Your culture of leadership and management comes from the top. In today's episode of Developer Tea we're joined by Ravs Kaur. Ravs is the CTO at Uplevel and in the next two episodes she joins us to talk about leadership and management.
In today's episode of Developer Tea we're joined by Ravs Kaur. Ravs is the CTO at Uplevel and in the next two episodes she joins us to talk about leadership and management.
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Your culture of leadership and management comes from the top. That is one of the many lessons that I learned from today's guest, Ravs Kaur. Ravs is the CTO at Uplevel. And in the next two episodes, she joins me to discuss all things leadership and management. We talk about, for example, some specific one-on-one questions that you might ask as an engineering manager. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. And my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. Now let's get started into the interview with Ravs. Ravs, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you, but I want to approach this as if, you know, I don't know anything about you at all. I'd love for you to give maybe the 30-second version. And don't worry, we're going to get into the much longer version in just a second. But give a 30-second version of who you are and what you do. I am the CTO of a startup in Seattle called Uplevel. I'm leading the engineering and product teams. Mom of two young kids living in the suburbs and living the dream. That's awesome. So the story is... It's probably a lot like, you know, at least that snapshot is a lot like the average coder in some regards, right? I have two kids myself. We have, you know, we're kind of living in the suburbs. But I know that your background is different from the average engineer. And I'd love for you to share that story. But first, I want to ask a question that hopefully will help us guide this discussion, even better. And this is a question that I ask all of my guests. What do you wish more people would ask you about? I wish more people would ask me about building teams, leading effective teams. At the end of the day, a lot of people think about technology teams with technology first. And I think it should be people first. And often leaders forget that. So I wish they would ask me more about that. That is a... Wonderful thing to talk about. It's certainly something we talk about on this show quite a bit. But I'd love to know for somebody who's listening and they say, okay, you know, it's nice to say that. It's nice to say that people should be first in technology second. But how do I know if my team is doing that? What are some of the things that you might look for? If you were to talk to somebody about their teams, how would you know, you know, maybe a red flag or even just a warning, a yellow flag that a given team is really not focused on people? First? That's a great question. So let's say I was talking to a leader of a team and I asked them how their teams are doing. There are leaders that naturally gravitate to the people side and they'll talk, you know, their comments might be like, I have a great team. We have a lot of fun together. Everyone's, you know, they'll talk about the personalities, what people do. They know the team, right? They know the struggles of the people. They know what keeps them going. They're motivated. They talk about relationships. They'll often refer to their teams like a family. They'll talk about doing things together. You will get the sense that they are tied together by a mission they all believe in, right? It's a family. They know why they're there. They know why they exist as a team together. They work hard and they have fun doing it. And those are the sorts of things you'll hear. You also hear leaders who naturally gravitate to. You know, the technology pieces or the, you know, just the throughput of it or the system of things, right? You'll hear things like, you know, how's your team doing? Well, they're getting bogged down because this, you know, technology isn't quite working and it's slowing us down. Right. And that same thing, you could either hear them talk about it from a technology point of view, or from a people point of view, the same underlying fact. It could be, I don't like this particular technology. It's old school versus this technology is really impacting my developers because it doesn't allow them to move fast enough and they don't get the feeling of being creators. So just within like, you know, again, the same facts and what you focus on, I think can be pretty telling about what the culture is like in the organization. So it might make sense. Then for, let's say, an engineering manager to record their next meeting or even kind of record their own discussion with somebody about, Hey, how's your team? How's your team doing? And look for those kinds of topics. Are you, you know, are you gravitating towards thinking about the impact to the individuals on the team? What is your first kind of gut response? Yeah. Now here's, I have a follow on question for this because I've met a lot of engineers who are completely empathetic people. They are totally people driven and you can see that in their actions. But when you ask them, how's, how are their teams performing or how's everything going on the team? They may not necessarily pull that out. And it's not because. They are not people focused. I'm curious, you know, have you, have you come across this kind of persona or this archetype of engineer that is, uh, so I guess level headed, right? Um, that when they're asked, uh, how are things going? They almost always just jump straight to the technology, not because they're, you know, uh, not thinking about other humans, but because that's just kind of their personality. How, how do you account for. For that kind of. Response. Um, when you're trying to diagnose these kinds of issues. Right. It's again, a really great question. What I've seen, um, you know, as I talk to different engineering managers, uh, even a simple question, like, what do you talk about in your one-on-ones? And that's a great spot. Like, even if you're a very, you know, technologically oriented person and even a people oriented person, uh, you, the one-on-ones that you have with your. People, they really should be less about, um, what is the status of that and more a check-in of how they're doing and, um, you know, what as a manager I can do to support you in your team, uh, or how can I help? Like I always end my one-on-ones with any feedback for me. And you'd be surprised that engineers find that question very, very odd. They they're like, uh, I don't know. I got none. Um, and that will happen for weeks, uh, till they'll say something really small, like, um, and it'll always be prefaced with, uh, this isn't really feedback for you, but, you know, um, This is for the whole team. Yeah. It's for the whole team. Uh, but we should get, uh, you know, think of healthier options for snacks as a simple random example. Right. And, um, as, as a leader, as a manager. It's that first cue and your first opportunity to build trust in that somebody has given you feedback. Uh, you take it, you take it seriously, you act on it and you follow up. Right. And the, the magic of that, I've seen that over and over again, and it's just such a consistent pattern that, um, the next time they'll, they'll tell you something more and they'll tell you something more. And, you know, there'll be weeks where there isn't any feedback, but, uh, Eventually you hear the most important stuff, uh, from your people and they get very comfortable telling you that. And, uh, I was lucky enough to understand the importance of feedback, uh, very early on in my career as a, as a manager. Um, and that happens when, when you are, uh, you know, in that conversation from a place of empathy, from a place of like you, you really want to genuinely understand what the person is going through and how you can help the person and the status of the tickets they're working on and the pull requests and what they're blocked on are also always part of the conversation. But, uh, it's almost secondary because you can get that at other, uh, meetings. Uh, but I, I try to keep one-on-ones, um, you know, more focused on people. Right. Um, so, so yeah, even for people who love technology, it's just, you know, some of the things that I've seen in my career, um, I've seen it in my own personal life. Um, I've seen it in my own personal life. Um, I've seen it in my own personal life. Um, I've seen it in my own personal life. Um, but I, I try to keep one-on-ones, um, you know, more focused on people. Right. Um, but I, I try to keep one-on-ones, um, you know, more focused on people. Right. Um, but I, I try to keep one-on-ones, um, you know, more focused on people. The culture is very focused on what you can deliver and how quickly you can deliver. And, you know, with less, uh, focus on the fact that working people is a marathon, not a sprint, you know, um, that's what they will tend to answer because inherently that's what they're evaluated on and that's what they assume you care about. So you really, when, when people do answer in, in ways that, you know, again, might not be people, you have to understand that. You have to understand why that is. Is it because they are focused on the technology or is it because they are in an environment where that is the main focus? And the assumption is that that's what you care about. And you can very well listen and say, that's great. How are the people on your team doing? You know, and ask directly. Yeah. Just ask directly. I love this advice for a couple of reasons. I actually have a, uh, practice that I'd like to run by you. I want you to pick it apart and tell me. What, um, what you think of it. So, um, part of the reason why I ask this question is because I've had these experiences on teams where I have people with, uh, you know, certainly different personalities. That's pretty normal, but sometimes they're wildly different personalities. Uh, sometimes we're talking about somebody who is the easily the most, you know, a gregarious person in the room. They're happy to talk for hours on end. And then there's another person. Uh, on the same team who, you know, barely talks at all. And these are both perfectly fine personalities. Obviously, uh, you can't criticize a person's personality. Um, that would be a problem, right? Hopefully we all agree on that kind of level ground. So, so, um, in, in managing these two individuals, certainly it's easy for the more gregarious person, the more talkative person, uh, for them to share their concerns and then also for their concerns to be, uh, actually heard, right. But acted on. Um, and it's a little bit harder to pull those concerns out of the less talkative person. Generally speaking, that was the case in this particular scenario for me. So one thing I learned to do, uh, to both kind of. To temper what I was hearing from the more talkative person, but also to draw out, uh, something from the less talkative person was I asked the person to rate just how they were doing, which is a very soft metric on a scale from one to seven. And my goal in doing this was, okay, I want to know your articulation of this, but I also want for you to kind of. Do that quick introspection. And then I asked the person to rate just how they were doing. Right. To, to kind of understand for yourself, you know, this fuzzy metric of how are you doing? And the goal was not to track the numbers, right. It's not a data dig or anything like that. Instead, my goal was the process of talking through, you know, for example, a really great answer to this question, um, that I got very often, by the way, this is really interesting. I would get this answer where they would say, well, at work, I'm like a five. Right. And then they would say, but at home, I'm like a two, you know, my dog is sick or something like that. And that actually brings out a topic that they otherwise, cause they wouldn't feel comfortable saying a two because they think, oh, well, he's, you know, Jonathan's going to think that, um, that things are going wrong at work and that's not the case or vice versa. Right. They, they may seem really happy, but they're kind of, you know, it's just when they go home that they're happy. And I found that this is a really interesting thing. But I'm interested in, you know, do you have a practice like this, like a particular kind of tactic in these one-on-ones to draw people out or to help kind of, uh, level the playing field between those different personalities when you're building a team? Yeah. I love that practice, Jonathan. Uh, I use something similar, um, you know, and one thing that I would typically ask is, um, you know, again, on a scale, uh, how much fun are you having at work? Right. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Um, and I ask that because, you know, it's when people answer how much fun am I having? It gives you, or it gives me, uh, just, uh, something very subjective, but, um, you know, uh, it's just a different measure, right? Like it's a measure of not just how engaged they are, but like, uh, I, I really want them. I want them to be having fun, you know? Uh, and that to me is like the, um, the ultimate goal I can achieve for my team. Like they're having fun while working. It doesn't feel like work like that is a utopia, right? And it's not always possible, but I want to know where I stand with respect to that. But the other thing that I always follow up when I ask that question is like, you know, say you say a six, um, what do you think a seven looks like? And to me, that is. Even more telling because that's when I feel the real, um, um, you know, it's generally a really juicy conversation, right? Because then they're not only introspecting about how much fun are they having, but what needs to change for them to have even more fun. And I say that even if people are at a two or a nine, like if you're at a nine, what does a 10 look like? And what, how can I help get you to a 10? Right. And that's when, you know, I've heard all sorts of. Responses from, you know, more snacks, uh, to the type of work people are doing. And that's a big one because, you know, there is some burnout you feel by just doing the same type of work and you want a variety, right? Um, or it could be just, I mean, I like the work I'm doing. I'm happy with my snacks. Uh, you'll notice I love eating and snacks and that'll be a theme, but, um, you know, uh, but I don't get to interact with. Um, other folks on my team as much. Right. And that is especially, um, true in today's world, like where you used to have in person, um, just ad hoc water cooler conversations, or, you know, you felt like you were part of a team. Right now, if you're not naturally working on a project with somebody, you're not really interacting with them in the sense that you would in an office. Um, and so I really feel that's a great question. And for me, uh, a really valid one, um, where I'm always, again, asking what does that next level look like? Because, you know, just like some people, um, uh, are a little quieter and some people, uh, have no, uh, like they can, they're pretty extroverted. Uh, the scales are different. So a four for one person is completely different from a four for another person. Um, so, uh, so I like to understand. So I think that's really the scale of what I'm talking about. Um, and, uh, I actually like, you know, uh, believe it or not. And a lot of people find it, uh, really hard to believe that I was one of those engineers who used to get feedback all the time that I need to talk more in meetings or I need to be more visible or I needed to, um, you know, share out loud more. And I used to get highly annoyed by that. You know, it was just. I think it's just one of those things that got me fired up in that, like, if I don't have anything really smart to say or useful to say, like, do I have to really be the loudest person in the room to just prove that, you know, I'm smart. I used to, um, uh, yeah, I had a hard time with that one early on in my career and I've, I've learned, um, over time, uh, just how to handle that. And to a point where I might have, you know, swung this pendulum on the other. Side and I have to constantly remind myself to like, be quiet and listen now because I talk too much. Um, but, um, but there are different personalities. And again, as a leader and manager, like you said, you have to put in the work to, uh, to get their viewpoints and get their perspectives. I think, uh, you know, we have a developer on our team and, uh, uh, she is not one of the most talkative on in meetings. Yeah. Yeah. But when she says anything, everybody drops silent and listen, because she's got so much, it's like gold coming out of her mouth. You know, it's like, my God, you said one line and this is like super enlightening and it's really great feedback and you really want to, you know, get more of it. So I have like, um, just again, as a culture and a, and a leader, think of ways to get that out. Right. Cause it's pure gold for you and your team. So, you know, follow up in one-on-ones as you, as you said, like, you know, there's questions around just how they're generally doing, but even to get their feedback around, how did you think that meeting went? And, you know, um, really like they're more comfortable talking about in a one-on-one setting or even in meetings, like I deliberately pause and I'm like, Hey, person X, what do you think about this? Or person Y, what do you think about this? Right. And many times we, um, you know, other meetings like, you know, retrospectives or things, we actually have some time. We have some time at the beginning of the meeting to do digital sticky note exercises where everybody has their thoughts out on a digital whiteboard. So everyone, you know, that gives everybody some chance to get their ideas and thoughts out so that you can then have a discussion about it. But to your point, like there is, um, there's just an intentionality that goes, uh, behind getting these really great ideas out from people that. Aren't otherwise comfortable talking out, uh, or over other people. Today's episode is sponsored by deep source. Deep source helps you find and fix issues during code reviews using static analysis. Deep source integrates natively with pull request code review workflows on all supported providers, including GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket. So there's no more digging through linter logs from CI builds. You can bring it right into your workflow directly on your review platform. Each issue has a detailed description of what the issue is and how to fix it. And deep source even helps you auto fix some of the most commonly occurring issues. Deep source can also run code for matters like black or prettier, et cetera, on autopilot. So you aren't having those extra commits of you having to do that in response to a less than helpful error message. There are less than 5% false positives on deep source. In other words, the things that it brings up are almost always issues. And if you do. Find something that is not an actual issue. You can send it back to deep source and they will get it fixed in a couple of days. On top of this deep source has configurable issue categories. For example, if your team doesn't care about style issues, well, you can just disable them directly from the dashboard. Deep source is finally free to use for open source repositories and small teams. Head over to deep source.io to get started today. It's deep source.io slash dev T. Deep source.io slash dev T EA to get started for free with deep source. Thanks again to deep source for sponsoring today's episode of developer T. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hard problem to solve because to your point, you know, it's interesting because it seems like as a manager, I have on many occasions I've asked people, hey, I really want to hear your opinion more often. I'd love for you to speak up more. You know, I. I can't tell how you're doing is what I'm really saying. Right. I really want to do my job, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of kind of shooting in the dark a little bit. And it's hard to for me to to put myself in their shoes and think, oh, you know, that's frustrating. But for some people, it absolutely can be. It can be frustrating to be asked to speak more. And the same is true in the opposite direction to be asked to speak less. That that's probably a little more intuitive. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Somebody who's doing something, you ask them to stop doing it. And that's a little more obviously could be annoying to them. Right. I'm curious, Jonathan, you mentioned something that I would love to actually hear your perspective on. I'm at, you know, four at work and two at home. Right. Like, I wonder in this day and age, is there really a separation in how you feel about work and how you feel about home? Because with all the craziness. happening in the world. I just don't think that people can distinguish that easily. Can really switch those. Yeah. It's a good point. And I think there's still kind of a cultural desire or maybe an unspoken cultural norm. It's an old norm, but it still exists. It's the imperative to try to keep those lives separate. And so to be clear, I don't think that it's a valid, I don't think we have to do that anymore. But I do think that is a cultural kind of desire to try to keep the private life separate from the work life. And I would say, for the people who are answering this in this particular way, most likely what they're saying is, hey, I'm not doing well, but it's not your fault. That's actually what, if you had to translate those numbers into a verbal message, that would be it. And what's interesting is, I've actually been on teams where people had really, really hard experiences in their personal life. Family members got sick and that kind of thing. And in those scenarios, very often, you can say, I'm not doing well, but it's not your fault. And I'm not doing well, but it's not your fault. And you could tell, and this actually goes back to something you were saying, and I wanted to kind of dwell on it for a second. You could tell that the person wasn't doing well. Now, when I'm a manager and I see one of my team members is not doing well, but it's not something that's dysfunctional in our team, then I have something to figure out here, right? Either A, I can try to make their day better by, I don't know, giving them, ordering them their favorite meal, or A, I can try to make their day better by, I don't know, giving them, ordering them their meal, right? Or getting them their favorite snack and get it sent to them to try to cheer them up. Or B, I can understand that sometimes part of being human is that we're not always going to be a 10, that we're not always going to be at our highest point. And in some ways, that answer, oh, I'm a two at home, but I'm a six at work. That's one of the most important things that we can do as managers is create that so that we're not worsening your home situation, right? In fact, everything that we're doing at work is hopefully lessening that burden to some degree because we're not going to be able to fix every problem. We can't imagine a scenario where everybody is always a perfect 10 and nothing goes wrong. We have to be prepared as managers, as leaders, even as teammates. You don't even have to be a manager or a leader. To kind of be with people during those really difficult experiences in their lives and not just try to make them feel better. I could not agree more. I think you've hit very key things that are top of mind for me and our leadership team in the office. It's just something we think about a lot. And we've actually, we've actually gone a little bit against the cultural norm here where we, I totally understand like, you know, there's a cultural preference to, you know, keep work and life separate. And somehow, you know, it's the culture, it's the kind of people we've hired. We all have acknowledged that in this time, that's really hard for us to do. And there are so many emotions running up people's sleeves right now, whether it's the pandemic or you're homeschooling kids, or it's the social unrest, or you have, you know, family who's not doing well. And, you know, it seems like everybody is going through something. And the thing that we do do these random things, like you, you've talked about, you know, ordering people's favorite beverages or meals that show up at the door and care packages and things like that. But what, what we can do, you know, it's, it's, again, going back to things that are in your control versus things that are not. And as, as team members, I think the biggest thing that, you know, helps the situation is empathy, is understanding, is flexibility, is like, you know, somebody just says, I need to be out. And we're all like, hope everything's okay. You know, that's all good. Right? There isn't this, you know, evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution what would happen and what the outcome would be. And for me to feel supported by my coworkers in this way, which was, hey, at any point you need anything, just drop and go, right? I'm not thinking about extensive handoffs here and transfers. And I know my team's got my back. And I try to do the same for my team members, right? You need something, just go. You need the flexibility, just, you know, I understand homeschooling two kids is not easy. You know, people, we actually recognize each other's kids now. It's kind of great. My own daughter, she comes in, she'll stare at the screen. She knows my teammates. And if they are known people to her, she'll come in, like she owns the room and say hi and everyone would say hi to her. And if she sees that this is a person she doesn't recognize, she just sneaks out and doesn't come in. So it's like that kind of culture, you know, our personal and work life. Our lives are very much intertwined and we've just embraced that. In fact, I was talking to one of my team members just this last week. And what he said really rang true. He said, you know, everyone has a certain mental bandwidth that they can deal with. And I feel like minds filled with just things that are happening outside of work. And you pause and you think about that for a moment. And you're like, that's absolutely true. Right. And what you said, again, I couldn't agree more is like our responsibility as leaders then becomes, how do I make that part that is your work part, you know, not contribute to even more of it? How can I make sure that, you know, at least that part's fine, whether it's in the type of work you do or whether it's in the support, the flexibility, the games, the social, the events, the connections, like, and that's just harder to do in this environment. It just takes a lot more effort, but that is the best that we can do. That is the best thing. And just, I don't think you can over communicate it enough to your team members that, you know, if they need anything, we're there. And, you know, you just keep reminding, it was, you know, another funny example of this, one of our really strong developers and one-on-one asked me, and I could clearly sense that the person's going through a burnout. Right. And we were just talking about that and he's like, is it okay if I, you know, set my hours from like 10 to five for, you know, a couple of weeks. And I was like, are you kidding me? First, I don't really care about the hours or number of hours you put in things like that. Like it was just such a, it was just, I'm like, duh, isn't that obvious? Like that should be known like that. That's fine. And, you know, after five, nobody assumes you're going to be on anyway or you're putting in extra time or whatever. And the thing he said to me was, no, I knew that, but it also helps to hear you say that because here I am thinking like, you know, if I really count my hours, that's not even eight hours. And, you know, I'm really feeling a little stressed out and I want to, you know, get into, I want to get into the habits of more separation and I want to try the schedule out. Because what he found was he was putting in the hours, but it was really busy work. You're like sitting in front of a desk because you feel guilty about not having put in enough hours. And honestly, that just complicates the problem more. Right. Right. And it probably doesn't produce anything new of value either. It doesn't. It totally doesn't. And so again, as you know, managers and leaders, even though you think, and that was a wake up moment for me, I thought this was understood, but it still helps for your team to hear you say what's important to you and hear you just care for them on a personal level. Thank you again to Ravskar for joining me in today's episode. And in the next episode of Developer Tea, we will continue talking about all of these incredibly important leadership principles. The next part of my interview with Ravskar, I'm going to be talking about the two key principles of being honest and open with your team. In the next episode, the second part of my interview with Ravskar, thank you so much for listening to this episode, and thank you again to today's sponsor DeepSource, head over to DeepSource.io slash Dev Tea, to get started for free with Static Analysis, Directly in your PR workflow, this episode, and every other episode of Developer Tea, can be found on spec.fm. This episode was produced by Sarah Jackson. Thank you.