We are continuing our interview with Ravs Kaur in today's episode. We pick up on the discussion about communication. If you missed out on the first episode of this interview, then I encourage you to go back and listen to it first. You can find it, of course, in the same place that you found this episode. My name is Jonathan Cutreller Listening to Developer Tea and my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find a clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. Let's get straight into the second part of my interview with Ravs Kaur. Yeah, man. This is so, there's so much to talk about here, actually. And I want to dig in for a minute because I just can't help myself, but this is one of my favorite topics to discuss. This whole communication thing that we're doing as teams is so deep and core to our humanity. And we have to think and become really scholars of communication to build good teams. That's 99% of our work really is communication. And I think this example, it underscores such a beautiful picture of how complicated it is to be a human. You have this individual who's obviously very good at their job. If they've risen in the industry to the senior level position as an engineer. And they're asking this question that in some regard is perhaps a question that is out of respect for their teammates, for you as their leader. They're asking a question of, okay, I want to make sure that I'm covering my bases. Maybe I assume that the answer will be yes, but if I assume and I'm wrong, then things could go haywire. I could lose, in some ways, this is an expression by asking this question of how this person actually got to where they are today is by seeking out that clarity and really getting specific with communication. And then your response is exactly the other complex side of this, which is we have in our minds what we think people believe. And this is such an overwhelming message to us. Our assumptions about what other people believe or what they should believe or what we see ourselves as and what other people should see us as. This is such an overwhelming message that it seems almost jarring to hear a question like, can I set my hours from 10 to 5? Because you start questioning like, have I not communicated our values properly? What is going on here? And what's so wonderful about it is this underscores the fact that even the most experienced people still have communication to take care of. We have to think about it more thoroughly than we're kind of naturally tuned to, especially, I know I'm droning on about this because I care a lot about it, especially in this kind of remote environment that we're in, where communication is even more constrained and all of the messaging around, you know, our day to day work has just gone into this little funnel of slack or whatever chat will you use. And so we don't get that day to day kind of back and forth like we're used to. And so these illusions that we have about what other people believe about us and the story that's in our head versus reality, the disparity between those things continues to grow more and more and more. And it can be really difficult problem to solve unless you're very intentional about communication. And I think that's such a good picture of that. You're absolutely right. I think communication is one of the most difficult challenges, especially, I mean, it always has been, right? It always has been, but especially in this time, you're absolutely right. Like, it did make me question. I'm like, wait, did I not, you know, communicate this enough? And even though I say this, like, I was on the other side of it too, like my boss is like he has probably mentioned on, you know, every day, like if you need anything for your home setup, just go and expense it. Like he's over communicated that. And even with that and even with us having the most trusting relationship, I don't know what it was. I think I needed a keyboard or something like that. And I was just like, hey, I mean, I know I have one, but it stopped working and, you know, is it okay if I just get another one? And he had a very similar response. He's like, you know what? You know, he's like, I am, of course. And the only reason I'm annoyed or offended is because you felt like you had to ask me. You know, this is my failing. And so, and I was like, well, I didn't really need to ask you. And so it's really funny, which you said, because even when I was talking to my developer, I felt the same way. I was like, what do you feel like you need to ask me? And he had a similar reaction, which was like, no, I mean, I knew it was okay and everything. But I think we're all just trying to learn this together and we're trying to like clarify our assumptions and just make sure we understood things correctly. And honestly, like on the grand scheme of things, like, yeah, it's great. Like it worked out great that we could have that conversation, right? And we went even further. In fact, what we realized as a company when everyone sort of, you know, went working from home, lines between working home were already like blurry. But what we found was that more and more people, like now they're on their machines that, you know, commute time and they can feel like they're more productive and more effective because well, I've got nothing better to do. I can go outside and slowly, but surely, like, you could sense fatigue setting in, right? You could sense that people aren't taking the time off like they had planned, like a lot of vacations were disappearing from the vacation's calendar, right? And again, from a people perspective, you're like, well, I'm not going to go anywhere. So why take the time off? Why should I take time off? Yeah, exactly. And then we were like, okay, this doesn't seem sustainable. We encouraged people a lot, like a lot to take some time off and just, you know, almost to a point where we were like, I want to see some vacation added in the next month or two or a day here or there, you know, by everybody. And it wasn't being super successful either. I personally tried to set an example and I took a mental day off, mental health day off right before our kids school started in the springtime. And when I did, I realized what I wasn't internalizing earlier, which was that I really needed this time off, right? Like, I didn't think I did, but once I took it, I was like, man, I need to do more of this. And so, and, you know, and some people did and many people didn't. And then we as a company leadership team just said, we're going to be out for a whole week in the first week of August. Because, you know, we just kind of forced it down, honestly. We realized, you know, some people were doing better than others, but everybody needed that time. They needed time to disconnect. And what was happening was when people were doing it a different days, they weren't truly disconnecting because stuff was still happening at work. And it was too easy for them to pop back in and help out on something. Yeah. Because, you know, they didn't really, and it was like a day or two here or there, they're mostly at work. But, you know, when you think of a slightly longer period of time, you, you, you start thinking of, okay, what can I do in that time? And nobody else will be working. So, you know, I won't be working. And it was an experiment. And I think it was really successful. Like, we got really good feedback from folks after that first week of August, where they came back and some people were, you know, like visibly refreshed on Zoom. Yeah. If you can believe it. That's a lie. You can't believe it. You can't tell it. You can sense the energy, you can sense the, you know, refreshment. And then there were folks who were like, oh, that was good. And that made me realize I need just a little bit more of that. And so I'm going to make it a goal to actually, you know, take some time. And then there were folks who were like, yeah, I mean, you know, I got really bored. I didn't do anything. But at the same time, it was still good to not have to think about work. So, you know, in all those cases, what we realized as a company was like, this is really important. And, you know, we again are going to do some more of this later this year. But it's just mental health is one of those things that I feel, especially in this time, it's just so important to take care of. I'm convinced that that's going to be the next crisis we're going to have to deal with. It already is, in fact, we're already thinking pretty deeply about it and how we can support our people. So we have a lot of things and it goes back to what you said earlier. It just has to be intentional from my Friday games to what we pick. We're doing a, you know, we're doing a fun challenge, a health challenge for the month of September. Again, because all our interactions with our people at work are about work. You know, except for our Friday games and lunches, it's like, I need this from you. It's very work related and you don't have a lot of, you know, you think of deposits and withdrawals, right? Like in energy and relationships. And so, how do you simulate the kinds of things when we were together in the same office? You used to have a lot more of these social or non-work interactions that made you get to know a person slightly better or you laughed over a cup of coffee, you know, it just doesn't happen that way. And when you, when all your interactions are about work and, you know, status of things and, you know, just everything's about getting things done, that can get pretty stressful. It can get, yeah. So we're trying to introduce more. We had a fun, chopped challenge too, I would recommend folks listening to this try it out. We sent via Instagram, Instagram, what was it? Fruit loops, celery and soy sauce. A secret ingredients to everyone's and they showed up at the same time in everyone's doorsteps. And then over lunch, we all had to cook something out of it and share pictures. And you discovered secret talent in your, in your team. Oh, I bet. Yeah. This is really fun. That is cool. Yeah. I've heard a lot about these kind of culture building things that teams are doing to kind of help people feel a little bit more at ease, more at, you know, not at home. I suppose they already feel quite at home right now. But it is an interesting concept, this idea. And I think you're probably right that as we experience more prevalence of these mental health, I won't even call them issues, just normal mental health problems that humans face and have a face forever, but they're more pronounced because of this particularly stressful period that we're living through. You know, I think you're right. I think we're going to find out that, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned your team initially felt that sense of kind of a surge, a positive momentum of, oh yeah, we're going to, you know, we don't have a commute. We are going to be so much more productive and in reality, things kind of erode quickly. Yes. And, you know, part of that is a clear picture of how just managing by the hours is not an effective strategy, right? Because, you know, technically, people are going to have more time, right? Technically, they don't have to have a commute. They can work more at home. So if you're managing by the hours, that's a net positive for you, right? But that's just not how it works. Humans are very different from that. And I think what we've lost, perhaps in the last, you know, a couple hundred years, this is maybe going beyond the scope of just mental health issues now. But something that we've lost is this idea that work is a constrained activity that it's not a part of the rest of our lives. And if you think about anybody in the course of history who has accomplished something meaningful for the most part, these are people who were not under any constraint that was provided to them by an hourly schedule. And some of the greatest work that we've ever seen was done by people who were totally autonomous, that they were inventors, they were, you know, writers, they were whatever the job may be. Typically it wasn't because, you know, their success wasn't necessarily because they were on time to work and they put in eight hours a day, right? That's not really the correlation that you find with successful people. And that's not to say that, you know, give your people, you know, total free reign over everything and they're going to turn into a bunch of divinches, right? That's not the point. But the point is that people do thrive when they have a full range of experiences, right? And full range meaning, you know, you mentioned that some of your coworkers got bored. It's a very important human experience to have boredom is very important, right? And like you need to have boredom. And how many times do we get a chance to be bored right now? Yeah. I completely agree with that. In fact, I would take it one step further. Like I actually believe you lose innovation and you lose creativity if you're always operating to your most, you know, effective, like delivery of software and things like that, right? Like if you're completely operating at your max, what you don't have slack, what you don't have is slack in the system, right? Right. And if you don't have that, then your team doesn't get an opportunity to step back, think, explore. You need to get bored. You need to be able to, you know, have that downtime for you to, you know, get that dose of creativity, right? In fact, we've had to try really hard to build that in our team. We need to like, as painful as it is, sometimes to, you know, move around customer commitments or things like that. We've had consistently, you know, a week or two of hackathon time where we say, you've got nothing else to do. Just go explore ideas, succeed at some, fail at many more, but we need to do that. We need to step back and we need to be able to invest in those things. I mean, and it's not just work. It's kids. Yeah. Absolutely. They're completely busy with screen time and it isn't till you tell them no, no screen time. And be like, mama, I'm bored. It's like, great. That's awesome. And that's when you see, yeah, you see the most creative games come out during that time. It's amazing what they're able to do when they're just told to, you know, be bored. As parents, it's hard. Like sometimes you're like, oh, you're bored. Let's figure out something to do. And my default if they come to me is really like, that's awesome. You're bored. Now you figure it out. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because if you think back to the way that we thought about the world before we had to work, right? You think about what, you know, the amazing possibilities that you had out in front of you. And I remember when I was a kid, you know, going out and playing, there was all of these things that I wanted to learn. And it wasn't because I could get rich from learning them. It was, you know, for completely different reasons. I wanted to learn, you know, how to jump my bike over a ramp or something, right? And it was because it would be cool. And all my friends, like, they could do it together with our friends. And, you know, where do we get that now? It's so much of it is driven off of that professional mindset of, oh, I need to do this so that I can make money, right? Or whatever the, and that's, it's completely valid just to be clear. I don't want to act like money doesn't matter, right? That's, that would be a horrible thing. Yeah. And certainly, certainly people who were listening to the show who are probably sitting there thinking, well, it's nice that you get a chance to go and be bored at work. My boss doesn't allow that and I don't have a way out, right? Yeah. But this, you know, as a imperative to the leaders who do have a chance to make this impact, it's so important to recognize that the people who are working on your team, people first, just like you said, rubs, the people who are working on your team are not machines. You can't extract work from them. If they have, this is what's so amazing to me. I can have an extra 20 minutes to go on a walk outside that totally changes my productivity for the day. Yeah. 20 minutes of a walk outside. And you wouldn't ever think, oh, I'm going to invest 20 minutes in order to have a more productive day. But because we are integrated, you know, animals, right? Like we're not, we're not machines. We're this organic thing that exists in the world. All of these other activities we participate in are in kind of concert with our work. And that's so often missed. Yeah. It's, you're so right. In fact, we were talking about, you know, just how much stepping out doors and taking a walk was so much better. And you know, we, we sort of share these things with each other. And what we started as just a habit experiment was doing walking one on one. So take a break from the screen. And let's just go out. You go out for walk. I go out for a walk and we're just going to talk on the phone. And that was actually really fun. It was really refreshing. And yeah, many times you can't do it because you want to share screen or something. But if you don't, that actually worked really well. And you know, people had dog walking one on one or just, I'm outdoors one on one. And it was just, I think it helps a lot. It really does. And you know, you brought up a really interesting point about this whole making money. You know, and I had a recent encounter with my son. My son was younger at that time. So not very decent. He was five or six or something. And you know, we were talking about what do you want to be when you grew up? And he's like, I want to be an ice cream scooper. I'd been in juries. And you know, as a parent, my first thought was, wow. Oh, no. Oh, no. But I asked him, oh, that's interesting. Why? Why do you want to be an ice cream scooper at Ben and Jerry's? And he goes, because every time the ice cream scooper does their job, they people leave with a smile. That's so cool. And I was so touched. I was like, because he's like, have you ever seen anybody when the scooper hands them ice cream? They don't smile and say, thank you. Like, it really brings back to their day. And I was speechless. I didn't know what to say. I was like, that's amazing. And that was just such a great quality to see in my son. I was like, that's really great. And I left it at that. But it made me wonder where in our journey of growing up do we like grow up and care less about these people and like giving joy to people and move more into like, you know, I need to figure out. Or manage matters on the right. So it's just, I learned so much from my kids. It's amazing. It, you know, you see the words with them and then you reflect on just, you know, their perspective and it keeps reminding you of the little things that it's just so black and white for them, right? You're like, yeah, people. And that's what you need to care about. And I don't know where in the world and time I learned to care about other things more than just getting up people and bringing joy to them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. The amazing thing about Linode is that it works at all of those points along the chain. In other words, you can start out with Linode at a very small scale on personal projects and it will scale with you. You can simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop deploy and scale your modern applications faster and easier. You can get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit. That goes a long way on Linode for listeners of Developer Tea. And you can find all the details at linode.com slash Developer Tea. That's linode.com slash Developer Tea. Linode has 11 global data centers provides 24, 7, 365 human support with no tears or hand offs, regardless of your plan size. And in addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use that $100 of credit on S3 compatible object storage, managed Kubernetes and more. You can host your website, build your app, store or backup your media. It's really up to you and it's all free with $100 in Linode credit. Head over to linode.com slash Developer Tea and click on the create free account button to get started. And be sure to check out Linode's new YouTube channel for video tutorials, security tips and more. That's youtube.com slash Linode. Thanks again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. I want to rewind a little bit because you're talking about your past now and some of the experiences you had. I'm curious, can you rewind us to a moment in your career or even a story about your life where you felt like it was a particularly low point or maybe it was a turning point where you had an epiphany that changed your course for the better. Can you tell us a story about that? Are you specifically talking like a career story or I'm in the career or in the spirit of this of what we've been saying. I definitely don't want to split those up. Absolutely anything that you want to bring. Yeah, that's a good question. I've had many moments of inspiration or epiphany you might call it. So a few years ago, like I was just reflecting upon my childhood. So just for brief context, I was born and brought up in Kuwait and I was there during the 1990 Gulf War or when Iraq invaded Kuwait and I was in fourth grade. So I have enough memories that I remember and I distinctly feel the fear and uncertainty and just the feelings that I went through. But I was again young enough to not really internalize what was happening around me in the world at that time. And so a couple years ago, I was just sitting and reflecting upon that time and I was thinking about how my dad caught us out of Kuwait and we were refugees and going into India. And I remember at that time, I had an older brother who much wiser than me when we were all as a family planning to leave Kuwait and go to India. Parents were worried about food and water and are we going to have enough to eat or be safe and so some cash builds and folds of skirts in case we need it or carry some cans of food and things like that. And I was like, what are about my Barbie dolls and teacups that I was leaving behind right? And I was like, I want to take these and my brother very rightly so. He's like, really? You want to take these? And my dad was the one who just put us for done. He said, yeah, I mean, this is what's important to her and so we're going to take these. And he's like, we'll make a back for you, just put whatever you want in. And of course, I was happy and always well in the world at that time for me. But as an adult, I was just thinking back on that experience and it made me realize that's what true empathy is and how empathy is a life skill, not just in family and community, but in leading teams and building teams and people first, right? I think about how as an adult, you could sort of live what that nine year old was going through and acted upon what's important to her. And I think again, at this time in age, it's so particularly pertinent because we're all going through a pandemic and most of us have never been through anything like this before. And I think about my kids, I think about my friends, I think about my family, I think about my team members, I think about work. And you know, 30 years later, if people are going to recount their experiences, what did they go through and how would they go through today will shape their memories and shape how they feel about this time period is all based on how we act today. And so that is just a constant reminder for me and keeps me and my actions in check really in all those days when I lose it and I'm like, oh my god, like why aren't things a little more organized? I just got a step back and think about the energy that you're giving out positive or negative and you know, what am I kids going to remember and how are my teammates going to remember this? And so I just think that for me, you know, more than one event in my life, it's just a series of these everyday conversations I have with people like friends, family, kids that really shaped me for who I am if that makes sense at all. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I recently had a similar moment with our son, his name is Liam. I woke up for some reason, I believe this is yesterday or the day before, I woke up for some reason thinking about an experience that I had when I was young, when I was probably around his age, which stuck in my mind. You know, there's not a lot that we carry from, you know, when we're three or four years old, but this particular experience stuck in my mind is going on a nature walk with my mom and if you're not familiar with what a nature walk is, basically walk around and you pick up, you know, leaves and sticks and rocks and whatever else. And you know, during the pandemic, we've spent so much of our time inside, we've spent so much of their days, like you said, with screen time and they're just, you know, kind of stuck in this kind of continuous pattern. And in my mind, I thought it wouldn't be hard. It wouldn't be difficult for us to make that special moment a memory for that for my son, the way that my mom did for me. And we went out and he, of course, he loved it, right? It's on spawn. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, go and pick up rocks, of course, you know. But I can't, you know, get away from this feeling that, you know, if we can take ourselves up and out of the tide, right? If we can get our minds above that rip current that's dragging us through 2020 right now, right? That's just kind of saying, we've got to, you know, put our heads down and try to get through this year as fast as we possibly can so we can get on the other side of this. And instead, remember that, hey, we've got moments here. We've got these experiences that are right in front of our faces and all we have to do is stop and take advantage of them and live in the moment that we have. And that is such a rewarding thing. Instead of saying, we're going to write the whole year off. You know, this, if I'm thinking like a child, a year is a long time. I mean, I remember, you know, from one birthday to the next felt like an eternity. I know. I'm not the come soon. Instead of wishing, you know, every day that this year would pass that all this difficulty would pass. Now I'm saying, okay, you know, and not that I'm a saint like every day. I'm perfectly experiencing the moment. But rather, I'm taking a moment more often. I'm trying to at least take a moment and say, no, this year isn't terrible. I don't want to rush through it. I want to experience every moment that I can. You articulated it way better than I could. And I was trying to say about the same thing, which is exactly these small moments, these little moments are what are going to make memories. And just like you, that may happen once a week for me. But even if it happens once a week, I'm really glad about it. And again, I just have to remind myself, you know, taking my kids as an example. When we were, when I was there, age and, you know, Kuwait was invaded by Iraq, our schools were obviously closed. And as a kid at that time, I was like, oh cool, no school. And here I am, expecting my kids to be bummed about no school. I want them to be excited about school. And I want them to, you know, love school for everything it is. And, you know, at some point, I'm like, no, remember, as a kid, you were so excited. Like, then there was another country in reading ours. And I like to think about was no school. Like, you know, so again, it's about remembering or trying to remember as much as you can or putting yourselves in the shoes of other people and, you know, whatever they're going through and where they're at in their life stage. And it sort of makes sense. You know, it's interesting. You bring this up and I think it's really, especially in companies that have a broad range of people. I've worked in companies where there was a bunch of people who were much younger than me that were in leadership positions. And it's really interesting. You mentioned this briefly there, the idea that you're remembering something in order to have empathy. There's also times where empathy is extremely difficult because you've never had that experience. Yes. And I think there's another core skill set that is often missed, especially when we're talking about leadership, of trusting and believing someone else's experience rather than saying, well, I can't imagine it. So therefore, it's invalid. Right. And very rarely do we actually articulate it that way, but that is so often kind of the unconscious reasoning that we have that I can't imagine that and I'm going to discard it because I can't identify with it. So it's not valid. Well said. I couldn't add anything more to it. You're absolutely right. That's a hard one. It's a hard one. It's a really hard one. I can't imagine or I can't understand or I can't, because you don't have your own experiences to dig into to try and put that in perspective. So you got to trust. In fact, the company I work for at level, we talk about engineering effectiveness. And everyone knows there's no magic bullet to it. Like our entire hour that we've talked about is we're talking about people and we're leading effective teams is about leading people. And so obviously, there's no one answer or metric you can look at to say whether you're effective or not. But again, the things that we try to do are all about what are the conditions in which developers are working. Right. Do they feel like they're always on all the time? Do they even get time to work? So it's like, it's a completely different viewpoint. So we'll see whether it's great or it's just we realize we can really measure that either. But to your point, you've the trust, the relationships, it all matters in that experience of working together. And you could have the most effective machines. But if there's no trust in the team, then well, it's not going to last very long, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think to that point, I think you're onto something, the idea that you're cultivating conditions that would look like effective places, right? The way I love to use this analogy all the time, maybe it's a metaphor, I don't know. I wouldn't know. Probably a metaphor. Anyway, the idea that our teams are less like machines, like we've already mentioned, and more like gardens. With a garden, you can stare at a plant all day long and wish it to grow. You can yell at it. You can sit by it and hold its hand, but ultimately you can't directly affect that plant, right? That's there's not much you can do. But what you can do is cultivate the soil around it. You can work with the soil. And sometimes unexpected things are going to happen, right? You're going to have weeds, you're going to have pests, you're going to have all of these things that you're going to have to deal with in order to keep that plant healthy and growing in a life. But at the end of the day, there's not much that you can do directly to the plant. Now moving it around to the right place is important. Of course, your main job is to make sure that that plant gets the water it needs and make sure that the soil is the right pH balance and all these things that you're going to be in your good gardener. But it's this beautifully organic thing that you don't have direct control over. Even sometimes, no matter how hard you try, that plant just simply can't grow there. I mean, in this metaphor, it works so well for teams, right? Because sometimes people just don't fit on a team either as much as you hope for that position to work out. And it's not because they're a bad person. It's just that plant doesn't grow in that kind of soil. You know, I love that so much. I think it's such a perfect metaphor analogy, whatever. And I'm going to steal that. Fair warning. Well, I'm sure I didn't come up with it either. I don't know where I got it. It's so beautiful. It fits completely perfectly. In fact, I've had personal experiences where I've moved the plant from one location in the garden to another and it's thrived, right? Yeah. Yeah. I meant team members. Like, I don't have a green thumb at all. So I can kill mint. It's just, you know? I don't deal with real, real green things. But the analogy or the metaphor is just so perfect. You've got it spot on. Ravs, thank you so much for spending time with me. And I know we're kind of over our time limit. And I appreciate you taking the time and the extra time with us here on Developer Tea. I have one final question. I promise it's a very short one. If you had 30 seconds to provide advice for developers of all backgrounds, what would you tell them? Trust yourself. Be true to yourself. Have empathy and, you know, make sure the environment's working for you as much as, you know, it's the manager's job to think of the same. Wonderful. Good advice. Packed with plenty of things that we can unpack. Maybe in a second interview, when they interviewed me. But business has been wonderful. Thank you. It's a pleasure talking to you. I had so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. First to you, the listener, for listening to this episode of Developer Tea. And of course, to Ravs for joining me in this interview in this episode and the last episode of the show. Thank you again to today's sponsor, Linode.com. Linode.com slash Developer Tea. To get $100 worth of credit, make sure you create a free account in the, is a button there on the page, create free account. That will give you the $100 worth of credit. Thanks so much for listening to this episode, this episode and the show notes for this episode can be found at spec.fm, along with all the other episodes of the show as well as other shows that you might find interesting and valuable to your career as an engineer. Today's episode is produced by Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cutrell. And until next time, enjoy your tea.