Arthur Doler - The Human Side of Tech

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Bekah: 00:08

hello and welcome to season seven, episode six of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. I'm Bekah, and this is a podcast that features members of the Virtual Coffee community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey, and they're here on this podcast sharing their stories and what they've learned, and we are here to share it with you. Here with me today is my co-host.

Dan: 00:36

What up, Bek? How's it going?

Bekah: 00:38

Hey, it's going okay.

Dan: 00:40

Going all right today.

Bekah: 00:41

Just, just, all right.

Dan: 00:42

Just chilling.

Bekah: 00:43

Yep.

Dan: 00:44

Um, well, glad to hear it. Uh, yeah. Um, today we are speaking with Arthur Doler, who has, uh, been a Virtual Coffee member for a while and he's been a software engineer for a long time. Uh, well, let's see, his bio says 19 years, so that's, that's a pretty long time. Um, and he's worked on a bunch of different things over his career and he's also gotten into, um, mental health advocacy, during his career. So, uh, especially related to tech stuff, I think, um, although maybe not exclusively tech related mental health stuff, but, um, he's done a lot of blog posts and talks about mental health, uh, over the last few years. It's, it's been really cool. It's one of the things that caught my eye about Arthur when he joined the community, uh, joined Virtual Coffee was his work and his thoughts in that area. Uh, and we talked about a lot, uh, in it was.

Bekah: 01:33

Yeah, I actually got the chance to meet Arthur last year to one of his talks that we've included in the show notes about burnout. And one of the things that I love about Arthur and talking to him is I will always learn something in those conversations. He'll teach me something about mental health and I, it's from a perspective that I might not have known had I not had that conversation or heard what he said, and I know. Now that as I'm kind of transitioning and looking for a new job, I've taken a lot of what he's taught me in that talk about burnout and kind of applied it to the process that I'm going through right now. And so it, it's great to be able to talk a little bit about that, but, um, about a lot of different aspects of mental health in this episode today.

Dan: 02:18

Yeah, totally. And we, we talked a lot about, um, we also got into the idea of the, the human sort of network that is a company, right? And, and how a, a company or a, a team or whatever isn't just. Some sort of plug and play thing. And it's not just a machine, right? It's a bunch of people and they all work differently. Managers work differently, uh, contributors work differently, and it all has to work together somehow. Right. And, um, so we, we talked a lot about some, some of that, uh, the mental health, uh, vis-a-vis management and, and how it's sometimes hard to forget when you're having an issue with somebody that, that they have all these feelings and, and motivations and, uh, everything too. And usually it's very easy to like villainize somebody, who you're having issues with. And, um, how that's not always the most helpful, helpful thing in the world. although it can feel good, you know, in the moment when you're doing some bending, but, uh, to actually move forward, right? There's, there's like needs that connection and the empathy between, between two. as opposed to just manager and reportee, you know? Um, so

Bekah: 03:21

Yeah. Yeah. That of motivation is. Arthur had some new takes on it that I hadn't heard, that I know that actually I was like just looking at my, my reading list of books that I want to read in the next couple weeks. And there were a couple of them I think that he mentioned that I have on there too. And so, uh, hopefully you'll find some resources here. You'll find some new ideas, exploring motivation, exploring mental health and all of the things that we talked about that maybe can be applied to your.

Dan: 03:51

Totally.

Bekah: 03:53

So we start every episode of the podcast, like we start every Virtual Coffee. We introduce ourselves with our name, where we're from, what we do, and a random check-in question. We hope you enjoy this episode. Today's random question is, what is your favorite hobby? We hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, my name is Bekah. I am a technical community builder from a small town in Ohio, and this is an easy one at weightlifting is my favorite hobby. I don't really have any other hobbies besides raising children and gardening badly, so that was easy.

Dan: 04:37

Gardening badly. Uh, you could be bad at something and still have it be your favorite, you know, but it's probably easier when you're good at something to have it be your favorite. So that's cool. Um, yeah. I'm Dan. I live in Cleveland. It was like 63 here yesterday, and today it is like 38 in raining. So that's Cleveland life for you? Uh, yeah. Well, it might be coming, I don't know.

Bekah: 05:00

It is Friday. It's gonna be cold.

Dan: 05:02

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, favorite hobby? Oh, my favorite hobby is disc golf. So that's golf played with, uh, you know, flying discs or Frisbees if you want to use the brand name. And, uh, yeah, I've been, I got into it in college and, uh, playing, playing a lot since then. So, just played 36 holes on, um, Last Friday. So it's good stuff. Keeps me in the woods pretty soon. Uh, I got Ollie, here's, is he here in the recording studio with me So pretty soon he's gonna come, start coming with me too. I'm excited about that. I was looking into

Bekah: 05:34

I was just gonna say for, for context, Ollie is Dan's dog.

Dan: 05:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was, well, I was about to, I was about to clue that in because I was looking at disc golf bags for dogs, so I can have him just carry all of my stuff around you know, and it, it would be perfect. So, uh, I'm, that's the dream really. That's, I'm excited about that.

Arthur: 05:55

All right. Uh, hi. My name's Arthur Doer or Art. Um, I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, where it is cold and snowing right now, so you're gonna get it probably in a couple days. Um, and I'm a senior software engineer and, uh, community and culture steward is, I think what we're calling the other half of my title. my favorite hobby is actually, I don't know if it counts as a hobby, but public speaking, it's more of a lifestyle I guess. But, um, it's definitely the thing that takes up a ton of my time, that is not my job. So

Dan: 06:24

I'd say if you, yeah, if you're not getting paid for it or maybe even if you are getting paid for it, I don't know. I guess, yeah, if you're just doing it by choice, then it, then it, we can call it a hobby, right?

Arthur: 06:34

how often do you have to get paid before it becomes a side gig? Like,

Dan: 06:36

yeah. That's the, yeah, that's always the problem. Uh, you know, it is, uh, Sometimes when you're good at a hobby and it can, you know it's possible to get paid for it, you know, it becomes tempt tempting to follow that down. So just like this, golf, I almost went pro and then, uh, no, I'm just kidding. I was, I was never good enough.

Bekah: 06:55

Is there pro disc golf?

Dan: 06:57

Yeah, big time. Like million dollar contract. Pro, pro. This golf. Yeah, it's on ESPN and all that stuff now too. So yeah, it's the same with.

Arthur: 07:05

like,

Dan: 07:06

Well, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, this is like, this is the same with lots of sports where there's companies that want you to buy their products and so they start sponsoring people that are really good at it. And that's, you know, that's, that's how it goes. And so you, and, and of course the sponsors, they, you know, they can only use those ones, uh, and they still win tournaments. And so you're like, well, I should buy that company's, you know, discs or shoes or whatever. is a baseball hat will make me better at disc golf. I'm sure

Bekah: 07:36

For sure. I'm a professional weightlifter, so

Dan: 07:40

Oh, nice.

Bekah: 07:41

Yeah. Not really I'm just manifesting it. I think that's how that works. You say it and then people make you it. So next week, watch out.

Arthur: 07:53

sponsorship's rolling in.

Dan: 07:54

the, the thing to watch out for there, right, is like, oh, you start going to a gym and like, oh, like, oh, I'll teach a class, you know, here and there, whatever. And then like you teach 'em more and more classes and then, you know, pretty soon somebody's like, wanna hire you full-time. And then it becomes a job and then it's no fun anymore.

Bekah: 08:08

I just, I just want them to give me workout gear, like, here's a pair of new leggings. Sweet.

Arthur: 08:17

Exercise influencer.

Bekah: 08:19

I know.

Dan: 08:19

Yeah.

Bekah: 08:20

Yep. maybe that, um, welcome Arthur. It is good to have you here on the podcast. We always like to get started with your origin story, and we're gonna start by asking you what is one word that describes your career journey?

Arthur: 08:41

Uh, I think my word is gonna be concentric, um, in that I've started. I went to school for computer engineering and then rapidly realized that that was a thing that, um, you know, you went to a couple, couple different companies, like one of a couple companies, and then they burned you out and then you moved on to other stuff. But, um, The story of my career has been kind of ever expanding circles of kind of what I care about, where it's moved from, caring about the technology to, okay, let's care about the architecture. Okay, let's care about like the process that we're doing to now. It's very about the humans, um, that either the humans that we're writing the software for, or the humans who are writing the software, or the humans who are affected by the software. So,

Bekah: 09:30

I really love that.

Dan: 09:32

Yeah.

Bekah: 09:33

So how did that, so I, I like the different concentric circles and almost, I imagine there's some kind of journey behind each of those different circles and how they're kind of related to each other. So do you wanna talk a little bit about maybe I, however you wanna tell your story of your tech journey. Um, but if there are highlight moments that you think were really pivotal there, I'd love to hear.

Arthur: 10:00

Sure. Um, I mean, really it's, it's a, it's a story of getting frustrated a bunch, uh, and just going like, well, there has to be a better way to do this. Like, um, I mean, it started out in a, um, I went to a small technical college in Terre Haute, Indiana, um, and paid a lot of money to learn the lesson that I am not the smartest person on the planet, which is a very valuable lesson to learn. Uh, and then kind of fell back afterwards into a job, um, doing JSPs. Uh, cuz that was, that was the style at the time. Um, and.

Dan: 10:38

can you, can you, what are, what are JSPs?

Arthur: 10:40

Uh, Java server, it pages. So back in the bad old days of the internet, um, it was, you know, we didn't have your fancy reacts or anything. It was all like server driven, you know, server side stuff. So it was, okay, well we're gonna write these webpages in Java. Cool. Um,

Dan: 10:57

sounds great.

Arthur: 10:59

Fantastic. Uh, so I mean, again, there's like, yeah, there has to be a better way to do this. What are we doing with our, what am I doing with my life? just been a lot of being frustrated about, um, the technology that I work with, the way that we're building it and kind of realizing, oh, okay, well this situation gets a little better if I can affect something downstream. Like, or upstream rather, like, okay, so if I'm frustrated about, oh, well I'm, I'm being asked to code something and I wanna make it great. Okay, that's easy. And then, I mean, it's not easy, sorry, but it's a, it's a simpler problem. And then, Realized that I'm being asked to code something that is stupid. Why am I being asked to code something that is stupid? Well, that's what the requirements say, and it's like, okay, so let's move into that and think about why am I being asked to code something that is stupid, that I think is stupid? Does this make sense in a context? What is the user thinking? And kind of expanding my scope in that regard. And then starting to realize, well, these pro, like now we're trying to. Learning these things that make sense about the users and about what they want, but. You know, we keep running up in crunch. We keep winding up with a deadline overrun. So let's think about the process and how are we building these things. And kind of parallel to all of that has been my personal journey of trying to understand what the hell is happening inside of my head. Um, which is a thing that I've been, I mean, it's a lifelong struggle, but it's been something I've been actively working on since I was 15. Um, And so there's been a lot of research into, okay, I mean, it's like any good therapist or psychologist starts out as just like, well, why am I screwed up? Let's figure that out. Clearly somebody has understood this and there must be a book out there that will perfectly describe why I do the dumb things I do and how to not do those things, and then you rapidly realize that that isn't true. But there's a whole bunch of other interesting things that people have learned. Um, so I vanished down that rabbit hole, um, about at the same time I took a job. um, drove me back into therapy. Um, cause I was, you know, went through the whole therapy gamut and diagnoses when I was in middle school and high school and then, uh, kind of fell out of it in college. Um, stopped taking my meds cuz that's what you do in college is do dumb things. Um, and yeah, I mean, it's a perfect time for it. But, um, so this job I was in my, my late twenties. No, that would've been early thirties cause that would've been 2011 ish. Um, and just, it was a nightmare job. Um, for a bunch of different reasons. Things like, we released too fast for the support team of the company. Um, so they refused to support our products. So all of our customers called our BA directly and then she would immediately wind up on, like, standing on our desks for things. It was exciting. Um, and it was all, um, it was election related stuff, so. Just ratchet all the stress three notches higher on all of it.

Dan: 14:05

Yeah.

Arthur: 14:06

Um, I kind of found myself at a, on the phone with somebody from, I think it was Hamilton County, Ohio, actually from their election board. Um, I mean, in the median age of somebody that works at an election commission anywhere is like 80. So I'm on the phone with this guy attempting to teach him how to copy paste over the phone. And it was just like one of those moments you see in a movie where it's. From office space or whatever, it's just like, what am I doing, Um, so I mean, about that time I was starting to dig into some stuff like, uh, Daniel Pink's Drive was one of my gateway drugs to really getting into, um, What is effectively pop psych, um, you know, popular psychology books and starting to understand a lot more about organizational psychology and behavioral economics and cognitive psychology and, you know, chasing down a bunch of rabbit holes there. And it was not that much later, um, a couple years into a new job and I realized that I started wanting to get into public speaking and. Was like, okay, well let's figure out, you know, I started doing, um, uh, we do lightning talks at work and we used to do 'em every week. We do 'em every other week now. But it was a, um, forced myself to give a lightning talk every week and rapidly ran out of technical things that I wanted to talk about, and then decided I was gonna start talking about cognitive biases at work and went, wow, this is a lot more fun and exciting Um, and that was, that was 2016. And. Started speaking at conferences and have been doing that and my making my focus a lot more about the humans of software since then of, okay, how do we get people to build these things? Understanding that there are systemic forces that are driving this instead of looking at individuals as the problem or even looking at teams as the problem. and trying to understand that there, this is stuff we've been learning about since the fifties for Christ's sake in some cases. Um, it's one of the most frustrating things about some of the talks I do is I go back and look at the resources and like studies and it's like, well, we knew about it in the seventies and we're still, we're still screwing this up now so.

Dan: 16:22

an example of is there is an example that pops in your mind of one of those things?

Arthur: 16:26

I mean, one of the basics would be from Daniel Pink's drive. Like the, the study research about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations has been around since the seventies, easily, like as a known fact. And, um, the difference there is, is an intrinsic motivation is something that is internal to the person. So, a, if you work out, for instance, like Bekah does, one of the values that you like, the benefits that you get out of it is in the doing of the. right? The benefit comes from the act as opposed to an extrinsic motivation, which is like paying your kid $5 to, uh, take out the guard. It is a motivation, a r a, uh, impulse that, or rather impetus, rather that is external to the thing. So without digging too much into the book and kind of restating his entire thesis, um, intrinsic motivation is a lot more sticky. Um, extrinsic motivation. You, you get what, uh, some people call the hedonistic treadmill, um, or hedonistic acclimation, where after a while the level of reward you get stops being effective. Eventually your kid's gonna want 10 bucks to take out the garbage. Um, but even without that, it. You can never, I mean, I don't have kids, but I've talked to people who do, once you pay them to do the chores, it's, you're never gonna not have to pay them to do the chores again. Uh, it's really one of the big lessons of that is that extrinsic motivators actually kill intrinsic motivation. You will be less intrinsically motivated after I've, you've applied an extrinsic motivator, but extrinsic motivators are easy and. it's easy for a manager to go, well, we're just gonna have a thing. And the people personally fixes the most bugs, gets an Xbox. I mean, most managers have moved past that point, but there are still a lot of extrinsic motivation about, um, you know, even things like velocity. Are you meeting your velocity? That's an extrinsic motivator, not an intrinsic motivator to the task itself.

Bekah: 18:25

That's really fascinating. I actually hadn't really thought about it like that. Now I need to go listen to that book, so that's gonna be on my list. But I, I think that the idea of extrinsic motivation, I've been thinking a lot about company. Culture what? How to determine if a company has a good culture. We see a lot of people at Virtual Coffee that interview for roles that seem great, and then they get there and the company culture is not great. And oftentimes a lot of the things that we see is, um, there are those extrinsic. Motivators, right? Like, we pay a great salary, we have unlimited paid time off. We give you a budget for food, we give you a budget for the gym or whatever. And in a lot of ways, I think that companies are trying to use, they use extrinsic motivators to kind of lure you in and make you feel like there's a good culture there. But maybe that what, what. Makes a good culture is finding ways to cultivate that intrinsic motivation. Or at the very least, getting to know your employees and figuring out how to utilize their strengths and allow them to fulfill the things that they're good at doing.

Arthur: 19:38

or what they want to do. Right? I mean, if, if I have a. You know, we have a, I don't wanna say we at the company, but like in, I've seen cases where folks are feel frustrated or angry because they care a lot about something and they're not being allowed to do it. They care a lot about quality, they care a lot about the process and the way that this thing works. And then the company is not allowing them to go be in DevOps or in, you know, or shaping things so that they have a role to play where they can bring those desires to bear. And that's a loss on both sides because now one person's frustrated and then the company's not seeing a benefit out of it. With that they could be, um, yeah, it's what I mean by like the extrinsic motivators are easy. Right. It's one of my fun, I mean, it's not my favorite hobby, but it's a fun hobby is if you go to another company and they've got like a break room or whatever, a foosball table, like just. Is the table dusty? Like is anybody actually using it? Um, like, you know, we have one at our company and you know, people use it cuz it's like the Foosballs people are sometimes broken and there's like pieces and repair parts around the, the room. Um, you know, we have a dart board and a, a ping pong table and there's like just, you open a drawer somewhere and it's like just full of ping pong balls cuz people actually use them and they're, um, various bits and pieces need repaired. So that's, but it's, it's, is there a question? They have these extrinsic motivators, like you mentioned, uh, unlimited pto the culture set so that you can actually take it. Is there an expectation that that will happen? I mean, unlimited PTO can be a trap where suddenly it's, oh, I'm gonna take this PTO that I think I'm allowed to. But there's a company culture where you actually can take way less PTO than you would have if it was yours. Right.

Bekah: 21:22

Yeah. I've seen a lot more job descriptions out there saying unlimited paid, uh, paid time off. But mandatory two weeks off or something like that to indicate that we have this, but we are going to force you to take off two weeks. And even at my company, we have unlimited P T O, but we also have company-wide days off that are usually, you know, some type of holiday that we. um, em embrace as a company, right? And so at the very least, uh, those days, everybody will get off. And that doesn't, that doesn't happen everywhere anymore either. I'm really, it amazes me that there are companies out there that say, Hey, you get two or three weeks off during the year. If you wanna use 'em on those days, use 'em on those days. But we're not taking company wide holidays, which is kind of mind.

Arthur: 22:16

I find that for a lot of cases to be, um, I mean that's where, where I work does that, it's easier from an administrative standpoint. It's also, it can be more flexible for a diverse workplace. Um, especially when, you know, a lot of major holidays in the US are religious to an extent, um, or at least some of the, you know, the huge ones. And so it's a question of, okay, well how do you, how do you accommodate things like Ramadan at your workplace? Um, so it can be a way to do that, but a lot of cases it's not, it's just an, you know, it's a little easier to be an accounting, uh, to manage it from an accounting perspective. And then it's a question, like you said, it's, am I gonna work that day? Well, I should. Okay. I guess I'm gonna, you know, maybe I'll work remote now after the pandemic, but I'm still, you know, gonna clock the hours.

Bekah: 23:07

Yeah. And all of those things are super tricky, especially in the remote world where it's almost like work doesn't ever turn off. Especially if you're working on a team that has people in lots of different time zones or you know, if they're a global organization, then somebody is always working. And I know, like, at least from my perspective, I have a hard time turning work off, you know? Slack or email on my phone frequently. And sometimes I'll delete them and then it's like, well, I'm traveling so I need to ha have access to this somehow and it gets back on my phone. But, but there's this, I think that tech can be really hard right now in the fact that it's, it can be very hard to turn off because of the continued, somebody is always working right.

Arthur: 23:51

Mm-hmm. Well, and some people like it, like I have coworkers. I way more time than I would ever want to spend. But to them, it's not a question of, being unsustainable. That's just the pace that they like and the way that they like to work. And you get, you can get trapped, kind of holding yourself up to a standard for somebody else that doesn't meet your, your lifestyle. Uh, but you can also get trapped by, I mean, I talked about kind of my journey concentric, right? Um, as you. Okay, so let's start with the thesis. Um, that tech is actually creative work.

Bekah: 24:30

Hmm.

Arthur: 24:30

really engineering work. Um, I know that's a huge bombshell for argument, but. Tech is in, a lot of tech is not. We're doing the same thing over and over. It is, we're kind of doing the same thing, but these things are different and it's weirdly innovative and new in this way, and this situation is different. The user wants this piece slightly different this time. So there's a bunch of novelty every time. And that novelty means that we have to be creative. And the thing about creative work is that, I mean, you can go ask the UX folks at your work. I mean, if they'd been through like a. Curriculum. Right? Um, they learn fairly quickly that there is no turning that off. Uh, there is no moment where your brain won't tap you on the shoulder and be like, Hey, that thing you thought you were, you know, you were thinking about. Uh, yeah. We have the answer to that now. if you can't, I mean, trust me, if we could turn the brain off, it would be, life would be a lot easier on a number of fronts, but

Dan: 25:32

True.

Arthur: 25:33

if, if you know you since you can't turn it off, how do you navigate that balance between, or, or find a balance between, um, hey, this is when my brain decides that it would be productive for me to work, versus how do I maintain that balance, you know, that, that the distance between me and the actual job so that the job doesn't flow backward into my life and define me. And that's, um, I mean, there's no simple answer to that.

Bekah: 26:03

Yeah, if there is, let me know cuz I

Dan: 26:05

Yeah.

Bekah: 26:05

been working on that.

Dan: 26:07

I love that framing though. The, the job floating, floating back. Wait, how did you say it? I'm sorry. Cuz it was

Arthur: 26:13

Yeah. The job flowing backward into your life.

Dan: 26:15

flowing backward into your life. Yeah, that was, I, I I love that. Um, just that framing of that whole problem. It, it's such a, that's a really nice metaphor. I'm, I'm a collector of metaphors and I, I like that one. Uh, and it's a problem in it, and it's like a great way to frame it, right? Because you, you know, you, you have a job and. Obsessively need to get work done and all that stuff. But you don't want your job necessarily to be defining things. And I think we talk about it or defining things in your life, you know, and I think we talk about it in different ways. Work-life balance is like a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. All all that stuff. But that idea of that flow, you know, and, and having your decisions, like what is driving your. Decision making in your life, uh, is, I mean, that's obviously, like you said, that's a big problem and, and not an easy answer, but, um, I think that framing is, is really useful and I, I like that idea,

Arthur: 27:03

Well, and it's easy things to be like. It's an easy thing to say, Hey, we pro, we strive to promote a good work-life balance here. Um, and then you get into the thick of it. Like, I mean, like Bekah was talking about companies that promote that. As, you know, here we, you know, we love to balance work and play or whatever, and I mean, sometimes that's a huge red flag. Um, Especially like the phrase, work hard, play hard, like that one's a huge red flag. Um,

Dan: 27:30

Nope, Nope.

Arthur: 27:31

but. It's easy to say that. And then what you see in practice is a series of exceptions where it's, oh, well, just this once, okay, just this time, well, this thing's happening and I need to get this done. And th and tho it's a death of a thousand cuts where, um, that those exceptions become the norm and they define the norm. And if you don't have cultural. Guardrails around that at a corporate level, at a team level. Cuz it can't just be corporate. It has to actually be at the team levels as well. Cause it's easy, again, to say at the corporate level, well, don't do this in your teams. And then the manager, you know, it happens and the manager gets a slap on the wrist and says, don't do that with your teams. And meanwhile their team is burnt out and chattered. Um, so it, it's, you can't just, especially, you know, if you're. I know through in Virtual Coffee you have a lot of folks that are breaking into dev, into, into being devs. You don't have a ton of power there. Um, especially since there is a, there's often a high supply of new devs, right? It is a career that does pay a lot. Um, it has a lot of upward mobility. It has a bunch of cool benefits. Like you get to work with code, you get to work with really cool problems. Uh, it is a desirable career, so the supply of new devs can often. You know, large, and that means that you have less leverage. So, you know, as a junior dev, it's really hard to be like, no, I'm gonna go do disc golf tomorrow and not show up at work. Like, you can't, how, how do you have that discussion with your manager when your manager is like, but the client is, you know, having this, you know, there's a hair fire and you have to deal with it and you're the only one that can handle it. Um, so as some of that has to be at that level of the manager doing, Um, that guidance, but it can't, again, it can't just be the manager either. It has, that actually has to exist almost like fractally at each level of the organization where everybody is working to protect that because everybody benefits from it.

Dan: 29:37

My, my wife at her last job had a bad culture like that, you know, the, the, like, the bad example of this. And she was a manager, you know, in her own right and she felt very strongly ab, you know, in favor of protecting her, you know. You know, her direct reports and things like that. But it's exactly what you're saying happened, you know, is that she would protect the people that reported to her, but nobody was protecting her. And, and so she got burned out. Honestly, she got burned out. Her man, her, her reportees were like, loved her and was like, you're the best manager ever. And she's like, I'm getting out of here You know, like right now, cuz uh, is is the same thing cuz it was a, it was a cultural thing. It went way. to the top, you know? Um, so I, I was wondering, you know, listening to you talk and, and, um, with the amount of like, thought you've put into this, uh, do you have any advice for people who find themselves especially, especially, uh, lower, you know, uh, newer devs, do you have any advice for people who find themselves in those situations? Um, where they are, they don't have a lot of power. They don't have a lot of, you know, they can't like throw their weight around but are being asked to. maybe do things that they are, that are outside of where they would like their boundaries to be. Um, you know, like is there any actual advice aside from finding a new job? Uh, which is a fine piece of advice, honestly, that I've given before, but not, you know, not always, uh, possible So,

Arthur: 30:57

I mean, it's a, I often, I have a toll talk on burnout that I talk about, and it's like one of the options for burnout is find a new job. But not everybody can do that for a lot of different reasons. Um,

Dan: 31:06

it, it could take a long time too, so you could still be stuck. Yeah.

Arthur: 31:10

So my best advice in those cases is kind of to, I tend to think of it in terms of almost Aikido. Um, Which is, if you're not familiar, it's a martial arts style that is very focused on, um, as they would frame it, like redirection of energy. And what they mean by that is typically that in Aikido it is entirely defensive. Um, and you are typically taking somebody, throwing a punch at you, somebody throwing a kick at you, and you. Blocking, but taking that energy and re taking their motion, their momentum, their actual velocity, and redirecting it in a direction that you want, um, you can use those moments to kind of do the same thing to haggle in the moment about, okay, if we're gonna do this, then we need something else. Like, what can you give me in that moment? Right? Because in those moments, you do have a little more power of. They want this exception, they want this thing. You can turn around and say, you know, accept that thing and try and in the, you know, the best terms of improv. Yes. And it, right. Um, where you're giving them what they want and then trying to go, okay, but I would like comp time tomorrow for this. Or, can you give me off Friday so that I can go to this appointment? if you're not making a ton of leverage, they're trying to, I mean, not to, um, immediately politicize it, but trying to almost unionize to some degree of, can you as a team define your working structure as a uh, individual? Can you find other people who agree with you about, Hey, we don't want to do X, we don't want to do Y. And try and make that the norm inside of your team itself. Um, And the key thing here is you don't wanna try, I mean, you don't wanna alienate the manager, right? Because if you start doing that, then you wind up in a situation where you've immediately created an US versus then situation. And once you do that, there's a whole bunch of human psychology that starts coming into play where it's so much easier to demonize the other person to, uh, believe that they are, you know, that their actions are due to innate, um, attributes. Uh, there's this thing called the, well, in this case it would be the ultimate attribution error where, um, We have what's called in groups and outgroups, where an in-group is a group you're part of, and an OUTGROUP is a group that you're not part of. Um, we tend to believe that our outgroups, you know, groups that we're not part of, they behave certain ways because of innate attributes of those groups. Um, so as an example, like qa, people are all extremely persnickety and uptight, right? Or, you know, for the opposite way, devs are completely loose and utterly lazy and have no, you know, rigor or, uh, coherence to their work. Right.

Dan: 34:04

Right.

Arthur: 34:06

neither true, but it's easy when you're on the other side of it looking in and it's, it's a shortcut your brain takes basically to go, okay, we can think about people in this way. Um, So alienating your manager and you want to kind of pull them in and be like, okay, you're part of the team. We are together on this. We all want to succeed. Um, which is true to an extent in that you have a shared goal, um, with, you know, the rest of your team. You, I at least hopefully all want to deliver good software. Right. And I mean, if you don't, then you're in a harder position where now you have to try and find something that does unify you, um, with this manager, et cetera. I mean, in the cases where you can't make any inroads and you can't, you know, they're completely, uh, othering you, as in they're gonna manage at you and they don't consider themselves part of the team. Those are harder situations, and those are the ones where I would start going. Maybe you can try and find a lateral move in the company. Maybe you can try and, you know, um, yeah.

Dan: 35:11

Yeah, no, there, there is. I mean, there definitely are just situations where the manager is either unaware of those issues and, you know, or, or, or knows about 'em and doesn't care. right? Like, you know, they're feeling pressure from above somehow. And, you know, uh, they deal with it in, in different ways, obviously.

Arthur: 35:29

Well, I mean, they can

Dan: 35:30

times where there's, where there's no solution really with

Arthur: 35:32

they can be burned out

Dan: 35:33

a manager. Right? Exactly. Yeah. And like lots of people, I think, experience burnout in different ways. And react, react, reacted to burnout in different ways. Um, or just even pre burnout, you know, like, uh, stress you know, people react to, uh, all sorts of inputs in different ways. So, um

Arthur: 35:51

once you're at a manager level, um, there's all kinds of internal status things that start pinging in your head about, you know, uh, human group dynamic stuff that starts caring about like, oh, I have a certain amount of status in this group, in this, in this workplace, and. This is where like if you're, this is where the Aikido thing comes in. Cuz if you start immediately coming against them, they start responding. And this is a challenge to their authority.

Dan: 36:19

Mm-hmm.

Arthur: 36:20

not necessarily because they're bad people, right? Uh, this is just a natural human thing to, especially if you're doing it in public, in meetings, their brain, like, you know, the monkey brain starts screaming, just going like, duh, what do you do? Like, you've gotta stand up for yourself. You've gotta demonstrate that you are in charge. Um, and I mean, that's something they can combat and should be working to combat, right? But, uh, it is definitely a human response to respond that way or to feel those emotions in that moment. Uh, and so what if you can help them through that? Uh, that makes it a little easier to have those negotiations, to have those discuss.

Dan: 37:01

Yeah. Right. Uh, yeah, if, if you can like align on the goals, like you said, everybody want on the team wants to make a good product or whatever, right? And so keeping that goal, Mind, you know, um, seems like a way to work together, to, to get things done right. Uh, and like there's, there's deadlines, there's, you know, always, oh, probably lots of times. Too much work for everybody. And, you know, um, just kind of remembering, I think you said remember that the other person has like emotions and has, you know, their own, their own things going on. Uh, I think we'll take you a long way. Um, I try to use that, that sort of empathy in all, all these kinds of situations, but that. Um, you know, human thinking, like remembering the people on the other end of anything is, are people right? And have their own have their own. Uh, Hey Bekah, you okay? You just smacked your microphone there,

Bekah: 37:53

Sorry, trying to come back quiet.

Dan: 37:57

yeah, yeah. You know, you failed at that one. Um, but what I was saying was, um, remembering that people have their own motivations and trying to figure out what they are, you know, uh, it, I mean, it can help you in a lot of ways. I think people have talked about that with winning. Winning haggling situations, but like it can help you and just not in that and not in devious ways, but like understanding where people are coming from, um, I think can help you get what you want and also what they want together, Right. That's,

Arthur: 38:24

Well, that's exactly it.

Dan: 38:25

that's the ideal,

Arthur: 38:26

We often approach conflict as a, um, uh, what ar shown term model one, um, which is a, it is an, a combative, uh, zero sum game where you are working to control the emotions of the other participant. Um, where you are, if you win, they lose and vice versa. And if we look at conflict in that lens, y. I mean, it's possible, but you're in for a hard fight right now. You've gotta bat somebody down. If you're a manager, you're trying to do things like, uh, have quick conversations so that you are the, there's no time for the emotion. It's like, well, here's your performance review and this is, and here's the things that you can do to improve. And then the, and the meeting's over and the person's still like sitting there processing their own emotions. Um, but you win because you don't have to have the hard conversation or, you know, see them. And emotionally respond to any of it. Um, and the alternative to model one is model two, which is, I mean, they're not great at naming things, but, um, it is a, a collaborative win-win approach where you are recognizing that conflict is, is inherently emotional, that humans are inherently emotional and you're respecting and acknowledging the emotions of others, including yourself. and attempting to find a situation that benefits all parties to a, you know, it's stereotypical, but to find those win-win situations.

Dan: 39:57

Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead.

Bekah: 40:00

was just gonna say, like, I, I think as part of that, it's really important to understand how people communicate, right? Like for me, I, my emotions go from zero to a hundred in like a split second, right? And so if there's a situation that I know is going to be an emotional one, I'll ask people like, Hey, can you gimme a heads up before we talk about this? Or, I'm, I'm getting better at saying like, before I just like jump into my emotional response. Can we take a step back and talk about this later? Uh, because I know that I'm not going to give the response that I want to be giving, and it's not gonna be productive for anyone in that situation, right? And I think that. Understanding that we communicate in different ways, that we, um, we receive feedback in different ways is incredibly important to finding that place where you can have that productive conversation where you can have those hard conver, nobody, I mean, I don't think anybody likes to have hard conversations. I don't, it takes a lot of work to do that, right? And so finding the best way to do that. Is going to benefit everyone and then you'll be able to grow through those conversations.

Arthur: 41:15

I think what you're, there's two things I want I want to touch on that you pulled, you mentioned, um, the first is that there is some degree of, uh, the concept's called it kind of called managing upward. Um, but it works regardless of. The description of the concept is that you are providing information to your superiors about how you work and what the best way to manage you is. Um, there is a tendency to believe that just because somebody is a manager, that they have. All seeing human powers, um, is absolutely not true. Uh, you know, they're, they're just people like you, right? So they don't necessarily, I mean, in a lot of cases, especially in tech, they are somebody who was really good at the tech side. And it's like, well, what's the program motion path? Well, now you're a tech lead. great. And you have all of these human things that you've never had any training in and never, you don't have a ton of experience in. Um, so helping them out and be like, well, this is how I respond to things. This is the best way to tell me about X. This is the best way to do that can help. But that doesn't have to be just that their manager that can actually be at your entire team. This is the best way to work with me. This is the way that I tend to respond to things. But the other piece that Bekah mentioned that I wanna pull up is, is making space for your emotions and making space for emotions and work in general. Um, which sounds like, I mean, we're, you know, in the tech space, so it's like har, we don't want to talk about any of that. Um, god forbid we ever admit that we're angry about something or, you know, upset or scared about something. Um, I think that recognizing and making space for your own emotions is important. So as a, as a perfect example for Junior Debs, um, if you didn't go through like again, an art school education, um, art school, they, they train you about on how to literally separate yourself from your creations. We don't get that. What we get is, You code. If you do good code, you are good developer. And that in like ties our concept of, wait, the, the flip side of that is if I don't code well I'm not a good developer. So when we start doing peer reviews or pull request or whatever your methodology is for these things, or even peer programming, um, Where you code a thing and somebody says, that's not right, here's the right way to do it. Now you've got a moment in your brain where your brain is like, oh no, I've gotten conflicting information. Um, I wanna believe I'm a good developer, but somebody has just told me I did a bad thing. So am bad developer, and it helps to have a moment to go. Okay. I'm just, I know that I'm gonna respond to this poorly, so I'm going to, like Bekah said, take a moment to go. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Or in a case of a peer review, to explicitly be like, I'm gonna take a minute to think about this. Um, and that could go for being a reviewer as well. I know there are moments where I look at like the PR and, uh, I, I, you know, make a comment. I'm like, I don't like this. I don't know why I don't like this, but I'm gonna try and figure it out. Give me 24 hours. And I'd sit back like, cuz I'm having an immediate gut response of like, that's wrong cuz my brain is telling me that. And I don't necessarily know why. So I give myself some time to think about it, to chew on it, and I come back to it and I go, okay, if I have a reason, I can put the reason in. If I don't have a reason, I basically say, all right, I don't still don't like it, but I don't have a reason for it. So go ahead. Um,

Dan: 44:48

yeah. That's awesome. I That's a great idea on a poll request too, cuz Yeah. I was, you. Wanna get it, like to hit submit. You want to have all of your thoughts in order. But I think that idea of saying, Hey man, like, you know, just like, pause on this for a second cuz like something, you know, I wanna think about this a little bit longer. You know, I'm not ignoring your poll request. You know what I mean? Uh, I just wanna like get through it. I think that's great advice. I like that.

Arthur: 45:11

It just gives them a little breathing room from, I mean, it's a space for those emotions to exist, right? And the same thing can be true, especially in things like retrospectives. We, I mean, if you're using an agile philosophy or whatever, or you know, explicitly scrum, you get these retrospectives. And a lot of the time it's. Um, okay, well, we're gonna make complaints about a bunch of things that we can't control. uh, or a bunch of completely superfluous, like, oh, well, maybe we could be slightly better about pointing things. This, like, you're, you're nibbling around the edges of these, um, I don't wanna say useless, but not often super productive, uh, changes that you make to the way that your process works, et cetera. Instead of asking questions about, well, what are the emotions we have about this? What are people getting frustrated about? Um, and what are the things that, I mean, we've used a, a thing in our own retros, like, uh, on the team I'm currently on, it's like the, the glad, mad, sad retro board. Like they're a million different types of retros. Cuz at this point I think somebody has a job where they're just cranking 'em out. Um, but like we use, like, we use this one where it's explicitly these emotional columns and. Like we've drained the emotion out of the actual things that we're putting under these individual columns. We're not talking about it in terms of, um, Hey, I'm actually really glad that this thing happened. I'm actually, uh, really upset that this particular thing happened. I'm mad about this particular thing, or, I'm really sad that this, you know, this thing occurred. Um, and it, it's a question of like if, um, Agile methodologies, they'll do like fist of five. Have you ever heard of that? Like, um, it's kind of a confidence thing after you do your planning where it's like, how confident are you that you can actually deliver what's in the sprint? And what's interesting to me is that that is a. weird performative kind of thing. Most of the time when I've seen it used, uh, where it's, if you have a, like, if you have dare to raise a one as like, I'm not sure. Um, it's like the whole team comes, like the, the whole force of the team comes to bear on you. This tremendous normative force to be like, why are you not conforming? and suddenly you've got to like, I mean, and the same thing can be true even if you're just doing normal pointing, right? I mean, like, that's the, the Agile joke is like, well, everything's a three because there's this, again, tremendous normative force to push. if you have something that's outside where it's a one or you have a, an eight, or God forbid, like a 13, if you're doing like FE numbers or whatever, um, there's this tremendous force to be like, why is that the case and not to. You know, to recognize that typically those things mean that there is an emotion there. If I'm looking at it as a 13, it isn't just that it's technically difficult, that could be the case, but in a lot of cases it's, I'm scared there's risk here, right? Or we've tried something like this before in the past and it didn't work, and I'm afraid that it might not work again. But we never frame it in that term and we should. we should be talking about. I am scared about this. Why am I scared about this? I'm, you know, we're in the middle of a, a revamp of, um, some code that is, uh, let's just say, let's be charitable and say it was hastily written. Um, there were externalities that, that has had to deal

Dan: 48:50

I just, just call it legacy code. It'll be fine.

Arthur: 48:54

this. This is the most legacy code I've ever seen. Um, I mean in, in, in real talk, some of the ca the code that we are working with is 25 years old.

Bekah: 49:04

Wow.

Arthur: 49:05

Um, there are nine different languages on this project. Uh, yeah, it's exciting. So there's a lot of emotions, and we are currently supporting this, this code that's, I mean, it's in production, it's running, and there is a lot of emotions around. I am afraid that we're on the hook for something that we're, you know, code we didn't. and code that we don't understand, still don't understand. And being able to literally say those words that I am, I am scared of. This, opens the door to a better understanding instead of having to, to wrap it in, um, the trappings of, of scientific, you know, fake science basically. Well, I'm worried about, you know, I mean, even, you know, words like the externalities that I used, right? Like we're we wrap it in terms like that, where it's like there's a lot of externalities, this code, there's a bunch of complexity, there's a bunch of technical debt. We've made up words that basically all mean the same thing, which is like, it, it's a nasty, dark thicket of code and I'm scared of it, right? That doesn't mean that there isn't reason for it, right? We also dismiss the emotions as as, as irrational or. Less valuable than a narrative cognitive explanation, but in, in a lot of cases, they're equally valuable, at least in terms of understanding your situation and, and the human element of it, and understanding what the next path forward is. If you're scared of the thing, you fix that by understanding it, you fix that by starting to go through and figuring out what the replacement is, what the path forward is. Right? I mean, going back to the, the human behavioral health side of things, right? There's the. The idiom that, um, anxiety lives in uncertainty and the more you can be certain about something, the less fear room there is for fear in that environment.

Dan: 51:03

Yeah, absolutely. I, I've had the experience many times and we, we, uh, Oh, just today it went out. Um, with, with Kai, we, we talked about that. Uh, I've, like me personally, I've had this experience of just avoiding things that I should learn or should do just because it was. A big ball of unknown, you know? And my brain had, my brain was just like, no, run away from this. You don't know anything. Like, you don't understand it. It's like it's, you know, it's, it's like that, it's exactly the dark thicket, you know, like, I'm just gonna skirt around this, this instead of diving in, you know? Um, but I guess to extend the metaphor, right? Get a flashlight and a me a compass and,

Arthur: 51:38

Or a machete.

Dan: 51:39

Or a machete. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Uh, one way or the other. Figure out how to, how to, how to get through it, you know? Uh, yeah. I.

Bekah: 51:49

Well, Arthur, I wanna say we're, um, at about time and I wanna thank you so much for chatting with us today. I know that these are, this one of those conversations that I could have had for probably another three hours and found so much value. So, first of all, I wanna know when your book is coming out because I wanna read it and I would love to see you put something out there like that.

Arthur: 52:12

I probably should at some point. I'm actually working on a course for, um, folks at work that want to get into speaking and I'm up to like 98 pages, so I don't think I'm accidentally writing a book about that. Um, so we'll see if that happens, but if it does, maybe there will be another one.

Bekah: 52:28

That would be amazing. Uh, and I'm gonna end with our last question, which is, what is one word you would use to describe yourself?

Arthur: 52:38

I think my one word is idiosyncratic. Um, I love that word because I think it describes like it is just about being slightly different, about approaching things a different way, about, um, not being what you would expect, and that I feel like that summarizes a lot of my life.

Dan: 52:58

Pull up that.

Bekah: 52:59

Yeah. I appreciate that. I think it, it, that's a really nice way to. Word to pair up with the concentric circles in the journey that you're talking about, because it is that different perspective. So thank you so much for sharing that with us and for sharing the time with us on the podcast today.

Arthur: 53:15

Thanks very much for having me.

Dan: 53:17

Yeah. Thank you Arthur. We'll see you. Uh, see you soon.

Arthur: 53:19

See you.

Dan: 53:23

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. This episode was produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel. If you have questions or comments you can hit us up on Twitter at VirtualCoffeeIO, or email us at podcast@virtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, sign up for the newsletter, check out any of our other resources on our website VirtualCoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring Virtual Coffee you can find out more information on our website at VirtualCoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week!

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.