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Authority Issues
Authority Issues episodes
- Episode 80: Anurag Sharma (Chargebee)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Anurag talk about:
- Getting left in charge as a career progression mechanism
- An "unusual" level of interest in affecting long-term strategy and systems thinking from an economics background
- Betting on more candidates by giving them an opportunity outside of their current background
- The vagueness of product management and strategy
- Instilling a culture of ownership/safety when everyone is working remotely
- How sometimes more meetings is...good? At least when onboarding, as a way to develop culture by seeing other people interact.
- Onboarding that results in checking in code within 5 days
- LOUD NOISES
- Admiration for one's leaders, learning by watching them
- Authority as responsibility to one's team vs power
- Intermission to enjoy Kendall's dog
- Safety to make mistakes as a child, wanting that for your team
- rachel has Opinions about calling your colleagues your "family"
- Loyalty to people vs company
- Enjoyment of natural places
- Using leadership skills to improve life with friends and family
You can find Anurag on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asblr/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
42 min - Episode 79: Is it OK to be happy right now?
In this episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- Coping mechanisms: are some worse than others? Where is the line?
- What happens when a planner can't make any plans?
- rachel's effusive declarations about indie sewing patterns
- Kendall's...disappointing COVID experience
- Why does it seem wrong to feel happy when people around the world are suffering?
- When it's helpful to compartmentalize
- Clarifying what you're actually feeling guilty about
- Happiness as self-care
- How much authenticity is too much, at work?
- The need for a mechanism for feeling hope
- Hitting that bucket list
- A song that changed the path of a life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXk5dXYw728
- A quick detour for hot tub recommendations and rap lyrics from Kendall
- The value of self-understanding, introspection, honesty
- Polarization for good and bad reasons
- Doing the little things that make you happy (like making a podcast with a good friend <3 )
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 78: Sean O'Connor (Datadog)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Sean talk about:
- The genesis of this podcast, and who we have to thank
- How taking the traditional path of CS to engineering leadership is the rare case
- Getting into guiding and mentoring at a small company named Huge (lol)
- Being glad for having done the deathmarch type work when you were younger
- Learning many important lessons via a failed startup
- Why consulting is often not appealing
- Finally getting into bonafide engineering management, with no training
- A free podcast idea: Awkward Silences
- The blessing and curse of being a problemsolver
- The idea that listening is an action
- Not being able to let go of puns
- Timing complexity when trying to promote internally
- How high trust environments must exist across a given company to work well, and how this makes hiring a much higher stakes proposition
- Intent to 3D print and make things out of wood
You can find Sean at seanoc.com
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
47 min - Episode 77: Making an ass out of u and me (assuming positive intent)
In this episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- Dietary constraints for gout sufferers
- Non-traditional Thanksgiving fare and excitement about cabbage rolls
- Kendall's adventures in escalating vegetarianism
- The definition of "assuming positive intent"
- How the power dynamic matters
- Why it's unreasonable to expect marginalized people to assume positive intent by default
- Kendall realizes once again he's playing the game on "easy" mode
- When assuming positive intent works well, why it's valuable and to whom
- Why this episode has the "explicit" tag :)
- A time when Kendall did not assume positive intent
- The dangers of making "assume positive intent" a corporate policy
- How this relates to injustice in the greater social world
- Kendall's unflagging optimism about people
- rachel's tactics for navigating a situation where you can't assume positive intent
- Why intent is not as important as impact
- How to serve a colleague or employee who reports discrimination
- Our desire for more topics to discuss, tweet us at @djpiebob and @blatanterror with your requests!
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
50 min - Episode 76: Marilyn Cole (Tuft & Needle)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Marilyn talk about:
- Wishing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our guest :)
- Growing up in a household that had computers
- Working in tech: doing math, but also making money!
- Going back to school, getting an internship at Google
- The value of just having credentials (why to get a Masters degree)
- The Wrong Kind of Management Training
- Going back to being an IC....briefly
- Getting crappy leadership advice
- When not to "lighten the mood" and how the rules are different for men vs women
- Enjoying the peer support of being a leader among several instead of being The One Boss
- Educating Kendall about K&R, a rare opportunity to gatekeep for rachel :)
- Enjoying being involved in decisionmaking vs being The Authority
- Enthusiasm for houseplants and reading during the pandemic
You can find Marilyn on Twitter as @mmmarilyn :)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
48 min - Episode 75: Eli Daniel (Jellyfish)
In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Eli talk about:
- The most apt failed startup name ever
- A terrible first experience as a manager and being voluntold to try it again
- Enjoying the force multiplier of leadership vs individual contribution
- Oracle acquisition zingers (nice one, Kendall)
- Being Guild-less at Spotify
- Going from being told what to build to asking what should be built
- Learning that it's important to also care about the business plan
- Communicating and marketing business context to [naive|entitled] engineers
- How that context helps drive a more collaborative process and empowers engineers
- How big is too big? Kendall asking the important questions
- The inevitability of acquiring a "superstructure of bullshit"
- Outgrowing the "rah rah" aspect of working at a company
- Feelings of beard inadequacy and enjoyment of bicycles
- The romance of building a sailboat with your life partner
You can find Eli on the Rands Leadership Slack and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-daniel/
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
49 min - Episode 74: The Future of Remote-First is Now! (also: Doesn't "Return to Work" imply we stopped working at some point?)
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- Kendall's amazing inflatable hot tub
- Having a little bit of guest visit enjoyment, as a treat
- The quaint marvel that is rachel's small-town paper's Police Blotter
(here's the video i reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mG2RGp-lcw&t=5s )- Wildlife encounters
- Not blaming people who choose safety over working a service industry job
- The need for a social safety net
- A heartwarming tale of anonymous free fancy dinner
- How companies who think "remote first" was just a phase are losing employees to the ones who realize it is the way of the future
- The investment in support and infrastructure needed to successfully implement a "remote first" workplace
- Ego-driven leadership and the need to survey one's domain
- A theory about innovation needing people being in a room together
- Whether the ability to multi-task during your Zoom meetings /really/ mean you're more productive?
- How not having drive-by interruptions all day definitely helps
- The possibility of a cultural split among companies -- in-person culture vs remote-first culture
- Whether our listeners want more of this kind of episode--let us know!
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
48 min - Episode 73: Why do people cling to their shitty ways? How and when do we embrace change?
In this episode, rachel and Kendall talk about:
- More than you wanted to know about grocery store ginger purchases
- How some people use the term "a couple" to mean something other than exactly 2 and that they are Wrong
- Examples of technologies that suck but people still use
- Being caught up in the glories of the past (rachel would like to point out that she used a sharpie to black out Gene Simmons on her KISS shirt)
- The downsides of Agile/continuous shipping of things vs Waterfall (warning, heresy inside)
- Blaming growing inflexibility as one gets older
- Unselfawareness in the face of serial shittiness
- Two reasons: arrogance or laziness
- How one gets stuck, how to know if you're stuck
- Recommendations:
- rachel: The Great British Sewing Bee (tv show, if you liked GBBO, you'll probably like this too)
- rachel: The Alienist (kinda gruesome, moody period crime drama)
- Kendall: fail videos from user mrmrmike on YouTube (great way to learn things NOT to do)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
48 min - Episode 72: Money is all that matters (a Very Special Installment)
In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:
- Spending money on Things and our feelings about that
- Are we the baddies?
- The nature of golden handcuffs
- What is "enough"?
- "Work" as a social outlet
- Contentment vs. satisfaction
- Kendall's wanderlust and associated twitchiness
- Enabling satisfaction for your employees
- Impact and the effectiveness of giving money vs. personal involvement and time
- Whether it's simpler (NOT easier) to be "poor"
- Underlying feelings of guilt/not deserving
- The stress of not being able to make working "good" for one's employees
- Recommendations for (unrelated) books:
- Kendall recommends: James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time
- rachel recommends: Gamechanger and Dealbreaker by L.X. Beckett (and Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan)
Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3
53 min - Episode 71: Amy Chantasirivisal (Unicycle)
In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Amy talk about:
- The olden dayze of Geocities and people hating on Javascript
- The scrum leadership to management pipeline
- Kendall's Litany Of Agile Atereotypes
- Getting promoted Too Fast
- Hypotheses about the ability to succeed using progressive management philosophies
- Wanting to leave the tech industry "better than we found it"
- Joining early for a greater impact on the culture
- Focus on strategy vs process as a signifier of seniority
- Twitter as a leadership training ground
- Leveraging authority should be uncomfortable
- The "ooh, shiny" approach to hobby acquisition
- Woodworking nerdery, a macrame + shelf project!
You can find Amy on Twitter at @amychanta
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