 (59:53):
That it's for you.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
He wearing a blazing with boxes.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
What's happening if you turn the camera on.
Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
This So Dan, speaking of it being four in the morning,
we do want to ask you a couple more questions.
I mean, I don't know how much longer you want
(01:00:26):
to go, but it is four in the morning, so
we want to be respectful of your time.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
But I actually have a personal insight question. Did you
ever answer your question everything fully? I mean before I
move on to something else.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yeah, he said the best way for leadership to provide
support for teams is to get support for themselves and
figure theirselves out.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Hey, ship, I wrote with that if.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
You need help, yeah, and if you don't how to
do it, yeah, just get a coach mentor or something.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, everybody need a coach.
Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
I don't want to drop this mic is expensive but kind.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
So I want to know it's four am.
Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
So can you share? First of all, can you share
some of your personal accolades or experiences? I like, I
wanted that significantly shaped your career and approach to leadership.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Mm hmm to share my accolades.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yeah, we dropped over a lot of your stuff. Well
I don't even think we told people about.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
Yeah, man, I mean I had I had so many
questions I wanted to ask you and I just we
we just never got to them, and we should do
a part too, Maybe what do you think we go
part three?
Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Because I mean for me, like I want to know
like you did these things, like you did a Ted talk.
You just talked about writing a book, Like what's the
motivation behind you said, I'm gonna do this take talk
because you know, I think I want to write a
book because you know what I'm saying, Like, I think
I think there's value in it. You know, there's value
the thing you want to do value and the reason
(01:02:13):
why you want to do those things.
Speaker 5 (01:02:15):
And was Ted Talk a goal of yours? Did you
put it upon like a goal your dream board? Right,
it's one of mine?
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Saying it was not a dream. It just happened for me.
I mean I never dreamed. Sorry, I just woke up.
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
And started talking. That's always That's how I went down.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
No, no, no, I got invited and it was a
great pleasure to to be there. But it was not
a goal in the terms of Okay, I die if
I don't get there. I mean people saw me and
see what I have to say, and like how I
discuss and how I present my idea and okay, just
(01:03:01):
said do you want to be a guest in this edition?
When not, I mean I'm there. I'm happy to share
from my experience, from my learnings, and from my strategy
of doing things and helping others to this way. So
(01:03:21):
I do have the podcast it's called Vibitop. We are
discussing something like this with people in tech.
Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I do have.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Leadership and career development program that I have developed to
get people to support people in their progress, right. But
my why it is to actually make better how to say,
(01:03:56):
workplaces in the end, because I was in the companies
that they didn't respect people, that they also were focused
maybe only on processes. So being human, being empathic, listen
(01:04:16):
to people giving them support when they need because I
didn't have maybe support back then when I once needed.
And doing that for others it is the why for
me because I always I'm mixing the technical part right now,
(01:04:39):
technical jobs and projects with the human development and the
leadership projects. So it is something both of my passions
working hand in hand. Also to support companies in their
technical needs, but also to support people. So this is yeah,
(01:05:03):
my my take on this. My two cents if you
call it this way, because everybody needs support. If you
don't know how to do things, just ask someone. There
are a lot of people out there, experienced people that
maybe got through the same experiences or that can have
(01:05:28):
the skills or can guide you how to get the
skills for yourself. Because it's not enough just to give
something when they needed to give a fish to someone,
but actually to learn them how to fish. So, yeah,
I know it's that come on yeah phrase, But I
(01:05:54):
do find my why in this. I do find my motivation.
I do find my energy into organizing events, live events
with some other people, coaches, to discussing about burnout, about
the imposter syndrome, about all the other things that matter.
(01:06:18):
Because when we don't have maybe confidence in ourselves and
the managers, the leaders are not giving us that confidence
because they don't know how. It's up to us to
get the skilled. It's up to us to motivate ourselves,
(01:06:39):
to get the energy to see what the why for us? Right,
Because everybody has different goals in the One may want
to do one million dollars or more, and others just
want to be free and travel and others just want
(01:07:02):
to stay more with their kids. Yeah, different goals and
it's perfect to be because we're different, and it's it's
okay for everyone to want to leave how they want to.
Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Yeah, I appreciate how you choose your words, because you
make these people that are like kind of like doing
that if we want to put a label and doing
the wrong things in these leadership positions, you kind of
like paint them out to like not be bad guys,
but just to be people in need to help themselves.
(01:07:37):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Yes, because I was there and I was pushed into
a leadership position without having the skills, and I didn't
have the trainings necessary. But those trainings it's not happened
overnight with one day of workshop or something organized by
the company. It's a long term process development, mental emotional intelligence,
(01:08:04):
coaching and so on.
Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Yes, sir, well, I mean it's it's definitely you know,
four a m over there or somewhere, but I didn't
want to drive one more question. Right, We're just gonna
keep doing. The sun come up with you.
Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
They're going to keep going and stand like if you
have to go to work later, or like if you
have like a spouse or like sleep that's important to you.
Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
Why are you still work? I can take from either room.
Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Why are you No, I just wanted to know, Like
we talked a lot about you know, tech stuff, right,
you didn't hint on some things you were passionate about.
What do you do now to get away from work
and you know, balance yourself so you don't burn it anymore?
Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
Where do I refill my energy from? Mm hmm. Well,
for me, it is the combining those two passions, right,
human development and technology. So during the most of the
day working on technical stuffs and with yeah products and
(01:09:31):
so on. But after that I do have one on
one with with coaches, helping them in their life career
goals and so on, but also going into gym, practicing
some bike, going out with my daughters and so on.
(01:09:54):
I mean, that's quality of time with the family, watching
a good movie, all the things I'm not a stranger
of because I'm also human and I also have other yeah, passions,
then just work.
Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Yeah, it's a it's a whole lot more so we
definitely got to do a part two.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Yeah, So I was just.
Speaker 5 (01:10:26):
Saying, it's actually a lot of love in the chat
and there's actually some questions, but we'll save that for
part three.
Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
Everybody listening, happy questions Ready, when we do part three because.
Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
It's coaching thing and we didn't even touch that at all,
and it's like we.
Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
Ain't really getting the technology that much.
Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
So yeah, yeah, where do you want to go into technology?
Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
My My.
Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Biggest project that I worked on the technology part was
a computer vision AI system for retail industry to prevent
theft and shrinkage and other things. So those cameras where
you see when we go in the big shopping yeah stores,
(01:11:19):
and if you see some cameras out there, just know
that I worked on a project that analyzes your moves
and see if you want to steal something products, what.
Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Amen are you car looking at me? I mean I'm
still still.
Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
Like, oh minority report at that point, because like I
didn't steal the product, but you're saying that I want
to steal the product, and I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
No, Like no, it's it's a yeah. It's communicating with
the puss with the hand scanners, bar scanners and so
on on the self checkout planes, but also on the
casual planes to detect if you scan the right product
or you just put something behind you out underneath it,
(01:12:15):
or just change the bar or something like that. To
pay a little price and you took a laptop, and
you you've paid the Banana.
Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Predictive I got okay, cool man, Yeah, all right, I'm
gonna go ahead and starts recording, right, and we can
talk about this
As I was staying. So if I if I miss
pronouncial last name, please correct men.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The rack Uh yeah, my, the pronunciation in Romanian is
to the rack to. It's like you put on kay and.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The right right. All right, Well, then if you don't
mind introducing yourself, and it's just kind of like telling us, uh,
you know, just briefly, like what what do you currently do?
How you operate right now?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes, first of all, thank you for your invitation, miracle.
I'm happy to meet you, Reggie Ebony. It's a pleasure
to be here. And it's our second attempt to record this,
this this podcast, and yeah, I'm done to the right kid.
(01:01):
My My actual current role is a solution architect and
the technical product manager. And uh, I can't take no loss.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I don't even know where they cross hit the ground
then to go off chah hit the ground then and
go off chat.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I can't take no loss.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Ye, I don't even know where they cross hit the
ground the inn and go off chat hit the ground in.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And go off cham chat.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Absolutely all right. Well, welcome back everyone to another episode
of Them Tech Folks. I'm gonna go random one of
your hosts, and I'm joined by two other hosts, Ebony
and Reginald SA Hi Avenue and Regional no specific order.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hi, Hi original.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
All right, you know what, There is no.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Way I can say that without making it, without giving
someone room to make some kind of corny joke. The
corny jokes are for me. Let me alone. But go ahead, Ebony,
Are you doing sad to hide everyone? Ebony?
Speaker 4 (02:04):
I thought I just said, Hi, I think your video
phones for a second. Actually, yeah, I think it did.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
So, Ebany's tell them where you are because you're in
the conference and that's probably why you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Have some Yeah, is that what that is? I thought?
I thought I thought you always had antennas.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I mean, honestly, I constantly wear a crown. It just
so happens that these are also antennas attached. And I
know that that's where you got confused. So this week
I'm at Hacker Summer Camp in Vegas. And so besides
Las Vegas, their theme this year was Halloween theme, So
everyone has costumes on, and so I'm a queen Bee
(02:45):
and all of my worker bees and antennas, all of
my volunteers.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Awesome, Dan, if you don't mind introducing yourself, And it's
just kind of like telling us, uh, you know, just
brief briefly, like what what do you currently do? How
you operate right now?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yes, first of all, thank you for your invitation, miercle.
I'm happy to meet you, Reggie Ebony. It's a pleasure
to be here. And it's our second attempt to record this,
this this podcast, and yeah, I'm down to drag my
(03:24):
My actual current role is a solution architect and a
technical product manager and I'm working on a diverse business
unit to say like that, but not only tech but
(03:47):
also human development. We will get more into more details
about what human development means for me because it was
a journey and I started with tech, but I switched
and mixed in the journey of my career.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Cool. Cool, I mean, shoot, you've already kind of like
made it easy segue. So if you if you don't
mind like dropping us back into like how you first
got introduced into or you know, working in technical and
technical space, all.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, right, I mean I graduated from high school around
two thousand or something, and it was the Internet hype
back then and everything everybody it was the Yahoo, M I,
R C or other channels we used back then, and
(04:46):
it was for me I was in contact with technology
way back back in time and got that from my
father actually, but he was on the technical electrical side,
and I was on the programming and other things. And
(05:10):
we always had clents about, yeah, what you're doing there,
because yeah, you need to put your hands to see
how wires are connected and how everything is working, and
not only to to code. But somehow I mixed up
with that and went to a computer engineering university and
(05:31):
I've studied also hardware but also computer science, and yeah,
it became a passion. It was a passion, but it
became a full time job in the end. Uh. And
I love I love doing this and I love working
(05:53):
with technology and being exposed. But more than that, I
love working with people working in technology.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So, so you were at the university studying, right, how
did you end up getting your first job, like once
you left the university or were you working in while
you were in the university.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah. I started to work while I was in the university,
and I don't know, a friend of mine worked for
a big games room or not room company or something
like that, and they had almost one hundred PC's game
(06:37):
stations in that yeah company, And I was hired from
my third year, I guess as a system administrator and
network at mean, and yeah, this part to handle the
games installation systems units and so on. So I started
(07:01):
that during my university years. And yeah it was physical
of course, and from the morning I was going into
the to work and after that going to classes after
four pm or something like that.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Uh did you keep did you sneak some gaming in
while you were while you work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, because I was. My responsibility was to create the
counterstrike servers and all the game servers that the people
were playing in the network. And yeah, it was my
also job to test it. And I also had experience
(07:46):
with with gaming from back my university years. Yea testing
right right right? Uh, but yeah it was good.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Then where's there we need there? I'm testing.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Right right, I need to start a patch, but it's
not working. Yeah, So it was a great job to
start from the university years. I mean, it was not
very much pressure. It was not that serious sales we
(08:30):
have right now and big corporate clients. But it was
released and yeah, I enjoyed it. And my after I
finished on the university or before starting my master it
was something I got. I got hired on real programming,
(08:54):
starting with front end HTML, SSS, JavaScript and after that
moving to PHB, framewores and PHP language. Back then, Uh,
it was that spaghetti code we had back into the
twenties if any of you remembered that period or I'm
(09:17):
the oldest from here.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
So so is that kind of like where you're so
are you a coder by trade? Or is that like
a passion you have?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Is that any the coding part.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yes, He's a lot bigger than that though, because yeah,
I mean we're gonna talk. Yeah, yeah, you started that afually.
Your ruths are right because Evan is also you know,
in that in that in that space as your roots
are in code, right An Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I have a computer science degree, so I have a huge,
huge shane of programming in general.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, so I also started with with that, started with PHP.
My first company that I worked for, it was a
company that developed streaming services and streaming applications. And guess
what those streaming applications. A few of our clients were
(10:19):
the adult industry, and I got.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
Exposed from the starting the adult industry. And yeah, I'm
not proud of that, but.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Because the industry, I'm gonna tell you right now, That
industry is typically first and technology. They're typically prioritized security,
They integrated quickly, and they are always trying to be
on the cutting edge of how they delivered to their
customers because the most important.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
I'm gonna tell you a funny story. I love you
guys know this or not.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
But the back when Blu ray and HD DVDs were out,
the main reason why Blu ray was adopted over HD
DVDs adult industry. They industry went Blu Ray, and that
forced the hands of the industry to go away from
HD DVDs over the Blu Ray. Big mistake for a
(11:21):
lot of gaming companies because they want ahddvds, so Blu ray.
Now we have Blu rays over ad DVDs. But yeah,
nice industry story.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yes, and now everything is online, right, So yeah, that
was my first exposure with software development and started with
the front end technologies. After that to go into back
end the databases, caching, PHP frameworks and so on. And
(11:58):
it took me a while to realize that not the
industry that I want to work on. And yeah, it
was something like enlightening for me because I also put
I was put in a leadership position after just one
(12:19):
and a half for two years of development, and I
faced with the clients back then, and I didn't have
the skills. So what do you do when you don't
have the skills and you are facing also with the clients. Yeah,
and the clients from that industry were not nice at
(12:40):
all to work with.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Is that still any adult industry?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Or yes?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
So I say I got into born out. I didn't know,
but back then, what's that burnout and what's the continuous
stress and could lead to? And I got my I
treach you. I changed the jobs and got hired into
(13:17):
a travel company. It was something from Portland, this one,
and yeah, it was a big great change for me because, yeah,
the mode of working it was more relaxed and we
(13:37):
had doing different different things. The technologies were the same somehow,
but yeah, it's how you feel in where you work
with the people.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Who did you no longer have the burden of being
in a leadership position.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Or yes, yeah, I also got that of my plate
because I felt like I didn't have the support and
when I was put in that position and the clients
were very pushy and I didn't have the skills to
negotiate properly, to communicate all the things that I needed
(14:18):
to which also with the team but also with the client.
So yeah, I said, Okay, it's not yet, maybe the
time or this is not the company that I want
to be a leader right now in so I took
a step back and get also in coding, back in coding,
(14:42):
although it was I was doing more than a half
of the time coding when I was a technical leader
back too, but it was that continued stress and the
bone out and me not having the skills to overcome
this and to cope with all the things that were
(15:06):
thrown to me. So I was somehow forced, But it
was a good option for me that I took, because, yeah,
I took time to learn, I took time to develop
my skills, and I took time to understand what I
want to do in the future and what are the
(15:28):
companies were industries that I don't want to work with.
So yeah, yeah, this was my beginnings in software development
and actual coding. And yeah, since then, I've moved to Python,
to machine learning AI, I've developed, I developed IoT systems
(15:54):
and Homo automatic systems as a tech leader, and I
also moved into more leadership position and so on until
a point that I decided to get into more client
facing role, into pre sale solution architect solution architecture more
(16:21):
like discipline lead on on Python. That helped me also
to understand and.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
To be.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
In how to put it, to be up to date
with everything that gets also changing in the business side.
And that was my first exposure to business because it
was something that I felt that I was missing. So
(16:53):
when we are young, we are getting into software development industry,
we are saying to ourselves where we got this persona
that we need to focus on the technical part, we
don't care the business side, and those product managers or
business people need to send us the requirements and we
(17:16):
just God, but I realized that it's a wrong approach
and it doesn't work this way. So since then I
try to get a complete way overview over the technologies,
over the business, over the clients, over what's happening there
(17:40):
in order to get the decisions.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Wait a minute, so you said that clients aren't supposed
to give you requirements and then.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
You do what you do?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Well, yeah, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they
just say okay, we need a system, and we need
to act like this and we need somehow these kind
of features. But there are other people that are staying
to put everything into actual features, to understand correctly what's
(18:17):
in the tech industry, what's in the web development industry.
To understand, Okay, how do you create a login page,
for example, because estimating a gain page could take I
don't know, from two hours until one week. Maybe because
(18:38):
you can have a lot of different use cases. You
can have login with multiple APIs from Google or from
a Gmail or other from Facebook. I mean, now those
are those APIs are easy to integrate and use, and
some of the frameworks are already heavy this. But back
(19:01):
in the day, we don't have that, so we need
to build everything from scratch. So that's why when a
client come and says, okay, we want this this set
of I don't know features to say that that, but
you need to understand that it's not only that, and
(19:24):
the code and the architecture and the testing. Everything is
taking a lot of time besides what was decided with
the client in the first place. So when you take
a project, maybe you are a freelancer, and I'm pretty
sure there are feelings that are watching us right now,
(19:45):
when you take project, you need to understand that there
are more than what the client requests, and you need
to understand and to explain them what those other side
tasks that need to be done are and how are
(20:07):
those impacting the quality of the project? Rightility? Uh and
so on? And security. A lot of clients said, okay,
we don't need security back in the days. So right
now everyone is mad about the security and they need
(20:28):
to integrate when they see like Microsoft having security bridges. Sorry, Regy,
that's right.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
It wasn't our fault. That was crowdstruck.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Tell someone who cares that was crowdstruck.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
That was crowdstruck.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, I was not talking about the growls like that.
When then without having the actual testing, right, So the
testing part is also a thing. I mean, there are
a lot of companies still working on that thing that
(21:10):
we don't have staging. We don't need to test on
staging because we know that everything is it's rock, I
don't know, but not solid yid.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yeah, the words you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, that's why, thank you. And it's not like that.
There can be a lot of cases that you don't
think of in developing a system of application in terms
of security, usability, performance, uh and so on. That you
need to test. You need to have a proper unit testing.
(21:53):
You need to have integration testing, and also other types
of testing and performance tests and stress test all those things. Right,
you learn those in time, but you learn if you
want to get better. So doing this and having this
mindset of growth, right, it will help you to develop
(22:19):
more skills and to understand better the industry that you
are working on and so on.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So what's the what do you feel is the best
way to go about learning that? You do? You feel
like a person should say, hey, I want to be
a developer right in in one of those languages are
multiple languages you've already named. Do you feel like they
should already know? Okay, well I need to I need
to develop in this way using this you know, methodology
of theory, and then I also need to you know,
(22:47):
stresses and do or do you feel like It's just
like you get into a project and then you learn
as you go and you build your experience as you
go as it a combination like what do what do
you feel is the better model to take on for
a person that's trying to walk in the footsteps that
you've already you know, laid down an industry.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Well, it depends now, I mean for any of us,
it's important what we want to do. And I can
get back into my other passion, which is psychology and
human development. But we are doing our best when we
are loving what we're doing. So when this happens is
(23:35):
we have the motivation and we have that energy by
learning new things and being curious and doing and experimenting things.
And it's like that in also in the coding industry
and so on. So when you say, okay, I do
(23:59):
want want to do software development coding right, and I
choose for that this particular language I don't know, Python,
not yes, JavaScript, Java or CHRP or other languages. From there,
it is important to understand what that role implies. What
(24:23):
responsibilities do you have and what do you feel like
when do you feel the best in what type of tasks,
roles and so on. I mean, there are a lot
of extroverts people that are liking are want to be
(24:45):
in the middle of other people, or want to be
in the center of attention, would want to be in
I don't know, different other situations that only not to
be alone in one room with a computer and doing coding. Right, So.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
There's a lot.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
So first of all, there's a lot I want to
unpacked there. But yeah, I'm going to kind of stick
to what you're talking about currently. But there's some things
I want to ask you about that you went over earlier.
But you know, do you is there a particular methodology
or some kind of reading that you prescribed to to
come up with your process of approach for this type
(25:27):
of stuff. I mean, there's a lot of books that
I read, but I'm just wondering if there's anything that
you have in particular, like you know, I'm a pro
si or there's a mountain of things out there, right,
So it's kind of give me your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
On that, right, right. So with with that, I can
go back a little time in during my uh college
years or something from there, and it was always my
passion to read about psychology and the human nature and
(26:04):
human personality, and I never took that step. I also
was passionate about technology, and this was giving the ways
of living and the salary and so on, and I
was all in technology and back when I don't know,
(26:25):
eight years ago, seven years ago or something like that,
when I was in a leadership position. I realized that
I don't have the skills to mentor people, right because
I was good at tech. I knew how to write code,
I knew how the systems work, how I can help
(26:49):
clients and so on, but I didn't know actually how
you motivate people to learn what they love, how you
make people to understand what love in the first place,
and after that to give them the motivation and the
resilience to start learning on that path and following their dreams.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
And that's why I went and get into god the
coaching certificate, and I was in the coaching school just
to get my skills into mentoring people. It was something
that I realized that it helped me a lot because
(27:38):
it not only tech. In tech, you can have and
you have all documentation all over the place. Now you
have CHUG, you have AI, you have everything. But what
you don't have is the mindset to help you get better,
the mindset to help you understand than the things that
(28:01):
you don't see.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And this is I think I think you actually started
answering the question that I was going to ask when
Reggie asked this question, which is kind of related to
that question because you talked about responsibility, right, and you
also talked about enjoying what you do, right, And my
question was is it on the tech to find a
(28:28):
way to enjoy what they do or is it on
the leadership above the tech to facilitate the environment that
creates that enjoyment? Like, what are you what are your
thoughts on that? Yes, because you were talking about I
think Reggie was asking about like books maybe and you
(28:49):
correct me if I'm wrong. You asked my books on like,
you know, developing technical skills and stuff like that, maybe,
and you were answering the question on developing yourself as
a leader to enable these people to develop their technical skills.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
That kind of sounded like the direction that was going.
But correct me I from wrong.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yes, that's the direction. So before being a leader for
other people, you need to understand and you need to
learn how to be the leader of your own life.
Self leadership. So self releadership is when you realize, Okay,
I want to do that. I have the energy, I
(29:33):
have the motivation, I have everything I got I need
in order to learn and develop myself and get into
the world I want to be. I don't know what
project management leadership roles and so on.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
I just want to interject right here a real quick
point for those that are listening. You understand what they
did talk right there? Was that was that was really great.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes, I didn't discuss on the tech talk about this,
but technical actually it was my story in entrepreneurship and
that's another way, other story than different tech and so.
But getting back into self leadership is the first step
(30:26):
of a leader that needs to take so a lot
of time. It happened to me when I was younger
and I was actually pushed into a leadership position, into
a technical lead to team lead position, right, And I
didn't have the skills and nobody trained me for the
skills to be a leader. Right. So what you said
(30:48):
right now, Marico is yes, you need to develop your
skills to lead people, but leading people by actually giving
them freedom to choose what they love to do, to
give them the motivation and the vision where the company,
(31:10):
the team, I don't know the project is going, and
for them to choose to be there and not to pull,
because it's a big difference in performance in the team
performance when you pull and when you push, right, So
everyone should have the options to be there on their
(31:30):
own will, and everyone should have somebody to give them
the vision, to support them to grow and to have
their own vision for their own career. Because I'm the dept.
And my strategy, my career development strategy is actually like this,
(31:51):
to think of your own career like it is your
own company. So in a company, you have all the departments,
you have sales, you have marketing, you have research and development,
you have people in culture, you have clients, and you
have skills. You have everything. So it is the same
(32:16):
when we think about our career because we need to
understand that we need to develop a lot of other
skills and not just the technical ones if we are
technical people. Right. So that's why I'm going and getting
back into a READI question what's my strategy and how
(32:39):
do I approach the career growth and mindset and develop
yourself going and choosing a path for yourself right, because
you need to understand who you are in the first place.
That self leadership comes from self awareness. Understanding who you
(33:00):
are in the first place, what you want to do,
what you love to do, Where do you feel better
in what type of situation or roles? Discussing with people, coding,
doing testing. I mean, there are a lot of different
roles in tech right now, network right so there are
a lot, and you need to understand what do you
(33:25):
love to do? Because if you are that extrovert, people,
maybe it's okay to go into tech sales or sales
or marketing or other type of roles. You don't need
to stay there and do coding. It's a waste of
time and life, if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
But I think I think I saw a coin b
ilestrious coin B nine. But I want to pause just
to kind of get that stamp of approve. Do you
approve is a message coin.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I do?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
And I actually had a follow up question because I
take this approach with a lot of my teams because,
as you said, it's really important to love what you do.
And if you don't love what you do, you're not
going to perform well, You're not going to want to
be there, your attitude is going to be poor, and
the semblance of separation that we have between our personal
life and our professional life is non existent. It's like
(34:26):
those are the same.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
So, earlier in your journey, you mentioned that you had
found yourself burnt out. How did you realize that you
were burnt out in the space that you had initially
started to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
A right, great question. So I realized that when I've
seen that my relation, my home romantic relationship didn't work
as well. I didn't have time to dedicate to my friends,
to my passions I was before that, I was playing football,
(35:10):
European football or soccer or how you said, and I
didn't have the chance. I was not doing any sport
at all, and I was the sporting guy. So everything
from my passion, from my well being, how I reasonate,
and how I discuss with other people, what's my daily mood.
(35:34):
You understand that if you are in a constant pressure
and a constant stress, it will get you to burnout
in the end if you don't try to get either
out of that situation or get support. I didn't new
(35:56):
to get support back then, but I knew that it's
not okay what happens to me. So I got out
of the situation had So yeah, that's how I knew
back then. But meanwhile, I also uh finished the psychology
(36:16):
university because I was also a lot into human development
and a lot into human psychology and profiling, and I
do I did the psychology university and after that I
got a master in business business Psychology and profiling. And
(36:44):
to understand that we have a personality type, all of us.
Right at a certain point, that personality is based on
I know three key factors. Those factors can move in time.
We can change our personality, but we need to understand
(37:07):
what we need to change and where we need to go. Because,
for example, and I will give you a short example
on this, if you are, for example, or if you
have people in your team which are avoidant, are afraid
to discuss with the clients, They don't have trust and
(37:29):
confidence in themselves, They are dependent on others to take
decisions right, and you put that person on a leadership position,
what you will get right?
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yeah? Yes, it's almost in fact that bad. That bad,
what is almost affecting the organization from the time right.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And it happened a lot of time. Yes, And that
is the sad part because it happens.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
It happened.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
In time too. And I've seen a lot of examples,
and I was one of those examples because I was
not ready yet to take a leadership position and get
them back into personality. To understand the human personality and
to understand what you need to change if you really
want to get a leadership role, a management role, client
(38:31):
things in roles or something else. When you need to
understand that you need to grow your self confidence in
the first place, you need to update your communication skills.
You need other skills to update in terms of technical
skills to say that, but also in terms of personality,
(38:54):
that your personality needs to change in order to feel
good when you are doing the presentation, when you are
in the middle of your team and you are driving
that vision of the company. So those things are quite important.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
So if you I just want to take a month
to Paul's here, if you listen to our podcast on
a regular basis, you're seeing a theme here, right, the
theme of the importance of soft skills and development. Right,
this isn't the first time we've heard this from leaderships
and from leaders leaders in the industry, all thought leaders
in the industry. Development of soft skills, you know, is
a highly underrated skill set, especially in technical in the
(39:36):
technical field.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
So you know, for those of you.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
Guys that listen, just re emphasizing that same point that
we talk about a lot. But it's weather is that
the brain or.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
What is that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Something's going on.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I think it might be that time was like, what's
going on here?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So, Dan, this is the time in our show called
Jim Lightning Lessons. Wow, this is when we ask our
guests to teach us something in sixty seconds or less.
So you're going to tell us what you're going to
teach us. Reggie's going to start the timer at sixty
(40:31):
seconds and then you have sixty seconds to teach us
whatever you want. It doesn't have to be technically, it
can be culinary, it can be whatever you want. All right,
floor is yours?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Okay? Great? So if I'm choosing a subject, it will
be career development strategy and how do you develop your
career development? How do you develop a strategy for your career?
It is like this what Reggie said, eveloping your personality
(41:02):
and developing your seft skills or human skills.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Right, so let me know when, but let me know
where you want to start or all right?
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Right? Because as I said earlier, first one is the
self awareness because we need emotional intelligence. Those self skills
are based on the emotional intelligence. Self awareness is the
part where we recognize ourselves. We know who we are,
(41:43):
what are our strengths and what our are our weak
points or improvement points to say like that, and starting
from that, we need to understand what we need to change,
we need to grow, what are the topics and areas
from our life that we need to improve in order
(42:05):
to be better. So taking into the career this part
into career development, we are getting into the strategy. How
do you make yourself a career strategy? Right? And this
is how after you realize who you are, you understand
that you need to you want to take a position
(42:28):
in five years or ten years time, right, I need
or I want to be a technical manager or cdo Okay,
let's take the cito role. What do you need to
do to get to a cituo opposition? Start from the start,
you need to understand that you need to get to
(42:50):
code or something in that direction. You need to understand, okay,
learn few technologies, learn networking, network and everything regarding the
communication and this the physical part of computers and the networks.
(43:10):
And after that, learning how to use that and get
some money, get hired, get a position in a company,
grow and that that position, get to a team leading position.
And when you want to get to a team leading position,
you need to understand that you need to grow your
soft skills soft skills which are communication, collaboration, leadership, vision,
(43:37):
and also increase the emotional intelligence skills. What that means.
What that means. It means that you need also to
work on your personality type, how you see the resilience
and what that resilience. How you grow the resilience right
(43:59):
by by implementing method strategy to cope with everything that
is coming into your way. To get that part mentally
to be strong, mentally strong, right, because you need that
if you want to be a CEO, you need to
be mentally strong, because you will have meeting with the clients,
(44:21):
you will have teams, you will have stakeholders, You will
have a lot of a bunch of people which are
getting to see only their vision, on only their interest.
And you need to understand that how you mix everything together,
the technical part, the budget part, and the stakeholders two
(44:45):
be there. So for that you need to understand how
to negotiate right. Negotiation skills. Chris Voss, It is a
great book because I also see it on your website too,
and I I look at, Yeah, that man in the
book he wrote but this is no emotion intelligence to
(45:09):
understand what you feel sometimes to understand how you can
control and manage your emotions if you see the inside
out one and two. It is a great movie which
I'm watching with my daughters to tell them from the
(45:31):
young ages. Okay, these are emotions and sometimes you can
face any of those, and it's important how we manage
those and how we manage our behavior when something happens.
You can get mad at everyone and the shout and
(45:51):
scream in a board meeting, or you can become and
you can be a self aware of that of those
emotions and you can be present. And everything goes into
emotional intelligence, soft skills and so on and communications communication.
(46:13):
It is a skill that you need in a every
leadership management position. If you don't know how to express yourself,
if you don't know how to be there when the
people need you to be empathic, it is something that
(46:34):
it is a game changer for your career. So that's
why I was discussing about career development strategy, getting a objective,
getting all the small parts, all the small steps that
you need to be to take until then, and all
(46:56):
the skills you need to learn before getting to that position,
not after you get there so so much.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
So I'm saying like he was he was, he.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
Was ware with sixty seconds. But I didn't have the
heart to stop him. But because he was, he was
on the road. Yeah, he was on the road.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
He was.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
I thought I was no, no, no, I didn't listen
like so, so I didn't.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
He was on a roll.
Speaker 4 (47:33):
I didn't have the heart to stop him. It was good.
It was good stuff.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
I didn't want to be like, oh, stop teaching everybody
how to be great because of the timer was really good.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Chris. I don't know which one you're talking about. The
only one I've read was Never Split. The difference is
that what you're about that that's a great that's great.
So those of you that don't know who Chris is
that I never heard the book. He was a hostage negotiator,
if I if I remember correctly, But that's a definitely
look that book up, check it out. That was great, man.
(48:06):
That was that you're you have a lot of great
information and it is telling you know that that you
went into like the psychology stuff, and you really did
the work that requires that's required of a person that
wants to understand the people that are under the charge, right,
and that's that's that's huge. Man Like you, you got
(48:29):
into a leadership role, you knew you wasn't ready for it,
it burned you out, you doubled back, and then you
you you you, You made it a point to fix
the deficiencies that you knew were there that caused you
to fail earlier in your career, and then you bounce
back ten times as strong. That's huge. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, And I didn't mention that. When I was in
that stressful situation, I also did pneumony or how we
did it called lungs disease, and I got almost twenty
days in the hospital, and one year after I couldn't
make any sport. Because everything we feel when we are
(49:19):
in stress and continuous stress and bornout, we will feel
in our body. And if we don't take care of
our emotions, our feelings and how we cope with them
will experience and the body will show us. Because when
(49:39):
we are in those positions, when we are only maybe
after the money that role requires me to be, I
don't know twelve hours or I don't know many hours
a day working, and we ignore what our body said
to us. And that's when we really experience body problems, diseases,
(50:06):
I don't know a lot because the immunity system goes
weigh down and our energy, our flow and the energy
state is below sea level to say, and it is
important how we increase and how we learn to get
(50:28):
our energy from and to understand what are the things
that makes you feel good, makes you pleasure, going to
the gym, going I don't know, meeting with friends, playing
a sport or any other instrument, I don't know. Those
(50:49):
are the things that are filling us with energy and
are giving us the actual power to go and build
something more from there. And it was the same for me.
I mean, I got into a disease and I got
one year of without sports because I wasn't allowed and
(51:14):
I actually couldn't breathe to better. And after that I realized, Okay,
I need to change everything. I need to learn how
to manage my emotions. I need to learn how to
express I need to learn how to stay no, because
(51:34):
a lot of people actually have problems saying no. Yeah
a lot of time because yeah, we say, and in
our head we have those images Okay, I will not
be loved, maybe I will lose my job, I will
lose my friends or something like that. And we always
(51:56):
let others decide for us, and it's not okay. We
need to be self leaders. We need to take the leadership.
We need to take responsibility for our own life. The
others might have some different agenda, and you might not
always like that agenda. What's in it for you? And
(52:19):
everyone is following their their I don't know their goals.
But if your goals are not a match with the
others goals their friends, either family, either a company, then
you should get out of there. You should take your road,
(52:40):
get into what you want to do. Where do you
want to get and so on and yeah, this is
why I developed a self development program. I will write
a book on that pretty soon I will finish it.
But it is how to get the best of your
(53:01):
life and how to get the best of your career
and your personal life too, because those are hand in hand.
You will not be happy in your life if you
are not happy in your career and the other ways too.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
When you bounced back from the health situation, you have
we kind of reverse those the damage.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
I guess, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I had a huge
spot on my left lung. Yeah, and I couldn't actually
breath to well, and yeah, doctor said, okay, we don't
know what it is. It may be cancer. I was happy.
(53:49):
I was actually hoping to not be and I've stopped
going to doctors. I finished the medication they gave me,
and I just changed my way of living, getting out
changing the stress with more calm, and changing my behaviors
(54:11):
to on how I approach those things. When somebody says
something that you should do or they wanted to do,
you should think critically for yourself if you want to
do that in the first place, and if that will
give you actually something good more than I don't know money,
(54:37):
but will take something from you. What's the price you
need to pay?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Dan? I had a quick question for you earlier. You
mentioned that it's really important to have some form of
self awareness and to work on yourself skills and to
understand what your body in your mind are telling you
about the position that you're in. But you also mentioned
that at one point earlier in your career, instead of
(55:06):
finding the support that you needed, you decided to leave
to try to take care of yourself. What are some
things that people in leadership positions can do to better
support their existing teams so that they can become more
self aware.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, first of all, they need to get the skills,
the emotional telligence. It's the first row. Well, it's the
first law. If you want to support, if you want
to be the support for your team, you need to
learn that. You need to learn how to be empathic.
(55:46):
To listen, you need to learn to listen. A lot
of people don't know how to listen. I mean it
is a great skill to stay there and listen. There
is the five second rule, so only after the person
in your in front of you finished what they needed
(56:08):
to say, give them five seconds five to to seven seconds.
That's somehow the limit. But you need to give them
the space to add something more and to feel that
they are listened because a lot of people just talk
about themselves or talk over or talk about what maybe
(56:34):
they think the other want to hear. But maybe sometimes
they don't need advice. It's crazy to want advice.
Speaker 4 (56:45):
Now is still moving.
Speaker 5 (56:48):
Everybody. Everybody's loving the show though a lot of people
are pretty happy.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
With the show.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
I want I want some recommendations on how I can
maybe fix my face when I'm listening.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
After these you.
Speaker 5 (57:03):
Gotta do something. You gotta do because that is one
thing that somebody said in the chat was, Hey, I
love Eboney's facial expressions. I feel like I can make
a drinking game off of it, just so you know
that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
That thing we can do that, we can bring that in.
Speaker 4 (57:27):
I love this playing for all of us a drinking
game off of Ebney's face.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Although I don't make the same ones. So I don't
know how you're gonna how are you going to plan
that out? But let's see how it shakes.
Speaker 5 (57:40):
We can get a general we can get a general
emotion based on your face. We can get like, you know,
the frustrated, the angry, the say what face.
Speaker 4 (57:52):
I get mult No, they're not always angry because you.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
Have real hard flavors of anger.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
I'm just letting. I'm just saying, you laugh really hard,
but does it meet my eyes? You laugh pretty hard
on the mark on the on the security breach that
you laughed a long time.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
I mean that guy deserved it. Then he has perfect
timing and look and he's back right like perfect and.
Speaker 4 (58:22):
We're back guy, welcome back. Then we missed you, man,
we missed you.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
I appreciate thank you. I actually forgot that. I do
have my wireless yeah, rotor to re start to the
certain point cetain hour.
Speaker 4 (58:46):
Yeah, because it's like it's like four in the morning
right where you are.
Speaker 1 (58:50):
You have your rider restart on schedule. Yes, you running window,
you run the windows on it.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
No, we don't have to do that.
Speaker 3 (59:01):
But they kilo, Now see I was just I was
just entertaining our guests piling off here.
Speaker 4 (59:09):
Do you see how they how you treat me on
the show.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
I'm just saying, you don't have to restart learning.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
You should restart your rider pretty often just to get
those bad those bad folks off of there.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Okay, especially if you have.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
To get those bad es.
Speaker 5 (59:30):
Hey man, you know, somebody can hook in and you
just be like, oh what happened? So but like I said,
it's four o'clock in the morning where Dan is, So
four o'clock in the morning reboot is not a crazy suggestion.
Most of the time you were sleeping or like you know,
but again, thanks again for coming on at four in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (59:49):
Your more impressed with your outfit, knowing.
Speaker 4 (59:53):
That it's for you.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
He wearing a blazing with boxes.
Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
What's happening if you turn the camera on.
Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
This So Dan, speaking of it being four in the morning,
we do want to ask you a couple more questions.
I mean, I don't know how much longer you want
(01:00:26):
to go, but it is four in the morning, so
we want to be respectful of your time.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
But I actually have a personal insight question. Did you
ever answer your question everything fully? I mean before I
move on to something else.
Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yeah, he said the best way for leadership to provide
support for teams is to get support for themselves and
figure theirselves out.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Hey, ship, I wrote with that if.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
You need help, yeah, and if you don't how to
do it, yeah, just get a coach mentor or something.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, everybody need a coach.
Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
I don't want to drop this mic is expensive but kind.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
So I want to know it's four am.
Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
So can you share? First of all, can you share
some of your personal accolades or experiences? I like, I
wanted that significantly shaped your career and approach to leadership.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Mm hmm to share my accolades.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yeah, we dropped over a lot of your stuff. Well
I don't even think we told people about.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
Yeah, man, I mean I had I had so many
questions I wanted to ask you and I just we
we just never got to them, and we should do
a part too, Maybe what do you think we go
part three?
Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Because I mean for me, like I want to know
like you did these things, like you did a Ted talk.
You just talked about writing a book, Like what's the
motivation behind you said, I'm gonna do this take talk
because you know, I think I want to write a
book because you know what I'm saying, Like, I think
I think there's value in it. You know, there's value
the thing you want to do value and the reason
(01:02:13):
why you want to do those things.
Speaker 5 (01:02:15):
And was Ted Talk a goal of yours? Did you
put it upon like a goal your dream board? Right,
it's one of mine?
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Saying it was not a dream. It just happened for me.
I mean I never dreamed. Sorry, I just woke up.
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
And started talking. That's always That's how I went down.
Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
No, no, no, I got invited and it was a
great pleasure to to be there. But it was not
a goal in the terms of Okay, I die if
I don't get there. I mean people saw me and
see what I have to say, and like how I
discuss and how I present my idea and okay, just
(01:03:01):
said do you want to be a guest in this edition?
When not, I mean I'm there. I'm happy to share
from my experience, from my learnings, and from my strategy
of doing things and helping others to this way. So
(01:03:21):
I do have the podcast it's called Vibitop. We are
discussing something like this with people in tech.
Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I do have.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Leadership and career development program that I have developed to
get people to support people in their progress, right. But
my why it is to actually make better how to say,
(01:03:56):
workplaces in the end, because I was in the companies
that they didn't respect people, that they also were focused
maybe only on processes. So being human, being empathic, listen
(01:04:16):
to people giving them support when they need because I
didn't have maybe support back then when I once needed.
And doing that for others it is the why for
me because I always I'm mixing the technical part right now,
(01:04:39):
technical jobs and projects with the human development and the
leadership projects. So it is something both of my passions
working hand in hand. Also to support companies in their
technical needs, but also to support people. So this is yeah,
(01:05:03):
my my take on this. My two cents if you
call it this way, because everybody needs support. If you
don't know how to do things, just ask someone. There
are a lot of people out there, experienced people that
maybe got through the same experiences or that can have
(01:05:28):
the skills or can guide you how to get the
skills for yourself. Because it's not enough just to give
something when they needed to give a fish to someone,
but actually to learn them how to fish. So, yeah,
I know it's that come on yeah phrase, But I
(01:05:54):
do find my why in this. I do find my motivation.
I do find my energy into organizing events, live events
with some other people, coaches, to discussing about burnout, about
the imposter syndrome, about all the other things that matter.
(01:06:18):
Because when we don't have maybe confidence in ourselves and
the managers, the leaders are not giving us that confidence
because they don't know how. It's up to us to
get the skilled. It's up to us to motivate ourselves,
(01:06:39):
to get the energy to see what the why for us? Right,
Because everybody has different goals in the One may want
to do one million dollars or more, and others just
want to be free and travel and others just want
(01:07:02):
to stay more with their kids. Yeah, different goals and
it's perfect to be because we're different, and it's it's
okay for everyone to want to leave how they want to.
Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Yeah, I appreciate how you choose your words, because you
make these people that are like kind of like doing
that if we want to put a label and doing
the wrong things in these leadership positions, you kind of
like paint them out to like not be bad guys,
but just to be people in need to help themselves.
(01:07:37):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Yes, because I was there and I was pushed into
a leadership position without having the skills, and I didn't
have the trainings necessary. But those trainings it's not happened
overnight with one day of workshop or something organized by
the company. It's a long term process development, mental emotional intelligence,
(01:08:04):
coaching and so on.
Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Yes, sir, well, I mean it's it's definitely you know,
four a m over there or somewhere, but I didn't
want to drive one more question. Right, We're just gonna
keep doing. The sun come up with you.
Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
They're going to keep going and stand like if you
have to go to work later, or like if you
have like a spouse or like sleep that's important to you.
Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
Why are you still work? I can take from either room.
Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Why are you No, I just wanted to know, Like
we talked a lot about you know, tech stuff, right,
you didn't hint on some things you were passionate about.
What do you do now to get away from work
and you know, balance yourself so you don't burn it anymore?
Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
Where do I refill my energy from? Mm hmm. Well,
for me, it is the combining those two passions, right,
human development and technology. So during the most of the
day working on technical stuffs and with yeah products and
(01:09:31):
so on. But after that I do have one on
one with with coaches, helping them in their life career
goals and so on, but also going into gym, practicing
some bike, going out with my daughters and so on.
(01:09:54):
I mean, that's quality of time with the family, watching
a good movie, all the things I'm not a stranger
of because I'm also human and I also have other yeah, passions,
then just work.
Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Yeah, it's a it's a whole lot more so we
definitely got to do a part two.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Yeah, So I was just.
Speaker 5 (01:10:26):
Saying, it's actually a lot of love in the chat
and there's actually some questions, but we'll save that for
part three.
Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
Everybody listening, happy questions Ready, when we do part three because.
Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
It's coaching thing and we didn't even touch that at all,
and it's like we.
Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
Ain't really getting the technology that much.
Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
So yeah, yeah, where do you want to go into technology?
Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
My My.
Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Biggest project that I worked on the technology part was
a computer vision AI system for retail industry to prevent
theft and shrinkage and other things. So those cameras where
you see when we go in the big shopping yeah stores,
(01:11:19):
and if you see some cameras out there, just know
that I worked on a project that analyzes your moves
and see if you want to steal something products, what.
Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Amen are you car looking at me? I mean I'm
still still.
Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
Like, oh minority report at that point, because like I
didn't steal the product, but you're saying that I want
to steal the product, and I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
No, Like no, it's it's a yeah. It's communicating with
the puss with the hand scanners, bar scanners and so
on on the self checkout planes, but also on the
casual planes to detect if you scan the right product
or you just put something behind you out underneath it,
(01:12:15):
or just change the bar or something like that. To
pay a little price and you took a laptop, and
you you've paid the Banana.
Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Predictive I got okay, cool man, Yeah, all right, I'm
gonna go ahead and starts recording, right, and we can
talk about this
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