S10 E2 | The Human Side of Software: Leadership in Tech | James Spivey - The Angular Plus Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Angular plus Show. We're app developers of
all kinds share their insights and experiences. Let's get started.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Angular plus Show.
My name is Brian and I am joined here by
Lara and Jay, and we have an excellent guest for
you today. Today we're going to be talking about software
engineering management and kind of the road towards that and
how that works, and so I'm sure many of you
are very interested in that if you're looking to pursue
that as a career and try to better understand how

(00:43):
that works. But before we get into that with our guests, Jay,
welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's good to have you, man, it's really good to
be back. This is an awesome first episode for being back.
First because I love Spivey and I haven't seen him
since a gikon last year and I won't be going
this year. But then also I feel like I kind
of I need to learn about what this whole engineering
leadership thing is as I'm technically one of those at
my company. So I think you.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Are, aren't you a CTO title?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I don't tell anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
And we're also joined by Laura how are you, Laura,
how are things going.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
I'm good. I'm good. I'm surviving.

Speaker 5 (01:18):
I'm like right in the middle of conference season, so
like I get back from a conference and then I
like work for a few days, and then I go
to another one, and then I work for a few
more days, and I go to another one, and I
just want to sleep in my own bed.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
So I'm like, I'm getting to the end of that.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
It's interesting because we're, you know, we're talking about like
career stuff a little bit today, and I'm just curious, like, Laura,
have you ever thought about going into devro?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Would make sense for me?

Speaker 5 (01:45):
And instead of writing talks at midnight when I'm so sleepy,
I could be writing them during the day and getting
paid to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, there's definitely a difference there, right, So, but I
don't know Cisco has a need for debro but.

Speaker 6 (01:59):
My yes, I guess it's not.

Speaker 5 (02:02):
But not about Angular probably like maybe I'm sure they
have people that are.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Like, oh, I'm sure they do, you know, go out
and use.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
My buy our stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
But yeah, of course, of course, especially at like large conferences,
networking conferences or whatever.

Speaker 7 (02:16):
Those side of sides of things. Good to have you here.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Thank you both for joining us today, and welcome to
our guest today. We are joined by James Spivey, and
we're just excited to have you back on the show.
I know you've been on the show many times, and
I've been a staple here in the Angler community. And
so go ahead and introduce yourself to a listener and
and we'll kick this thing off.

Speaker 6 (02:39):
Yes, hello everyone, I am Spivey. I go buy Spivey.
It's the cost of managing too many. James is on
one team, just kind of stuck. So I am happy
to be back. This is my second episode, so not guess,
not many, but very excited to be here with some
of my favorite Angular folks. I am the director of
engineering for Capital One and a program called credit Wise,

(03:01):
So if you have not signed up for credit Wise,
you should. We are in both United States and Canada.
It's awesome. It's free, tells you all about your credit.
We've just migrated to Fico, which is what all of
the major groups used to judge you on your credit.
So there's a lot of value there for you if
you want to go sign up for that. But yes,
happy to be here, happy to chat management been a

(03:22):
director for quite a while and was a CTO competing
with Brian on how awesome CTOs could be a long
time ago.

Speaker 7 (03:29):
Management.

Speaker 8 (03:31):
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about before we
get into the tech, before we get into the full
discussion around this, tell us a little bit about credit
Wise and how it's built, if you can anyways, is
it an Angular app?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Is it kind of what are you guys building over there?

Speaker 6 (03:45):
Yeah, so we are an Angular app. We just got
to version twenty. Pretty happy about that. So it's nice,
nice to go to a large scale migration there. Can't
get too much in the back end, but it's just
a large mix of Java and pipe on type of things. Sure,
full stack teams and a lot of native code to
for our mobile experiences. And then we have some tie

(04:08):
ins back to the sort of main capital one app,
which is what a lot of especially in the Angular community.
I believe it's one of the largest Angular repositories.

Speaker 7 (04:20):
It's got to be pretty close.

Speaker 6 (04:21):
Yeah, So we work a lot with Angular folks, with
NX folks, with all kinds of folks doing all of
that work. So we, like credit Wise, are fairly small.
We're almost like a little startup inside of Capital One.
So it's kind of a fun, fun world to be
in where you're in this very large supporting bank, but
you get a lot of autonomy in this smaller group.
We have sixty million users, so we're by no means

(04:42):
a small product. Yeah, so we have quite a lot.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Of like that. Just I don't even know that that.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
I don't That can't be true, definitely, is people could.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
Have that many users? Is that true?

Speaker 2 (04:57):
It is a free I mean it's a free product, right,
I mean it's like a I imagine like like marketing
top of funnel, like sign up, get a free credit report,
kind of see where things are and then hopefully you
use Capital One is part of your crediting, whether that's
credit card or loans or whatever.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Right.

Speaker 6 (05:14):
So, actually think this is a lot of the vision
about Capital one being about banking for good. So one
of our our slogan is change banking for good.

Speaker 9 (05:22):
And yeah, Capital One started credit wise a very very
long time ago with the whole soul purpose of just
giving away the credit report, helping people better understand their
credit and what it takes to improve their credit.

Speaker 6 (05:32):
One of the project now is actually helping people build
credit goals. So that they can say, Hey, I want
to get to here so I can buy a house.
Here's the steps that you know you can take to
get to those things. So a lot of it's about
helping our customers and we're really proud of that.

Speaker 7 (05:46):
Right.

Speaker 6 (05:47):
We are not an ad heavy experience. It's not about
selling you capital and stuff it is. It really is
about trying to help you understand credit and how to
grow your credit and improve your credit or just monitor
your credit. You We have just to kind of keep
an on things and make sure like we have darn
babble learning, so if your information gets out there, your
Social Security will alert you on those things. You know

(06:07):
you can and if your scores going up and going
down all that sort of stuff, you can just read
your credit report, which harder to do these days than
it looks sometimes, And.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah, we do that well.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
And like I know, when I was buying a house
right before, there was some leak that had happened, and
you know, pretty much everyone that has a Pulse got
their data leaked, and so people were advising to freeze
your credit and I'm like, oh, that's going to be
super hard.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
I'm like, oh wait, no, it's actually like it's really easy.
And then of course then.

Speaker 5 (06:37):
We're like, then we're gonna buy house. I'm like, oh,
you can though it for like a day, and I
did not. That is stuff that like that used to
give me a lot of anxiety. So these resources, I think,
like credit bises that are coming out are super useful
to the consumer because it is something that gives people
massive anxiety because it's hard to understand it if you
don't do it every day.

Speaker 6 (06:58):
So the challenging thing and were we were trying to
give a lot of that education away for free. And
one of the exciting things is we're actually now moving
beyond credits. We're actually moving now into broader financial management
and taking those same principles helping you manage your finances,
manage your budget, manager spend, manage your credit cards, goals, retirement,
all of those sorts of things are on the table

(07:18):
for where we would like to go.

Speaker 7 (07:20):
Excellent, that's really cool, man.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
Is going to help you do it angulars And what
we the takeaway I got.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
From that is angular is awesome.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
So.

Speaker 6 (07:31):
Very much.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Right, So that's by you were an individual contributor, kind
of an engine You came from a very strong engineering
role I know that you. I don't know your full resume,
but I remember when we met back in ben I
think you were a dish was it Dish or what's.

Speaker 6 (07:47):
The other Charter? I worked for Charter for a while.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Harder.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I know that you were doing a lot of engineering,
and you were doing you know, a lot of that historically,
and eventually you started to make a kind of a
migration or move towards kind of the management side or
the dark side or whatever we want to call it.
So what made you I'm kidding obviously, like what was
the motivation there?

Speaker 7 (08:10):
Were you thinking?

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Like, I mean, let's be honest, Like I think some
people look at that and they say, okay, you know,
I can kind of continue on this track in the
engineering side of things that kind of work my way
up into like you know, staff engineer or principal engineer
or whatever that is architect type of thing. And then
other folks kind of say, hey, you know, I'm really
curious about doing more of the organizational style kind of
managing people.

Speaker 7 (08:30):
I have a great background, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I love it when somebody like yourself who is managing
engineers was an engineer and understands engineering understands a lot
of the technology. Maybe not like the nuances of the
technology perhaps, but certainly has a good appreciation for how
things work and how to manage that and help move
things along.

Speaker 7 (08:50):
So what was your motivation around that.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Was it primarily like I got to choose a ARB
or were you looking at Let's be honest, were you're
looking at salaries and were you looking at income and saying, oh,
this is the way I can make more money? Or
kind of was there a combination you just really wanted
to work with more and more with people and less
with tech. Yeah, kind of curious, kind of what your
story was.

Speaker 6 (09:12):
Well, first, I still think I know the nuance fairly. Well,
thank you very much. I tried.

Speaker 7 (09:17):
That's great.

Speaker 6 (09:17):
Many managers disconnect myself. I was telling these two I
actually submitted a p R last week, so you know,
good for you their toes.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
Having reported directly to Spivey for like three years, I
can confirm that he is uh above average, like way
above the average manager technical poweress because there were many
times where we'd be like what about this and he's like, uh, yeah,
no that is going to be uh yep, no, you

(09:50):
don't want to do that. And here's why.

Speaker 6 (09:52):
So yeah, but yeah, to get to your question, so
it's a it is an interesting one because I've had this.
I've had this conversation a lot with folks. Yeah, these days,
it's great because what you're talking about being able to
really take the IC track really far. Yeah, when I
was coming up through engineering, because I've been doing this

(10:12):
for so long, that really wasn't a thing IC route
until fairly recently. I think that's agree, maybe the last
decade or so, they sort of I think I was
going to say about ten.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
I remember Google kind of said, you know, we're not
going to force people into management, like we're going to stick.
We're going to still have a full engineering organization and
engineers all the way up to the top or near
to the top.

Speaker 6 (10:35):
Which is unique though although in a way I tripped
into it for a couple of reasons and it actually
wasn't because of the forcing of a management track. So
I started a junior engineer fresh out of college, and
when you know, through senior made it to architect. I
worked for a large consultancy firm as a as an architect.
They're servicing government clients and large scale projects, and from

(11:00):
there I kind of had this opportunity to go, I
guess do something crazy, which was start a company. I
met a business partner and we had these ideas and
he said, I want you to be the CTO. And
I was like, Heggy, Yeah, I'm in for this insanity.
And so I kind of tripped into it from that route,
not so much of like I had to be a manager,
but like I wanted to go try my own thing.

(11:22):
Everybody back then thought they could be the CTO of something.
Only a couple like Jay and yourself really truly pull
it off, as I only lasted I think three or
four years before we exited. But I will say a
big part of the reason that I entered people management,
and I've sort of talked about this before, is that
I got very frustrated with leadership that didn't listen to engineers.

(11:47):
And I got very tired of you know, directors and
whatever managers and they would just kind of like yell
at you from the top, sit in their office. You
wouldn't hear from them. They didn't lead from the front,
and you felt like they were making these great mistakes
that imperil the success of a project, for our success,
of your ability to deliver, and you know when it
went wrong then they would just yell at you and

(12:08):
You're like, I've been trying to tell you it's going
to go wrong for months now. And so I said
to myself that I can do it differently, and I
can be a different type of leader, and I can
be one that engineers can engage with. I've been in
the pits. I've seen how this stuff goes wrong. I've
been through the muck. I have had the sleepless nights.
I have been on call twenty four to seven, I've

(12:28):
worked forty eight hours straight. Like I know what it's
like to be on the wrong side of those bad decisions.
And so I've always worked really hard ever since that
moment to not be that type of leader. And I
think that's what's really kept me engaged with it, because
I really really enjoy the people aspect of being an
engineering leader. I mean, I love writing code, and that's

(12:49):
why I try to keep doing it occasionally, just to
keep my skill sharp and sort of keep fresh on
what's changing. You know, this industry changes so fast. If
you're not doing those things, you know, having hobby projects,
it's hard to keep up. But the people aspect is
one of those things that I don't know that I
can get rid of. I don't know I could go
back to just being an IC. I love it too much.

Speaker 5 (13:10):
They're like one thing I wanted to that I like
what you said that. There was actually an article. I'm
trying to find it. I'll see if I can get
it in the show notes. But basically, somebody wrote an
article about why do I keep losing my doves? And
it's because when you have managers that are constantly not listening.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
To the doves, they just.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Check out.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
Yeah, I like, you show up for a paycheck, you
get the work done, and when somebody tells you to
do something that makes no sense, you say, all right,
we'll see what happens. And then when bad things happen,
you say, well, that's what we said would happen, but
here we are. And it's it's demoralizing for the teams
to it's demoralizing to be writing code that you know

(13:56):
is going to fail or that you know you're going.

Speaker 6 (13:59):
To do out.

Speaker 5 (13:59):
Yeah, it burns you out, especially when you're like, I'm
I know, I'm just going to delete this in a month.
I'm why do I want to write this, like, why
am I taking the time to do this because I'm
going to be deleting it or I'm going to be
cleaning this up, like next year, I'm going to spend
all year fixing this.

Speaker 6 (14:14):
Great.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
Yeah, Yeah, the one that I.

Speaker 6 (14:17):
Learned in those situations.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
You know.

Speaker 6 (14:19):
The thing. The other thing I see not happening a
lot is at least, you know, sometimes those are situations
you can't avoid. Yeah, but at least if you have
a manager that takes the time to explain why why
those decisions are being made, is open to alternatives, but
is explaining their intention and what they're having to do.
Maybe it's their hands forced or there's something you don't
see because you don't sit in the you know, in

(14:39):
a higher level at least doing those things like those
it's just entry level you should be doing, and so
many leaders don't do it. And it's and it's really
to me, it's the fundamentals of explaining yourself so that
can people can read what you're thinking and understand and
then they're more inclined to actually want to go follow
you to do that thing.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
And it's not It also builds trust because it feels
good to be treated like an adult, Like I'm a
freaking adult, Like I'm not. I'm not you know, getting
roller skates at the skate counter anymore, Like I'm I'm like,
I'm yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah. It's it's a two way streak between the leadership
and the ICs, right, Like, the more you trust that
your team is there for the right reasons and that
you trust that your team is going to execute correctly,
then you let them do that and then they deliver,
and if they don't deliver, that's a whole different conversation obviously, right,

(15:35):
But like, if you're gonna trust that your team is
like like my team, I can just get them entire
projects and then like it'll get done in a week
or two and we're golden, everyone's happy. Right. That builds trust.
So when all those times that inevitably come up, like
we had a whole tax issue come up recently and
trellis and we're like, cool, we just have to drop
everything and get this done as quickly as possible, right, Like, yeah,
we're still gonna do it the right way, but we

(15:57):
just have to absolutely hammer through this project thing. Right, Like,
everybody has trust in you that this isn't just going
to be the norm all the time, right, So they're
like okay, and then they're like get behind the project,
like okay, let's like crush this out, like let's do it,
let's get it done kind of thing, right, And it's
just it's a two way street. Yeah, you're the quote
unquote leader of the team, right, but you're all the team, right,

(16:22):
Like you're not about You're not just telling them what
to do all the time. That's not that's not how
it works, right, Like I actually want them to tell
me how they're going to do the work that I
need them to do. I don't want to tell them
how to do bottom engineer. I want to tell yeah, yeah,
like let them do that. They're better at it than me.
I'm not great a building production systems. I'm not you know,

(16:42):
I you know, hardly detailed and organized and stuff like that,
but I have that high level vision of it. So
it's like, okay, guys, here's what we need. And then
they were going to go and do it the right way.
And I'm I trust that they're going to do it
the right way.

Speaker 10 (16:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
I mean, even as a tech lead whenever I you know,
if you meet your team for the first time or
onboard a new member. I always take the time to say, yes,
I'm the tech lead and I'm gonna I'm gonna do
my best to set the technical direction. But if you
disagree with me, I want you to tell me. If
you have a better idea, I want you to tell me.

(17:17):
I don't care if you're an intern. I don't care
if you're mid level. I don't care if you're senior. Like,
I can't know. I literally can't know everything. I am
not the expert on everything. Like I love it when
I have somebody on my team that's like, you know what.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
I really geek out about typescript.

Speaker 5 (17:32):
I'm like, sweet, you can solve all my time script
problems because you, like I don't love it. And that's
the thing about teams, Like why would you have a
team if all you have are people that you have
to micromanage all the time.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
That sounds like a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, seriously, Yeah, like my nightmare. I don't want to
micromanaged people. I don't like managing people enough. I like
leading people, but I sure don't like managing people.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Right exactly.

Speaker 5 (18:03):
Exactly I found I did find the article, so that
will be in the show notes.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
So three steps I took to stop losing my best people. Sweet.

Speaker 5 (18:10):
Yes, yeah, like it sometimes like depending on what your
situation is, it might make you cry. They're like, oh no,
somebody really understands me.

Speaker 11 (18:23):
So I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
So you talked a little bit about how you got
into engineering management for those that are listening on the
call that are probably considering kind of making the making
that that career transition towards that, do you have any
recommendations for folks kind of to get started towards that path? So,
like sure, they can just go start looking at LinkedIn

(18:45):
for jobs, Like, but like what is there like something
before that, Like are there any sort of resources or
you know what I mean, even yourself, Like you're you're
the team lead, right, so you're kind of moving towards
that and stuff like that. But I'm curious by the
kind of how you think.

Speaker 7 (19:01):
So I don't know, I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
About how you kind of think about Like, yeah, if
you've got somebody maybe you're in a one on one
with a you know, a bright engineer and they come
in they're like, hey, you know, I'm very curious in
like how you know I like, you're a great leader, spivey,
I want to be a leader like you.

Speaker 7 (19:18):
How do I get started towards that?

Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's kind of what are some recommendations, there's some thoughts
that you have around.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
That yourself in the deepend's heart a company.

Speaker 6 (19:27):
Yeah, that's that was one way of doing it. I'm
not sure do that much. It was a very different
time in engineering back then, so maybe don't go do that.
Uh yeah, I have definitely in my role as a director,
had these conversations about what it's sort of moving into
being a people I would expect you have the right

(19:50):
and a lot of it. You know. My first bit
of advice is always to be intentional about it, right.
Don't don't go be a manager just because some manager
said you should be a people manager. That's a fast
way for failure because you don't fully know what it takes.
And people management is a very very different skill. You
could be the world's best engineer and the worst people

(20:14):
manager because they are such different skills. And much like engineering,
you're never done learning this side of house either. Like
I've been doing this for almost a decade and every
new person I meet is completely and utterly different than
the person next to them, and it's a different set
of problems. It's a different thing you want to help

(20:35):
them with. It's a different thing you coach them on.
They've got different needs, different challenges, different history. They could
mean different age groups. Right, I'm getting old, so I'm
starting to manage folks that are like, what were the
eighties and nineties? That's weird.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
You were born in the nineteen hundreds, So you.

Speaker 6 (20:56):
Know, you're explaining like movie references that they've never heard of,
and you're just like, you know, my gray hair just
keeps getting thicker and thicker. But you know, it's a
never ending skill. And so the first step to sort
of doing that is saying, Okay, I want to be
intentional about this, and much like you do to be
an engineer, is you go start learning about it, like

(21:16):
what are the like It's very easy to google what
are the biggest mistakes people leaders make? And it doesn't
even have to be software engineering. They're pretty straightforward ones
defined that are pretty clear about, like how you treat people.
And that's the fun thing about it, especially since we
all have a history of either really good or really
bad managers or ones in between. You get to have

(21:36):
your own voice that you tailor off of that you know,
I manage lots of managers and I really try to
not have it be Spivey's voice, but their voice with
their teams, because they've got their own history and experiences
obviously things I want and hope for, and then there's
things that I will help teach them. But every team
should have their own voice and their own way of
doing things. And so finding your voice and who you

(21:58):
want to be as a people leader is that first
step of like, this is what I'm going to stand for,
this is what I'm going to believe in, and this
is how I'm going to be, and then being obsessive
about learning how to be better at it. So I
can't even tell you how many people leadership books I
have on my kindle right now. I mean it's crazy.
I read them constantly, and every time I'm taking furious

(22:18):
notes about what they they think worked well and didn't
work well for them, you know, Simon Sinek and knowing
your why, Like I love that why aspect of things, right.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Like yeah, have you read good to Great?

Speaker 6 (22:33):
Yeah? Good to Great? It's a good one. Delivering delivering happiness,
you know, Like it's the guy who started Zappo's challenge
that's a very wild book, right, I probably wouldn't necessarily
lead the same way. You know, maybe a little hr
nightmare in there somewhere, But like he also created this

(22:54):
culture that was pretty definably amazing, and so there's you know,
there's a lot of that. Like I think for me,
like spend time learning about culture and how to build
teen culture. Yeah, because I'm arguing a lot about that's
one of the most critical things to the success of health.

Speaker 7 (23:12):
Of an org is the culture then you create.

Speaker 6 (23:15):
I literally gave a whole talk to a room full
of CTOs where I blamed them for tech burnout, and
I said, because they weren't building the right culture.

Speaker 7 (23:22):
In their company.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
I saw that talk that was the CTO connection stuff
that Peter Bell was doing years back, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that was great. Yeah, and that was a great organization.

Speaker 6 (23:31):
It's a nerve wracking time to stand in a large
room of people like that, who are industry titans to
a degree and go like, it's your your people. Yeah.
At the same time, I wasn't.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
Lying, no, you're not, like and it's amazing what Like
you know, people might say, oh, it's all this organizational
turn that's getting people to leave or oh it's all
the like tight deadlines. It's amazing what your teams can
weather when you have good leadership, like it makes it
so much easier to show up and keep doing the

(24:02):
job because you trust your team and you trust your leadership.

Speaker 4 (24:07):
I mean because I don't know. I don't think I've
ever worked.

Speaker 5 (24:09):
At any company and been like everything here is awesome.
This is the best place I've ever been. There are
no problems, like I don't have like that one person
I got to deal with this's a giant pain in
the ass, Like.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
I've never had that situation. But I have had.

Speaker 5 (24:23):
Different kinds of leaders and you're the leadership can help
you handle whatever the company's weird problems are that come
at you.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
I'm helpome to maybe tech a little bit here. So
we've talked a lot about culture, and I think there's
a lot of value to that. I want to ask
you maybe some like spart hitting questions and are maybe
a little more like on the like on the ground.
So maybe here's the here's an interesting question that I
love to get your take on.

Speaker 7 (24:49):
Spivey.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
So you're you've got you're during spirit planning with your team,
or you're kind of overseeing some some.

Speaker 7 (24:56):
Like a chunk of work.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
How do you deal with scope, like you deal with
scope and timelines and that kind of thing. What are
some some things that you deal like I'm sure you
deal with this on a day to day basis and
cap one and I'm sure you have it in many
of your past jobs. But like, okay, we've got you know,
we've got a deadline well you know whatever that is,
and we want to build all these things. And obviously,
like your engineers, they're coming to you and they're saying, Spivey,

(25:20):
we can't do that. Like, okay, you've given us, you know,
we got three sprints, whatever, we got six weeks to
build this thing. And it's just it's just not by
I just don't think we can do it's spivey, you
know what I mean. And so like there's all kinds
of ways like do we just do we bring more
people on, do we pair down scope?

Speaker 7 (25:34):
Do we cut features? Like?

Speaker 2 (25:35):
What are some ways that you deal with those challenges?
So I think that's kind of an in the trenches
kind of question. So I'm curious to hear from you
as a manager, how you think about that.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Yeah, I mean I don't know that I per se
deal with that as much at the director level, you know,
I mean I certainly do. I certainly hear about it.
We startin talk about it. It's not as though, but
I'm not in every sprint planning meeting. I generally not
a lot of teams, and so it's not as though
I'm in every single one of them on the ground
saying hey this, X, Y, and Z. I'm sort of

(26:06):
looking a larger realistic project of what we're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 10 (26:10):
Good morning, You know that moment when your coffee hasn't
kicked in yet, but your slack is already blowing up
with Hey, did you hear about that new framework that
just dropped?

Speaker 7 (26:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (26:21):
Me too. That's why I created the Weekly dev Spur,
the newsletter that catches you up on all the web
deaf chaos while you're still on your first cup. Oh look,
another anger feature was just released, and what's this typescript's
doing something again? Look also through the poor request and

(26:41):
changelot gramma. So you don't have to five minutes with
my newsletter on Wednesday morning, and you'll be the most
informed person in your stand up. Ah, that's better. The
Weekly desper because your brain deserves a gentle onboarding to
the week's tech matters. Sign up at Weeklybrew dot dev
and get yodos of deaf news with your morning caffeine.

(27:02):
No hype, no clickbait, just the updates that actually matter.
Your Wednesday morning self will thank you.

Speaker 6 (27:08):
But I have certainly dealt with that for the entirety
of my career. If you've ever been in software, you've
had to ask a thing and how to deliver against it.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Is it's an extra large No, it's a small Why
did you ask when.

Speaker 6 (27:22):
I was really early on in careers some challenges there
my first job. My best piece of advice I got
was you will go very far in this industry if
you can accurately estimate how long it takes you to
complete a thing, and then beyond that, if you can
figure out how to mostly accurately predict how a team
can do that. Yeah, because that's a very hard thing

(27:42):
to do, and it changes based on what team members
are available. You know. There we get into a whole
conversation about Fibonacci and T shirts and swag, et cetera.
You know, to your sort of like what do you
do well? First? It's definitely not to add more people.
That's not my default. There's a whole book that stands
the test of time called the Mythical Man Month. I'll

(28:05):
tell you that when you add people to a late project,
that just makes the project later. So I generally tend
to stand by that argument. So it's more of having
a conversation with the business, you know whatever. Our business
partners are designed partners basically just rallying the group around
you and saying, Okay, what makes sense based on what
we know today. We know we can do X, Y

(28:27):
Z and x amount of time. If we crop this,
that might get us on time. If we downscale that,
that might get us to time. Are you are you?
Can you live without that screen? Can you live without
that service? Can we add that to a fast follow
or a phase two? You know? Really it's about partner
managements and working with your partners to find what's acceptable

(28:48):
and what's acceptable to business. And I've always found that
as long as you are there's sort of two important
things to it is, as long as you're very transparent
with your partners and coat with your partners, you bring
them close and you take them along for the ride.
They're often very amenable to like, Okay, we know what's
going on here, and yes, Pivot will make the adjustments

(29:10):
needed to make this happen, because ultimately we want it
to happen the other one. And I told this to
my team. I still tell it to my teams. It's
one of the pieces of advice I stand by the hardest,
which is speak about it early and often. I think
at any management level, it's very hard to figure out when,

(29:30):
like if you're at a two week sprint and someone tells
you on the day before the sprint ends that like,
I'm not going to make it. I got nothing done
and I've been blocked, I'm having all these issues. There's
nothing that I can do for you at that point
in time. You have hurt yourself and you have hurt
the team, and there's nothing I can do to help
you because we've already exhausted the time. If you had
told me at the start of the sprint, hey, I

(29:50):
think this is going to be a challenge, This X,
Y and Z might be a problem. I can find
you people to sit with, I can talk about scope,
we can get you educated. There's so many things that
I as a leader, am empowered to be able to
do early to help you even more to a director
level where I'm looking in projects in six month windows. Yeah,
if I'm going four months down the line through a

(30:11):
major project and my whole team is telling me everything's roses,
and then we get down into like the month of
testing and they're like, well, it's all bored and not working.
There's not much I can do to help at that point.
But if you had sort of told me early, hey, spy,
the scope is too big whatever, like you just said,
that's a whole separate slew of things that I can
do to help, that we can have a conversation on

(30:31):
and that we can work through to make sure everyone's successful.
And I ultimately my job is just to make you successful.
So like, I'm fine with people telling me that I'm wrong,
or the projects wrong, or whatever it might be, so
that we have an honest dialogue about making sure we
get it figured out, because I really don't want people
selling me bill of bad goods just because they're afraid

(30:52):
I'll get angry. I won't. My job is to help
you be successful. I want you to be successful, so
help me help you do that.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
I am a problem. I want to know if there's
a problem right out of time, early on, right.

Speaker 5 (31:05):
And as a developer, I am firmly a fair for
of keep your receipts as well. Oh yeah, like I
a lot of times, if I know there's a problem coming,
I will write a very detailed email about it so
that I can say, no, I told you about this.
Everyone was aware of this, and you know, good managers
will be and directors will say, okay, I've been warned.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
I know, here's what we can do about it. But
that also protects you as an eller.

Speaker 6 (31:33):
We also have to be sort of clear though that
Like that's true for us here in this moment, but
for the folks who are listening and thinking about this,
there's probably a few folks who are like, well, I
could never tell my boss those things. Yeah, And that
really does come back to the trust factor we talked about.
It's that you actively work to build trust with your group.
These are things that are not hard, and people will

(31:54):
want to come to you and have those conversations. If
you're the one that flies off the handle as that
manager because they're angry about whatever and constantly losing the cool,
then you're not building trust, and then folks really aren't
going to want to be proactively coming to you, and
that's kind of been on you for like not building
that trust with it.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (32:12):
I've worked on those teams before too, where everyone is
doing the contractor two week thing, like two sprints, when
you're going to be done two sprints and how's it coming.
It's great, everything's fine. They'll go so far as to
be like it's done, and you're like, but it's not done.
Yes it is, and like, but it's not done. And
it's a really frustrating position to be in because especially

(32:35):
you know, if you're an Angular developer, you're almost certainly
the last developer to touch any project, and that means
you're the easiest to throw under the bus for it.
So why did you take so long? Oh well, like
nobody did any of the things they were supposed to
do getting up to where I am. That's why it
took me so long. Nope, you were last. Sorry, you
ruined the whole thing. And it's it's really frustrating.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Had some experiences.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
I did a lot of.

Speaker 5 (33:04):
Contract work too, so like, yeah, I feel a lot
it's like, oh gosh.

Speaker 6 (33:09):
That's luckily out there or twice and.

Speaker 5 (33:14):
When you have to email your boss to be like,
you know that the production server credentials are being stored
in plain text on the HTML server, like I don't know.
You have to tell people stuff like that and then
they respond with, oh, we know, it's like cool, I'm
going to cover my butt on this.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
Then yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:38):
I mean I think, I think to the people that
are listening, if you aren't in a good management position,
you are not alone. This happens all the time because
management is a skill just like anything else, like, and
people have to learn, and some people are willing to
learn and some people are not.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
And so spidy, what do you feel like?

Speaker 5 (34:00):
Makes like, what are the ingredients that you need to
like if you're like I think I'm going to be
a good manager, Like, what what traits have you found
beneficial in that realm?

Speaker 7 (34:14):
You know?

Speaker 6 (34:14):
I think a big one, because every every engineer in
your org is going to be that beautifully unique butterfly
that you just want to embrace. But life treats everyone
very differently, and everyone has family, Like the ingredient list
is huge, and so one of the things that's so

(34:38):
critical is a listening skills, being able to stop trying
to talk over someone and let them talk to you
so that you can hear and maybe sometimes they'll say
things and you actually go, so I hear that what
I think I'm also hearing is and you kind of
start to dig down a little deeper and you start

(34:59):
to kind of get to the root of what might
be really going on, which then can kind of help you.
You can kind of go, hey, you know, kind of
sounding like you're burning out here a little bit, why
don't we take a little off your plate for a
bit and let you, you know, do whatever that is,
which kind of leads into the next one, which is
that level of empathy is being able to get out
of your own life problems and the stuff that like
challenges you every day and go put yourself in their

(35:23):
shoes and say, if I was sitting in their shoes
with this kind of stuff coming at me and some
of the things that I know because I'm listening to them,
how would I be feeling right now? And if you
can start to kind of understand what those feelings are
a little bit, then you can start to like pull
back or push or whatever it might need to be,
because sometimes it means you need to push a little
harder on them, or sometimes it means you need to

(35:45):
pull back a little bit and say, you know, I understand,
let's let's have a slightly separate conversation. And that's a
really really hard skill, Like I don't want this to
come off to anyone listening as though I've mastered all
of these things. I have failed plenty of time. I
have learned tons of lessons. I have had people in
my orger that I did not do the best service

(36:06):
of and it does hurt, Like that's the thing that
I don't enjoy. I don't I want everyone in my
org to feel heard, feel like they've been able to
be successful, and I have not always gotten that right
because it is a hard skill and everyone ere everyone
that comes to you comes to you with such unique
differences that there are sometimes that's just not going to work.
And I think that comes to the third one, which

(36:27):
is again back to what we talked about, that sort
of willingness to go learn, Like even if you're dealing
with someone really challenging, go read another book or do
some more research, or do some homework about like these
are kind of the things that I see. Are there
things that I could do differently to help this individual. Right,
Some folks do really well of being told they need
to keep a written plan and then that will help

(36:49):
them stay organized in their thoughts. Some people are like, hey,
you should have sticky notes everywhere. There's like some people,
for example, even just in one on ones, some people
like really structure one on ones with documents, agendas, here's
what we're discussing, and they want to kind of kneel
through that. Others like to free flow it and just
want to have a conversation with you, and so learning

(37:10):
where they fit on that sort of spectrum of things.
Like I personally like a free flowy one on one.
I like to how was your weekend? But have you
been up to kind of build that connection and with
an agenda? I always feel like too limited by that.
But that's for me, right, and the one on ones
not just for me, It's also for the person I'm with,
and so having to find that balance with that person
and being able to do those things, not just sticking

(37:32):
to here's the formula I think works, but constantly blending
that formula.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
How much you or have you done any reading on
like emotional intelligence and stuff like that, Like we're talking
books earlier, but have you read any like EI type books.

Speaker 6 (37:47):
I have a bunch and I have definitely dealt with
differing levels of emotional intelligence, and heck sure probably people
have told me I have varying levels of emotional intelligence.
But yeah, I have done a bunch of books on that.
You know, It's that is a very complicated subject that
I think would lead this. We would talk about that
for the next two hours, about how that impacts things,

(38:10):
especially about how the dynamics of personal life impact that
so significantly on a week and day by day basis.

Speaker 4 (38:20):
Yeah, I you know, I was I taught.

Speaker 5 (38:24):
I went through a training program to teach little kids
how to make art when I was in grad school,
and one of the parts of the teaching program was
basically calling out the different styles of learning, which I mean,
it's like, this is a little simplistic, but I think
we are in a society where we sort of have
very narrow definitions of what success looks like, what performance

(38:48):
looks like, how you're allowed to do things, how you're
allowed to achieve things, and really, if you look at humans,
like for myself, I learn better by I gotta get
my hands on it. I can watch a video, I
might fall asleep, so I'll probably watch it on the treadmill,
and then I need to just actually try to do something.
I need to fail at it right to actually.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
Learn how to make it work.

Speaker 5 (39:11):
Other people can just read a blog post and they're like,
I know how to do this, and that is weird
to me, but that works for other people. And it's
the same thing with like just these interpersonal relationships. To
learning to kind of understand how to predict people, I
think is important, and that is not always with science.

(39:34):
That's like doing the witching thing with water, where I
think I get you, I think I get your motivations.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Why we were coming down to the end of this,
and I think we'd be maybe doing our listeners a
disservice if we didn't talk about the elephant in the room.

Speaker 7 (39:54):
So tell me how you think about.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
As a director of engineering at a large company, how
do you guys think about AI, How that impacts developer productivity,
how that impacts kind of longevity for engineering, and kind
of we don't need to do any sort of like
big predictions here. I'm not looking for that. I'm just
curious in terms of, like, you know, the landscape has
certainly changed and the job has changed over the last

(40:17):
let's just say a year or two. The tools that
are the tool and I think the tools, the tools
that we have available to us have changed that may
or may not have positive or negative impacts on velocity
or development productivity.

Speaker 7 (40:33):
Or these kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
And I think we'll continue to see kind of that
impact continue to roll out into this career and I'm
certain that into your career as well. So tell us
a little bit about how you guys are thinking about
it at cap one and how you guys are using
it or not using it.

Speaker 7 (40:50):
Kind of what are some things that you are really.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Bearish on or kind of things that you're kind of thinking, hey,
this isn't quite ready for mainstream or yeah, I'd love
to hear just your general thoughts coming from more of
a director kind of leadership style, you know, approach. I'm
sure that Jay and Laura and myself have lots of
opinions on AI.

Speaker 7 (41:11):
Tooling and developer.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Tooling and and how to how to build with AI,
how to use AI and to build AI into applications
or whatever that is. But I really want to kind
of stay focused, Like, let's not talk about like chatbots,
like let's talk about, like, you know, how how AI
is affecting organizations and and how how you guys are
thinking about it at cap one.

Speaker 7 (41:31):
And I'd love to hear from you on that.

Speaker 6 (41:33):
Well, I don't really want to speak for cap One.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Uh we we I guess yeah yourself then yeah, yeah
we we.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
I mean Capital one is embracing AI. We we have
a co pilot and you know, there's a lot of
belief in the power of AI at Capital one and
we're doing some really amazing things. We have a significant
number of patents, so there is a lot of AI
occurring at Capital one that you know, you can go
read about it if you go check you know, LinkedIn

(42:01):
and whatnot. There's lots of great stuff about what we're
doing publicly from my perspective as a leader Capital one. Aside,
because I don't want this to infer any sort of
reference to what they are driving towards that'd be great.
I think the first step is to ignore everything that
you read on LinkedIn, because they are all thought bleeding

(42:21):
about what AI.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Is and is not.

Speaker 6 (42:24):
It's not you know, it's going to take your job.
It's not going to take your job. Blah blah, blah.
I have played with it a ton. I have written
plenty of hobby projects with co Pilot and these different
models and Claude, and I've just played around with it
a ton just to sort of get a sense for
what I think it's going to do. My general thoughts
are right, it's not going to take your job. I

(42:45):
think that because I've been doing this a really long time,
and I've heard that statement far too many times, far
too many times. Oh, you know, whatever is going to
be dead and you're going to have no work. Engineers
will always be around. I think AI is only going
to increase the number of them that are needed. Where
and how that's applied, I think is the question that's
still being very tend'd. I do very much see AI

(43:09):
as a potential accelerator.

Speaker 5 (43:12):
Now.

Speaker 6 (43:12):
I've read some interesting articles about how it actually slows
teams down because they accelerate the initial writing those things,
but because it doesn't operate terribly well once you get
very large. It's great for like vibe coding, the sort
of starter, but once you get into complex systems, it's
you can't shove enough of that in there at this

(43:32):
point in time for it to like cohesively make changes
that make sense and do it well. And so you
then spent a ton of time reviewing the outputs and
like I certainly are even smaller projects were like I
don't know where you went with that one, and how
many times you had to like cancel a prompt roll
back really think you're prompt to get it to go
to then go forward again, and so you're like doing

(43:54):
this back forward thing constantly. But when it does it,
and it does it well, Like the number of unit
tests that I wrote went up dramatically because it just found.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
I hate it.

Speaker 6 (44:09):
Cool, right exactly, Like that kind of stuff is great,
So like, let's knock that out. So I think as
we learn how to better use it and how it
becomes smarter, I see a lot of opportunity for it accelerating.
Justin Searles, if you haven't heard of him, look up
his ng comp talk from a long time back. It's
called Scratching Scratching an itch, I believe is what it

(44:31):
was called. It's still my favorite ng comp talk of
all time. It is such an amazing talk. I still
follow him and I really like him because he's kind
of spicy and has really hard opinions that he just
fires out there. And he had a really good article
recently called full breadth Developer, And I think that article
to me and I will make sure I get it

(44:52):
for the show notes for folks. It is a really
really good first take on what I think is going
to ultimately make engineers successful, which is, and I've thought
this for a long time, having come from being a CTO,
is that a really good engineer is also a very
good product person. So they don't just think about the code,
but they think about what this means for a customer,

(45:14):
what's the outcome that I'm trying to accomplish, What does
this mean to my end user? And the folks that
can do that can now harness the power of AI
to kind of help accelerating them get there and have
better partnerships with product and design to like put these
ideas out and put them together quickly to get products
into folks' hands. I think that's really where we'll see

(45:35):
that evolution of engineers. Is AI is just going to
kind of enhance these folks. We're still going to need
a ton of engineers, even if it's prompt engineers, and
we're going to ultimately all sort of become semi product
engineer hybrids, which is not a bad thing towards a
sort of this future, towards what's better for us as
consumers and as customers. And I've always pushed my teams

(45:57):
think about the end user. That's the beauty of being
front end engineers kind of forced into that. Generally speaking,
we're like back in folks often don't really get that exposure.
We're always like, what's it like to click through this thing?
What's the user experience?

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Is the button there?

Speaker 6 (46:10):
Yeah? Why is it that color? That's kind of strange?
You know, Like, so that kind of stuff will start
to be really really critical to at least the UI
engineers and full stack engineers that are listening that.

Speaker 5 (46:20):
You know, I think one, oh, I was gonna say,
my experience has been exactly that, which is using.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
AI to write code.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
I have had to definitely put on more of a
product hat to make sure that what I'm doing is
what I'm actually supported like it's it's been helpful to
help sort of refine those requirements and honestly break up
the work into logical like chunks, because that's hard to
do as well.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
But go ahead, Jack, the one thing I was going
to add note on, like the leadership side with AI
is kind of you know, I was talking about like, yeah,
we're not sure if it's action making us quicker or
if it's ultimately making us slower because of the you know,
we're we're backloading the work kind of thing.

Speaker 7 (47:01):
Right.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
What you don't see the start is something that I've
started doing internally is measuring us now. Not on an
ic levels. I don't I don't want to measure any
individual person. That's not how my team operates, but from
a human versus bot level, I've started. I wrote some
n execute executors that are run on a schedule generous CI,
so at the end of every week, it'll go and
calculate a bunch of metrics from like our githup poll

(47:23):
requests and our number of releases and stuff like that,
and then graph it so we can see. And I'm
continuing to find those to try and find some metrics
that like have a bit more meaning because like, yeah,
number of poor press doesn't necessarily mean anything. If there's
a bunch of back and forth on those bot pole
cross I'm like refining them still, but like as a
leader to know if this is working for you or not.

(47:44):
You need to have some kind of an understanding of
if it's working. So you have to you have you
have to measure somethings. So like what we've started to
do is just like measuring certain things of the human
versus bot and then graph those over time. And we're
not trying to have the humans beat the or the
boughts beat the humans. It's about are both graphs going

(48:04):
up or one graph going up in one like plummeting
or something like that, Right, Like, that's not what you want,
right because you don't want to just like, yeah, drastically
increase your bot prs, but then all your humans are
ever doing is sitting there like readings on prs all day, right, Like,
that's that's not a success metrics. You want them both
to be either like steady or moving up kind of thing, right,

(48:26):
so you get more efficient overtimes. That's the ideas that
you get more efficient. So just something to early days.

Speaker 6 (48:30):
We're still learning a lot and there's gonna be a
lot to learn over the coming weeks and years. You know,
I think there will be an evolution, but exactly what
it looks like today, I'm not scared for engineer's jobs.
I know that there are folks laying off and saying
our company is now doing fifty percent coding through this,
But I also see a lot of hiring. I think
some of that's it's hard because there's correlation causation, right,

(48:53):
we gyes a lot of market conditions right now that
are not attuned to a lot of hiring. And so yeah,
keep these things in mind when you see these fancyful headlines.

Speaker 7 (49:03):
About X, Y and Z.

Speaker 5 (49:04):
Well, and you know, you have to remember, like nobody
hires punch card operators anymore, right, Like, and the punch
card operators learned how to use early computers.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
And then you know, like, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (49:15):
I wrote Visual Basic and the beginning of my career,
and I don't do that anymore. I lost my Visual
Basic developer job. I'm so sad.

Speaker 6 (49:22):
We're all engineers your jobs just to keep learning, exactly.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
So, on the topic of jobs, a little birdie told
me that you're a great person to work for.

Speaker 6 (49:36):
Well, if you've heard that and you would like to
be one of those people. I actually have two job
postings coming up soon for a senior and a lead
level position to come work in my team and credit
wise as of now. Unfortunately, for those listening that are
not in the Washington DC area, it is not a
remote friendly position. We are a mcclaim based company for

(49:57):
at least for my teams. So for folks that are
in the Washington DC area, if you are interested, please
do ping me. I will have those positions. You can
find me on LinkedIn at James Spivey the search for
DC area Capital one you'll find me. Feel free to
ping me, reach out to me and I'm happy to
have a chat with you about it, or you can
find me on blue Sky. I think I'm spyby do wtf.

Speaker 5 (50:19):
I also heard that you might be at ENGI Comp.

Speaker 6 (50:22):
I will be at ng comp, so you will find
me wandering around the halls at ng comp for the
Capitol one shirt on so you can't miss me. I'm
a swag guy, as Laura knows.

Speaker 5 (50:30):
So oh yeah, I'm still like, you got to get
the Capital one Hawaiian shirt like that's they don't.

Speaker 6 (50:38):
Have one, although I have put a couple of little
things in people's ears about getting one. That's kind of crucial.

Speaker 5 (50:43):
Yeah, exactly, it makes the most sense, honestly, so and
for the listeners. If you haven't yet got your tickets
to ng COMP, they are still on sale. It is
in the Baltimore area October oh seventeenth through the I
do this every time because I can't remember days. Okay,

(51:06):
sessions are the seventeenth and the eighteenth. If you want
to sign up for one of the workshops, which are
an additional ticket, they're October fifteenth through the sixteenth. And
g comp is also partnering with JSKOMF at the same
location they are taking That is taking place the two
days before, and there is a deal if you buy
tickets for both, you should send your whole team, or

(51:27):
if you can get there yourself, that is fantastic.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
I will be there, Spivey will be.

Speaker 5 (51:32):
There, Brian will be there. Jay will be staying in Canada.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Yes, yeah, I will not be leaving my borders right now.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
Don't blame you, but yeah, definitely, And.

Speaker 5 (51:46):
I Spivey's always happy to talk to folks. I'm always
happy to talk to folks. I'm talking for you, Spiby.
But I've seen you at conferences, so I know that,
like you got some friends, so.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
But yeah, so definitely do that.

Speaker 5 (52:03):
But are there any okay you said blue Sky LinkedIn,
but the best way is in person at engcom pretty much.

Speaker 6 (52:10):
Yeah, you'll find me always for for sure.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
There definitely awesome Man.

Speaker 7 (52:16):
Well, yeah, thanks byve.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Thank you for your time, Man, thanks for bringing your
experience and kind of sharing all that. I also, I
think I generally vibe with your like the AI scare stuff.
I think that there's a lot of things out there
that you could read or you could you could see
signals maybe that have some correlation maybe not direct causation

(52:38):
and related to hiring and all that kind of stuff.
You know, there's a lot of factors that come into that.
It's very complex, and so I just appreciate your leadership man,
in the ange of the community. Appreciate your leadership at
Capital One. And thanks for coming on the podcast today
and sharing with us about your experience and kind of
how to get into you know, leading people and working
kind of wearing that hab of also being an engineer.

(53:01):
And I think you're really right about the product side
of things, you know. I think oftentimes we think, you know,
I just you know, pick up a ticket, write a
code and I'm done. And I think some of the
best best folks I've worked with are engineers that are
able to also spend a lot of time thinking about
the product and the goal and really work closely with
leadership and product management and all of that to really

(53:22):
build a product that.

Speaker 7 (53:23):
People want to use.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
So yeah, I just want to appreciate you and thanks
for coming on the podcast and for the listener. Thanks
for listening.

Speaker 7 (53:30):
Be sure to subscribe.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Like Laura said, go to NGI COMF, get your tickets
and we'll see you there.

Speaker 7 (53:35):
Thanks everybody, Boy, Ryan, thanks baby.

Speaker 11 (53:40):
Hey, this is Pressol. I'm one of the NGI Champions writers.
In our daily battle to crush out code, we run
into problems and sometimes those problems aren't easily solved. NGI
coomp broadcasts articles and tutorials from ngie champions like myself
that help make other developers' lives just a little bit easier.
To access these articles, visit medium dot com for its
last ngcomm.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Thank you for listening to the Angular Plus Show, a
NGCOFF podcast. We would like to thank our sponsors, the
NGCOMF organizers Joe Eames and Aaron Frost, our producer Gene Bourne,
and our podcast editor and engineer Patrick Kyes. You can
find him at spoonful ofmedia dot com,

All Episodes

S10 E2 | The Human Side of Software: Leadership in Tech | James Spivey

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Breakfast Club

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S10 E2 | The Human Side of Software: Leadership in Tech | James Spivey