people AND tech

Duena: 00:09

Hello everyone and welcome back to a new episode of People and Tech, the podcast. In today's episode, I am super honored to announce a departure from our normal format, where Dave and I would be talking about these things. This time we have a guest, and it's an exciting guest. It's someone who I have hoped to expose the mind of for a while to the universe. Someone who I hope you guys will find as endearing and fascinating as we have.

Duena: 00:39

And that is Aaron Phethean. And Aaron has been my boss. He has been my colleague. He has been someone whom I've built technology with and someone who you should hear from because he is now building the new world of data after having been both an entrepreneur and now the CEO of a technology company. So without further ado, we're going to jump straight into a question we've asked him as he came on and we hit record because we didn't want to miss on a good story he had.

Duena: 01:12

I hope you enjoyed the episode and next week you're going to hear us chatting on our own but the week after there's a very exciting guest coming on again. So don't forget to tune in, subscribe and also find us on all our work TV other channels.

Aaron: 01:30

Yeah. So I was on the call the prospect library and they had been one of my previous clients, though we are working through their day to day. And he was the guy who implemented the original system that went there. Was hilarious. And you get the whole backdrop of where all the time and you're like, oh, that's great.

Aaron: 01:55

We're gonna do that soon. Of course, I didn't say. I was a complete mess. So it's not you know, it's it's just life, whereas things go, things grow. But, yeah, I'll come down to class.

Dave: 02:06

What better intro to what our conversation is going to be about today and our conversation as per the other mini intro, you guys already heard that we've recorded, is with one of my favorite people in the world. Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the pod and welcome to the conversation and thank you for jumping straight into that call. What we did, as you can imagine, is we heard that Aaron was going give us a good story straight in the middle our pod trials and we hit record. You're getting it straight from the fire.

Dave: 02:42

So we're all happy. Thank you for coming on.

Aaron: 02:47

That's a lot of me too. I love the experience. Bit what we say.

Dave: 02:52

We didn't guarantee you any experience. What experience are expecting? Like, I'm sorry. Like, this is completely there's gonna be a consumer office before he's making

Dave: 03:01

There's no experience. Poor stuff I didn't say in the intro, which was a very dry kind of going through of Karen's amazing accomplishments in life, is that we I haven't disclosed our personal connection, if you will. And I haven't actually told the story to Dave properly either because I wanted him to hear it live and I'll try and be succinct. Not very good at that as we all know. Whoever is listening to this knows I can't, but I'll try.

Dave: 03:25

This is your reaction face.

Aaron: 03:28

Got a little of track, isn't it?

Dave: 03:30

Both you and the duck will have a reaction. Look, she's come very close to She

Dave: 03:33

needs to come

Dave: 03:34

back here to listen to. Whoever is listening to this, on a podcast, you're missing the video of it on YouTube. Our traditional duck has come in to hear about you're blocking the duck day. If you want to move a bit there, that's that's Now everyone's listening to it.

Dave: 03:51

Super seeded by a duck.

Dave: 03:52

I met Aaron a few years ago when we tried something really big. Tried to, what I would say, I'm trying to not look at his face as I said, pull technology heist by making the technology giant be smarter than they were willing to be. And I don't know that it was an successful experience, but it was for sure a very painful experience. It was my maybe first experience of being an entrepreneur for longer than five minutes. I don't think I had ever lasted more than six months before, but then Aaron made me stick it out because them being around Aaron's mind is what was driving 90% of this technology giant, I shan't name.

Dave: 04:36

So I too, like everyone else in that technology giant just needed to be around Aaron's magic. We stuck it out for a long time. We made an amazing thing. Nobody cared and in fact, we all got swiftly punished for making that thing. And as you can see, Aaron and I were like, well, F this, we're not going to entrepreneur anything anymore.

Dave: 04:56

We got to entrepreneur this like we should have done. So Aaron went to fix the data layer of the problem and I went to fix the team and people and project layer of the problem and here we are. How

Dave: 05:10

many years on?

Dave: 05:10

A few years later. We don't want to say how many because pandemic happened and it makes us sound slow, doesn't it?

Aaron: 05:16

Don't even guess. Imagine that didn't happen that whole batch of time. The memories of that time, by the way, are still vivid. In fact, aside from, like, the huge technical challenge and trying to go in my suit company and change everything and how they operate, I was a Stingeroma being stuck at an airport for an entire day trying to get to the customer. No more.

Aaron: 05:44

Quit.

Dave: 05:46

That into the country?

Dave: 05:46

Everyone, everyone, but stop. Not edit points. Stop point. Everyone, let's think and feel what Aaron is saying. Like aside from the minor challenge of having to turn a technology giant and all the backend banks that it was driving, like without much foresight.

Dave: 06:05

Aside from all that minor thing we were doing as a day job, we were stuck in an airport for an entire day, but we were. I mean, you would not believe the

Dave: 06:13

kind of

Dave: 06:14

red light I have brought upon Aaron in his day.

Aaron: 06:17

Oh dear.

Dave: 06:19

You would know. Well,

Aaron: 06:20

I mean, a small segue into that. After waiting the entire day to board a flight, somehow between the moment Boen went through the control and I went through the control, they managed to cancel both our tickets. Gloria was stuck on the last side not able to go anywhere, and I was stuck on the other side, I wasn't going anywhere. And did you realize not alive. There's some areas.

Dave: 06:45

We've we've been through. We've been through quite quite a you know, those are like, I think of those fondly and I'm sure some of our colleagues at the time, shout out to Ravich, shout out to Ben and people that have gone through horrible experiences with us to build both Teams and software. They'd remember those times as well. And you know what, that's what we had. We had Teams, we had super psychological safety because any entrepreneur team would have psychological safety because it's the inside apple apple situation where it's you against the machine that you've created by mistake.

Dave: 07:17

But I've been in awe of his capability of entrepreneurship doesn't even cost him anything. It just comes to him. He is that kind, that setter, that elegant on top of being that sharply on the cusp of technology. So that's what people thought, Aaron, at the time. I'm sure you're even better these days because you're vintage like all of us, but where does this journey, what happened meanwhile?

Dave: 07:45

Catch us up, all right? What happened over the last few years since we, left the giant, carry on into the darkness?

Aaron: 07:54

Yeah. And I think, I know, first of all, the whole experience is so worth it. If it was only on other side, when you're speaking to a big company and you're speaking to someone or he's trying to change the, that's why I'm trying to help them change their company. And you fully appreciate the difficulties. So probably need a business base.

Aaron: 08:16

Let's go right there. You you need to plan who needs to think about this and needs to change or that needs to happen. Those 50,000,000 people that you need to keep abreast of what's going on, let's go and do that. And, you know, you don't I don't get frustrated to anyone this or as much as I would be if I am in Internet experience. And so, yeah, on the outside, you've got world is your oyster problem.

Aaron: 08:42

You know, on the inside, you can truly last you've decided what the main area is because that's not gonna be working from the domain that they're in. On the outside, one of the bigger challenges is you have to focus more on on who it is you're going to help first. You might be able to help everyone at once. So

Dave: 09:03

expression of

Aaron: 09:04

past for the the, you know, few years since, trying to build a company, build a product, build a sales pipeline, build a sensible version of line up here. And the 10 iterations of all of those that have happened along the way, that is going be what's keeping you busy.

Dave: 09:23

He said a lot in that. We can unpack that for the rest of the day, but for the sake of our listeners, that the magic of what Aaron said, I think what I heard was, one, you've heard there, I hope there's some tidbits coming out of our edits that makes that point. Heard there what it means to be an entrepreneur who used to be an entrepreneur and who is a technologist. I think all those things had to happen together for Aaron to tell you that story. Meaning one, he understood the size of the problem.

Dave: 09:54

Two, he now is seeing why it was hurting on the inside, but it's also hurting everyone on the inside who's looking out. It's no better in or out is what we're saying really and we've said this on this podcast multiple times, I know no one has time to kind of recap what you're saying, but what we always come back to is there's no, you know, no one knows, right? No one has the exact golden printout of what we need to be doing, but like you guys are going to go in-depth in, I hope, an episode of Let's Plug It! Developer Insights. You're having a conversation that goes in-depth into this, I hope.

Dave: 10:30

It's understanding really the size of the problem, which I think brings us to the following things. One, not everyone has the same overall view of the technology industry that you have enjoyed over the years. Both of you are people who, and I suspect the 20 other people that are listening to this, bless your heart, were all people who have seen what's happening. What does it mean for stuff to be like very basic things. So that I don't know what we spent months, years trying to teach people about.

Dave: 11:04

We've had the one thing we don't, we didn't, we don't say much because we neither him nor I are braggers, which hasn't really helped us much in life is we've trained probably tens of technologists and business people in what technology all is, so that we make this change in this big company. So it meant that we had to kind of really strip everything to concepts and go, this is what backend is, this is what front end is, this is what the data layer is versus this is the context of the data versus this is on premise versus this is in the cloud. All of these very basic and very tenant level differentiations that are clear in our heads, that are never clear in big companies and that are never clear with new people coming in and so on. So I think, would you say what percentage of our time was spent just kind of trying to level the playing field and saying what we mean by a sandbox is, what an API is, was kind of So

Aaron: 12:03

we definitely don't help ourselves in technology. I think we say the first and easiest way to solve the problem that is playing is to create another term so that you're really specific about what it is you're talking about, but all we've done is create another thing you need to move slightly.

Dave: 12:21

So

Aaron: 12:22

we invent things all the time. We invent new words. We invent new concepts. We we rename old things. We retract confusion all the time.

Aaron: 12:30

So which means that if there's a percentage, it's basically all the time. Like, this all we are doing is explaining things. And the the monsters that there are, you know, after the two people like in Theatro, it really simplified that. And no lingo, no technical words, no what I call just something really simplifies that. And, yeah, the data, you're putting it in one place so you can make a sensible insight.

Aaron: 13:00

You know, that's sort of a It's a

Dave: 13:02

separate I have got to interrupt you because

Dave: 13:05

this is

Dave: 13:05

the best segue. I can't believe he said that. You're putting all of it in one place so you can make sense of it. Let me show you an outtake which we have prepared for you, because we were discussing this episode earlier in the day, and we were trying to think, fine, for technologists, it's not a big conversation. They know what the hell the problem is.

Dave: 13:24

We have data that's fragmented, that come into different ways. We see the notches on the tree of how, which CTO made what decision, which part is on prem, which part is We don't need to have this conversation between us. You guys can have that conversation between you on developer insight. I am hoping that people, Entech is a bigger platform than that. And that people that are listening to this are not necessarily DevOps enthusiasts like the rest of us, right?

Dave: 13:50

So for those of us that don't have a fetish for DevOps, we need to kind of try and bring this to the more palpable layer of layman technologies. Because I think what's working against the both of you and many other developers with insights is that no matter how much insight you have, the translation to that next layer of layman ship has to translate into something that's a day to day to them. And let me show you what we were saying in the morning. We will attempt this live. We don't know if we can.

Dave: 14:18

So let's see what happens. It can't be worse than usual. We've already for the for our listeners and not our viewers, are attempting to share a screen just for Aaron to listen to what we were saying in the morning, and that would be this. Here's a reframe that we are recording offhand, offshoot, same studio regarding the problem of explaining the issues of data to a layman, be that the layman are CRO, new CEO, CFO, or a see you later mommy. Anyone that we, meaning our family, that is also a stakeholder in this.

Dave: 15:09

How do you explain the issues of the data? Let me tell you how you explain them to the layman. You go, you know how when you try to start capturing something, maybe photos or videos of verifications or conversations that you wanna remember with your friends or dates, you know when you start trying to record something in your phone, You know how you have three systems for all of these things? I don't know what they are. I don't know what they're called, but you always have three systems, maybe four, and sometimes you manage to reduce it to two, but it's never worth any of these things.

Dave: 15:43

Your photos are saved in two places, maybe iCloud and Google, but certainly in your phone. And you have a suspicion they're also on your desktop, but you're not quite sure what that last extension is. And I'm talking to technologists here, which is on time. You know how that personal layman technologist everyday person is having these hundreds of systems, at least four, I would wager to a minimum of two. No.

Dave: 16:12

A max of four to a minimum of two. I don't know what the max is. Sometimes we have many of them. Well, just like that is how the vast majority of mid sized enterprises in the technology sphere today have a mini spaghetti of their own. You may have heard of spaghetti and of bad back end when we were discussing banks some 12 gods fifteen years ago when we started talking about this.

Dave: 16:42

And until up until five years ago when they stopped talking about it because, you know, blockchain and also were bought. But when we talked about that, we talked about the back end of banks and the spaghetti there. Right? And, oh my god, how stupid of them to have these footprint systems that they covered with, like, 60 other plug unplug the ball brands and and how silly of them and how much more advanced or whatever. Let's not even discuss that.

Dave: 17:08

They either got themselves out and Aaron will laugh at this from towards the cloud, and I can't wait to hear his rebuttal to that or somehow or other are not there today. Let's not discuss the giants. Let's not discuss the small, ones that start right, but let's discuss everyone else. And that's them every day having three to four systems, having no idea what the extension is of any of them. And just being tired to remember the neural pathway that brought some system engineer to convince them that half an in house, half an outhouse inbred solution extension dot personal CEO is the way to go with the data.

Dave: 17:52

And now they need to show anyone that they have this data. And they now sound almost crazy by having this business proposition. That is an actual real rare delivery that we're having. Oh, my life. That's Delivery across while we were running the story.

Dave: 18:08

When you record outside. Yeah. This could be cleaning the birds. It's not a big home. Yeah.

Dave: 18:17

So wait. Wait. Wait. I actually remember. So that's exactly what happened when an an an a CEO of a mid sized now come good has been purchased three times and has been presumed a unicorn once company faces themselves with a but I know I have this data somewhere problem.

Dave: 18:37

I know I have it. Just like you know, you have that vacation photo. And just like you know that things should be magically sorted and filed, but not in the way that Apple or Google already did for you. So I think you should frame it that way. That there's a mid sized and and then the question is how big is the slice of the industry?

Dave: 19:01

So I'm looking forward to hearing answers in our episode. Is this at all? No. It didn't. Now a period of us not knowing if we have recorded this.

Dave: 19:11

Here's the reframe. Then we are recording it and see if we can. Off the shoot. We can't stop. Seems to stop it.

Dave: 19:19

Now we can. We would never worry. Just stop sharing and continue this conversation. It makes sense. Just how you don't remember your vacation photo is how the CEOs you talked to today can't get to the data.

Dave: 19:31

Is that fair to say?

Aaron: 19:32

Okay. It's back.

Dave: 19:35

We're back.

Aaron: 19:36

Well, that's a, that is a good framing on the problem. And I think this is what people need. They need something we can relate to. They, they take long lines in their fucking instant. And then they can also imagine that he times that problem by hundreds of people.

Aaron: 19:55

Of course it's to you. I mean, of course it is. And, you add some time and you add some acquisitions and you add all the things you talk about. And it's really not to blame that it's a mess. What I suppose is kind of a surprise is that we're still surprised.

Aaron: 20:15

You know what? Is obviously going to be a mess if all of that happens. And there's a continual effort to keep refreshing and removing and simplifying, and that is the job.

Dave: 20:29

Yep. So that's Datadet really, I guess. Lots of disparate bits of data from disparate bits of APIs and applications and databases all over the place.

Dave: 20:41

No. Wait, we did that.

Duena: 20:43

I can't even. I mean,

Dave: 20:45

human debt sounds absolutely logical to me. And, you know, in a sense, I think data debt, is it not like human debt and tech debt, only how it translated into your data, what it ended up being in your data. Like if you have an organization, hear me out here, on this podcast, we talk about this concept of human debt a lot. It's obviously, as you know, because it was born before we worked together, but I'll repeat this for our listeners, the definition of human debt is all those times that the organization should have done better by its employees and it has failed them in the sense of the organizational changes that happened without much communication. The lack of good solid communication, the lack of consideration for their private lives, the lack of mental health kind of skeleton put in place.

Dave: 21:31

All the politics, all of the bullying, we know what it is. That's human death. Human death then ends up, I think, multiplying. Becomes from something that you are managing in an SRE jointly happy way. It becomes compounded into something that's entrenched in the organization.

Dave: 21:51

People are afraid to talk about it and it just, I don't know that there is, it's as solvable as that. Is it solvable? That's a question for the both of you. Can you clean data that? Should you attempt to never get data that?

Dave: 22:06

And or should you get some sprints that you clean it up once in a while?

Aaron: 22:11

Well, I wonder if you've considered that human debt and debt debt and data debt, are they almost look exactly the same? Because often the people organization represent systems And in days of, like all the following trends that have fully seen as far as me recently is that everyone's really changed the established data owners today. I wonder whether that has created a new situation where you've got a piece of legacy that you have to hang on to, that you carry around the baggage and the longer you are in company, you'll have more baggage to carry around. And

Duena: 22:53

it's a, it's a, it's a it's

Dave: 22:56

a Phoenix project brand that everyone is putting their hand up for so that they secure their seats though. Would you say it's not that? I mean, do you not see this, that internally people are so desperate to have this ownership so that they're sure.

Aaron: 23:10

Say the question again.

Dave: 23:11

So, I mean, it's a threefold question if you wish, but it sounds to me like the behavior that you're describing is practically everyone jumping in to become, put their hand up to become the proverbial Brent Jean Kim's Phoenix project. But literally saying, own this, this is mine. Let me fix it in a really good solid way, but it is my data that I know of, just this one bit, right? Which I mean, obviously over simplifying of what you're saying, but if you start carving out data ownership, do you not with it, just create excuses so that you're more convinced that your particular people situation is more secure? Is that not a fear reaction is what I'm asking from the technical community?

Aaron: 23:56

So I think I don't know whether they are seeking it. There's lots that they give to it because what people really worry about, you know, Dacey, you might as lineage or you might as well just where did it come from. So they're really worrying that they're looking at piece of information about making decisions. They actually know where it came. I agree with all whether it's been sitting in a covert for a while and it's actually of date, you know, there's just, they, they try and establish an owner to solve that problem.

Aaron: 24:30

But really it's a technology debt problem that have just created a new human debt problem, like giving it to someone who can't possibly leave or can't possibly move on because they'll have to look

Dave: 24:40

after I think you're giving, it's a whole new definition of human debt to a degree. So you're saying you're creating an operational debt problem is what I would call that. And we actually call out operational debt in people not taking the sense that in the company, while we write software in the sense of anytime and in our media company, anytime that we leave stuff, we try to keep ourselves very honest at the end of a sprint and when we've left stuff unclean, we literally would write a ticket called operational debt, haven't moved all of the logos, whatever. Whatever it is, and finally enough data, right?

Aaron: 25:16

Let me give you an absolute classic. So with the company we discussed earlier, I received an email the other day from someone who found a piece of code that I wrote eighteen years ago and wanted a little bit of help with it.

Dave: 25:35

Left your own you've left your own sales hooks into various systems around the universe, mister Pithi. It's what's happening in that graduation.

Aaron: 25:43

I know. Well, I thought I could do. I mean, had to obviously say I completely supported that for this time. I

Dave: 25:50

mean, okay, let's take a step back from that because while it's a heartwarming story, it's also very sad for the industry. They still have some of yourself in a corner slaying about. Well, might as you do know, I think you do need to take a step even further back and I'll be devil's advocate about this. There is almost, if you want to be, I want to be careful here, but if you want to take a step out and have a helicopter view of what we're looking at, The part of the humanity's life where we had a need for human programming is very short and it's coming to an end. And you know, like that's not if we look at us as humans, maybe we're in a simulation sort of thing.

Dave: 26:34

That's kind of like four hour lifetime, almost saying I think we're coming out of need to, I think we have now moved from creators of code and creators of content, which we all like to do, whether it was content or video or writing or code, we all like that being in the zone bit, to we have now finished all the content we all need to make. And what we need to do as humans is manage those and administer those and repackage those. And we're really just in this adult project management, new shoes that we don't want to be in. The very little of our needs in any capacity we are in, except for the very fortunate ones that are, I don't know, Tibetan monk and they can write code all day. The rest of us have to communicate for the vast majority of the time, which is what takes most of the time and it's the yuckiest bit.

Dave: 27:29

And then we have to actually do the adulting and the project management, right? So if you look at overall the idea of do we need to be doing any of the software development if needed to for a minute, but then we made this thing that's going to make it and we're not needing to, right? And it sounds

Aaron: 27:44

Right.

Dave: 27:45

It goes straight into does AI kill us also in the conversation? And in a sense, it's where we're not going to see the end of it, will we, Aaron? Will we see the end of the AI argument?

Aaron: 27:54

Maybe, maybe a little bit more hopeful about AIs. I think the communication effort, I personally find it very drowning. Yeah, this is repetitive and you need to explain it in different ways, in different contexts. And there's there's no reason the way why not include all the information for someone we need to include more information for others. So maybe the hope of pain is not that we're replaced and redundant, is that it just helps us explain in the right chance size to the person that we need to explain

Dave: 28:29

it From your lips to some investors years or something, because that would be very useful that we would have this unified communication layer. But let us be honest, you and I have been talking about this for ten years and it's not, there's not been anyone in a hurry to be doing that for us. It's not gonna happen.

Aaron: 28:47

It's not there yet.

Dave: 28:48

And it's not, Did you make it? Did you make it? Did I make it? No. It's not gonna happen this lifetime.

Dave: 28:52

Let us drop it. It's gonna have to be human to human communication. We're gonna have to

Aaron: 28:57

Yeah. I think you're right. And then she's time. I mean, those are the best, best, you know, best solutions, spending time with us all real, subtle, you know, new things, space to come out, you know,

Dave: 29:12

that's amazing. That's the thing. I think what we need to, I, I think that's the crux of it. The humanizing bit, right? How do we humanize with each other?

Dave: 29:21

If we want AI to help us with something, in my view, I don't disagree with you. I really hope that it gets to automize more of the shit and leave us with more of the good stuff. But the good stuff has to lay in thinking together, being kind and reading each other. Because I mean, those are the bits AI can't do, right? So let's focus on the bits it couldn't.

Dave: 29:43

So, but before then, we are all in this layer. We are talking about these things and you guys are in the trenches writing that code, which is why I'd like people to go listen to you talk about it on Developer Insight, which is interesting. Is it writing that code or is it just explaining to those business cases why that code doesn't need to be written, you just need to let us at it. So have that conversation separately. Once we're done with that, it's it's kind of this tension between people and technology.

Dave: 30:14

Are we not still left, like Aaron said, with the same ones? The communication. Are you feeling it the same way? We're still gonna be left with that.

Dave: 30:21

All communication. It's all communication.

Dave: 30:23

All the communication. Everything

Dave: 30:25

we do is communication. I mean, if we talk about what we're talking about here with the data, it's not necessarily data itself per se, but it's the integration between these different data layers. And how do we move petabytes of data around underneath the covers so that we get that better integration? And the trade off is do we move it?

Aaron: 30:45

Do we

Dave: 30:45

not move it?

Dave: 30:46

That's where Aaron will tell you what the is. Don't tell them what the secret secret sauce is. But obviously, this is not a sales pitch, and we all know that. Right? But for for you to kind of arrive where you have arrived, It's, I think it's fascinating to anyone who was a technologist and listening to this, that you have had the resilience and the foresight of staying with the, he's an optimist at heart.

Dave: 31:12

You hear it in this conversation. You know, you can't make Aaron just go down the, this we're all gonna die path, which is amazing as a team leader. So one of the things that we do on this podcast, we discuss kind of what does it mean to have authentic leadership and what does it mean to have psychological safety in teams and so on. And the thing that Aaron has always been able to create is the type of team that people adore. Now, know that some elements, I'm not gonna ask him how he did it, because I don't think he knows how he did it, but I'll tell you from as an external observer that one, people adore the fact that he's, you know, the technologies he is, but that's easy.

Dave: 31:48

I've seen multiple teams built around this hero. The other, someone is super smart. It's easy to fall in love with someone being super smart and to want to do work for them. But from that to actually listening to them deeply and wanting to kind of trust them, it has taken, I think, Aaron, a lot of work. And here's the question about the work, Aaron, that I have.

Dave: 32:11

Over your time in building teams, have you had to consciously spend time telling yourself, I need to speak to these amount of people. I need to send one on one to this amount of people. I need to make sure I put them together at least this amount of times and I need to make sure that I care and know about them as a human. Did you have to tell yourself you have to do these things, have to do in your head or do these things come to you naturally?

Aaron: 32:38

I've certainly felt that I would say I will appreciate more where I see the difference, where I see someone who's properly care and really taking an interest and sees that that is the main function. Know, or maybe almost anyone could be a farmer to use it in an LNG. Not everyone could be a guy. You know that, and that's kind of where it's flat for me. The, the, the predict is that in, you know, time and tearing and the approach that I take, it's so easy to like rush ahead of us.

Aaron: 33:24

It's like, me, it's like, never wants to eat all this. Come on. You know, that does not, that's kind of not enough. So, yeah, I I definitely had to throw the wallet out into the, you know, learning what's required and observing what's required. And it yeah.

Aaron: 33:41

It's just really not a simple thing. You've seen appreciation over time.

Dave: 33:46

Would you say that you learned leadership intentionally? That that it's more of a thing you've observed and learned? Do you feel you've trained your EQ intentionally? You've learned about how people function intentionally? Or would you say that it I mean, you know, I don't need your answer to tell you that you're talented in the topic.

Dave: 34:04

Well, and I thought this is not for you to blow your own trumpet. This is for you to hopefully tell people what did you do to become from a technologist, a people leader? Because it's rare and it's needed. And it's not, again, it's not the because you were super smart and people loved you. That's very, that's not rare.

Dave: 34:23

That's common. Everyone in a team thinks that the other dude somewhere is the smartest one. That's not a people leader. A people leader that I've seen Aaron spend time with people, is someone who just genuinely from the heart and he's lucky that he's someone good hearted, not all leaders are good hearted. Would you say that there was some investment you did in your IQ

Aaron: 34:42

or your pot

Dave: 34:43

red, what would

Aaron: 34:44

you recommend? I think if you could magically just zoom yourself to the point of appreciating the better things, they would probably then go looking for ways to learn. I probably came about it the other way around where I had some structured training of myself or how I approach things. Some other kind of life coaching type things where you're actually probably more appreciating how you talk to other people potentially, not just about what you want to achieve. Oh, kids teach you an awful lot because you're communicating all the time and you're getting a response from them.

Dave: 35:26

I was gonna leave this for the other one, but tell people that you're the dad of two amazing boys.

Aaron: 35:31

That's

Dave: 35:32

what I learned. Yes.

Aaron: 35:33

Two amazing boys who, you know, on a daily basis, telling me down the years and you don't even have to look for feedback. That'll be a bit too.

Dave: 35:41

That's right. We used to say, because we have almost the same age, we used to say they're just growing new features like independent. Interrupted you, but you were saying this is how you learned. You've done so again, let's for for our listeners, super important, like these are takeaways. Once you can understand the reason for it, let's magically zoom to you having the motivation to focus on your humanizing capability as a leader, as a person, as programmer.

Dave: 36:17

Then like you're saying, then there are things you can do, right? There's life coaching you can do, like loads of it in many geographies will come through the company for those of you that are still on the inside. Those of you that are on the outside, we probably have some therapy of some sort. Lean into that, genuinely do, because it actually teaches us things. These days, I keep saying this on this podcast, these days we have no excuse.

Dave: 36:42

Like there's the equivalent of a PhD in six months of watching TikTok if you try hard enough. So it's just a question of curiosity and time and emotional investment into learning things. But there's nobody who can go, oh, I'm not a psychologist. I don't know how emotions work. I don't understand about diversity or all this more.

Dave: 37:02

What don't you understand about that's not already out there? So yeah, there's no excuses anymore in terms of information these days. That's the thing that can happen from

Aaron: 37:13

my experience is that you can end up having a bit of an existential crisis of what if I could kill these people to do what I want? Or maybe I shouldn't, you know, like like, you know, that's kind of a craziness and appreciation of the side. You can convince someone who should do, so, know, like, you you that is definitely worth the time. You'll have to make the right choice to have I a repeat

Duena: 37:39

person involved in the call you or

Dave: 37:42

don't know where to, I don't even know where to go with that because, yes, you should. If you can, can and you know it's good, you should. I think when it comes to technology, he's right. If we, as technologists, we know in our heart of heart what the right way is, and if we had, you know, we were the emperors in the universe, we would just lay out the perfect enterprise with the perfect guts, and it would never end up being as effed up as all the other people we see every day, obviously, but outside of knowing what's best, and then in that context, if I know what's best, should I really convince everyone to do this one thing or not? I get it, but when it comes to the part we were saying earlier, a 100% that's what's best and that's what you should be doing, which is what Aaron is saying is from the gods.

Dave: 38:29

Try and do some of that self exploration bit that's painful in some way that gives you a boost. And then even again, I say this to people all the time, you did this work and you did this work when this wasn't as accessible as it is today. For anyone to want to still be a technologist, we're going to have to double work on the people side of things. So obviously we have to double down on the bits and make us good leaders and good teammates and good humans, really. And with that, I think that's wrapping it up.

Dave: 39:03

I'll leave you two to talk about the technology in developer insights for anyone who is not subscribing to both. Don't forget there's also another podcast that maybe one day we can have people that are listening to this come stick on as well, which is not only Developer Insights, but NeuroSpicy at work, because many of us listening to this are autistic. And part of why we're so fascinated by what's the holdup with technology is that we see this concept so clearly that it makes us go, oh, for God's sake, like, can we move faster? So come listen to Neurospatial2Arc, listen to the two of them still talking about this on Developer Insights, and thank you so much for coming on, Aron. It's always a pleasure to talk to people who have done it and have lived it and are still in the trenches.

Aaron: 39:51

I absolutely enjoy the entire piece of work.

Dave: 39:55

Much. Thanks you very much, Aaron. Bye.