050: From Ambition to Action: Career Planning Insights with Mark Herschberg

00:00 - 00:27 | Mark: Engineers are not people who like just being told what to do. They want to understand. True leadership is what we call influential leadership. People like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, they were not elected to an office. They did not have formal command of people, but they said, I have a vision or a dream and got other people to buy into that and to follow them. Not from authority, not from control, but from true leadership.
00:28 - 01:36 | Christopher: Welcome to the podcast for financially focused technology employees. Are you working for equity? Do you have questions on how your career and money work together? Then welcome. Every week we discuss strategies and tactics for how to grow your career, build wealth and reach your financial and lifestyle goals. Welcome to this episode of Tech Careers and Money Talk. I'm excited to be here today with Mark Herschberg. Mark is a serial startup and public company CTO and CPO. That's Chief Product Officer for all of those out there. He's worked in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, healthcare, and other sectors. And one of the reasons that we're talking today is he's an author of a book, a very compelling book called The Career Toolkit. The Career Toolkit helps technology employees understand how to assemble a set of tools that can help them navigate the challenges that are tech careers. He's also been a lecturer at MIT for 20 plus years. And the fun fact is he was at one point a top ranked ballroom dancer. and is known for his annual Halloween party. Welcome to Tech Careers and Money Talk, Mark.

01:36 - 01:39 | Mark: Thanks for having me on the show. It's my pleasure to be here.

01:39 - 02:11 | Christopher: Well, great. And, you know, digging into your book and digging into your content, it's obvious that you and I are of like minds that Technology employees as they're embarking on this journey need to have a career plan and need to at least, while they may not have the ultimate destination in mind, like they need to at least have, you know, one or two steps. Please define for us what you call a career plan and how you think tech employees today can start mapping theirs out.

02:12 - 04:49 | Mark: The best way to think about a career plan for this type of audience, I would say, think about any of your project plans. Imagine if your boss came to you on January 1st and said, here is a critical project. 50% of the company's revenues depend on this project. You've got a year to get it done. What would you do? Would you say, OK, got it. Well, I guess I'll see you December 31st and cross your fingers. Hopefully we'll achieve it. That's obviously insanity. No man would accept that. Instead, what do you do? You say, okay, this is what we need to achieve. We have to be there by December 31st. Let's create a timeline. That means we have to be in testing, say by November 1st, we have to have the integration completed or maybe started in September, right? We can backtrack and put these milestones. Now, you don't know exactly what you're doing on September 17th, and I can do that January 1st. That's fuzzy, but you've got those broad placeholders. On the other hand, you should have a clear idea of what you're doing next week. You shouldn't say, I don't know, figure it out. Say, OK, we've got to start reach out to these vendors, start creating this architecture, create these details, estimate this. The earlier part of your career plan is going to be a little clearer And further out, it gets a little fuzzier. Now, the other key thing that we can learn from our project planning is we all know whatever plan you set out January 1st, that's not the plan you actually follow. We know it's going to change. We know nothing goes according to plan, but that's why we have check-ins. Whether we're doing a scrum and every two weeks we do a small adjustment, or whatever other type of project plan you use, say, let's adjust. And in fact, we even know come July, the CEO can come in and say, listen, I know we've been aiming to do this, but change of plans, we're going to do something slightly different. All right, that's what we're doing now. That's what happens in our careers. It's not set in stone. And this is what trips people up. How can I know what I'm doing in three or four years? Well, how do you know what's happening on the project in month 11? You don't, you have a plan and you'll change that plan as you go. So here's a simple technique you can do right now. I'm going to ask you to pause the podcast, but you have to promise to come back. Pause the podcast, create a calendar event that says, think about my career and set it as a recurring event every six months. And now you've just created that process that every six months, you're going to sit down and say, Hey, let me just pause. Let me check. Am I on path? Do I need to change the path? Just like you do with your regularly, regularly scheduled project meetings.

04:49 - 05:10 | Christopher: So Mark, when you're, when you're thinking about a career plan, how do you think about, you know, titles versus skills? right in that because right titles, I think are the destination. I think sometimes people focus so much on the title, but they don't think about what are the underlying skills that they need to get there. How do you how do you think about that?

05:11 - 06:24 | Mark: I think about my title, CTO. If you're a CTO at a eight person company, you've got what, two developers? What are you doing? You're coding, because that's what you need to do. On the other side of the spectrum, if you're CTO of an 80,000 person company, not only are you not touching code, your direct reports, direct reports probably don't even look at code. Right. It's not about the title. It's about the level of responsibilities. Now, we just use title as a proxy for that. Now, for some people, they really do care about the title. And there's something to be said, I think about the captain of a ship. If you're the captain of a ship, you have the power, for example, to marry people, right, or do certain other things, right? Whether it's an aircraft carrier, or a tiny tugboat, you are a captain and you have certain legal rights and certain cool things you can do. On the other hand, it's very different being the captain of a tugboat where you might have a single first mate versus that aircraft carrier with a couple thousand people. So you have to decide, do you care about the title or do you care about the type of work and responsibility and do what's right for you?

06:24 - 07:00 | Christopher: Right, because I see it's interesting because I think in tech, It is so easy for people to pick out a title, but not be clear on the fact that, you know, getting back to your analogy that the captain of a tugboat, the captain of a super tanker have completely different levels of responsibility. So building, like focusing on, on skills and you think about it like technical skills, you think about soft skills and things to go with it. You know, how do we, when people are putting together their annual career plans, you know, how much is skill development a part of those particular plans?

07:00 - 09:48 | Mark: By the way, even though in the last question, one other facet is even two people with the same title at the same company might have different roles. A lot of my companies, the CEOs, early in my company would say, well, you're the CTO. Why would you ever possibly leave the office? No, you don't talk to customers. That doesn't make sense. You don't belong at this conference. Well, I kind of like to understand how it's working, especially because I'd be running product too. They felt, nope, that's not your job. I've had other companies where they've said, yes, get out, talk to customers. We want to put you at conferences, even speaking at conferences, same title, same size, but different aspect. Now, you asked a question about soft skills. Here's how I think about soft skills. We're going to do a little bit of math. I know that works just fine with this audience. We're going to go back to middle school math. Imagine you have a rectangle that's four by 10. And I ask you to increase one of the sides by two units to maximize the area. Now, if you need to pause the podcast, feel free to pause for a moment. Now you've thought of that, you know that to maximize the area, we add to the short side. We go from four to six for 60 units. The other way is only 48. Okay, what does this have to do with soft skills? Conceptually, by putting the two units on the short side, those two units get amplified by the 10. If we put the two units on the 10, they're only amplified by the four. All of us have long sides and short sides, more than two in fact. Now, one of our long sides is probably technology. We understand it better than most. And we absolutely have to keep up with it. I'm using technologies that did not exist when I began my career. And if I wasn't paying attention, I'd be out of a job. So do work on those long sides. But for every unit of effort you put in, you get a better ROI on the short side. Putting time into the short sides increases your overall area, your overall capability. As an analogy, we've probably all met in our careers, some technologist who is brilliant, super technical, really smart, but boy, this person is really hard to follow. We can do it because we're technical, but you put a non-technical person in the room with him and they just get lost and go, I'm sure he's smart. He sounds smart. I don't get it. He can't sell his ideas. And he would benefit not from another unit of be even more technical, but from let's talk about how you can communicate more effectively. That would make him more effective overall. So all of us have long sides and short sides. For many people, those short sides are the soft skills. That's where we should look to invest some of our time because we'll get a much better ROI.

09:49 - 10:02 | Christopher: And so where do you see where do you see people in this process of career planning? Where do you see them going wrong? What do you what are some of the more common mistakes that people make in this process that, you know, people listening today can avoid?

10:02 - 11:51 | Mark: First, they just get overwhelmed and they go back to how do I know five years from now or what if something happens? Well, things will happen, just like on our projects. You never know when. Guess what? We're getting sued. change a plan or there's a merger or something else or someone quits a partnership change of plans in our careers. There will be recessions. There will be mergers. Your boss who promised you a promotion will leave. There will be global pandemics. That's just par for the course. And we know that in our career. So don't get overwhelmed by how do I know the future. Our jobs, any project we've done, involves that uncertainty. Next, it's making sure you do that check-in process. It's not set in stone, and it's okay to adjust. But now, also remember, you are not alone. On your projects, you're likely not alone. You don't have to come up with all the answers. You have teammates. some above you, some below you, some peers, you're happy to take information and help from anyone. The same thing is true for your career. Now, the fact that you're listening to this podcast, great step. You're already doing the right thing because you're getting great advice from these shows. You can get advice, hopefully, from your manager and HR. Unfortunately, not always. Some companies and managers are good. Not all of them are. But you can also get advice from podcasts like this. from articles from industry associations. You can get advice from peers from friends. You can talk to other people. You can meet people in community groups. I'm a member of the New York CTO club and this is great because we have other people we could say how are you doing with this or I'm a CTO at this size company by one be at that size company. How do you do it and get input. So do ask for help. Do look for outside input.

11:52 - 12:00 | Christopher: And do you find mentorship or peers tend to be the ones that contribute most to your career plan?

12:00 - 13:09 | Mark: I think it's different for different people and how you tend to gather and synthesize information. Importantly, don't think it has to come from above, because peers, people even in other industries, even people seemingly less senior than you might have insights you can use. So here's an example. You might be talking to someone and she says, you know, in my company, I was in this office, I was doing very well and they hit a certain level and got stuck. And then what I learned is that this organization, you really have to put in some time back at headquarters. You have to spend time at our corporate headquarters, really meeting people and building those relationships. So I did a two-year stint there, and that opened the door, and then I got promoted, and everything moved forward. I think, huh, you know what? I've noticed I seem to be stuck. I've noticed most people in my office, they hit that level. Let me kind of feel around and go, wow, okay, that's the unwritten rule in my office. So she was not your mentor. She's not even in your industry, but she gave you insight that's applicable. So be broad in how you look for ideas.

13:09 - 13:27 | Christopher: So when we're thinking to these six months check-in or more frequent and somebody is sitting down to think about their career, what would be three or five writing prompts or things that they should be thinking about when they're just getting started in this process?

13:28 - 15:22 | Mark: We can again, I talk about this in the book, but I'm going to use very engineering software examples here because that works with audience. Think about it just like your project plan. Say, okay, we're now in quarter two. I know by the end of this quarter, here's where we need to be. Here's where we are. What's that gap? What do we need to achieve? These features or answer these questions or this design. Let's make sure we achieve that by the end of the quarter. So when I think about a career plan, what I suggest to people is you actually have different phases. You have a short-term, intermediate and long-term plan. Your short-term is a year or two. That is concretely, I need to get better at public speaking. What will I be doing? I will be maybe joining Toastmasters. Maybe I'll take a class or get coaching. I'm going to ask my manager to give me opportunities to do more speaking at the company. I'm going to ask for feedback. Very specific concrete things that are on a clear schedule. Your intermediate. Now this might be three to five years, three to eight years. This is OK. After I get that public speaking done I know next I need to get a little bit stronger on reading financial reports. I also want to do better on marketing. That's what I'm going to tackle next. I'm lining up I think there's some classes and some books and that's what I've got planned. It may change by the time I get there but I've got a plan. And then longer term you say here's some other stuff that I'll get to. That's just that's the far backlog. And eventually, it's not even scheduled in the sprints yet. You've got your current sprint, you've got your next few sprints planned out, and then you've got your backlog, and it's in some order, and that might change. So think about short, intermediate, and long-term plans. And again, the nearer term is a lot more well-defined and you're executing on it, and it gets fuzzier at each of those stages.

15:22 - 16:03 | Christopher: And it sounds, you know, and part of a career plan is as you're executing is getting feedback, getting feedback so that you can have outside perspective on how you're achieving certain goals. Some of them, you know, if you're if you're going for a specific promotion, or You're looking to achieve a skill that is measurable, maybe quantifiably, that's going to be in front of you. But I think for certain feedback, especially around soft skills, leadership, influence, we're going to need feedback. What are some of the ways that have worked for you in seeking feedback to understand how your career plan is progressing?

16:03 - 18:09 | Mark: Great question. And unfortunately, I've had some good managers. I've had some not so good managers. And I think a lot of managers are very bad at giving this type of feedback. It's unfortunate. They're bad at giving feedback in general, most managers. They're especially bad when it comes to these soft skills. And the reason for this is most people don't put any time into learning them. They feel like you either know it or you don't. Now, these are learnable skills, but so often we find people, and people tend to be who managers are, They either say well I just naturally know it but I don't think about how I can't really explain it or they're not naturally good and they just don't know or don't care so they're not going to help you. Now you can certainly sit down with your manager and say in my career plan here's what I'm working on my short term plan the next 6 12 24 months. I want to get better at leadership or negotiating or whatever it is. Can you help me? Can you give me feedback? Maybe you'll get lucky, probably. Yeah, I guess, yeah, maybe, okay. But you don't know what to do. So what you need to do in those cases, first, remember, you can get feedback from others, not just your manager. You can get it from peers. You can get it from your rabbi, who might not be someone in your chain of command. You can get it from all sorts of people. Also, you can say, here is what I think. are the right metrics that will tell me if I am doing better. Let's take negotiations, for example. I would like to be involved in some of our partnerships or some of our vendor selections. I want to be part of the negotiation process. And at the end, let's see how those contracts are compared to how contracts have been in the past. Do we feel we have done better? And there are some measurable, maybe it's not quantitatively measurable if it's apples and oranges, but some degree of measurement we can do. So you might hold your manager's hand to help him help you.

18:09 - 19:09 | Christopher: Well, and that's and that's managing up. And I think when it's interesting, you know, I've had a similar observation is that when I made the decision to take control of my career, start drafting a plan, you may realize that your manager is not doing the same thing. And that can make them, again, depending on the person, somebody could lean in or they could lean away. And in that scenario for me, what really helped was being a part of a formal peer networking group because I found that if I wasn't getting that from my direct manager, having peers that could validate and help me understand my value. I mean, that ended up setting me up for a lateral move, meaning that I ended up leaving that company and taking those skills to another company. And then I was able to find a situation that was much more aligned with my plan from skill building, from the responsibilities that I was able to take. And sometimes I think people need to do that. Absolutely.

19:09 - 20:20 | Mark: These skills in particular are best learned through peer groups. When we think about our technical training, if there is a new software language, there's a new package, you can go watch a video, you can go to some seminars, you can say, okay, yep, I get it, do this, click here, this is how it works. Great. But these skills cannot be learned the way we learn chemistry or programming where you just memorize information. It's like learning sports or music. I can teach you the rules of baseball in a matter of minutes, but you actually need to play it and try and feel it out to get a sense of the game and get good at. And peer learning groups allow you to practice and reflect on these skills. If you don't have access to a peer learning group, then you should start your own, either within a company or find other people. In fact, a good place to start, other people listen to this podcast are people you know are interested in these skills. And a simple thing you can do to start is just find people and create a discussion around each one of these episodes. And you'll go deeper into what you're learning and even find ways to practice it.

20:20 - 21:17 | Christopher: It's true. And, you know, one of the most important things that I think you just said is if you can't find a networking group, start one. The people that I've seen, and I feel so lucky that I had the privilege of being able to join a already in place peer networking group that helped me accelerate my career. But I witnessed one person in particular start her own networking group and hers was around procurement in technology. And this was wind in the sails of her career. Not only were people like dying for somebody to have this conversation and were so excited when she started this group, but now She is owning and managing the group, and it's brought to her, you know, people seeing her as somebody with authority in the space, expertise in the space, and has brought a number of phenomenal career opportunities.

21:17 - 22:56 | Mark: I give an example in the book. Years ago, I had joined this online social network. I thought, let me get a couple people together for drinks. And what I thought would be six, eight people ballooned to about 250 people. Wow. I don't know, it was a combination of some luck and stars aligning, 250 people. I started saying, oh, damn, where do you put 250 people in Manhattan? That's right. Thankfully, the club owner reached out and said, listen, hey, I know you don't have a place. I've got a club. He was excited about 250 people showing up. I said, listen, we can open up an hour early to do a private event. Great. He saved me. But I looked like such a mocker. Here's a guy who can open up a private club and get 250 people show up and everyone wanted to meet me. I was brand new to this group, but I looked like I was the guy. And so when you create and organize an event, you don't have to be the expert in it. I don't feel like I don't know enough. It's like, hey, I'm just the organizer. But now everyone's going to get to know you. It's going to expand your network. It's going to raise your visibility, your personal brand. I highly recommend it. And when we give you the website at the end of this podcast, there's a free resources page, the very first resource on it. It's a free guide. You can download how to create such a group, either within your organization, that you can do it, or you give it to HR and say, can we start something like this? Or you can do it across organizations, create a local meetup group, post online, and you can start yourself. But absolutely join a group, or if you can't find one, start your own.

22:56 - 23:28 | Christopher: And the one thing I was going to add on to that, Mark, is you just have to be the person with the questions. You don't have to be the one that knows everything. You have to be the curious one that is bringing everyone together to say, I want to answer these questions, whether that's we can answer that here in the group, or who do we know that may have the answers that's excited to get in front of an audience? Because so many experts are excited to be able to get in front of an audience of people that are, you know, want to know answers to questions that they can answer.

23:28 - 24:22 | Mark: The even that's a really good point. And the even extra bonus, my friend, Olivia Fox Caban, she wrote the book called the charisma myth. And she says, one of the best ways to meet people, if you're on within an organization, the membership committee or the awards committee, And it's something you get to do with your podcast because you can reach out to someone and say, hey, you really successful person. I'd like to have you on the show. Now you're flattering the person. You're saying, I think you're smart. I want to put you in front of others. But you get to meet the person. As you and I know, we have conversations before and after what we're recording. So you as the organizer, you'll get to meet this person. Everyone gets the advice. They'll see her show up and do her talk, but you're going to have extra conversations with her. You're going to build that relationship and get to know this big name expert. So it's just extra tailwind, extra bonus when you're the organizer.

24:22 - 24:47 | Christopher: It really is. And so I think that's that's definitely something to highlight. And I'm excited to share the resource that you have with everyone. So we've gone through career planning, and I think we've answered a lot of questions. And I think just to sum it up, setting time in your calendar. And I also think you also have another resource, too, on the website that gives people a career plan, some basic questions to answer, too. Is that correct?

24:47 - 24:52 | Mark: Absolutely. On the site, also free, a list of career plan questions to start asking yourself.

24:53 - 25:36 | Christopher: Yes. And so I think, you know, the takeaway here is taking time to start thinking about planning is the next actionable step that you can take. And then thinking about short term, intermediate and long term goals are essential where, you know, you just have that crystal clarity on what you want to execute in the next 6, 12, possibly 18 months. And then you have some intermediate term goals that again are clear, but may have some wiggle room. And then you have, you know, your long-term goals, which those are, you know, directional markers. Those are definitely not set in stone. And leveraging skills that you know of a work breakdown structure to be able to reverse engineer and say, what do I need to be doing today, next week to be moving the ball forward?

25:37 - 26:01 | Mark: We said you wouldn't do this 12 month plan that's 50% of the company's revenue or the 12 month project without having a plan. Well, if you can't tackle that without a plan, how can you tackle your 10 or 20 year project as your career, which has 100% of your revenue? How would you possibly do that without a plan? So all your project planning skills you can apply to your career.

26:02 - 26:51 | Christopher: That's correct. And so we're going to put a bow on the career planning right now. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about career toolkit. Be right back. Okay, we are back for round two with Mark Herschberg. I think we talked about the career plan. Now we want to be filling up that bucket with a career toolkit. And I want you to give us an overview of what should go in the career toolkit. And I think there's a couple things that I really want to focus on for this conversation today is, is leadership you know, when people should start leading in their companies. And then also, you know, one of the things that you and I connected with before the call was on ethics, because sometimes those ethical decisions that you will have to make sneak up on you sooner rather than later.

26:51 - 28:15 | Mark: But you asked about what goes into the career toolkits. We'll start with the overview. Now, in the book, There's 10 skills 10 chapters. There are different lists out there. Some will have five items some will have 50. It's all really the same list. It's just kind of how you bucket it. But the 10 skills that I put in there and these skills come from research done by MIT. by other universities, by surveys done by companies. We consistently see these are the skills companies look for over and over. So 10 skills, I have them in three sections. Section one, careers, how to create and execute a career plan. We talked a lot about that in the first half of this show. Working effectively, things like managing your manager, understanding corporate culture, understanding how you deliver value to customers. Chapter three, interviewing. Now, many of us have had training how to be a candidate, But we regularly hire, and most of us have had little or no training, how to hire people, which is the key ingredient in our team. The second section, and we're going to get into this more shortly, is leadership and management. So there's a chapter on leadership, one on the people side of management, and another on the process side of management. Then the third and final section interpersonal dynamics has chapters on communication networking negotiation and ethics. And again those are 10. You could see them in a larger or smaller set but universally we see these skills requested.

28:16 - 29:29 | Christopher: And it's so important for people to understand that what he listed out are not the core skills that you're learning in college all the time or that you're bringing into the workplace. These are soft skills. These are other skills that you're going to use in your day-to-day work. And then also, you need to continue to grow and evolve them as your career ascends. Because interviewing other people is a great example where you can practice being the interviewee, right? When you walk into an interview being interviewed, you want to position it on the other side. But then when you pivot to becoming a hiring manager, and you are in interviews day after day and hiring people, understanding how to do that effectively, efficiently is going to be critical. So I think that's a key example. The one though that I want to touch on is leadership. I think this is where people who come in at an entry level and maybe the first couple of years of their career, they think, I'm an individual contributor. I'm executing a role. I don't need to learn to lead until X time into my career. How would you respond to that question?

29:29 - 31:29 | Mark: I want to disabuse you of that notion. This is how many people think of leadership as positional. It comes from you're in this position with this title. You have this authority. Therefore, you're a leader. That is not true leadership. That is authority. Now, they often correlate. But let's again, we'll be very technology specific. I'm a CTO. I have a team of engineers. In theory, I can say, do this because I said so. I'm in charge. I sign your paycheck. You won't get one if you don't do what I say. But how long would your team stay? We know in this market and in most markets, there's a lot of jobs out there. We know our employees are getting opportunities. Recruiters are calling them every day. If I just say do it because engineers are not people who like just being told what to do. They want to understand. They want to be part of it. So I have the authority, but that's not the way I should be using it. True leadership is what we call influential leadership. And I think about some of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, people like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. These are people who had no authority. They were not elected to an office. They did not have formal command of people, but they said, I have a vision or a dream. and got other people to buy into that and to follow them not from authority not from control but from true leadership. And what this means is that any of us can lead at any level. And we see companies saying over and over we need more leaders. They don't mean we need more people with fancy titles. They mean people who can stand up and say, I'm going to put forth a future state that I think we should get to, follow me. And they want anyone in the company at any level, even if you're a summer intern, this applies to you, you should be able to start to lead.

31:29 - 31:39 | Christopher: So you hear that and then you say, how do I, how do I now start developing this framework to move forward as an individual contributor and become a leader?

31:40 - 33:08 | Mark: One of my most popular articles is Leadership is Not Atomic. Even though I have a chapter called Leadership, if you ask yourself what makes someone a good leader, there's a lot of things that can go into it. As an analogy, what makes someone a good basketball player? Well, maybe he's great at scoring points. You can be a great basketball player that way. Maybe he's great at rebounding. Maybe he's great at defense. Maybe he just has good court sense and is a good supporting team player. There's lots of ways to be great. It's not just, well, you're only great if you score the maximum amount of points you can get in a game. So there's more than one way to do it. And we naturally tend towards being this type or that type of player. And we're going to tend towards this type or that type of leader. So here's a simple exercise you can do. Think about leaders you admire. They can be people you know. They can be people you admire from afar. They can be fictional characters. Doesn't matter. And ask yourself, what are the qualities that you admire in this leader? Start to write down that list. That's what resonates with you. And now you have specific things that you want to get better at. And that's what you're going to develop. Just like a basketball player can say, I really want to get better at free throws right now. So that's what I'll focus on. There's other things too, but in my short-term plan, that's what we have and the rest are in the intermediate and long-term plan. You can do the same with your leadership.

33:08 - 33:28 | Christopher: And how does, how does somebody know, I mean, a question that I get frequently with people that I coach is, how do I know that I'm ready to go from an individual leadership where I am, you know, influencing people, I'm an individual contributor, and, you know, I have a desire to go into management? Like, when do I know that I'm at that inflection point?

33:29 - 35:26 | Mark: And now we'll note here that it's a question of authority. Because again, you see that no formal authority, but leading. Leading from the middle, from the back. So now you're saying I would like formal authority. And management and leadership are different. Often they go hand in hand, but they are different abilities. So you need to think about, is this what you want to do? And I mentioned starting with this question for two reasons. First, this is the biggest transition you will make going from individual contributor to first-line manager, biggest transition in your career. Because historically, you showed up, you were a junior engineer, said, okay, I'm working on this level problem. And then as you get more senior, they give you larger and larger problems. When you become a manager, suddenly, it's not about you solving the problem. This goes back to what you said in the first half. It's not that you have to have the answers to the questions. You have to get the team to ask the right questions. And so suddenly, as the manager, it's not you have to deliver the results. You have to get your team to deliver the results. That's a very subtle but important change in your responsibilities. So you have to make sure, A, you're ready for that. B, you want that, because there are some people who they really belong as individual contributors. They will be happier as individual contributors and not happy as managers. And in fact, something we as a society, as a company need to think about is do we have parallel tracks? Because historically, people say, well, if I want more money, I have to be a manager. And a company loses a good engineer, gains a bad manager, and it's a loss for everyone. So decide if that's the type of role you want. Make sure you've got the skill sets ready for it as you work through your career plan to be prepared for it, and then make that transition.

35:26 - 36:19 | Christopher: That's great. in the sense that, you know, separating out leadership and management, understanding that you can be a leader and continue to influence and contribute very impactfully as an individual contributor. I have, you know, been pleasantly surprised over the last, you know, five or 10 years to see the growth of, you know, the concept of a staff engineer, principal engineer, where, you know, you can have individual contributors that can, be promoted up to almost a director or VP level in some companies because they have that expertise. And while not having the authority and the management, they do have a lot of leadership and a lot of people see them as mentors. And then they can actually then do what they're supposed to and what they love to do, which is really writing amazing code. Yeah, absolutely.

36:19 - 36:23 | Mark: I'm glad that we're seeing it more and more often in our industry, as you noted.

36:24 - 36:30 | Christopher: Yeah, it's still it's still not, I think, as mature as I would like to see it. But I think it's trending in that direction.

36:30 - 36:49 | Mark: And some people, by the way, after becoming manager say, you know what, it's not a fit. And they go back. And that's perfectly acceptable. If it's not a fit for you talk with your boss about talk with your company and say, my career plan should take me back here. I think I contribute more value to the company that way. There's there's no shame. There's no mistake in doing that.

36:49 - 38:00 | Christopher: That's such an important point to bring up, Mark, is the fact that if you get into a role, if you get into a leadership role, and you realize, this is not for me, and I tried it, and I don't like it, it is okay to change course. And I would encourage people to do that. And while some people may find that disappointing, that has nothing to do with you. That's 100% on them and their own expectations. But you need to do what's best for your career and where you can position yourself to thrive and to sleep well at night. Absolutely. So I want to change the topic here. And so I have this quote that I got from some of your material that says, your impact on the world comes not just from you as an individual, but from what you do in and through your company. You will face ethical questions in your career as with other challenges. If you're not prepared, you run the risk of making the wrong decision. So what have you observed in this scope of ethics being part of the career toolkit and how can people prepare themselves for that today?

38:00 - 41:23 | Mark: Ethics is a redhead stepchild of this list. Companies will put it on there, but it always seems to be the bottom of their list. Now, we find ourselves in ethical situations, big and small. Often there is some degree of pressure. We have to get this done or we're going to have trouble raising the next round of money or making payroll or closing the partnership. We got to get this done and we'll we'll fix it later. Just we'll cut a little corner here. Don't we. We're not trying to be bad but we'll do that. And sometimes you can cut quarters. We've all shipped software as well. We didn't fully tested or the documentation is not fully done but it's not life or death. So this is fine. It just might make us look bad. Other times you should not be doing that. What I recommend is we need practice. And the analogy I use in the book, think about fire drills. Now, we all remember doing fire drills back in school. Maybe your office has done it. I have been in offices where the fire alarm has gone off. No one is running. No one's shoving other people out of their way. No one's taking the elevators. We're all taking the stairs because everyone says, OK, alarms goes off. Don't panic. We know what to do. We've been trained. Here are the rules. Rules are stairs, not elevators. And don't shove. It's scary. There might actually say, I see the flames, but walk calmly. Same thing with ethics. If we've had that training, when the alarm goes off and go, wait a second, you know, we're under pressure, but there's a little warning here. We might be doing something wrong. You go back to your training. But if you haven't had that training, it's like people in a building when the alarm goes off and you're going to see people run and shove and make mistakes. So we want to have some training. Now, those of us in software, I think it's particularly incumbent upon us because we have certain knowledge that's not transparent to others. Our understanding of software, of algorithms, of data, it's not, we get it at a different level other people don't and we can see problems and risks others don't. For example, I'm a member of Authors Guild, this community of authors. Authors Guild recently took a position on the TikTok proposal in Congress where they would cause a divestiture of TikTok from ByteDance. And Authors Guild came in and said, First Amendment, we don't like anything that can impact anyone and what they're saying. And I felt an obligation to say, well, let's talk about There's some subtleties here. Let's talk about the national security issues. Let's understand the influence algorithms and what this can do. I don't expect Authors Guild or other writers to understand that. It's my job to explain it to them and say, here are the issues we need to take into account. Now, this is a public debate, but you can imagine you're part of product discussions where you're saying, hey, let's do this because this will get more teenage girls engaged on our platform. And while that's not illegal, you should be asking the question, but is that a good thing for them? Are we causing them harm? And so we need to raise those questions. And that means we need to think ahead of time about some of those questions that might come up, even if we don't have answers, just so we can recognize and go, there's the fire alarm. Okay. It's an alarm, but don't panic. Don't feel that pressure. Let's think through what to do.

41:23 - 42:06 | Christopher: And so, I mean, is this similar to, let's say, a career plan where people need to spend some time and reflect and understand what their ethical positions are on certain things? Because I know when you go into many companies, especially if it's a cybersecurity company or it has anything to do with healthcare, you know, in even in, I'd say, still as a private company, you're going to have to do some type of ethics training where they try and, you know, draw the broad strokes of, of, you know, things that you do and don't want to do and things that you want to raise attention to. But what about the, the personal things? Like how, how do people start really, you know, defining and understanding what their personal ethical lines are?

42:06 - 44:09 | Mark: I've yet to see a company with ethical training I have seen some that have what I'll call legal training. And they say, don't harass your co-worker. Don't steal office supplies. You're not allowed to take a customer out to do spend this money. But that's more legal rather than ethical. They're doing it just to say, here's some clear guidelines so we don't get sued. They're less concerned about the subtleties of, well, it's not illegal and it makes us money, but maybe it's not best for our customers or society. And I think you're right that you're not going to know all the questions ahead of time. And just to continue the analogy, the day we're recording this, I live in New York City. We just had a very minor earthquake, a 4.8 earlier today. I felt my apartment shake. I happen to know it was an earthquake because I remember one from about 12 years before. Now, I've never had earthquake training. And this, by the way, was a minor one, but well, I've had fire training. If I thought this was a really big earthquake, I would know things like I'm supposed to stand in a doorway. I'd certainly know, don't get into an elevator. Maybe get into the stairwell. I haven't had formal training and that's what you do or don't do. But what I've learned from fire drills, like I think that's applicable here. So by spending some time to think about where are my lines, Now, there are some obvious ones. Some people say, well, I don't want to build weapons. Okay, very clear. Don't join a defense contractor making missiles. But it gets more subtle. Is your social media platform potentially a weapon, even if an unintentional one? And so just start to think through these things. And here again, this is best done not alone, but as part of a group. and raise these questions with your peers get their perspective. How else might this apply. And you're going to have some great conversations and that's going to start to set those boundaries. So when you do come up against something you can say I might not know the answer but I recognize this is a question. Let's not rush over it.

44:09 - 44:46 | Christopher: That's a great roll up, Mark. And I really appreciate you bringing this to the forefront because I don't think that this is talked about enough. And where we're headed right now, when you think about AI, you think about security, you think about the advancements of a lot of these complex social media algorithms, I think all of us who are in the workforce need to understand you know, what what our ethical boundaries are, and be able to define those very clearly and understand what we're going to do ahead of time so that when we're in that emergency situation, we understand what to do clearly. So thank you for that.

44:46 - 45:00 | Mark: And at the time we're recording in 2024, AI and big data and bias, and these are all questions we need to help lead those discussions because we understand it in ways that others may not. So true.

45:00 - 45:13 | Christopher: Well, I want to thank you very much. And before we go, we have a couple more things to wrap up. I do want to walk you through our fire round questions. So five quick questions. Number one, what's the worst career advice you ever received?

45:14 - 46:00 | Mark: You need to focus. Now, that is good advice for many people. Specialize in some area. That's just not the right advice for me. And all of us, all the career advice you get, including what I'm giving you, take it with a grain of salt because no one is more responsible for your career than you. You have to own it. You have to drive it. That's great. How do you keep learning? I am lucky that not only do I read a lot and I've got a great network and I've got these peer learning groups, I also, through my teaching, I continue to learn through going on shows like this and meeting people like you. I have these great conversations and I continue to learn from others. So cast your net widely, look for people and sources of information and look for value you can gain.

46:00 - 46:05 | Christopher: That's tremendous. So I know you have a lot going on. What do you do to recharge?

46:05 - 46:29 | Mark: This is part of it. This is my fun. Unlike other people with a book like mine, I am not a career coach. I am not here to sell you my services or anything. This is fun for me, helping people learn and do better. So I go on podcasts. I work on the Brain Bump app, which I use to help people learn. I give away for free. So all sorts of things people would consider work, but for me, it's fun.

46:29 - 46:38 | Christopher: Well, yeah, I think you're in that, you know, building a legacy, right, and helping people move forward. It feels phenomenal. What advice would you give your younger self working in tech?

46:38 - 47:28 | Mark: Don't just focus on the technical skills. I came right out of Big Bang Theory. I was very much like Sheldon, maybe a little bit of Leonard. I got pieces of all of them, but very much it's just about super smart, getting the right answer, meaning doing the math. But in fact, it's not just about getting the right answer. It's about making sure you can communicate the right answer to the right people in the right way and get buy-in and employ a whole bunch of non-technical soft skills. So the advice I'd give, which is what I give to my students and what really kind of motivated the book, is these skills matter beyond whatever your technical domain skills are. Focus on developing those. Think about your short sides and make them longer. That's great.

47:28 - 47:36 | Christopher: And what would you say of the plethora of skills that are in this skill set, which one of those helped advance your career the most?

47:37 - 48:47 | Mark: I get this question a lot. It's not any one skill, and it depends on the person. But here's just a quick way to think about it. Imagine you get a little bit better at negotiating. So the next time you go out for a job, instead of taking it, you negotiate for 1% more. That conversation is going to take you 10 minutes, maybe a couple of emails. That 1% more you get every year for the rest of your life, in a couple minutes, you can suddenly add tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars if you're young, maybe even seven figures to your lifetime earning. Now, that we can do because it's easy to do the math with negotiations, but the same is true for your leadership, your communication, your network. No one says, oh, you're a better leader, so here's 1% more. But by being that better leader, you're going to stand out, you'll get on the better project, you'll get promoted faster, you'll be more visible, and you're going to get the same compounding effect. So it's not, here's the skill. It's recognizing any of these skills, if you just get slightly better, it's going to compound over the rest of your career and really accelerate you.

48:47 - 49:08 | Christopher: That, yes, that reminds me of the book, The Slight Edge. I don't know if you've read that, but it's the same thing. Yeah, this theory is just the same thing. It's compounding just if you look around. And so I really like that. So let's give people some resources. Where can they find out more about some of these resources? And I'll make sure and put those in the show notes.

49:09 - 50:24 | Mark: I'm going to give you two websites. The first is thecareertoolkitbook.com. You can learn more about the book, including where to buy it, get in touch with me or follow me on social media. I put out articles every week. We mentioned the leadership is not atomic. And there's the resources page with the free download, the career questions, how to create this peer learning program, a number of other completely free resources. I don't even ask for your email. All of that is at thecareertoolkitbook.com. I have a second website, brainbumpapp.com. The free Brain Bump app, you can find it on either of the stores. You can also go to that website and follow links to them. This has all the tips from my book, but also other books, blogs, podcasts, classes, and talks. We keep adding more. all free. And you're going to have these tips in your pocket. So you can either grab them as you need them. For example, gain the networking tips right as you go to a conference or interview tips, right? Interview. Or you set up as a daily reminder because you're going to be forgetting this stuff. So imagine if every day instead of a daily affirmation, you got daily leadership advice or whatever you're trying to work on. So that's completely free. And that's at BrainBumpApp.com.

50:24 - 50:32 | Christopher: Well, I can't thank you enough, Mark, for spending the time with us today. I sure got a lot out of this, and I know everyone will, too. Thank you so much.