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Authority Issues
Authority Issues episodes
- Episode 90: What does "take all the time you need" really mean, anyway?
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- The long journey to a big whisky delivery
- Kendall's triumphant return
- The magical locale that is Port Townsend
- A particularly pleasing hat
- The conflict in question
- What actual family means vs "your work family"
- How the pandemic has strained the definition of "take all the time you need" for companies
- Parental leave as a possible model for policymaking
- Doing The Math
- The SVB failure as a case study of doing the Math
- What would you do?
- The impact of the pandemic on views of the value of "working"
- Opportunities as a leader to improve the situation when it arises
- Kendall recommends: My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hands
- rachel recommends: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Pokerface (tv show) on Peacock
- rachel's advice on cask programs
- How to reach us
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
46 min - Episode 89: Ricardo Brízido (Stake)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Ricardo talk about:
- How we're a global podcast!
- Rough times of wearing a suit to work in the morning
- A lack of startups in Portugal in the early 2000s, moving to London on a whim
- The Land Before APIs (and podcasts)
- Discovering a penchant for leadership
- The differences between raising VC money in EU vs US, definitions of success
- Trying to keep a startup going after the runway runs out
- German startup culture vs Portuguese startup culture
- What does "long story short" even mean anymore? :)
- Reflecting on past decisions
- Suddenly realizing the scope of responsibility
- Arriving at Stake (whew!)
- An emotional response to being a builder vs a fixer
- Pragmatism in technology choices
- Running a sourdough bakery with his wife
You can find Ricardo at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardobrizido/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
54 min - Episode 88: Is work the friends we made along the way?
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- Freakin' time zones
- Whisky delivery news
- The subtleties of F to C conversions
- Migration to Mastodon, bike community trends
- Kendall's new CTO Lunches business undertaking and travel plans
- Going from having all your friends come from work to having most friends originate outside of work
- Benefits of socializing with your more senior colleagues
- How the pandemic has impacted work friendships, especially for early-career people
- The change in dynamic when you become the boss
- Progressively wanting and needing less social contact at work as time passes
- Hiring your friends
- Relationship-building as a strategy
- Giving less of a fuck as you get older, tolerating more weirdness in others
- Energy level imbalance anxiety therapy session for rachel
- The value of being optimistic about people you encounter at work
- Recommendations: rachel recommends the Monk and Robot series of novellas by Becky Chambers. Kendall recommends you go sailing, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.
- A warning from Kendall
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 87: Virgile Raingeard (Figures.hr)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Virgile talk about:
- Starting out as a CS student, but wanting more human interaction
- A path through HR tooling to HR generalist role with a detour to Perth, Australia
- The elephant in the room: is HR "the bad guy"?
- How to manage the tension inherent in doing HR work
- Differences in the role when a company is small vs large
- Getting some experience in an entrepreneurial culture
- Discovering firsthand the need for reliable compensation data
- Tying the lack of data to salary level disparity and unfairness
- Walking the line between corporate best interest and employee best interests
- Deep differences between employment policies in the US vs France
- The stress of hiring thoughtfully and effectively
- How crucial it is to understand onesself before one can develop the empathy to manage others well
- The ego required to feel ok about being responsible for peoples' livelihoods vs the humility required to do it effectively
- How hard it is to give away one's legos
- Fulfillment at work leading to a happier home life
- How many bikes is too many bikes?
You can find Virgile on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vraingeard/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
47 min - Episode 86: Growth, fast and slow, at companies, large and small
In this episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- Why rachel retired
- A brief diversion into the fundraising lifecycle of a nonprofit
- Why Kendall gets offered weed on the street in Portugal
- Visas and the eldritch horrors of the permitting system
- Settling one's family into Portuguese living
- Appreciation of walkable living environments
- How bootstrapped and venture-backed startups are different experiences
- Merging acquisitions into larger corporate environments
- rachel's theories about why Splunk was such a success story
- Kendall's thoughts on new vs additive markets, effort, and growth
- A Tale of Two Shitshows
- An enumeration of variables in our defense
- What attracts people to different stages of company growth
- Freedom vs risk, another set of axes to consider
- Minor regrets on scope
- Our recommendations for distractions of late:
- rachel recommends the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik and the Star Wars show Endor
- Kendall recommends learning Portuguese
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
52 min - Episode 85: Maya Mandel (Helios)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Maya talk about:
- Competitive athletics as a driver of leadership skills and high performance teamwork
- The power of the history of the University of Michigan
- Preparing for when athleticism will be a memory
- Serving in the military, leading software dev teams...in the military
- Doing things young, when you have less to lose, less context
- Learning the value of a holistic product view
- Wanting to change the world
- Motivation differences in the military vs the civilian working world
- Getting an MBA and why it felt kind of relaxing
- Different leadership requirements for the different stages of childhood development
- Getting her mind blown launching products at a huge org like Symantec
- Adaptability and how the process of problem solving is essentially unchanged
- Using authority as a tool vs a bludgeon
- Being where she wants to be
You can find Maya on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayamandel/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 84: Can you be a good leader without also being a systems thinker?
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- The art of mending things beautifully (the words rachel was trying to remember are Kintsugi and Sashiko, in that order)
- The art of mending things not so beautifully, aka hacking off the bottom of your favorite pants and adding bits of your favorite shirt so they fit better (Kendall subsequently found some photos, but none of them from after the shirt addition...)
- Why Kendall sounds echo-ey (also, maybe this is why there's an annoying echo of rachel throughout this recording, apologies)
- Why we're talking about systems thinking: https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1518361842342453248 (no longer pinned)
- Context, and why it rules from orbit
- How seeing the big picture can be frustrating when one has limited power or scope
- Optimization, in a shockingly nerdy gaming analogy
- When it's hard to share context due to business volatility
- Wait, what actually do we mean when we say systems thinking?
- How systems thinking is actually largely about understanding people and their motivations
- A former podcast guest we both think is a super impressive systems thinker but did not name ;)
Thanks to John Cutler (@jcutlefish on Twitter) for a thought-provoking list!
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
43 min - Episode 83: What does peak leadership look like?
In this episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- Not looking a gift Wagyu steak in the...mouth? marbling?
- The primal/spiritual nature of singing with other people and joining a Threshold Choir
- Taking Kendall Seriously
- Moving to Portugal updates from Kendall
- Dentistry nightmares
- How far up the corporate ladder is far enough?
- Theorizing about the impact of being part of Gen-X on rachel's career path
- Caring about money vs caring about power and ways some companies exploit the latter
- Speculation and validation around why Kendall keeps at the grind
- An interlude to let you know that this episode was brought to you (in part) by gin
- Things that complicate the equation of when to stop
- rachel reins in her judginess (a bit)
- How being a woman in the tech industry affects things
- Kendall plugs the Radial Development Group
- rachel marvels at Kids These Days and their nomadic lifestyles
- Echoes of Episode 81
- Deep Thoughts with Kendall and rachel
- Kendall recommends a podcast: The Fall of Civilization, especially the episode about Assyria
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 82: Sarah Rieger (Jellyfish)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Sarah talk about:
- Making the choice to go into software engineering
- The daily life of a team lead
- How one becomes a team lead, awesome support from Jasmine and others!
- The power of empathy in leadership
- Being able to ask questions across the org
- Approaches to building trust
- Being highly concensus-driven, associating "authority" with top-down directives
- How leaders should always remember they have more to learn
- Just How Very Tired Kendall Is
- That it's important for leaders to be approachable/accessible to people at all levels of the org
- How "Building up relationships in a company is like building up a friendship"
- Learning how to paint, using 3D printed items to practice drawing
- Disrupting the "deciding where to eat" market
You can find Sarah on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-rieger-66617a145/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
42 min - Episode 81: The more things change, the more they stay the same
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- The good vs the bad kind of underwater
- Why one should make one's own underpants
- Ear infections and their provenance, also Kendall made a pearl with his ear
- rachel's new e-bike and how it's awesome
- Kendall learns about the magical thing that is kolhrabi
- rachel's plans and anxieties about travel during the pandemic
- Why Kendall chooses the opposite of "stability"
- How that impacts motivation to invest in the future in a given community
- rachel learns about the turbo-plus version of notarization called "apostille"
- Kendall's new working situation, goals for work environments
- Why work when you don't have to?
- Feelings of pointlessness regarding activism
- The magical allure of Portugal
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
47 min
About Authority Issues
From the publisher's feed
Welcome to Authority Issues, a podcast about leadership, management, and competitive prescription writing.
Hosted by Rachel Perkins (aka piebob), and Kendall Miller