Principal Software Engineer: Democracy at Work is Overrated

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and joining me today is Dario Quiselar, Principal Software Engineer over at Elastic. And we talk about career progression in big tech organizations as software engineer, how to raise the bar, be critical with regards to feedback and how to deliver as high performer. So enjoy. There's 2, two moments during the year where there's a possibility of a promotion.

So it's for the entire company. So every six months, we get what we call merit increase, so base salary. And then in November, I think we get our Rs US. So stock options or whatever you want to call them. And that is also the point of time where people can get promoted. And I had no idea how promotion goes. Like I've never spoken to my manager about promotion at that point. What it did know is that every six months, emails go out to the entire company announcing the promotion.

Oh, OK. It's like a celebratory thing. Yes, it is a celebratory thing, but it has a flip side, right? If you feel like you deserve a promotion and you don't get the promotion, can you see the promotion emails go out? It stinks. So I didn't know at that point that your manager is supposed to have a conversation with you the week before and tell you this is what you're getting. You're not getting promoted. Or not. Yeah, because I I didn't ask. I also didn't know that I should

ask about my promotion. So I was kind of anticipating the e-mail to go out and maybe it would have my name in it. And then the e-mail came out and didn't have my name on it. And I remember being so frustrated. I remember being so frustrated. I felt I deserved it. And I felt like there were other people in the e-mail, like all like the toxic bullshit that comes with promotion culture. I felt it. I spent two days being upset about it. And then I was like, I pinged my

manager. I was like, hey, sorry, I'm upset. Doesn't make any sense. Ridiculous. I love what I'm doing. I'll get over it. And like we had a good chat and six months later I did get promoted. Good for you. Good for me. And I mean like at that point again, right at that point again, I was like, Oh my God, I'm a principal engineer. Elastic does it. But then again, like the same thing happens. You start to get used to the way people look at you, what their expectations are of you,

etcetera. And at some point, you start to feel like, hey, maybe it's just not like the ankle. From comfort. Yeah. So I think to put things in perspective like elastic, elastic, the title Principal Engineer one is it's attainable. So I think about 20 to 25% of engineers are Principal Engineer one and then you have Principal Engineer 2. So that's about let's say 2 to 5% something like that and then you have distinguished and that's. Yeah, legendary. Yeah, it's like 5 people in the

company. Yeah, L6 to L7, So senior to principal is it's doable and you, you can tell like people expect that to to get promoted. Yeah, but they don't have to add like actively advocate for themselves. So that is the thing. That is the thing. So yes, they should advocate for themselves and not everybody's doing that. But you really need to like the

classic game that you play is you ask your manager, what do I need to do to get promoted? And your manager will give you a list of things that you need to take off. And if you do those things, then it's going to be really hard for your manager to not promote you. So to some extent people, some people, I figured out that game, right? So they just ask their manager, what do I need to get promoted? And I think we do try to stay away from checkbox based

promotions. But if your manager is not being upfront with you and they give you a list of things that they just give to you because they felt like they needed to give you an answer, it does create an expectation with the employee that they're getting promoted if they do those things.

And I think that is that is the worst possible outcome, but it is what it is. And then I mean, I do always say to folks like you need to make very clear with your manager that you want to get promoted and they need to tell you what you need to do to get promoted. And then it's an easy discussion for you to have. And I think that works. And it doesn't really. At some point, it doesn't really matter anymore if you're doing your job well, if you're making

an impact or whatever. If you have an agreement with your manager, it's going to be really hard for your manager to say no. Yeah, it feels like a lot of this is just setting expectations. And I don't know if it's Netherlands specifically, that's always the environment I've worked in. But salary and like those conversations are like very crucial with regards to motivation and even energy, how much you put into a job and how much you get out of it.

Like I joined the CBO six years ago and six years ago I was very

early in career. So I also got an offer which was likely very early in career. Like, it was no problem here we have like these yearly ski vacations or like summer vacations. And if you earn below a certain threshold, you get a discount. And I got the discount. But the way this came out and I never thought about my salary, I

was really happy. If you're really happy, I don't think you think about like, promotion or job, but like, something has to, at least for me, something had to trigger me. And so my colleagues were like, yeah, yeah, discount. Like, it's really nice, but it's not relevant for us. I was like, what do you mean? I was like, it's definitely relevant. And then that's how the conversation started. And like those conversations happen, at least in this environment yearly.

And it has always been a matter of managing expectations, what am I doing or whatever I achieved. And then having a conversation with your manager. And to a point, I also bumped heads with my previous manager and he did, he gave me the whole checklist thing. And then I looked at the chest list and the checklist was like so generic. That was like, listen, I had the conversation with him. I said I could bump this out in two months. Give me two months and I'll have

the checklist. But I say, I don't think you want to work with this. I don't think I want to work with this. Like I want to work in an environment where we have shared understanding and blah, blah. And in the end, because we didn't see, I tell you, I had to escalate. I had to go above his head. And he was not happy with that. But that was the only way for me to feel vindicated. Yeah. Yeah. I also like, before doing that, I really had thought I fought hard and just hit a wall.

And for me, hitting a wall meant either I accept which I had a really hard time at the time. It's very early in career. I'm also very idealistic with regards to growth or I had to leave because I'm not going to accept, which means I still need to sit in this, which means there's no place for me here. Colleague gave me another option. He said, OK, go to the CEO at the time, managing director. I was like, OK, we don't have many levels, so it's my manager

and then CEO basically. And I was like, yeah, it took a bit of convincing. I was like, this seems like a petty thing to go and have a conversation with. He's like, yeah. But like, it's either this we could leave. Like, that's how he read the situation. And he was completely right. So I had to go through all of these kind of hoops to at least few more valued. In the end, it might not even

have been about the money. It might have been about the whole situation, about the conversation, about this feeling of being valued. And in the end, I felt like I deserved that. Yeah. Yeah. And in the end, I also got that forcefully, which was not a nice thing. And there's a reason why that manager's not my manager anymore. I think so.

I don't think it's about it. It's, it was never about money for me getting promoted. It was purely about the recognition that you feel like you're doing well and you want to be recognized for doing well. And money money is a way for a company to show you that you're valued in a for me, a title is a, an even more visible way of the company telling you, hey, you're doing really good. So elastic job titles are not job roles. So I've up until six months ago,

I was never a tech lead. So I was, I was just an engineer on a team and I got promoted from senior to principal in that way and I got promoted from principal 1 to principal 2 that way. I will say like my conversations were never checklist based, but I did, I did make it very clear when I got promoted that I felt like I deserved to get promoted without threatening. Yeah.

Like substantiating also. Yeah. So like, yeah, basically my manager, my manager at that time didn't have enough time to prepare my promotion calibration or whatever. So I escalated to RVP and then my VP worked with me to, to get my name on the on the table. And then L7 to L8, there's a, there's a committee that decides

whether you get promoted or not. And I, I, I mean, I don't know what happens inside of the committee or whatever, but my, my VP really helped me out there to get me promoted. But the money, I don't, I don't care about the money anymore. I mean, I make enough money. Money is only a factor for me if it's the only way for me to get the feeling that I'm being valued. So honestly, like I don't negotiate my salary at all. I just accept my fate and like

that's all I need. I just want to have the feeling that I'm useful. That's it basically. It's as simple as that. It's weird that some companies have this conversation which is about you feeling useful and you feeling valued. And it only happens once a year. And even when it happens twice a year, it's like such a build up. You know, the first three months, no one's going to remember what you did, which means the last three months everyone like everything is like on, on thing.

And you remember your whole journey.

And if your manager has many people, then it's very hard to do that conversation and like do justice to it. And there's varying levels of ambition and like ideation. It's, it's, I think it's incredibly challenging. Something as simple as and I'm, I'm horrible at giving positive feedback when someone asks for feedback. When I get a feedback form from people in my team, everything that pops up is like critical feedback.

It's like, these are the things that, but like I've learned this is also something I'm trying to work with or trying to work at at least for myself, that when something happens that I appreciate that I pause and that in that moment that I give the feedback, the positive feedback. And I have seen that do wonders. And it makes me feel like less of an asshole when I am the like critical person dotting the eyes with the feedback form.

But before that, like I could just not think of a lot of positive things to say if there were things to work on. And now that's what maybe it's my the way I was raised. Maybe it's the mindset that I have this way of giving positive feedback when it happens, when something did a really good job, when someone was absent, when someone just gave really good feedback or had a great idea. I try and say that in the moment nowadays. Yeah, it takes those wonders.

So this is this is one of the biggest struggles for me personally because I'm exactly the same. I don't know why, but it's it's never good enough for me basically. And I forget that. I forget that for the person doing the job or whatever, it was the best that they could have done and it did a pretty good job given their perspective or whatever. It's really hard for me to also in that moment that you think, oh, somebody's doing like a really good job, then tell them.

And I think it, it, it's probably the one thing that I would like to change about myself to also highlight the, the positive aspects of whatever is happening. I am, I am somebody who complaints and it it creates a relationship with people that they think that you're just a negative person, right? Yeah. You don't have. To I have that, yeah. No, I really recognise that, yeah.

It and I talked to colleagues and some people get pissed off for me because this labelling of negativity, that is one thing,

but I do think there needs to be room for critical feedback. Oh, 100. Percent like that's the thing. But if critical feedback gets labeled as negativity and there's communication of we cannot have negativity even though it's like critical feedback, like it's actually very much here's the facts and this is like the opinion and these are the effects. Even though you might not want

to hear it, it remains a fact. Then at some point I've also had the feeling of, OK, if I keep being labeled as negative, should we say something or then I start second guessing myself and should I actually speak up now even though I don't agree or I'm going to be construed as negative and I've caught myself and be like, well, I don't want to be someone that like doesn't say what they're thinking even though they think it's

important. And like so I've tried to kind of grow over that, but it's definitely an ongoing topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I think in the last thing we have a huge problem, right? We're not direct enough. And I'm, I'm totally on the opposite side of the spectrum. And I would say I'm, I'm, I'm too far like I need, I need to you're. Too direct I'm. I'm too.

Direct. I'm too direct, but to some extent it's also a reaction to being in a culture where critical feedback is not the norm and you start seeing situations where people are not being honest. So recently a couple, a couple of weeks back, we, I was looking at a, an RC that somebody put up and it was literally 6065 pages for a really small security feature. And it, I mean, it doesn't like, it's not OK.

It's like it's not OK to ask 4050 people to read a 65 page RFC, which could have been A1 pager. It's just not OK. But people see somebody's putting the effort to write a 65 page RFC and they shy away from telling that person don't write a 65 page RC.

And in the end, I think that hurts everybody because a lot of people read that document and that RC is not going anywhere, right? I mean they they killed that RC or. Sandbag it or like postponed and like in the end it's not going. To go anywhere and everybody's waste of time. The person who wrote it is frustrated and I just feel like that is that is the consequence of a culture where people are not upfront with what they how they feel about how somebody approaches things.

Like we, we try to try to tiptoe around the issue and be very indirect in how we give feedback. And this is also America, right? Like I have a lot of US based colleagues. I remember I have AI had AUS, I had a manager from the US in the beginning.

And I think for American standards, he was already pretty direct, but I remember being always aware of the fact that if he gives any kind of indication that maybe I should have done something slightly differently, I know that that's the only thing that I should focus on. So there's 50 things that are that is telling me that I'm doing good. And there's one thing that he's like, I'm not sure if he should

have. So like anytime, and I still talk to him every week, anytime he says something to me and he says something that is can be somewhat interpreted as critical feedback. I like, I, I lock in because people in the US are much less direct than US Dutch folks. And for instance, our founder is from Israel. So there's a lot of folks from Israel in the, in the company as

well. They're way more direct than even Dutch people, and that makes it really easy for me to work with them because I know what they're telling me. And I just think that leads to more efficient decision making.

I if I talk to somebody and they don't disagree, I want them to tell me that they disagree and I want them to tell me that I'm wrong. And what I see happening too many times is that people are not clear in their feedback and people go off into another direction because they don't agree, but they also don't tell you that they don't agree. And that just leads to waste at work. And I think waste at work is the worst thing that can happen.

Like if a team works on something for 12 to 18 months and it gets like what sometimes happens is a team goes off, product manager goes off, does a certain thing, it goes gets back to the C level executives and it gets killed. Like I've been in those meetings, they see it. They basically tell you, I don't know why you're doing this. You can stop doing this. You can try to figure something

else out. That team of five to 10 people or whatever, they spent 12 to 18 months working on something that gets it just gets shut down in the blink of an eye. And that misalignment, I think that to some extent is a product of people not being honest about where they agree or where they disagree. Yeah, I, I completely agree with you. It's just, I really don't know

how to solve that. Like in Dutch culture, I don't know what it is, but when in upbringing, when you hear feedback like that's just, it's just objective. It's not you as a person. The feedback is something separate and it doesn't really impact you. It's just something that happened and it's not about you as a person. It's about your behaviour and something that you can change, you can influence. And I feel like in other cultures, that is not the case

by default. It's something personal or it's something that is kind of taboo to say about someone. Even though it's their behavior and they can act accordingly or they can grow because of that feedback, it's not really there. You have to have this, like, base level of trust. And you, you do that with family, but not with friends and especially not with colleagues, weirdly enough.

But I do think that maybe when I hear myself speak like that, it's like, yeah, maybe you need to build a relationship before that level of trust can be there. That's also true by the SEC. It's really hard to build that remotely with everybody so remotely like this is one of the things I think that we see each other once a year, I would say. And I remember, so in my first year, I went to Orlando the second week, I went to San Francisco 2 weeks later for the

like the onboarding week. And then I went to to one O 6

months later and then it was COVID. And then didn't see anybody for three years. Yeah. Wow. And I remember, I remember feeling so much more empathy for people that I've seen in real life than people that I've never seen. And it just, it completely changed us. The way that I work with people, if I've seen them face to face, I've gotten to know them a little bit. It just completely changes how I

work with them. And in a company that's fully remote, it's just really hard to to do that right. It's really hard to build that relationship. Yeah, you have to have those touch points in person. That's the only way I think I haven't seen any. Or you like what I used to do because I was responsible for product, but there was no Scrum master. So I also did like the the Sprint rituals and all that.

I took every beginning of every retrospective and we had them bi weekly to do an ice breaker and those Ice Breakers were usually to break the ice. But then I learned that some of the questions I could do could be a little bit more personal. Talk to me about your favorite vacation destination. Talk to me about your favorite food. We had really funny questions like in what fictional universe would you want to live and why? So I learned about people's

like, do they like fantasy? Do they like action? They like anime, like cartoon, stuff like that, and sometimes it's spiraled a bit too long out of control. We spent too much time with the icebreaker. I don't really mind because even though there was a big slice in person, there were people in Romania, there were people in Poland, and this was the only moment we had in our work to learn about each other on a more group level.

People started becoming comfortable, people started trusting each other more, reaching out for help. And I attribute a lot of that to the time that we spent as a team discussing honesty, a lot of personal things. And that for me together with them meeting each other in person, created a really strong team, made it incredibly fun to work in a team like that where I could see people disagree and then still commit to delivering and delivering over and over

again. It's just really fun to be part of. And that's the time you spent in building a team, which you don't really see. And then the sad part is if you then kind of tear that team apart because the reshuffling happens or reorg happens, like all organizational stuff where it takes a long time to form a team and it takes seconds to destroy one.

Yeah, that's true. I think at my at my last job, like we had maybe two or three reshuffles in the time and it was so disruptive. It was so disruptive. People are so peculiar in the way that they work. Like every engineer has their own sense of how to write code and teams establish a culture, standards, whatever that are very local. And as soon as you start mixing it up, there's so much friction in people having to adjust the way that they work, how to communicate what their process

is like. And lastly, we don't really have it's, I think it's changing, but we like, we were basically doing, I wouldn't even call it Gumbon. It's just like gung ho. It's like, OK, like there's a thing that we need to do over the next six months or whatever. We'll just do it. Like maybe there's an issue. Quite often there's there's no issue. That is, I mean, that that other teams have a different way of

working, right. So maybe they're not doing combat, maybe they're doing sprints, maybe they have like monthly retrospectives. Maybe they don't. And because it's so free for all, any time there's a change, it has such a dramatic effect. We had a reorg, I think it was maybe 18 months ago, we had a big reorg. So one of the problems that we weren't running into was that we

had a siloed product. So you could tell this feature is made by this team and that feature is made by that team and they're basically doing things in different ways, etcetera. So we tried to reshuffle it a bit to get rid of those silos and it made a lot of things so ineffective. Like I, I think we still haven't fully resolved that issue. It's been really hard for teams to find their footing in the new

setup. And it's, I mean, teams just work on products that projects that don't really materialize. And before that, when we had the silos, I, I know silos were bad, like silos were bad for the end user, but silos are really good for how A-Team performs. And it was a lot easier back then to, yeah, get things done. Yeah, it's like you can, you can see it as a silo or it's like this incubator. There's a lot of stuff happens under the hood. That's why they all say start up incubators.

Like it's like a yeah, pressure cooker basically. And a lot of stuff is boiling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's like I had AI had a very different perspective on this, let's say 2 years back. I mean, I was in one of the silos and I was always doing, I think everybody in team was always like will not use this thing that our core team or a platform team has built. We'll just do it our own way, etcetera. And now like I have a different

perspective on things, right. So I'm more, I would say my scope has increased a little bit and they start looking at it differently. For instance, one of the things that we have is Kibana is the biggest public TypeScript prepository in the world, and I was proud of that two years

back, but now I'm like, that is embarrassing. Oh, really? Yeah. Like what? What does it mean to have the the highest amount of code in the world? It means that you're duplicating things everywhere, right? It means that every, every team is doing things for themselves. They do it in slightly different ways or whatever. And it creates a situation where if you want to make a change, you can't do it in one place. So it's not a single problem

that you need to solve. It's a dozen problems that you need to solve, or it's 20 problems that you need to solve. And that like, I just look at that totally different now. Like I just wish that looking back, I would have used the like the platform thing that maybe wasn't the 100% right fit for my use case, but it was a problem and it is, it was a solution. And if it's a problem, it's a problem that we can solve in one

place. And I think that's, yeah, my, my perspective on that completely changed. Like let's go the better. That's funny, things like this and I, I've been like, the only experience I've had is some team leadership, but also some product management. It's like if you see this, if you would now see a version of you where you can see a different person kind of treading on a similar path. Are you going to use this experience and like advise them no, no, no, use this because XY

and Z and trying to inform them? Or are you going to let them make their own mistakes? Because you learn from this experience. You made the mistake. You now have this perspective, which is a complete 180. That's something I'm like, I'm juggling with where I can see someone do it and I'm like, it's not that harmful. They're going to realize it's a mistake and then they will never forget. Because I know this person, they take this responsibility highly. They will never forget for the

rest of their career. That's a good one. Or if they go this route, it blows up the product that that we have to prevent because that cannot happen. Yeah, because I, I, I remember seeing one of the interviews that you discussed this and I think you said like, I would like that you'd leave room for people to make those mistakes.

So this is again, like this is one of the things I struggle with. I would have hated working with me for sure, because I am, let's say, strong willed, stubborn and I like to do things my own way. And I, I would have hated to work with somebody like me. And I, I think that I'm as a tech lead or whatever you want to call it, like I do think I micromanage a little. Bit you're going to bump heads. You and you will bump heads. Yeah, me and me will bump heads

for sure. Yeah, like worst enemies. But in terms of letting people mistake. So I think you need to have a system where there's accountability. So if people pay the price for their mistakes, by all means let them make mistakes. If you have like a very mature system or a very modern system, I would say where you push code, code get shipped to production. If it goes wrong, you get an alert within like 30 minutes.

I think in that environment it's very healthy to let people roam free and and make mistakes because like even the most dramatic things will get fixed within 5 minutes if you have a platform like we have. So we are essentially a database or a database platform and we sell to enterprises. So anything that we ship, it takes about 6 or 12 months to reach the majority of customers. So if you make a mistake, you

pay that price a year later. And at that point, so many things will have happened that it might be really hard to recover from that mistake or the person that made the mistake, they moved on to a different project. And at that point, like there's no accountability, there's no feedback loop, etcetera. So this is one of the things that I struggle with because I've been here for a while and I think I have AI think I have a relatively good understanding of what works and what doesn't work.

And there's a lot of things that I learned. I mean, the conversations that I'm, I'm in, like if I'm in a conversation with our CTO or with our distinguished engineers, they look at me the same way, right? So it's always a matter of perspective. But I think I have, I think I have a relatively good sense of what worked and what doesn't work.

And what works of Elastic is not always the same as what works at let's say a Datadog like a pure SAS company where they can ship fixes in no time, they have good telemetry on their users, etcetera. Like we have customers that deploy our software software on their own hardware without like any connection to the outside. World.

We're completely in the dark. And I mean, enterprise software is weird anyway because there might be 1 customer that runs into a specific problem and they can dictate your entire road map just by virtue of them paying you millions a year. So you cannot do any kind of like quantitative analysis of user analytics because again, if someone works for 90% of your customers but not for the 10% that are paying your bills, it doesn't matter. It's not the right choice.

It's priorities. Yeah. So it's it, it's, it's very different. And this is it's hard for me to figure out a balance between letting somebody run with it with the understanding that they will not feel that pain. So that kind of like what do you call it, like the Pavlov reflex conditioning people that if they do something wrong, that they are responsible for their health, accountable for it. That is missing.

So then in that environment, how do you approach like how do you let people grow without impacting the product? And I'm very focused on how well are we doing as a company, like how well is our product doing? So sometimes I I think it's hard for other people to to work with me because I am pretty blunt about not believing in something. Yeah. So that is a struggle. I mean, I, you've also built up a certain level of credibility, right? And it's, I think it's hard.

If you and I were to work day one and I didn't know you and you have this kind of opinionated version of you with regards to something I'm doing, which I think is the right thing. It'd be hard because then indeed, it's like this opinion. I do think you have a lot of, because you've been there for a while, you have a lot of like political credit, right? Yeah. You've seen things. You have a virtue of history and not a lot of people have that. Not many people have that.

And that should also kind of give you a base level of trust. Yes, but that works very differently for everybody, yeah. So that's the hard part. Yeah, like sometimes it feels so weird, right? So like, we were in Las Vegas a few months back and people come up to you almost as if you're like a kind of celebrity. I'm exaggerating, but it's something like like, hey, like, oh, respect, famous, blah, blah,

blah. And people, people, some people really feel that way and they look up to you a lot. But some other people don't care about that at all, which is fine too, but they approach you in your feedback very differently from the people that look up to you to some extent. And for me, it's if people don't give me that, let's say, benefit of the doubt or whatever, based on the fact that they know, OK, he's had a track record, he's done X&Y.

And then I think it's hard for them to take my feedback. And that's also something that I need to work on, right? Like I need to continuously have empathy for people that don't know me, are not used to how I communicate because because they will get frustrated with me being that blunt. Yeah, that's something that works against me for sure. Yeah, yeah, One of the things you mentioned earlier is this, like, I like directness. I mean, it's the culture I've

grown up with. So I, I, I relate to you with that. One of the problems that I had with my own directnesses and someone shared this with me are still very valuable. And I was happy that they shared it with me. But they said your feedback and like, your directness gave me the feeling that I was bad at my job. And then I reflected. I was like, well, that's not really my intent, right?

That was never my intent to a point where he would lie awake at night and like think about decisions or situations and stuff like that. I was like, man, like that. I'd never want to give someone that feeling. But then it's also I have to really think about what I say. Does something really matter? Does it not matter? And then what do I put emphasis on? Like what is, what do I truly believe in? And the feeling is from both sides. Like I cannot give someone a feeling.

Someone also has the interpretation based on how I communicate. But still I don't want to contribute to that. That really made me reflect and be like, OK, I need to focus on sometimes things that matter and sometimes things that don't matter. And I feel like you have a lot of similar thoughts in that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's I, I do like sometimes focus too much on details and it doesn't matter.

Like maybe maybe it's not the right decision, but it doesn't matter where they're whether they're making the right decision or not because the impact on it's so low. But I think it's interesting that you say you, you would never want to give somebody the the feeling that they're bad at your job. Have you ever worked with somebody where you felt like they were bad at their job? Yeah, I have. But still, don't you still wouldn't want to give them the feeling that they're bad at

their job. I don't think I so yeah, that's a hard 1. So in this case I did not think it was bad at bad at the job. So then that made me feel bad. I have worked with people where I was like, we just, there's something that they're missing, right? And I don't think they know. I always do think that everyone thinks what they, but they're doing what they believe is best for the organization. So then there might be a part of

misinformation. I think I shared with you before the show, I joined in operations and in that role I joined the team and they were doing some manual stuff of going into orders and like fixing orders because it didn't flow automatically and I was just fresh out of university. I was like, there's no way I'm going to do this day in day out. This doesn't make any sense. Why doesn't, why don't these orders just go? They should be going, it's

automated. So I figured out what the problem was and it was something very simple. There were like spaces and telephone numbers and shouldn't be there in the 1st place. The website had validation. So that's not the problem. So it turned out to be old accounts. I I made sure that that was actually fixed. But yeah, the people that were doing that day in, day out, even before I was there for months, I was like, like, I don't bad at their jobs.

Like say, I did think that especially early in career now I was like, they were just, they didn't know. Like there was a part of the knowledge that was missing. Later on with one of the colleagues that did that thing, I had a kind of a heated argument where I was like, OK, for XY and Z reason, this is never going to happen again. Or This is why this is not really valuable and we shouldn't

do anything with this. And he was like, I'm just doing my job when this comes in, this is the procedure and I'm doing like this. And this really bumped it. And I was, I mean, especially back then early 20s, I was like, there's no way. Like I had, I had this in my mind that this is my first job. I'm kind of like a wild card. I can do whatever I want. If it's not going to happen, I'm going somewhere else. I don't care. But I'm definitely like, this is what I believe in strongly.

Well, he lashed out. He said, I'm being a bad colleague. He yelled at me and that. And I actually, like, took that with me and I was like, man, I didn't. I don't want to make someone blow up. And it's probably from both sides, maybe at a bad week or whatever. It really sat with me and I made him apologize to my manager. He thought it was all like childish. I was like, I don't care for me. This is principally all right.

We work together on a certain level and we meet as humans 1st and we don't yell at each other and then working separate. So yeah, I did think it was bad at his job, but I still wouldn't want him to give him the feeling. I like people that are open minded, that also want to learn and that also want to grow. And I don't mind if we bump heads as long as we then disagree and we commit to

something. And if I need to force your hand basically by going to your manager and being like, this is what I believe, do you agree with me or I learned something new? That's completely fine with me, yeah. Yeah, no, I get that. And I think I agree in the sense that I mean, in general, I don't want to make people feel bad, but I think there's, I think it's really important to establish a culture of accountability. I agree.

And that also means managing low performance. So if people are not performing, that needs to be managed and that is HR speak for they need to be let go. Some people just aren't the right fit for the organization. They might excel in smarter place, but this is not the right place for them. And I think what at least elastic, I think what has happened too often is that those people are they're not being told that they're not performing. And that I think is detrimental

to everybody. It's personally frustrating for me. It's really frustrating for me to see people not performing, not not seeing their contributions in the right perspective, winging it. I mean, that's also the downside of a remote culture, right? Like it's really easy for you to fake work. Ghost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there's there's people that are doing that for sure. And if you don't want people accountable for that, I think you. Create the wrong kind of culture.

I agree. And in that sense, I think it's OK to make people a little bit uncomfortable sometimes that you're clear in the fact that they're not doing the thing that you asked them to or they're not doing the thing that they're not doing the thing at a level that is expected of them in their position. And this I, I sometimes think about like, is this toxic or not? And I think to some extent it is.

But I also feel like this is software engineering and any software engineer, especially at a company like Elastic, they can get a job anywhere else and they will still be handsomely paid. Like, I don't think we need to treat software engineers as if they were like lower class of workers that need to be protected against, you know, like the, the, the waves of capitalism or whatever. I mean, we're software

engineers, we have it very well. And I think in that, in that context where you get paid very handsome amount, you are a remote worker, the company gives you a lot of flexibility and how you work, where you work from, what kind of work you do and whatever. I think you can make clear to people that there is something being expected from them. And that is, that is one of the reasons I think why I'm sometimes I'm OK with making people feel a little bit

uncomfortable. I mean, I like the way like my previous manager IG, he put it, I also invited him to the podcast. His name is John Mueller. And especially in the European context, he said that hiring is one of the biggest jobs you're going to have, choosing your next colleague who you're going to work with day in, day out. And especially in Netherlands where you have a big hiring process. And the reason for this big hiring process is getting someone out of the organization

is very difficult. You have to go severance. You have to have evidence. Like if there's a rotten apple, it might kind of, yeah, create this toxic vibe within the team and maybe even within a department. A few people, that's all you need basically. A few people that you see coasting and then other people think it's OK. Where behaviour doesn't get

addressed. It can definitely snowball, especially in and I think Elastic is like one of those tier one companies, incredibly high engineering culture and also very well paid with regards to what people get compensated for what they do and also the problems they solve. It's hard to get in. It should also be like, this is what is expected of you. And it might sound harsh, but yeah, indeed, I am a person. I don't have a house, I don't have any kids, I don't have any pets.

I like my job. I put a lot of effort in my job compared to a person that has kids that I then barely see online that is not necessarily contributing. I would be like, OK, is this the environment for me?

Because if we're going to be equally valued, even though our lives are completely different and what our output is and we're working towards outcomes is also different. I would definitely reflect and it might be a little bit toxic like I agree, but it's like it it is for me. If I see myself as a high performer, I want to be with people that are like minded on that aspect.

I don't mind anything with regards to diversity, where you come from, what your education is, what your experience is, but we are working towards a shared goal. And I need the person right, right from me to also see that goal and the person left for me also to be that goal. And if the person right from me is looking somewhere else, I'm like, what are we doing here? We need to be on the same line because otherwise what are we A-Team for also?

That's the difficult part. And I agree with you. Like, yeah, I've been in situations, and this is in consultancy where I was responsible for one thing. My colleague went on holiday, we had a new person come in and they were just not productive. They just had a kid and I started doing everything myself. I worked over hours to make sure we still delivered. And this person, I was like, he's really good. He's just really not doing anything. And I could, I did not know how

to manage. And then afterwards, after this whole process, the other person came back. He said. I completely understand with you, but we do have to talk to like the delivery manager for this because this compromises the project, which would be way worse. I was trying to solve everything myself. I could not. Yeah, because this is always the case, right? It becomes somebody else's problem if. Somebody's I made it my own problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's also a pitfall.

Yeah. But I think it's like, I think you're right in that hiring is really hard. And I think I think it's really important that you make sure that you're very critical the 1st 6 to 12 months about whether somebody's a match. And if you feel any like kind of doubt or whatever in again, in Europe, where we have different protections, if there's any kind of doubt, let them go because there's, there's going to be someone else. Like it's not that big of a deal.

And after that, it's really hard to get rid of a person who's ghosting. Like if I say this out loud it feels so bad because. I mean, I don't think we live in a dog eat dog world with regards to software engineering. There's a lot of positions that are open, even though now on the job market it's a bit harder. I do wish best for everyone, but it's like, yeah, you're working towards your own interests, the best interest for the organization.

And if I believe that the best interest for the organization is not this person and that's in the end what we do, that's also what you get hired for. It might not be a nice thing socially, but then in the end, yeah, it's also it compromises my own motivation. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think if you like, if you don't have that, if you don't have those checks and balances, people who are high performance, they will zone out. Like I, I see that happening.

Like people who are really talented, they see other people getting promoted because they're they're in, they're in specific team, they're in specific team or like maybe they complain a lot to the manager. There's all kinds of reasons why somebody gets promoted and that, but they see people who get promoted who are not doing their job well and they zone out and that that that is the worst. I think that can happen. People who are really talented and can be really valuable to

your work. They just feel like it doesn't matter if they perform or not and they zone out. One of my last thoughts, I wanted to zone in on something that you said earlier. Very early on, you said I was responsible as a sole person with regards to the delivery. And then that changed and the collaboration came into it and you were like, oh, how do I collaborate in the 1st place? What's your opinion on collaborating as a team to create and work towards shared outcomes?

Because me as a person, I, I came into teams. Teams is all I know. I put a lot of value in teams. So I'm very interested since you came from this sole contributing kind of role where you take on collaboration is nowadays. I will preface this with the fact that I'm just, I think I'm bad at teamwork. I think I'm not a fan of, let's say, what do you call it, Holocracy, where you have like, well, let's say just democracy in the workplace.

I think it's overrated. I think a company is the most effective if there's clear guidance and a clear understanding of where you need to work towards. In an ideal world, this is established to some kind of like very democratic model where people can contribute towards defining those goals, etcetera. What I find really refreshing is working with our CTO, Shy, who's just very direct in what he wants and what he doesn't want. And I don't always agree.

And then I have a discussion with him and then it takes, it takes every amount of courage or ego, whatever that I have to disagree and commit to whatever he's telling me to do. And I think that's fine. Like I don't always have to agree if somebody who I know has a has a better understanding of where the company needs to go, if they're telling me something that I don't agree with, it's fine for me to just do it their way as long as we can keep on moving.

And not everybody gets away with that, right? So shy can tell somebody that in his shy way and people will accept it. I cannot do that, of course, but I think in general, I think it's fine to have hierarchy. Like I think it's it just, it just makes me feel like I don't always have to have an opinion about everything. And somebody else will tell me to do it and it's fine and I will have my opinions on things where my opinion is useful.

I, I, yeah, I like, I'm not a big fan of a model where everything that comes on the road map needs to be discussed with the team or everybody needs to have input. Because I honestly at a company like Elastic where you have probably like 12 to 1500 engineers, product managers,

designs and whatever. Like it's the company is huge and it's not possible for somebody who's in one of the 202 hundred 5500 teams or whatever to have a good understanding of what the impact is of whatever day, whatever opinion they have. It's much easier to have a much more top down approach to making road map. And of course, like, I know like it can be super frustrating if you have your own ideas and somebody's telling you what to do whatever.

But for me personally, as long as the person who's telling me to do it, as long as I have respect for them, as long as I know like they know more than me, they, they know this better, I'm totally fine with being top down. And I think and I think that comes back to being direct or not to some extent. If you, if you give people, if

you give everyone the same amount of space and same amount of authority, even though they, their contribution to the shared goal, whatever is, is not the same as somebody else. I think again, that leads to a culture of maybe everybody feels like they're heard, but if you're not making an impact as a team or as a person in your team or whatever, if you like, if you for instance, if we go back to the example of a team working 12 to 18 months on a on a feature and the feature just being like

the old initiative being killed. Maybe that team was like maybe they all felt heard and maybe they all felt like their ideas were being valued in the end. They feel much worse without their work not being useful. So for me, it's fine for me to put something in front of the CTO and the CTO shutting it down. And maybe I've spent a month on

that. Maybe I spent two months on that, Fine, I'll accept it. Maybe it's a little bit of it for my ego, but I'll move on because I know I've not spent six months, I've not spent 12 months on working something that that was just useless. And I've, I've made those like I've, I've made like I've, I've try to work on ID is that if I look back at it, they were just like dumb IDs. And I I wish somebody would have told me that was that it was a dumb ID. You might not have listened.

I might not have listened no, because like I, I know, like I'm, I'm stubborn and to some extent that also got me to the to the point where I'm at. But he also like, I genuinely feel totally OK with people telling me it's the wrong ID. And I think that that is also how I approach teamwork to some

extent. And I think this this is what tripped me up as well a little bit, because I will just, I will tell somebody like I don't think this is a good idea and I'm not even going to tell them don't do it. I just tell them it's not a good idea. But then people, people like, people want people want you to tell them. Yeah, why? Yeah, or not even. They just want you like they they want to agree. It's really hard for people to disagree and and accept that that's totally fine to disagree.

Like any time I I voice my opinion on something, I can always tell that people are looking for agreement, but I don't care about agreement. I just told you like, I don't think that's a good idea. You think they're about a different OK, like this is not my responsibility. So do what you want to do. But then I think, I think it's human right to to want to feel that.

Do you then say that because I've been in situations where indeed I'm saying I don't think we are going to agree because there's I, I'm not changing my opinion. You you've said why and I just don't agree. Like we understand each other and we still don't agree, which is fine. Which is fine, but I think a lot of people, a lot of people find that really hard. Yeah, it can be. To accept. I mean, it's like winning an argument, right? There's no win, there's no loss. Yeah, yeah.

It's just an impasse. Yeah, yeah. And in the end, doesn't matter. Yeah, I agree. So you just have to move on, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like we have, we have like we, we call this, we bring this up, guide off the right. So disagree and commit. There's a disagreement, but you need to commit one way or the other because the worst possible outcome is you disagree and you kind of like fake agree maybe, but then you go off. And you do something else.

Do something else. That is the worst, that is the worst. So this, but this is another reason why I think creating a situation where people feel uncomfortable or where it's clear that they disagree is a really good thing, because then it's clear to everybody what their position is. And then you can, yeah, you can commit to a specific option, but everybody's very aware of what

they're actually thinking. So it's much easier to plan whatever the next step is because you don't have this situation where somebody's told you, yeah, I think it's a good idea. And then when push comes to to shove, they do something else or they kill the project or whatever that you're working on because they didn't really agree. I think it's, that's the worst possible outcome. No, but I, I, no, I hate it. I hate it, I hate it. I mean, it's, it's really hard.

I think it's really hard to, like you said, like to take it personal. It's really hard to detach yourself and your ego from whatever you're being told. I have it all the time. People tell me this is not

great, that you're doing it. And my instinct is always to push back and then I need to remember, like I need to take a breather and then I need to look at the feedback. For what it's worth, maybe I don't agree with the feedback, that's fine. But that the immediate reflex of serving your ego and pushing back, that is something that isn't really helpful. Yeah.

But there's a few things there. I think the fact that you are so reflective about what your action is, what your default is, and how you want to change that or at least try and play around with it and see what's most effective. I think you put such emphasis on kind of this.

We need to keep moving. And even though it's not my idea, or even though I might not agree, as long as I think they know something I don't, and as long as there's this mutual form of respect, we can do it. I've been in many situations where indeed something I didn't necessarily agree with or something indeed where I thought I might not get the full picture, but I can, I can kind of see it that I could still do it where I cannot do it. And I've also told people is

where I fully disagree, where they've said everything they had to say. And I'm just like, I think this is bad for the organization. Then I would also say I will not do it. I've been in those situations. And then it was like, yeah, what do you do? Then my product manager would just go to another colleague and be like, well, this and this and can we do it? I was like, we should not do it. That's not the point. We can do everything. Yeah.

Yeah, like, I, I try. I mean, there's, there's definitely been situations like that, right, where I disagree with someone who's way above my pay grade. And I genuinely think that it's bad for the product, but I still do it. But it really depends on who's telling me. Yeah, because it really depends on who's telling. Me, I'll tell you my situation after I think you operate at a higher level than when I had those conversations because I can escalate.

I can be. I know the people I need to reach out to, to tell this person that this is bullshit, basically. But if you don't have any other people to go to, then it's a harder conversation. Then it's like, yeah, like we just have a different vision. Yeah, I mean this, this is also one of the things that I'm running into, right? Because I have an opinion about

a lot of things. Again, my scope is it's increased and I have an opinion about things that are not in my reporting chain, but they do impact the work that I'm doing. They're not in my reporting chain. And if things are not in my reporting chain, it's really hard for me to escalate. It's really hard for me to get the grown-ups involved to change the way that we work or whatever. And this is sometimes like, it's

really hard. And then I, I, I say to people directly, and then that sometimes also creates fiction. And then what they tell you to do is they tell you that you need to escalate, right? So if you're, I, I, I really don't like this. But what they tell you to do is like, if you, if you're not happy with the work that somebody's doing, you need to escalate rather than telling that person directly. But there needs to be an escalation path. And honestly, like, I hate that.

Like I, I hate it because I don't like, it's just not how I want to operate. I don't want to go behind people's back and complain about them. Eventually I will, but I guarantee you that everybody that I complain about, they know what I feel about them. I mean, escalations are interesting because they're like different within various organizations. My first organization, escalation wasn't a bad thing. Apparently it was needed. It was like a necessary thing.

My last organization, I had this conversation with a vendor and they came in and they had the specific task to take some burden off my team. And I told them this is not a burden. Like transferring this to you is going to be more effort than what it is now in the team and it's going to go away anyway. So this problem will self resolve, but the contract were already signed. He said like we need this part. And I was like, is there any other way where we can get this team to be effective?

Like that's the conversation I want to have. He didn't want to play ball. He somewhere escalate. I said, well, if if you don't want to like see how we can collaborate and like, yeah, I'm like, I don't see any other way. If this is what you feel completely fine. He did. I never heard back from him ever, ever again. Like that's fine with me.

I've had to escalate for other people because if you work at big organizations, you have some approval processes and if you've got a sandbagging and I need this out right now because of promises and expectations, then yeah, I will have to say, OK, I'm going to. I need to escalate and I will tell the people and I will put them in the CC in the same escalation to the manager and they're there the whole time. I don't like this going behind the back. That's why I just put them there.

I'm like I told you, I was escalating this de escalation. That's how I handle it because this feeling of going behind, that's not what I want to do here. It's this is the outcome we're working towards. If people are sandbagging or if people don't agree, I know I should have the right priorities. Otherwise, I'll be set straight. I don't mind. I don't mind if I escalate and the people are saying, well, Patrick, actually this is more important. So you'll go next. Completely fine.

Honestly, I just need to like you. I need to keep moving. Basically, if we stand still, I hate it. Yeah, Yeah, I hate that feeling. Yeah, yeah. Because I I still genuinely believe that that is, well, for most people that that that is the true motivator to keep things moving. And it it should just be the top priority for everybody. And even if they have to sacrifice a little bit of their ego, whatever you got to keep things moving.

It is so satisfying to not just keep moving but to deliver and like ship features to whatever. If it's enterprise, if it's end users, consumers or business to keep shaping your software, it's incredibly gratifying. Yeah, like I always see, I

always see, I always see software engineering, at least to me, it's just, it's, it's sports like it's, it's high level competitive sports for me. And I think that just dictates how I how I handle things. Like everything is just like the, the like the drive and the motivation and the adrenaline rush or whatever that you get and the vindication and the recognition. It's all sports. Like I don't care about being paid a lot of money and not

doing anything like that. That doesn't motivate me at all at all. And I just see like, OK, like I just want to be the best team. I want to be the best player. Maybe I don't not even want like I want to be the best team. I do generally believe I want to be the best team, but I want to win things. And if I'm not winning things and I've worked, I've worked for a long time at companies that were not winning, it just burns you out. It just makes you feel horrible without the work that you're

doing. It's not as fun. It's it's not fun. It's not fun, like all the effort that you're putting into whatever and the company is not winning. It just it kills me. And I mean, like, I think there are people who don't really care, like they care about what they're doing. But I think in general, the main focus for everybody should be let's get the company moving and then we can talk about how we make adjustments or whatever to make certain people feel better.

But if the company is not moving, if the company is not winning, everybody feel feel bad. And you can have all your processes and recognition and democracy and whatever, but if the company is not winning, nobody's feeling good. Yeah, that's it. Thanks so much man for coming on and sharing. This was the blast. I I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for your insights with the rest of the career, your perspective on a lot of things.

I'm going to relisten to this episode because I think I had a. Lot. I really enjoyed it. Like I didn't expect. I didn't expect you to be in the same boat. I think we have a lot of similarities. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Then we're going to round it off here. If you're still here, leave a like if you'd like the episode, it's free, it's the best way to support the episode, and I'll see you next time.