He Thought Product Management Was The Answer...

Ever been working in an engineering position for a long time and you suddenly get the bug to do something really different? Maybe get into product management or QA or some role that's totally different than what you've been doing. Well, today I want to share a real coaching session I did with a client of mine that I worked with about a year ago. His name's Monty and he's in that situation today. He's looking at shifting into a product management role. And so when you listen to this session today, I hope you find some value by maybe thinking about changes you might be thinking about making in your career. And it not only helped Monty, but it helps you too. Hey Monty, how are you doing? Well, Jamie, great to see you and catch up. Absolutely. I think it's been we were saying before this about 6 months maybe something at least like that. So what's changed in your career? What would you like to talk about a little bit today? Yeah. So um I have gone back into a senior engineer role um from kind of being the director because I wanted to get you know back into kind of what at least what I'm interested in the career. Um, but we talked about last time exploring like going into product management. And as I've been in this role, I've both um had some interviews with some companies for those sorts of roles and done a lot of research. Okay. Um, and so far and you know the steps that I'm taking in my current role are going in that direction, but like it's really uncovered a desire to like continue to use my communication skills and like leadership. So, um, you know, I you pointed out a lot of like pros and cons with moving in a product development space. Um, and I've encountered some of those so far. So, like I'd be interested to like kind of go into that and you know, I've uncovered like what I appreciate about those roles, but I think that like veering more towards a management or leadership is more in line with kind of like my overall goals at this time. So, okay. So, let me say back to you sort of what I'm hearing just to make sure I'm clear. Uh, so you you've done some interviewing since we spoke for potential product management positions. That's the first part. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay. And then sort of it sounds like in the process of that, you've also been looking at your current job for opportunities to get, let's say, more exposure to product management or figure out if it's what you want. and you've had uh some opinions or some insight, let's say, uh to that and so you'd like to talk a little bit about sort of what you found and what you're thinking that means for your career direction. Is that right? Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So, let's start then with what sort of have you been seeing or experiencing as you've gone about kind of looking deeper into product management? Yeah, I think one of the tradeoffs um with kind of going from engineering to that product management side is, you know, the ability to actually affect some of the change that you see for a direction with the product. Um, and I know that that's something that I would have to give up like not that I have to necessarily not or touch the code and that's what I mean, but being closer to the teams that are delivering and seeing what the issues are versus, you know, having this strategy and only dealing with some of the stakeholders and looking at the strategic elements involved in the product, okay, and then letting it go off on its own. like that's I don't really get the fulfillment out of it. Like I'm not really getting what I need from that sort of role. Um you know like being able to engage with the technical side because I have the technical expertise. A lot of the people that I would speak to or were non-technical in the product management or product development space, excuse me. Sure. and you know like I felt like I still had something to contribute there but like those contributions weren't really needed or even wanted frankly in some of those roles that I spoke of and so like I really want a hybrid of being able to affect that technical change but also look at the overall vision of what we're doing. Okay. I'm hearing that you have tried, I guess, to sort of offer either work or input to the business side of the company as a product manager would sort of coming from the more engineering type role that you have today. And it hasn't really been received very well. Is that right? it's been received um and I've gotten great feedback on some of those

um ideas, but it's led to more discussion than actual contribution, if that makes any sense. So, you know, one conversation and I have a great idea and I can align it with business goals leads to another conversation about further business goals and you get further away from like what we're actually trying to accomplish. Hm. Um, at least in my experience so far with trying to like add those. So where I found that I'm pretty good is I can align you know the business goals with the technical goals well but still be involved in the process of delivery and not necessarily as a developer but someone overseeing them and making sure that hey when we go off on a tangent to update some dependencies or something that's not align with the business goals that I can help steer us in the right direction. And that's like I see something that I've enjoyed more that makes sense. I don't know if you'll agree with this characterization and we'll talk more about it. Uh I think because you're kind of in a you're kind of caught between two worlds in a way in that you know and it would be one thing if you were brought into the company or you were formally given the charter you are the product manager. your goal, the biggest, you know, thing we're looking to you for help with is how do we go to market with a product, satisfy a customer, improve the product in a way that builds the business, generates more revenue, what you know, whatever their business model is. If that was like your full-time job, you'd be steeped in that. You'd have the authority and the expectation that that's the main value you're bringing to the company as an employee. Uh, and I know we've talked about possible entrepreneurial options down the road, but right now we're just kind of talking about within the company. Yeah. Um, while at the same time I'm hearing, you know, the world that you know, at least a lot of it more recently. I know you've got a pretty storied career, but uh is still very close to the engineering team. And so it's I think it's only natural that when you have these conversations with product managers, your brain is immediately going to how does this impact the dev team? I'm hearing that. Is that fair a little bit of kind of what you're saying? Yeah, somewhat. It's not so much how does it impact the dev team. I think that it's really like alignment of expectations versus reality or like this is the perception of ideally you would go into this product management role and be given that charter to do that. But, you know, I've built some relationships with some product managers, uh, as we discussed and gone down that and like it never ends up that way quite so much, right? Like I've seen it. You get the charter and you do all of the work, but you you're still negotiating whether or not you have validity or credibility to accomplish it even though you were charged with doing that, right? uh that's been my experience and I've you know found a few mentors in the industry that have you know been kind enough to share their input and their uh roles with me as well and how that goes and what I've seen is you know the reality of the position in a lot of companies and this probably depends on the company is that that's not it's not always so singularly focused right like there's a blend and if there is going to be a blend I feel like the most impactful blend and one that propels me into the more entrepreneurial space is to be on the line of seeing the impact through and not necessarily that I'm worried about the development team as I'm listening to the business things but really looking at feasibility and like kind of going to market around the strategy that we're dealing with. That makes sense. Yeah. And you'd shared with me over the coaching that we've done before at one point. I think you said this that you and your wife sometimes will look at other businesses that are out there and kind of uh just have discussions around how the business was set up and how they make money like that's almost like a I don't want to say it's like a hobby or a pastime but you two enjoy that just kind of talking about different businesses. Is is that right that I'm pretty sure that's you I'm remembering said that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Let me try uh describing a couple different distinctions between what you're talking about to see if maybe there's one aspect of what you're sharing with me that might be more helpful to discuss today. So, I I'm hearing a pretty significant amount around just the challenge that you're experiencing with trying to get a feel for what it's like to do product management within a company where you have worked to get approval from people that that's going to be part of your job. where that's still kind of you're like trying to prove that you have you

deserve a seat at the table some somewhat to speak to do that when you're when you've already established a relation uh I'm sorry a reputation for yourself within the company as primarily being an engineer of some sort that's kind of a little bit of what I'm hearing and we can talk about uh if this would be valuable to you we can talk about maybe strategies for doing that better you know I can kind of talk to you a little bit about what you've done so far, the problems you ran into. I'm hearing some of this. So, some of that's one piece. I guess I'm just hearing kind of the struggle with like how do I get them to take me seriously and get to actually enact change as a product manager when that wasn't my original role and they're and you know, I'm trying to get them to look at me a little bit differently than they originally did. That's one thing I'm hearing. Uh the other thing is we could talk also just about you know right now when you're at a company as you know as I've experienced many times it kind of puts the blinders on you a little bit when you're an employee in that the perception I have of a job role or how I should be doing it or what it's like to do it and I've heard you say this yourself can be very colored by the current company you're at and the current experience you're having which can make it a little bit difficult to really look at product management in a more neutral sense so that you actually are making a career decision when you look at the future of your career that's not being too colored by the current company's way of viewing product management. Um, so we could talk a little bit about the way product management you're seeing it done at your company. I'm hearing some of that and what you do like, what you don't like, and whether that's specific to the company you're at. And then the third thing we could talk about, and maybe we talk about a blend of these, is uh just how do you shift more towards either getting experience at your current job or starting to find a way to carve out some time, and I know you've been through a bunch of life changes recently, to start to pursue some stuff on your own, kind of independent of the company. Do those three distinctions or paths make sense to you? And does either of those three sound like something that would be more helpful to start with? Yeah, I think probably looking at how it colors the future is what stands out to me. I think as far as like having this seat at the table, I am interested in kind of getting a better perspective on what strategies can I use to gain an influence. I just wanted to kind of call out that I think in general with the role itself that the credibility is a piece that I don't know that it's credibility but companies have initiatives and they hire folks and some of the experiences that I'm hearing from other people at different companies um are similar where they're given a charter but not actually given the authority to do it. And I see that being friction in the role itself in spite of uh the company's context, right? Right. And I think that that's something that was concerning to me with going down that path because I really want to enact change and I want to like improve things and and really be on that business side but in a way where it can actually happen and I so far I've seen my value add be that I am also a developer and so either blending that line or like you know figuring out how I can use both of those skills be it, you know, getting influence at the table or actually continuing the transition. So, I I'll ask this as just a way sometimes I like to pose these hypothetical situations to people, not to say that this is what you should do, but just to kind of help you resolve some conflict or just, you know, it's it can be helpful just to bring clarity to your motivation. uh I if they told you let's say next week, hey Monty, we really like the you know the passion you've had for product management and we've been giving you and I know this isn't happening right now but you know and we've and when we've been thinking about whether we want to really fully support you to try to enact the change at the business that you've been kind of trying to move into. We'd like you to actually step into this role more fully, but to do that we don't want you to really be involved in engineering so much anymore. We'd still like you to talk to the engineering team when it comes to helping them understand what to build and you know interfacing with them and describing what the customer needs but like we need you more focused on understanding the business at an even deeper level you know taking more responsibility for this really this being you know if you're going to do this basically we want you to be more allin how would you feel if that kind of a proposal was put in front of you today and it might be different at a different company but just let let's start with that your current company. How would you feel if that happened? I'd be excited about it. Um because I

really could make a difference because I think that you know my particular skill set is lacking on that side um right now and you know I don't necessarily feel like I need to be as hands-on um like with some of the code stuff that I am right now. Right. So I was actually jumped at that opportunity. I think it would be like a value ad and I also would enjoy it a lot. Like I still obviously can continue to like have my skills but I think that there's a level there's a point excuse me that I'm at my career where some of the details um with the development side are like less important to me. Um, and I feel like, you know, there are other engineers that it is and I think that they should have those roles and I would be better suited to do what you just mentioned. So, yeah, I would be excited about it. Interesting. So, I'll first I'll say it doesn't surprise me because uh just, you know, the sessions that you and I have had in the past, that was totally the attitude and the priorities that I felt like were pretty clear by the end of our time working together. if you were in that situation. I mostly just wanted to kind of bring you back to that, see if you still felt the same way. Yeah. Um, now I did hear you just a couple minutes ago talking about, you know, you tried to be involved with product management there. You had a and I'm paraphrasing here, but you had like a lot of conversations. It led to a lot of discussion, but you don't feel like anything was done because of it. And that you really enjoy um I'm trying to put it the right way that you put it. you really enjoy like then kind of feeding information back to the engineering team and helping them know if it's feasible. Talk to me just for a minute about, you know, to whatever level you can without feeling like you're sharing information that maybe should be confidential, but uh is there anything you could maybe share about when you say it led to a conversation that didn't actually lead to anything happening? Why do you think that is? And that's never going to happen? or do you think maybe it's just the ball's in motion, but it hasn't quite come to fruition yet with some of your suggestions? I think the ball's in motion. I think that there are other circumstances around this that are not a part of the process and that predate my time that really influence these decisions, right? And so I think over time I could gain that seat at the table and once I've kind of delivered on this side that would go away. Um, but there are some things outside of like the scope of the work that we're doing that influence it. Sure. And I've seen that happen and that's and that's okay and I'm comfortable navigating those waters, but I want to make sure that my contributions will actually be sitting there, right? Sure. Um, yeah. And I think that kind of leads into, you know, as I was kind of doing some of these interviews, I got some questions about like just really translating like what my background is and being more engineering heavy over to that and like are you willing to give up and like I guess selling myself as someone that can be in that role. So I think that was that were those were some of the big um challenges that I faced as I like started interviewing and questions that I got and I think the conversations went well but I never quite got over the finish line. My suspicion is that perhaps that engineering side was a part of it or played a part in that. Sure. Uh, I think it's pretty normal. You know, you hear about in Hollywood, for example, an actor will uh play a part in a really famous movie or a TV show or something like that and they're typ cast, right? Meaning like they go out and try to get a part in some different production and it's like the production company or the film company or whoever the staffing, they basically won't hire them because they're like, "Look, people are going to see you on screen. They're never going to, and this is an opinion they have, but you know, they're never going to believe that you're this other villain or character cuz, you know, you were such an influential personality before. I think there's an element of when we've had a successful engineering career like you have going out there and proposing to a company that no really I can bring a lot of value to your company in this very different role than I've done at this point. It is a challenge. You know, you're asking them to take a little bit of a leap of faith. You're also asking them to go against, let's be honest, some I don't know if everybody will agree with this stereotypes that exist in the industry about engineers that we can be too introverted or too focused on like kind of the final the fine details of things to see the big picture. Now, I know from the time you and I have spent together, I've told you I think you're a really clear communicator. You've got a some Did you have a background a little bit in sales at one point too? More from like kind of consulting. Okay. Yeah.

So, you know, in a way it is a little bit of an uphill battle. You're looking to do something that's, you know, against the grain, so to speak, in a way, but as you know, I I'm pretty sure I recommended the Cracking the PM interview book to you, right? Did I? Or Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you did. I read that one. Yeah. So you know one of the things in that book that they talk about is how uh product managers can come from a variety of different backgrounds. They can come from support, marketing, they can come from dev, right? So it's not like this doesn't happen. Um and maybe it can it can feel like it would be a more natural transition if you're at a company and they see that you have an appetite for product and this is what we're kind of talking about today. I only wanted to bring that up just to validate that obviously you had your interview experience. I'm not going to say what you experienced isn't true, but just to bring also a little bit of just a reality check that like just because you had these interviews and you had some friction. I would say and I we'll talk about them in a minute. I don't think that necessarily means that you're a bad fit or even that you couldn't do it today. Maybe there's just some aspects of selling yourself that require a little bit more practice. if you're comfortable sharing, how many interviews, and I don't mean within the same company, but just like specific opportunities, let's say, did you get a chance to kind of interview for that were more of product management roles? Yeah, there were two that came up um that I was able to get. So, well, just from a numbers standpoint, you know, that's a pretty low number, personal opinion. You know, I again giving you props for doing it. I know that that's a scary I'll say for myself it can you know I tried doing some product management interviews this was about 8 years ago when I was thinking of shifting into that before my life kind of went to hell and I went in this direction. Um but would you agree? Do you think two is an adequate amount of interviews to come to some significant conclusions or do you think there's still some more room for learning in a few more future interviews? How are you kind of feeling about that? Uh I got some good data from the interviews. Okay. um as far as you know expect general expectations for like the role and the folks that are also in the role or that are around the role. So that was really useful because you know sometimes you have to ask like will I work well with these people um and not just at the company but I think it's like not to generalize like there's a specific type of person or people that are around these roles and I got some good data points there. It is low. It can be difficult to get any of them at all. So, uh, I was pleased with two, but it's a lot of it's not enough data, uh, for sure. But I did get some interesting insight into like the process. Cool. Yeah. And I'm not trying to devalue the work that you did to get that far in the interview process. That's awesome. It was just more of kind of a reality check to see how you felt about it. I'm sure you did get some great data. Let's talk about that just for a second. What are some of the let's say key insights or just kind of things that maybe were surprising to you or really helpful that you discovered through those interviews? Yeah, I think some of the tactical side of what was being expected from the role um was a little bit different than you know what you may read about or that I've heard about from other people. Like I think the ideal version of the role that you talked about like driving strategy and going to market and looking at markets is a piece of the role, but there's also some of kind of the day-to-day tactical project management slash kind of scrum management that's involved. Um, so you know, I've seen a ton of hybrid roles in that way and I'm less interested in that piece of it, which is totally fine. And I think that it depends on the company but that's something that came out of it that like I should be prepared as we all are right like as a developer you should be prepared to also be QA and maybe even some DevOps like you should be prepared to drive strategy and lead daily initiatives and activities and project management right like that's something that came out of it for me um and also maybe the way that the role interacts with the business Right? Like you may be the product manager and you have a director that interfaces with the business and you are only involved in a piece of the strategy which is a great role but like not necessarily um how I envision impacting it and I'm okay with for me and where I'm at with the transition that would be a great uh learning space to be in but I think that you know each business you know sees that department as either kind of a cost center in some way and others as a

really profit center driver of change and I think that I got hints of that and from the interview process and something that I hadn't considered previously. Are are you saying that in either one or both of the interviews you got the perception that the let's say product that you were interviewing for was looked more at a as a cost center within the company than a profit center or did I maybe mishar what you said there? Uh yes the product but more from the standpoint of you know the product managers are implementers and they're not strategic partners. Mhm. So other sides of the business will drive the strategy and drive the direction of this and it's up to the product managers to just deliver it and bring it across the line instead of there being a true collaboration between you know and asking these questions like should we build what you think that you want and like do you really want that and is this appropriate for the market? Yeah. So I think it's more of that I've expected a more symbiotic relationship between other departments and be it for the initiative and it seems more like at least in a couple of experiences that I've had that there were decisions that were already made and it is up to you to bring this across the finish line. I see. One thing that I'm sure you've experienced and you I know you've read about in the book that could be coloring this a little bit is you know as you can imagine if you were a company of one like I am um I don't have the luxury of having another person that I can delegate managing the development of the product and its features to if I come up with a service or a product I have to be customer outreach strategy I have to design the products I have to build them. I have to deliver on do everything. And as a company scales, when you know, even if they start with a founder, you know, a single founder or like a partner, as a company scales, I think it's natural that depending on how ambitious that company's been and how many uh products are involved, they will add product managers that are kind of like, you know, it's described in the book. they're a CEO somewhat for their individual product line. And so actually we're going to talk about it doesn't sound like the roles you interviewed were this but I think the idea in that kind of a role is let's say there's a company with three revenue generating products just as an example. The overall strategy for the entire business could still be mostly driven by the CEO or upper level very upper level seuite management where the product managers they still have a lot of freedom and flexibility in how they're going to use a product to achieve some amount of money or you know market penetration you know whatever that business strategic goal is. So they don't get to like choose the strategic objective per se, but they still have flexibility in like how do I spend some money of the companies and use the engineering team to try to kind of pull that outcome off if that makes sense. U before I go any further because I'm going to ask you a question about that. Does that make sense? Just that kind of high level description there. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for saying that. I will say as a company gets even bigger and I think this is the experience I'm curious if you know again I've said before a lot less people watch these videos but I'd be interested for people who do get to this point what leave some comments what your experience has been. I think a lot of developers who get into like lead positions at a big company, significant size company, they're interfacing with a product manager, but actually sometimes the title you'll hear is product owner. And product owner, you know, this is just like tech lead and staff engineer, right? There's some ambiguity of what these terms mean depending on the company you go to, but product owner from my understanding, and again, correct me if the in the comments if my history is wrong, but I'm pretty sure that term came out of Scrum. And at some companies, there's even like the CEO who drives the overall business strategy. There's the product manager who is the face of that product to its customers. They're doing all the stuff we talked about just a minute ago, which is they're figuring out like, you know, how are they going to develop a product to reach that strategic objective? And then there's a product owner, and they're really more like, I'm going to take the the product the go to product uh strategy that the product manager came up with, and I'm going to turn it into the artifacts that a dev team needs to execute on, like user stories, for example. So it's more really a manager of scrum artifacts around the product

and helping actually execute on that than it is really any kind of thing about designing the product or figuring out how the product's going to meet the strategic objective with that sort of description, which I know every company's going to be different. Again, I'd love to hear in the comments what people think. what you're describing to me sounds, and I could be wrong, it sounds a little bit like their expectation of the roles you were interviewing for was that they were a little bit closer to like a product owner role. Does that make sense? Or maybe I'm That's No, that's exactly right. Uh okay. I think everything you described about leaving stories and getting uh the artifacts of that particular product that's what I was hearing more of than the first piece about actual strategy and the product manager role that you mentioned. So the role was entitled product manager but it did have more features of a product owner. Okay. One thing I would suggest is something to consider is knowing that and again I know you've had some exposure to these concepts. We're just talking about them. You know, maybe write down a list for yourself of the attributes of a type of product management role that you feel you're looking for. And then when you're interviewing, if you can, I would say as early in the process as you feel like you're talking to someone who's going to know. Because if you're talking to like a recruiter or some, you know, HR, they're not going to know this. But as soon as you talk to somebody, you know, on the business side or an existing product manager, someone in the interview process, I think it might not be a bad idea to just say, you know, basically what I just said, like, hey, my understanding is, you know, there's a product manager, there's product owners, sometimes it's combined, sometimes they're separate. when you, you know, look at what someone would do to be successful in this role. Is this a combination of, you know, coming up with how we're going to go to market and achieve strategic objectives with the product and getting to decide that maybe and doing the scrum artifacts or are you mostly just looking for someone who's in a way like a glorified project manager with product in their name? I think if you and you'd have to come up with of course you're a great communicator, the way that you'd feel comfortable sharing that and asking that. I think that might help you just have an early stop where if you just realize early on this isn't really a product management role. This is just more of a project manager, product owner role. You just don't even waste your time. Don't even continue with the interview. And you don't have to, you know, you could be respectful of them, but just Yeah, that's this isn't the type of role I'm looking for. Yeah, that's great. I would have loved to have been armed with that before. So, that's super helpful. my understanding of your career history and I won't go into it all here because again we've spent quite a few hours before in the past I think you got a passion for working on product you're really fascinated by the business you're a great communicator you do have empathy for customers you know you have a fascination in some ways with business um I think if you can find the right company that is willing to give you a shot to have a position that has more of an impact on strategy I think just your energy behind it and your desire and you're again that you kind of do this for fun. You and your wife in your free time that tells a compelling story that you have a level of I hate the term passion. It's overused, but you know, you have a level of desire that they're definitely not going to worry, oh, we're going to give him this job and he's not, you know, he just wants a paycheck. They're going to be like, "This guy really wants to do like he's excited about this. " Yeah. Again, hopefully that was helpful just clarifying that. Now, given all that, let's talk about your current company again just for a moment. Do you have any feeling as to your interfacing with product management at your current company? The people you've been interfacing with, do you feel like they're more product owners? Are they project are they product managers? Are they kind of a combination? My sense is that they are more product owners than product managers. uh maybe there's one product manager that oversees some of that but I think that they're tasked with being more product owners but given kind of their directives from some from another place given that you as a developer I'm sure have had quite a bit of exposure to the kind of scrum artifacts user stories you know product backlog items whatever you want to call them epics sometimes people roll stuff up into you know you're having the whole scrum process daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, grooming, all that kind of stuff. Clearly, you can be involved in that. You know, I I've been on teams a lot of times when I would come in as an agile coach, I would recommend to teams that they don't have a dedicated scrum master, that they actually just let a dev be a scrum master and rotate it sprint to sprint so everybody gets a chance to do it. I don't think you need even necessarily a dedicated role. Now, if the developers hate uh busy work, because there is some busy work involved. if they hate just like being responsible, well then you don't want to force someone into a situation where

they're doing something that they're just going to bring down the whole team. But in a team where I think developers are willing to do it sometimes it doesn't require a separate scrum master role. So I would imagine knowing you, you know, you're not going to get super jazzed and excited by, wow, I get to write user stories, right? You you've been exposed to this left, front, right, and center. Um, it sounds to me like the growth area for you, the interest area for you really is more around getting to talk to customers, getting to understand the business strategy, all that kind of stuff. Would it be of any value or even does it sound even like reasonable to either have a future conversation with maybe the people that you've already talked to or maybe people that are closer to the business that you identify within your company and maybe just expressing a desire. Hey, I really have appreciated, let's say, the, you know, opportunity you've given me so far to talk to product managers. I've recognized that some of what they're responsible for here is mostly scrum, you know, artifacts, which are obviously important to the company. That's not really when I think of product management, the growth opportunity for me because as a developer, I've been exposed to all that. There's not as much growth. interest in that. I'm actually more interested in really getting to understand and influence the business. Do you see any opportunities for that in the future here? I don't know if there's any political or image implications that you'd be worried about or if you think that's even reasonable. Would there be any value in that? Do you have any reasons you wouldn't want to do that? I think I have access to try to go into that direction. So, it's possible. I think the organization doesn't quite have a strong grasp of that role, but I could try to influence and lead in that direction. Like I have been trying to lead some of these ceremonies and we talked about like kind of producing some product management like artifacts or presentations in a role, right? Like to go there. So, I've been trying to do that and I've gotten some great feedback with my efforts there. So, I think that like I am making it making others aware that that's part of my skill set and something that I'm interested in. So, I think I could Do you think that it's advantageous to continue to push in that direction and try to find an avenue to get closer to those decision makers? The reason I'm kind of asking that is obviously you got a full-time job. You're going to put in the effort anybody would expect of you to do a great job. You know, you've been an employee many years. You know what's involved, what's required of you. We all have to choose sometimes, too. How much effort do we want to put into trying to get the company to conform to our future career desires from a growth standpoint? Meaning like, hey, I'm going to step beyond doing a great job of what you hired me for to even going above and beyond that. Sometimes we can want it all we want, but it's just the company culture or the opportunities that are there just aren't available. I'm not saying that isn't the case there. I think you still have some opportunities to learn what's possible. There's also the decision to just do a great job with what you were brought in with, help maybe with, you know, product to the level that that's possible there, but really focus your energy more on carving out 10, maybe 15 hours a week. I know you just went through a lot of life changes and you're kind of settling into a new situation, but you know, instead being more intentional about looking for some sort of way to get an opportunity to do that outside of the job where you instead of arguing and advocating for your opportunity to do it, like you're creating the opportunity. Do you have any gut feeling yourself as to which of those two paths might be best and that could be different today because of again you know some of the changes in your life versus let's say 6 months to a year from now. What's your kind of feeling about the level of effort for those two paths? Yeah, I I'm more interested in using that energy outside of the company to explore those options. like I feel like you know as everything settles down from what we discussed earlier I'll have the bandwidth to really devote to that and I just want to make sure that my focus is going in the right area and effective right so I you know ultimately we talked about some entrepreneurial desires like building that outside of this company would be the path that is more appealing to me so awesome that that's something that I'm more interested in cool I don't know if you saw recently I rebranded the channel back to healthy developer. Did you notice that? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. So, I'm still, you know, when I coach people, I'm still helping them if they do have entrepreneurial desires and I and I see that they're in a place in their career that they're actually in a good health spot to take action on it. I will help them with

that. Part of the reason though that I also rebranded, there was a variety of reasons. I talked about that in that sort of rebrand announcement video, is also because I've just noticed that there's a lot of people who want to do this, but they really first would be better served making some decisions in their kind of personal life and with the way they're establishing boundaries with their current job to get into a better health spot. you know, mental health, energy, workload, relationships before they take that leap. Other than the life changes that you've had recently, just as far as, you know, and again, you don't have to get into anything that's personal. This isn't about that. How do you feel just about kind of your general, you know, mood about your career, level of energy that you have, stability in sort of your personal life? Do you feel like once kind of the dust is settled with some of the changes you've been through, you're in a fairly decent spot to try to apply a little extra time outside work to approach this? Or do you have any um concerns that this could place pressure on your relationships or your health in a way that there's some things you should maybe make some changes with there first? I actually think that right now I'm in a good spot to really devote to that. I think that some of the changes are really fueling my ability to devote extra time to some of these interests and in this path. So, I am excited about using this as an opportunity to go down that path. Like I've tried to practice at this in my current role like some of the things that we discussed and like awesome. You know, I make sure that I take time off before I think I need it. um if it's just a day a month or something like that because you know I noticed that you know it just that little recharge and really you know if we have these benefits and we're you know we have some of the flexibility we should really take advantage of it to keep ourselves healthy. Absolutely. And so I've really like worked hard at staying on that path and like make maintaining improving my own personal health. So feel like I've gotten great stability there and now I think that's what gave me the energy to propel me to let's move into a different direction and let me actually focus on outside of the organization or my career to pursue these other uh avenues. Good for you man. And just, you know, I try not to speak to the audience in the middle of our session too much, but I'll say just for people out there, let this be a reminder and just underscore like if you are in a spot with your career like I've been, uh, where you feel somewhat trapped or somewhat stuck and things are difficult, if you choose to invest in, you know, resolving those things and you do start to, you know, treat your health as a priority and you start to deal with some of the crap in your life that is holding you back, you can get back to a place like you are Monty where you know looking at something that's a little more ambitious or you know a little outside of your comfort zone feels more achievable but sometimes it requires doing that hard work which it sounds like you've done quite a bit of in the last couple years yeah good for you man that's awesome at this point uh I guess just sort of to end out this session the last let's say 5 10 minutes let's talk a little bit about given that what I'm hearing is you have made changes in life and made some great decisions to get yourself to a health spot and just kind of life circumstance where you could approach uh you know entrepreneurship on the side while still doing a great job with your day job. Knowing that at least from my understanding your current job it may be pretty difficult or just you know require a lot of energy to get the a seat at the table not just with like managing scrum artifacts and being you know a product owner but being a product manager. Um, do you have any thoughts as far as how much energy you want to continue to put into that at your current company? You know, I know when you've expressed a desire to do something in a company, sometimes it can create a feeling of commitment. Like, it's not right if I reset expectations with people or go a different direction. And again, this isn't about what I would do. This is your career. So, like this is a very personal opinion and it could change even of course from month to month. But how do you feel about sort of going forward? how much you want to continue to kind of push people to bring you into this capability at your current company versus kind of just saying, "Well, hey, maybe this company isn't the one that's going to give me that full shot. Uh, I can still do an awesome job with what my current responsibilities are, but maybe I can just, you know, really save that energy for the stuff I'm going to do on the side when I get into a better spot. " Yeah. My focus for, you know, for me is performance and actually like dialing in my own performance. And I feel like that's where my energy is most impactful because some of the convincing and trying to get a seat at the table. I think perhaps at this particular company there's some diminishing returns there.

So like I feel like if I can devote my time to performance and doing a good job and performing well in my role that continues to give me the energy outside to pursue other interests because I think that leaking that energy onto kind of desperate tasks is probably less efficient overall. Yeah, I would agree and you'll have to figure out exactly how you go about this. There's also the, you know, when you're switching from like you've been doing more of an engineering role towards product, you know, you can get into this situation where you kind of can't do either job at peak performance because you're kind of transitioning or you're trying to kind of cross both worlds. I think this is one of the biggest frustrations I would have in tech lead roles is often companies would be like, "Hey, we want you to lead everybody, be the best developer, take responsibility for everything, and hit all your deliverable dates. " And it was kind of like, do you want me to lead or be Superman? You know, cuz there's only so many hours in the day and so much that I can do. So, I mean, you'll have to figure out, of course, and I'm sure you will, how to navigate setting expectations with people and whenever and however you might handle all this. But I think that makes a lot of sense. you know, it's actually a net positive to your company regardless in a way of whether you choose to move towards product because you have the potential of making an impact there. Or if you say, you know what, I'm a really great, you know, engineer. I've understood the culture here. Great company. I see how the why this is set up the way it is just for my career. You know, maybe it's not the right next step just because it's not possible here. I'm going to kind of double down on engineering and they're going to get awesome performances. I'm sure they have from you with that. I think that's totally legit. Thanks. Yeah, I think that you know in line with like being a healthy developer is what will you know like understanding that I am giving my effort but my effort is reserved for like this slot and I have other slots outside of it that are for me and for relationships and for like my physical health and those other activities. Yep. Well, hey Monty, it was great to see you again. It's been a while, man. But like it sounds like you're in a really good headsp space to me. I'm really glad to hear that you have continued to make some good decisions in your life and luckily had circumstances in your life happen where you're able to keep your health in a good spot. I know, you know, sometimes stuff just happens in life where we're set back for a while, but really glad to hear that you're doing okay. you know, you're making some great changes and man, I just want to encourage you when you have the energy and the time feels right, you know, keep leaning into that direction cuz I don't see any reason why you can't either start your own company or really get an opportunity to impact a business more uh as long as you just keep pressing and don't give up. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate the support and you know a lot of the you know advice and kind of direction that you've helped me come to and really like opened up my eyes to some opportunities that I already have in front of me but I didn't necessarily see. So I really appreciate that. Happy to, man. All right. See you next time. Awesome. Thank