Stress can either stretch you or hurt you. In today's second part of the interview with Carl Yates Perry, General Manager at Square, we're discussing jobs that give you more energy than they take and how to maintain a healthy working life.
What is your mindset?
In this second part of our discussion with Carl Yates Perry, we're talking about healthy developer mindsets and how to identify a healthy team mindset and how your team mindset can affect your own growth.
Carl Yates Perry On The Web
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What is your mindset? That's one of the questions that you'll ask yourself as you listen to today's episode, the second part of my interview with Carl Yates Perry. Carl joined us in the first part of this interview and talked about things like hard career transition decisions, encouraged you to go and listen to that first part if you haven't listened. And then jump into this second part. My name is Jonathan Cutrell, you're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective and purpose in your careers. As we said on the last episode, we bring guests on my Carl because it's kind of a good injection of clarity, perspective and purpose. You're likely to hear something in today's interview that sparks one of those three things for you. And when you do hear that thing, encourage you to do one of two things. One, you might already have subscribed to the show, but if you haven't, and that's the first thing to do, subscribe to the show. The second thing to consider is to share that moment, that spark, whatever thing that you heard in this episode directly with another person that you think could benefit from that same moment. Let's jump straight into the second part of my interview with Carl Yates Perry. So this idea of stressing and stretching that you've outlined here, I love this idea because as we get into the startup culture, especially in early days, and I've done this, I've been at two different startups now and certainly you have a lot more experience with this than I do. So I'd love to hear more about when you feel like that transition happens or how to encourage that transition happen when it needs to. But it feels like early on, there's a lot more of this sense of stress than there is a sense of growth or focus even. So I'd love for you to kind of share your experience in that transition. And whether you think it makes sense to push for it, are there times when where that stress is actually significantly better for us or when they're one and the same? Where we feel like we're actually being stressed, but actually we are more on the opposite side of that continuum that you've set up here. Yeah, so I think I'd said before, I haven't had a ton of experience in startups. Actually, I came to square late and the two other companies I've worked at are Amazon and Microsoft. So they're pretty late stage. I'd say beyond late stage. But I have worked on teams that are, you know, it's best I can tell our more startup. In particular, when I was on S3, it was that way where we were going through a hyper growth phase. You know, lots of things were happening. More and more people were using us on a daily basis. And, you know, from talking to my friends and coworkers at Square, many of whom have been here, you know, one of my coworkers who is one of the other GM's at Square. He's been here for 11 years, I think he's, you know, been here from the beginning. And, you know, we hear him talk about it. When it comes to stressing and stretching, I mean, number one, you know, stress can sometimes be everybody agree on what the stress is. And for others, other times, it's based on your personal like value system, what you're focused on. Oftentimes, the best way to look at it in my opinion is like, make sure that the job, the company, the role you have, as you energy instead of takes energy from you as much as possible. There are going to be days where energy is just sacked from you. And that's just, that's just the fact of life in some time. You know, you go through hard times, you go through easy times, go through challenging times. But as long as you go through that kind of the growth that you're going through in any company, and you have a way to connect back to the things of what made you passionate to join that company. And those are still true. You can really gather energy from that. And it, it changed the situations that could be stressful into situations that are, they're stretch full, not stressful. And so, you know, I think there's a lot, which is grounding and making sure that the role you're doing and the company you're working at is something that you really believe in along any number of dimensions, right? And that it gives you energy more often than it takes so that when you hit those rough patches or those times where you're just scaling like crazy or needing to hard solve really hard problems that the resolutions aren't apparent. And it's really hard to go and figure those things out. You're able to gather that energy from other places in just the day to day work that you're doing. And, you know, as you find these hard problems, they don't completely wear you down to the point where it's really stressed on a daily basis. That's been my experience personally is, and I found it most in S3 when I was there. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you identify the kind of energy as a heuristic for whether or not you, you know, you're, are you in a period of stress or stretching? I've known a lot of people who truly love their jobs and they love them to the point of burnout. And it's not a negative experience that they're having. It seems that it's actually quite positive, but that positive, the positivity of it doesn't necessarily make up for the toll that it's taking on them. And it's kind of an interesting thing because I think if you would ask them, hey, is this, you know, is this giving you life? Is it giving you energy? Do you feel good about this? That most of the time they would say yes. That actually they're very energized. That's why they, you know, work on the weekends for this, whatever venture it is. And they enjoy it. So I wonder, you know, and it seems like you had this experience at S3 where you actually, for the most part, enjoy the work, but at some point the, the energy that it was taking, the balance problem that it created for you, burns you, maybe not burned you out, but you had this moment of turning, right? Or the moment that the personal story that you shared about your daughter and all of this kind of came to a point, but would you have said, you know, a month before that that you felt that your energy was being taken from you rather than being given to you? Yeah, I mean, I think so one of my co-workers at Square, he uses the term work life integration. I actually like that personally myself more because I think that balance is a really inaccurate word for how you want to manage time in your life. There are certain times in your life where you're going to want to put more into something like, like, for example, my son joined a basketball team this last year. He did it the year before and I was a coach and he did it again this year and I was the assistant coach. And so for me, making sure I was available during that timeframe for him, I just had to set certain boundaries and I realized that it was important to me. So knowing what's important to me and making sure that I allocate the time for it, enabled me to have better work like it's life integration and I made certain trade-offs, right? I wasn't staying at work as late on Mondays and prepping for practice, right? I was leaving it to and that was just a choice I made and I made it a priority and that was the thing I didn't do before in my life was I didn't look at at this point in time what's the priority? I just let I let the work and my lack of focus on kind of outside of work pull me along and I think that happens to a lot of people. There's no intentionality to the decisions you make because you're so wrapped up in trying to make this thing successful and really focusing on what's the next thing I need to do. And there are times where it makes a ton of sense and it's super exciting, it's stressful or stretchful depending but you need to make the choice. You need to take time every once long to decide do I need to balance things a little bit differently than I had them before and that's what I didn't do at least for myself. I didn't think about it on a regular basis. I just let it carry me along and I think a lot of people do that. You kind of get wrapped up in this thing that's kind of all consuming on some level and you know you don't take the time to pause and say hey how am I feeling about this and am I making the right choices? Am I feeling am I getting energy? Am I missing anything outside of work? Is there more I want to do in work and being able to make that trade off yourself? I think that's the most important thing you can do is take the time on a somewhat regular basis to check point with yourself and say am I am I happy? Am I challenged? Am I growing? Am I getting the things I need out of work and out of personal life and and and other things and you know I think that it's not the only thing you do but I think that just at least you know having that checkpoint with yourself lets you at least pause and if you do the honest evaluation there are going to be times where like you know I'm really not doing the things that I think I need to be doing to feel be happy with my job or my personal life or something else and I need to make some choices and then then the hard part so that's that's the easy part if you actually do it somewhat regularly but the hard part is actually following through on that right? Okay well how am I going to carve out that two hours a week or four hours a week or how am I going to rebalance my working schedule to so I can go do this you know this social thing or this exercise thing or whatever that's the hardest part and I find is difficult for most people to go do and I think that's where you know when you get back into you leverage your network and your friends to help you hold yourself accountable to reinforcing importance of it and things like that. Yeah I think I think the idea of integration is a much better way of looking at it because I think you know when you think about balance it creates this kind of necessarily kind of opposing position or antagonistic position where you have to counterbalance your work with something that is not work and I think that that can be damaging to our perspective of the work itself and very often I think people end up creating this antagonistic viewpoint to work in general rather than taking advantage of you know the possibility that hey maybe you will actually love this and it's about balancing the things that you love rather than balancing the good with the bad right and I think that's you know and it's not to say that I'm going to love every minute of every job that we ever take but rather you know I like to think about it like I have many people that I love but if I spend all of my time with the person that I you know theoretically love the most however you quantify that then I would be kind of in an imbalance where I'm not really that priority, priority lineup is incorrect right not really not really doing the right things and also kind of in the same way when we stack up our priorities and we say okay I'm not a priority prioritize my family but to the point that I'm no longer employable well that's not you know it's complex right that's that's kind of the point of that and and so when you when you deal with that complexity I think it's useful to have heuristics rather than trying to you know create a perfect you know algorithm for is my life balance or not well I'm going to measure it by did I spend three hours in this area well that's probably going to run you into a wall at some point yeah you said something reminding me of something I strongly believe I said that somebody may look to be weird but it's true it's like you know somebody's like do you like this more or that more it's like it's like my children yeah I love I love both my children equally but there are times where I or one of them needs more love from me than the other and they need more time from me than the other right and that switches and so you need to be attuned to that you need to know that and they're you know when my daughter needs more love from me or time for me I put my efforts in there and you know sometimes there's tensions as to well I can't do it all then you make choices but you do you do this kind of weaving of different things in your time in your life so that you can focus on things that are most important at that point in time and then transition to the other focuses as they become more important meetings become less important absolutely yeah it's it is a complex thing we I think we we think about prioritization wrong even even in our jobs as developers we think about prioritization wrong very often because you know instead of thinking about it in terms of how do you meet your priorities as a as a group or like interconnectedness like you said integration how can I integrate my priorities so that one feeds the other rather than one eating the other you know and it kind of goes back to that duality between stretching and stressing can we stretch in this particular area as well I think that's incredible insightful yeah yep so we've we've covered this this incredibly dynamic career that you've had and of course you said you haven't spent a lot of time in startups but you've spent time on teams that were new you've spent time and companies that were new for you what were some of the some of the lessons that you learned about you know especially moving from one job to another in those first you know in that first year first couple of months you must have felt like a beginner on multiple occasions kind of resetting to a totally different company even though you you have this long career what was that experience like moving from one team that did something totally different from your next team yeah it's it's always a really exciting time for me I think you know there's a there's a bit of like butterflies you're nervous but it's always really exciting I mean I think you do a couple of things and I think in just as an individual you know the first thing she like talked to people you ask you know you go ask what's happening you go ask what their perception is of the work that the team that you're on is doing what the struggles are what the great things are that the team does so you go around I think the first three months is really just learning about that and getting a sense of what the perception and kind of gathering data of your team from everybody outside right and that's super valuable you learn the connections you know you ask who are the right people to talk to and you know initially the first five people are probably the people you're going to interact with the most or have had the most interactions with that team in the past and so you get a sense you know based on what they're saying you know what's going really well for the team where does the team need help you know what what what can you bring to bear I think one of the things you have to be really careful especially as you move between companies is you know I've heard a lot of people like they hear somebody say you know well we've been doing this and oftentimes I'll be like if it was me I'm like well when I was in Amazon S3 this is what we did I mean it's like the worst way to talk to anybody about it so you've really got to just like understand and start to live the perspective of everybody else and then start to understand how you can have an impact what are the things you can bring to bear where are the biggest problems that you need to go in and dig dig on and help the team be more successful and I think secondly as a manager one of the things you want to do is you really want to ask two questions of all your employees you know and have a deep open conversations like one what what do you want me to continue to do what do you want the team to continue to do what are specific things you're really happy about and then what are the you know one to two things that you want to stop um we want us to stop doing um and then what are the one of the two things you want us to start doing right and just get everybody's perspective and that really helps to you know over time as you talk to a group of these people you start to identify the threads of things that you know the team really values um really drives the team's success helps them form what cohesive unit you want to make sure you double down and get those things continued and and have them go um and then you you know slowly um you'll start to hear about the things that you don't have them bothering people a little bit and you want to see you want to choose one of those things you want to go make a change a change for the better for the team um and it could be a really big thing or it could be really small thing it actually doesn't matter you want to you want to know you want the team to know you're hearing them and you've identified those problems and that you're actually going to go and make things better um while not removing the things that are most valuable to them that they that they really think are you know great and obviously there's going to be some you know disagreements and things like that but you can generally find these things so I think as a manager you want to go do those things that's kind of like your first you know three months two months whatever right you're still doing your job but these are the things you need to do outside of your job um and the thing that you know I think the most important thing I've learned while being a square actually is um you know I'm a believer in platform like and building solutions for developers like you don't need to convince me of anything I I strongly believe that this is an incredibly important hugely strategic thing for the company um I've built I've worked on platforms most of my career and I'm super passionate about it right not everybody not everybody's a believer not everybody in the darkest of nights is just going to keep going right and I think you know and it's I logically know that emotionally it's hard for me sometimes to get behind but the fact that with this job has taught me is like I have to I have to have something that I tell everybody about why this is strategic and why it's important how it connects to the company's mission and purpose and I need to say it 10 times to every single person and I need to have differing levels of what that is I need to have you know the elevator pitch I need to have the the you know one paragraph or one page or and then I need to have the deep dive right and making sure your leadership team you know your peers or your directs all say basically the same thing you know we've gone through this recently as we've made some shifts on some things and it's been really important that everybody says exactly the same thing and you know never really thought about it because I've always you know we've had a small group of people focused on this thing it was the core of the company you know core whatever team we were on in the company and the platform was new to Square and so it was just like entirely big massive shift for the company and they're like why are we doing this thing like we build products and so it's been really fascinating and so anybody coming into your team that's a leader not a manager necessarily but a leader in that organization I think it's important that you find the the the words that you use to talk about why this is an important space and why we're impacting the companies trajectory and most importantly our customers lives and you know having that story that you can tell everybody that you know they hear at the fifth time and the seventh time that they start to connect to and they start to become the voices for I think that's really critical early on when you go to a team as a leader that can be an individual contributor that can be a manager when your role is to really help make that make the custom the company the customers and that team more successful those are the three most important things I think having gone through my career that I would do in the first you know three months or so yeah wow so that's that's kind of covering the the 30 60 90 almost it sounds like you've probably you've probably done something along these lines where you walk into a company it's like okay we've got 90 days basically 90 days to start right from from from my first day here and a lot of this actually you know I've recently been thinking a lot about hiring and hiring processes and how a hiring process makes such a massive difference to that first 90 days for that developer and explaining like what is the value of this position not just hey we need to fill this position but why did we strategic you know filling this position is a big effort for this company and it's not a small you know we didn't just decide one day that I think we you know we want to open up a position for a new developer no it there's a strategic reason that this position is opening up and if you can explain that in the first interview and carry that through all the way through onboarding all the way through to your one-on-ones then the clarity that that engineer comes on with is far and above better than if they came on thinking okay we're going to figure out you know why you're joining this team right they're going to be flexible you know all of those things are are nice words to hear we we like to hear those things as developers because it's like well you know we can kind of shape my career around what I'm good at and all of that is is there's nothing wrong necessarily with with job shaping in fact there's some good research around that but I think having that clarity walking into a job and everything that you're talking about here using the same words right and that's so critical it's so critical to be able to have that consistent language for a new hire for candidates for the internal team to understand how is this person going to fit you know in the bigger picture because confusion confusion especially on a team like the team I'm on right now a remote team confusion is an opportunity to fill in the blanks right and we have a negativity bias when we fill in the blanks typically we're choosing bad things to fill in the blanks with yeah I mean your point actually about you know if you repeat that message through the hiring process and multiple people say it on their first day the first couple of 101's the thing that struck me was you said that was like you're not you may not get a believer but you've got somebody who knows what their expectations are of what the focus is and what's most important for the team for our customers to be successful and the repeat repetition of that probably uh enables a level of buy in that you won't get if you don't have that right so they come in expecting this and then they see it repeating they're like this is it this is one of the reasons I joined and it's totally the way it is and that's awesome I'm excited about that and it helps it probably helps people like get even more invigorated and excited about that new role that they're in in the organization yes absolutely and if if so for engineers who are searching for a job one of the best questions you can ask is what is going to change on this team as a result of this hire like what is the goal of of changing and and if the if a hire has no change then why is that higher happening right um if the change is while we're going to increase our capacity then that's that's a reasonable you know that's a very common reason to hire right but knowing what that is so that you can come in with with uh kind of a heads up for why you're there you know and how how you're going to be evaluated and and don't just limit it to the job search ask that question can you continuously yeah exactly what you're saying Carl I think is one of the most critical things that that can happen maybe not every single one-on-one uh because it might get a little bit tiring but the question about you know what should we keep doing if a direct report asks me that kind of question and it gives me an opportunity to ask them that kind of question our feedback cycle and not just what can we you know what should we keep on doing but also what what new thing should we adopt and what things should we stop those three questions are are such a good uh a basis for a feedback I think a lot of a lot of one-on-ones are just catch up sessions right I think that can be really problematic because it's this opportunity it's an opportunity for feedback for bidirectional feedback yeah um so I you know I really appreciate that you brought that point up I'd love to know you know in the in the one-on-ones that you've had has has there ever been a point where you felt like the feedback that you were either giving or receiving was kind of scales lifting off your eyes where suddenly something that wasn't clear before is immensely you know so much clearer now after this simple one-on-one meeting I mean I have a couple of those where you know it's mostly when people talk to me I can't remember an incident an instance of me talking to somebody and their eyes being lifted but they're definitely it's definitely happened to me and it's like on some level it's freeing when it's really positive feedback and then you know when it's you know hey you're not meeting expectations in this area and you kind of get it it clicks it's still freeing it's frustrating but it's still freeing because you're like I get it now I know what I need to go do and I think that it's hard it's hard sometimes to take feedback that comes in and really identify a couple of things one I've gotten this great new insight what am I going to do with it am I going to continue to reinforce the behavior I have am I going to change a behavior what do I need to change about the behavior that I have or am I going to take different actions and I think that understanding where the feedback drives from and what its intent intent is in order to help you positive or negative like there's positive or constructive is probably the most important thing we all get feedback all the time right and you know it's I like to say it's all data you get to choose what you do with that data to construct a story that you're going to and a set of actions that you're going to take going forward and in the in the cases that I'm thinking about you know it was definitely like hey this is an area you're not doing a great job and then let me explain you I got us like okay I understand it now I see what you're saying now I'm going to go take this action one case it was hiring obviously we talked a little bit about this is like okay I need to make my job scaling this team and focusing on hiring and leading the team instead of doing the work itself I'm not I'm blocking the team and I'm the limiting factor and once it was I remember the conversation was like the way they said I was like oh now I get it now I get it and then they gave me some more instances of where this was limiting the team I was like okay I know what I'm going to do now yeah this having feedback that changes or is like counterintuitive right this is one of the most valuable pieces and types of feedback that I've received is you think that this is happening when you do xyz but actually the you know maybe not the opposite but some other downstream effect is occurring as a result of that and if you just adjusted it this way or you know let somebody else take that responsibility it totally eliminates that that downstream effect that you don't want that kind of feedback I've received on multiple occasions and it's totally changed you know the the way that I work at least in that in that narrow frame at least yeah today's episode is sponsored by x team x team is the most 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participating in their seasons this is a three month experience that's filled with challenges rewards games competitions and more all centered around a theme that will inspire and energize you this is a rethinking what it means to be a remote developer you don't just have to sit at home to be a remote developer either you can live and work in one of x teams roaming hacker houses these are called x outposts and they're around the world it changes locations monthly which allows you to explore and work remotely in the most beautiful locations in the world you can take part in adventures share passions and learn how to be a better remote developer go and learn more about what you could do at x team by going to x team dot com that's x dash team dot com slash Developer Teax team dot com slash Developer Teathanks again to x team for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Teaso I you know I'm going to shift gears a little bit to kind of looking back over your career and then forward taking some some lessons that you've that you've learned over the course of this you know these many kind of shifts and transitions that you've had I'd love to know if you could look back ten years ago is there something that you know now that you think about totally differently is there a concept or a belief that you had that you no longer have no the thing that struck me out let me think a little bit more while I say this but the thing that struck me wasn't something I didn't I guess I didn't have it but it is like you could do anything I've always believed that but I think like so I come from a non-traditional background I have an English degree as we discussed and I've done lots of different things I've kind of grown throughout my career have taken on lots of really amazing challenges and opportunities and and I've been very lucky but I think that there are times where I haven't tried to do something because I don't have a computer science degree or I didn't do this or I don't have that pedigree and I think that you know over the last four years by five years my mentality has wholly changed I've always been very much a growth mindset person that I can go do it but you know I said that one of my co-workers said there's opportunities everywhere and I would say don't limit your choice of opportunities be wide open to take on new challenges that's the thing that's amazing about you know the Bay Area San Francisco Silicon Valley is to just the myriad of opportunities that are here the different ideas the different challenges like it's incredible to see how much creativity and kind of things are happening and what I would tell somebody you know took myself 20 years ago is like look this is your job now do just think about what you want to go do and go try it you know you're young in your career there's there's very little impact you trying new things and you know I don't know what I would have been more successful or you know have a bigger house or be happier but like I think that there were definitely times in my life where I limited whether I should go try something or not and you know I think that that probably held me back and I think hold a lot of people back even people that have the expertise in the domain and my feedback to everybody is like of course you can't you know it may require a massive amount of effort on your part right can I be a gymnast at age you know I'm 48 now I can't be a well I can't be able to jump to sobby so that's that's past but early on maybe if I really wanted that and I committed to it I could have done it right and I think that's a mentality that everybody should have and I think oftentimes we hold ourselves back yeah because we're scared it's not because you know maybe we think we can't do it but actually it's just we're scared of trying and failing and you know I've learned at least in my career that trying and failing can be one of the best things and as a as a parent you know with my children I definitely talk to them about like you know what if what if I don't do good it's like you'll learn a lot then you know and I think that if I just if I just wrap my arms around that idea that I get to learn a lot by failing and going and doing and trying I probably would have had a very different path and it would have been you know I've been really happy with my path but like I would have learned a lot more probably and I've really been excited by that so yeah this is great advice I think you know this advice is echoing something that is a theme on this show actually which is around questioning your your kind of presumed truths right and and the assumptions about the path that you need to take or that you have to take you know the path through a particular job who is allowed to walk that path or what are the right gonna milestones along that way and I think a lot of people unfortunately they limit themselves I think it's an implicit fear to your point about being scared I think people tend to not want to stray from what they believe is the correct path because it seems to be well-trodden it seems that this is the right way to do it and you're telling me that I can go to a totally different industry yeah that sounds crazy right or I can take a job that's two jumps you know on the on the ladder I'm on the career ladder I can go straight to that that seems I don't I don't feel qualified for that and the the the more common truth is that these pathways that we think are well-trodden pathways are still in the course of humanity brand new right it we don't really know what it means to jump tracks from being individual contributor to being a manager we we kind of know but we don't really know who's gonna be great at that we can't look at somebody's resume you know speaking from hiring experience I can't look at somebody's resume and say yes absolutely this person is is qualified and and could be successful with this right I know that there are people who have two years of experience that speak louder than five or even 10 years of experience sometimes you know depending on on what they've done and so that was down so heavily with me because I have watched that be true with people that I've worked with and in my own life so I sincerely appreciate that that insight yeah so I'd love to know you know what do you believe that you perceive now that might change in the next five or 10 years let me think what what I believe now that might change in the next five to 10 years that's interesting the first the first thing I thought is the at least as I get older my physical limits and you know this is this is it last 10 years fitness has been a big part of my life I had gotten extremely heavy and I decided to make some changes and as a result got in very good shape and you know I'm 48 years old you know I'm not in the best shape of my life I was about four years ago but I'm in pretty good shape you know and I think that my perception of where I'll be in 10 years is probably limited so I would say my physical health is one of those things it's a physical health as you get older is something that's super important to me and my mother passed away at a relatively young age due to physical problem health problems real bad health problems and so it's been a focus for me for quite some time so my guess is I'm probably going to be far in far better shape than I anticipate and not just like physical you know that that then fills into my life and personal probably the thing is that I think I'm going to live here for the next 10 years where I live right now but that's probably not true that's probably the thing I would point to in my personal life oh it's a really good question I don't know I don't know I actually I don't know you know something right now that I think is absolutely going to be wrong I probably have lots of assumptions based on the where you know where we are in terms of technology and in terms of like solutions that help make our lives better that massively far off and what I think is going to happen but I can't point to anyone things all right it's not really an interesting answer I apologize no I think this is a this is a commonly difficult question to answer right because if if we thought that we were going to change our belief then what is holding us back from changing it now right and typically this answer reveals that there are uncertainties that all of us have and and I think that's you know it's really critical for me as a developer to know the things that I'm kind of grasping on to that I should probably hold more lightly you know that you just said something that reminded me so recently so we have an event that we do it squares for Developer To come and see what we're doing is called unboxed but at that at that event our CEO Jack interviewed gosh I'm spacing out his name he's VCs found in many companies he's a great guy I forgive his name I apologize and it was on Bitcoin and I haven't really been like I've followed Bitcoin much I'm a lot of people talk about it but ever since then I've gotten more interested and I would say that if you'd asked me this question but I knew what I was going to think in like three months I would say that the money system as we know it is probably not going to be what I think it's going to be in 10 years I think it's going to be dramatically different than anything I even understand or comprehend and so that's probably the one thing I feel confident saying is I probably have it wrong and I think it'll be really interesting as to what happens I think square actually has played a part in changing the way that we think about transactions and squares not paying me to talk about square at all just to be clear square is a sponsor of the show but you know I think that the idea of being able to integrate payments as a developer I can sit in my you know in my living room and I can build an entire application, launch it to the world and people around the world campaign me for a software that I'm building this is is relative to you know business as we know it this is brand new right this kind of accessibility it's not saying the global business is brand new of course we've had trade for you know as long back as we've had travel but having instantaneous global business that's given basically to anybody who can read right essentially anybody who can who can read and can understand how to build software to some degree and it and that that bar is getting you know lower and lower that's an incredible kind of move towards mobility for people who are building there you know the smallest thing right the smallest app that you can imagine you can go and build a small app and make money like right out of the gate it's amazing it's amazing what has changed and even 10 years ago 10 years ago that was not the case right yeah as much no I mean the internet has I think we're just we're in the beginning of of its impact on the world and like the fact that anybody in the world can go right in application of deploy to millions if not billions of people to potentially use is unprecedented historically never happened before and the fact that the distribution lands are no longer controlled by monopolies and large companies and instead that anybody can participate and drive through there is an amazing idea right I'm sorry I realize I remember his name is Bologi Shrinivasan was the person that Jack was interviewing and it was a fascinating fascinating interview on Bitcoin in the kind of the future of money and commerce up but yeah I think you know one of the reasons I joined Square is I was really impressed with the company you know I remember you know when they started seeing it first the farmers markets right it was just absolutely freeing and incredible for the sellers and then for the buyers as well and so when I you know when this opportunity came up that was clearly a part of my rubric in evaluating whether this was a company I wanted to go to and the answer just you know Square has innovated in a space and was really the first mover and did amazing things they completely revolutionized this space and so it's exciting to be part of that company and moving forward in the future yeah incredible so Carl I want to ask you a couple of questions that I like to ask all the guests that come on the show the first one it's kind of a cheat question if you could talk about anything what do you wish people would ask you more about maybe so I'll give you two answers I mean to cross I wasn't I mean to crossfit so crossfit but I have this really interesting passion on like making things and in particular like woodworking so I'd be excited for somebody to talk to me and ask me about woodworking very interesting most people have a very hard time answering this question and they tend to want to answer it in ways that are more they're less tangible than that but I really like the idea of just hey you know what I like working with my hands I I have a couple of these things I actually am recently I've purchased a 3d printer I haven't really got into it enough yet because I just don't have the time that I expect to have but I think woodworking and 3d printing have some similar kind of qualities of structure and structural thinking and I'm really I'm very interested in in woodworking but I don't think I have the the space to actually do it are are you taking any classes no I did a bunch in high school did a bunch of stuff with my grandfather when I was younger when he passed away oh I got all his tools so when we were up in Seattle at least I had basically a full woodworking shop I could do whatever I want to it's it's not like really nice furniture anything it's just like I like working like you said I like working with my hands and making things with my hands and kind of building things is is something I've really enjoyed so that's very cool so the second question that I like to that I like to ask is if you only had 30 seconds of advice to provide to developers regardless of their background or or experience level what would you tell them so I'll say two pieces in 30 seconds number one always always have a growth mindset and take on new challenges and learn new things it will be the most valuable thing you can do in your career regardless of what you learn or what you go do that mentality will change things for you in a meaningful way and the second thing is find sponsors and work with them and mentors those are two separate things mentors are people to give you feedback help you understand where to improve help you tackle hard problems and understand how you might want to respond to them sponsors are people that help you they give you they reach out their hand and they pull you into opportunities that wouldn't other be either be open to you are available to you and I think that in every career having both sponsors and mentors is really valuable yeah I love the distinction here and I appreciate that that piece of advice as a manager I think it's important to to keep those two things in mind as well that sometimes we need to play those roles as managers yes I mean I think I think as leaders managers tend to fall into a pseudo mentorship role and can fall into a sponsorship role but I think leaders need to take on that role proactively both of those you know participate in communities or organizations that can help you mentor find people that you're impressed by who are in different roles that you really think can make a big difference maybe not in your organization but other places other roles invest in them and help them get those because you know that can be transformative for people and you know not only what it helps them but it helps the people around and they move into that role and they help the company and the team and then the customers by by their effort be just more successful yeah absolutely Carl thank you so much for taking the time now in two separate interviews with me I really appreciate everything that you've that you've provided to the listeners in terms of thought and value and investment thank you so much for your time and for joining me thanks well thank you for having me on I really enjoyed talking about love the questions and hope everything goes really great thank you so much for listening to today's episode my interview with Carl Yatesperi and huge thank you to Carl for joining me on today's episode don't forget today's episode was sponsored by X team the most energizing community for remote developers head over to x-team.com slash Developer Teato learn more today's episode and every other episode of Developer Teacan be found at spec.fm and today's episode was produced by Sarah Jackson my name is Jonathan Cutrell and until next time enjoy your tea