Welcome to the Effective Engineering Manager Podcast. In today's episode, Adam and Slava invited special guests to dive into the impact of feedback, honesty and trust in the candidate selection process and experience. Tip Engineering Manager Podcast Hello, Slava. How are you doing today? We have a special guest in our session. I'm doing great. Maybe you'll do a short intro and we'll get rolling. We're very excited today.
We have a guest and we're going to cover a very important topic about feedback. And with that, I'd like to introduce Tim Wensel. Tim joins us today out of Silicon Valley. Tim grew up in Silicon Valley from the age of five. He attended San Jose State University and obtained his undergraduate degree in business with concentration in finance and a minor in journalism. He later went on to attain his MBA also at San Jose State.
And after completing his undergraduate studies, he found that he had a natural passion for recruiting. And after working for two staffing companies, he was recruited by one of his clients, which was a startup, you may know, a few of you may know, called PayPal. Tim joined PayPal in 2000 and was their first recruiter. So recruiter number one, he spent seven years as the head of recruiting at PayPal. And by the time he left, his team had grown the company from 50 to over 5,000 people, huge growth.
In 2007, Tim then joined Tesla Motors. I think I see a theme here as VP of human resources, where he grew the company from 150 employees to 300 in just 12 months, double in that short amount of time. And after Tesla, Tim spent two years running HR for an early stage video startup, video chat startup called Talkbox. And Tim then joined a late stage venture back startup called Cheg, where he headed up all the people function, worked there.
And then after 15 years of four startups, Tim co-founded a boutique recruiting consulting firm called the AILA group. AILA specializes in running the recruiting function for startups. Wow, what a bio. With that, Tim, welcome to our podcast. Really happy to be here. Sorry that bio was kind of long. No, it's quite impressive. It's because I'm old. Well, you know, with age comes wisdom, right? Isn't that what they say? I hope so. Well, Tim, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today.
We haven't had a visitor or guest, I should say, in a while. And we're due for one. And I think this is going to be a great topic. Tell us a little bit about what, you know, you know, a little bit of a headline of what you want to talk about today and why you think feedback is so important from your experience. Sure. So as you just explained, I spent the bulk of my corporate career in startups that were either growing really quickly or trying to.
And so that tends to be a pretty dynamic, dynamic circumstances. And so the teams tend to be dynamic. So for example, during my seven years at PayPal, I believe we had about six CEOs. I think we had about five or six CTOs during that time period. So leadership is changing. The office dynamics are changing. There's so many moving parts. Being back, I thought, you know, the things that really helped keep things together were some of the fundamental things that often we forget about.
And feedback is one of those. So I found that, you know, leaders who are really effective at giving and receiving feedback tend to kind of keep things calm, you know, when the rest, and then there's so much chaos going on. Yeah, I think that's an incredibly important topic. And I think you nailed it with so many things going on.
And so many changes being able to kind of adapt and learn from your environment, even if it's not just learning about your mistakes and being able to kind of adjust iteratively is so important. Slava, what do you think? I know this is a topic we've talked about before as well. I think it's really critical to be able to provide feedback to your folks, but also it's important to be able to receive the feedback because without receiving the feedback, we won't know how we're doing.
And maybe a team you would give us a bit of a deep dive of how engineering managers can do good and better in this area. Yeah, happy to. So to me, it's all about being authentic and not being afraid to have difficult conversations, you know, just be real and don't keep people guessing about where they stand. We had, especially going back to the growth time at PayPal, we had a lot of young first-time managers that needed a lot of help and guidance.
There was one leader that I was coaching, helping and prepare for our annual review cycle. This was just after eBay bought us. And eBay had a feedback system, a scoring system of one to five five being a superstar and one meaning you should not be there. And we were sitting down going through this whole team, the rankings and the logic for the rankings. And there was one software engineer on his team and I said, okay, what are you going to give him? And we would review the quarterly scores.
And he had given this gentleman a three for all four quarters. And so he said he was going to give him a five for his annual review score. And I said, that makes no sense. It doesn't add up. And I said, why would you give him a three if he's a superstar? And he said, I didn't want him to get lazy. So he was basically playing this game where he didn't want, he didn't really want to be authentic. He wanted to make it seem like he needed to work harder.
So that was a learning opportunity for that leader. He went on to do amazing things, became a CEO for another company. But I think what I learned from that is really smart, well-meaning people can make decisions that don't make a lot of sense and just having an open dialogue and really having a best practice in play and being open and getting ideas and sharing thoughts with other leaders as well as with your team is the only way that you're going to make the whole team better.
Yeah. And I think one thing to add is, I think the theme across a lot of what you're saying is, is really trust. I know, as being an engineering manager, one of the things I've always really been proud of is being honest with my team. And I think one of the most heartwarming feedback that I've gotten from my team over the years and I don't know why I was surprised on this is just that when people say, hey, I just appreciate you being honest and upfront with us.
And I'm like, that's what I want in my manager and that's how I try to be. And so it really does make an impact. I mean, of all the things I think my directs have ever come to me about, I think that's been one of the things that's been most consistent. And like I said, surprising to me. So I think you're on to something. Well, I think the reason why they said that is that it's rare.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of leaders who care more about their own careers, care more about how their upper management is viewing them and their performance. They want to really be successful themselves. But I think what you miss when you do that is the opportunity to really have a quality connection with your people.
My boss at PayPal, who is my boss for the whole seven years, his name is Salji and Banco, really was a great mentor to me and he cared more about his people than he did the company, which also is very rare. So if you kind of keep it really human and also ask regularly for feedback and don't pretend like you have all the answers because no one does, great ideas should come from everywhere.
You know, setting that tone and doing it, you know, doing it all the time, really, then you're not surprising someone when you're doing the annual performance review conversation, which a lot of people dread because they're not giving regular feedback. And you know, if it's if it's real, it's you're coming from a caring place, even if it's tough feedback, if you have that trust, like you said, and they know that you're coming from a good place, you really want to make them better.
If they're screwing up, hit them between the eyes with it, you know, do it, you know, do it tactfully. Hit them between the eyes with it and then and then help them if they don't know how to get better on their own, help them get the resources they need to to improve. And if they can't improve, they could be in the wrong job and then you can have a different conversation. Right.
And at the end of the day, I mean, you're doing your job as a manager when you can give feedback, positive or negative. I know some managers kind of steer away from negative feedback because they don't want to, you know, upset the Apple card or upset an employee. But I think to your point, it's like that's kind of part of your job and it's okay to do that. It's perfectly okay to do it in the right way, especially when it comes from, you know, when you're being genuine about it.
All right, Tim, well, let's, I'd like to dive in a little bit more and maybe do a little bit of Q&A to kind of help work through the topic. First question for you, as we talk about feedback, how have you seen the best managers develop relationships with their direct reports in your experience?
Yeah, so it starts, it really starts during the recruiting process, you know, you really want to make sure you're not just grilling, technically grilling if you're an engineering leader, all of your candidates really getting to know them as people and coaching them holistically.
Both some people need technical coaching or training, some people need coaching intact, certainly not to stereotype, but software engineers tend to be, especially ones that are new to the workforce, they tend to need a little bit of training as it comes to people skills.
So, you know, make sure you're vulnerable with them as it relates to your own style and then have an ongoing conversation with them, not just about their projects, not just about, you know, what it's going to take to get a raise, but, you know, what are their longer term goals? And sometimes their longer term goals might be better served working at a different company, right?
So thinking like that, giving feedback with that in mind is unique and will actually develop greater loyalty with your team. And, you know, the managers, yeah, you hate to lose someone great, but if there's, you know, if there's making a move to another company is the best thing for them, it'll pay it forward and it'll come back in other ways and my boss of PayPal did that to me. In fact, the reason why I left to go to Tesla was he recommended me to Elon for that job.
So that type of approach, again, is rare, but I wish more people would do it. Yeah, and actually on that note, what was that experience like? So, you know, in real time when your boss came to you and kind of recommended you, I mean, coming from the other side, how did that feel? What was, how did that help you actually become a better, better at your role and even better at guiding others? Yeah, so it was really awkward the first time. He did it a couple of times.
The first time he came to me was in 2005 and he said, look, I don't want to lose you. You're doing a great job, but I wouldn't feel right if I didn't tell you about this opportunity. And in 2005, it was an opportunity at SpaceX down in Los Angeles when, you know, when Elon was starting to really build out that business. And I actually flew down, took the interview, got the offer and declined it because I didn't want to move to LA, which was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
And I like to make fun of myself for that one. But then he came back again a couple of years later for the opportunity at Tesla. And I think what I learned from that was, you know, I feel like we tend to be too hung up on our own job that we're doing at any given time. Maybe a little bit too hung up on like the perception of the company. And being open-minded, like I don't want to encourage ever anyone to be a job hopper.
But, you know, if you're at a company for a few years and you've, you've, you've made some really good valuable contributions to that organization. It's smart to keep an open mind and be recruitable if, you know, if there's moves out there that are going to be better. And I think that's what he taught me. I really wasn't, I was loving my job both in 2005 and in 2006 when he came to me for the Tesla opportunity.
And I, but I realized after seven years, I was probably a little too comfortable and I wasn't pushing myself. I wasn't learning as much. And I believe that in order to learn more, you really need to make yourself uncomfortable. And I put yourself in scenarios where you're going to, it's going to be stressful, but you're going to learn more and grow from it. Yeah, uncomfortable. That's a, that is a very important keyword that something we don't talk too much about.
We're uncomfortable by the nature of it. Just like we said before, it's uncomfortable to give feedback. It's uncomfortable to make change. It's uncomfortable especially when your management chain may be, you know, expecting certain things a certain way. And if you, as somewhere in the middle and you have a team and you know you have to make a change or you have to give feedback, you have to adjust course in real time and still deliver.
And that can be daunting for many people that aren't afraid of that risk. So I think you hit another really good point and point there with, with uncomfortability of the situation. Slava, what are your thoughts on that? So I think, I think it's critical that there are this, there's this opportunity for, for a conversation between a manager and their direct reports. And at the same time, I think, at least my experience has been that negative feedback coming out of nowhere is going to be scary.
And when the manager comes to their direct reports and ask, hey, can I talk to you about something? They're not going to be thinking that it's going to be amazing. So, and I think my question becomes, how can we create an environment of psychological safety where direct reports are not fearing that seeing that the feedback is coming? What are thoughts on this team? Yeah, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier is trying not to surprise your people. It's all about providing context.
I feel like if you, if you, if you get in the habit of providing ongoing feedback positive negative or otherwise, then it will, it will be less jarring when you have to have that difficult conversation. So if you, if you put someone in a new role, you put someone, you give someone a promotion, let's say, or you make them the first time people manager, they're going to make mistakes.
So it's treating those mistakes as learning opportunities, being tactful, you can be direct and tactful at the same time. But it's not sugarcoding it because if you sugarcoded, it's going to get lost in translation. So it's, it's having that, that relationship, having the trust, giving the direct feedback, and then also keeping it human and realizing that it might be hard for them to hear.
And then checking in with them on a human level, maybe the next day, you know, you try and get some, get some casual time with them, take them to lunch, take them to coffee, what have you, and make sure that they're okay and let them know that you want them to be there for the long haul just because I gave you tough feedback yesterday. It doesn't mean I don't want you here, you know, for the next few years. Good stuff.
What do you think about giving positive feedback only for, for some time, for a bit or for some time, maybe for one or two months, three months. And once they get used to the fact that feedback is not harmful, switching to corrective feedback, what are the thoughts on this or what you would rather prefer just, you know, go straight in. So if it's, let's say in the case, it sounds like you're talking about maybe a new hire.
You know, it usually takes a while to see, you know, if they're, if it's obvious that they're not performing in the first 30 days, you probably just made them all hire, right? So I think those, the first 60 days or so can be usually almost all positive conversations because you're, you're planning, you're talking about what the future is going to look like, you're talking about what that person's role, what, what you'd like their role to look like.
And then it's probably not until month three or four, where you're starting to see the results of their work and that that's, so that's about the right timing where if there is negative feedback, if they're, if they're, if they're not performing the way you expected them to, that's about the right timing.
If you, if you hired the right person, where they're going to start making some mistakes, and then it's about again, being tactful, being deliberate and letting them know that you want, you're very interested in them being successful, but you notice this thing is not, not going the way it should. And so how can we, how can we help you be successful?
So yes, I was going to say that when Adam, you and a team, we were talking together offline, team mentioned that how critical it was to build a great candidate experience when hiring. So maybe a team you could tell us a bit more about it, how, how can managers build this great candidate experience and recruiting? Absolutely. So I've done quite a bit of interview skills training workshops, especially for teams that are light on recruiting experience and interviewing experience.
And I always encourage those teams to treat candidates the same as they would treat a guest in their home, you know, just basic things like make sure they know where the rest of them are, make sure they have water or if they're, if they're coming in during lunchtime, make sure they're fed.
So if those basic things are taking care of, then they're going to be comfortable and you're actually going to be able to get to know the person and hopefully, you know, get through the nervousness more quickly and just get to meet a conversation. And then, you know, once you're into the meet of the conversation, make sure that you're giving each of your interviewer's areas of focus so that you're getting a complete balanced view of the candidate.
That one of the worst things that is all too common is you see multiple interviewer is asking the same questions to the candidate and that that tells the candidate that, hey, these guys are not, they're not really in lockstep on this stuff. So to be like hyper organized in every step of the process, make sure that you're thinking about how you'd want to be treated if you were the candidate, getting that holistic feedback, getting the feedback quickly from the interviewer.
So I was trying to get that feedback within 24 hours. I tried to have a conversation within 48 hours with the candidate to collect their feedback, share our feedback versus, you know, going radio silent and taking forever to get back to candidates as a major turn off that again is all too common in Silicon Valley. Yeah, that is very true.
And you know, you never know, right, at that point, I mean, presuming you haven't already ruled out that kind of, you never know who could be that diamond in the rough. And I know from recruiting some folks, you know, there were times where you may have wanted to, you know, you get busy with other things, you may have wanted to pass on someone, but you're really happy you didn't because you end up sticking with that candidate and they actually become one of your better employees.
And I think, you know, I think you had another really good point there. Okay, so let's say, you know, you recruit good people, they're in the job. Now, you know, they're working with their teams and their manager. Now a manager has to start delivering feedback to either that person or someone else on the team or some dynamics have changed. How do you suggest managers best deliver feedback and how do you determine if they should even use that as an opportunity to deliver feedback?
So I'm a big believer just from having been around the block many times, especially if it's someone that's in their first 90 days, if you usually know if they're going to stick or not, right?
If you're having multiple flags with someone that's been there for three or four months, you know, instead of going through a painful series of conversations and getting your HR person involved and, you know, doing a written performance improvement plan, I prefer to have a discussion that says, Hey, I'm wondering if this might be a mismatch. And have them have input on what to do.
So again, going back to the surprise thing, you don't want to surprise them and say, Hey, you're on a performance improvement plan. If you do that, they're not going to stop listening right away versus, Hey, I'm going to be real with you. I'm seeing some things that are concerning that are surprising to me when I get your feedback on it, right? And sometimes the person will say, You know what? This job is a little bit more, I think I'm in it over my head.
It's more than I thought it was going to be. And you know, I'm not, I'm really uncomfortable. I'm not sure I can get comfortable here. Then you can have a nice, tactful conversation, which is keeping a human, you know, let's let's, let's work on a transition plan and, you know, help them, help them with their search elsewhere. I've done that many times. But doing that is much better than stretching it out for months and then people get stressed out.
It's stressful for the manager and the employee. Now, if it's a different scenario where you actually think they have the raw capabilities to be a good, a good performer with some coaching and training, then that's a much different conversation. And that can be a very positive conversation, but you have to get them, just sit them down and get them to sign up for the work that is required to get them there.
Yeah. Absolutely. And as I'm listening to you, I think one other thing that really stood out from what you just said, I think is also so important. And it's a subtle thing. And you're, when you, there may be some flags and you sit down with that individual. That's another really important data point. I know some opportunities where I've had some folks on the team where you're still trying to gauge, like, is it because they're struggling? Is it because they're not committed to the job?
It's because they've got something else going on. But seeing that human relation, that interaction, when you get them on a, on a, in a conference room or an Zoom or whatever and you're like, hey, how do you feel? What's your feedback? If they come at you with a, with also a human side of it, I think that's an immediate, for me, that's a real positive because it's like, I am really struggling. I'm really trying. What else can I do?
But if you don't, let's say you don't get a really candid answer and you can tell it's not candid. I mean, can you talk a little about that, how a manager can interpret that and adjust their course based on what they get back from the candidate or the individual in that case? Yeah, you know, you should constantly be reading your, your employees, right? And reading how they react to feedback.
And some people are introverts and they don't really want to talk too much about it because it's so uncomfortable. Then it's, if they're that style, then you just have to monitor how they're doing. Sometimes it'll be a wake up call and all of a sudden, they'll start hustling and doing a great job. If someone is defensive and disingenuous, then I would, you know, I would let them know that you're really concerned about that.
And I would, I would probably move toward exiting the person quickly if they don't stop doing that. Yeah, for sure. Slava, what are your thoughts? I think it's pretty solid. And I really like the idea of, first of all, coming, we talked kind of, we went very broad, the notion of candidate experience and making sure that we come back to them pretty much within 24 hours. And we've all been there.
We went through a hiring process and it's really tough when you don't hear anything for same day or even next day. Then after, I've never thought when there was a delay that is just the team is taking time to come up with the decision. Most of the times I thought, okay, are they interviewing someone else and they're just keeping me in the back pocket if something else is not working out. It's really never a positive thought process on the candidates side of things.
And it's really, I believe that building this sense of someone being welcome and the team you mentioned that making them feel that they're guests in their house. And it does, it does require special effort. And the team you mentioned that it requires deliberate hiring process from the moment the candidate walks in the door and to, you know, final handshakes. I can, my own experience has been that a simple thing like such as a couple of bottles of water, a few snacks on the table.
Because they don't need the break between the interviews and all the good stuff. That makes huge difference. It can make huge difference. And so I think my question to your team was, so we, let's say we made a, we took the candidate through a great hiring process, hired them, they're doing well and we keep hiring, we keep growing the team. We've got a lot of different teams from, from pretty much nothing to thousands of people.
How do we, how do we build a great company in engineering cultures that allows the engineers to blossom and allows to managers deliver great things while keeping the team? What are the thoughts? Yeah, there's a few things that I think, you know, a really important one. If you just think about the work that the engineers are doing, it's, it's really valuable work. So make sure that they feel valued.
Make sure that you thank them for their work often, which is, again, something that is all too uncommon. And then, you know, have, have, especially the early engineers, you know, that when the company starts growing, you know, when you're going from say a hundred to a thousand, that, change is most, it's most stressful for the early people. So for the early engineers, they tend to be the most affected by that.
So staying close to those, you know, especially the ones that you see as kind of what we used to call culture pillars, giving them every opportunity to expand the scope of their work. Make sure you understand what their career goals are. Make sure, you know, if, if you think that their, their goals are, you're, they're not ready. Say they're, they want to be a people manager and they're not ready. Let them know that, tell them that.
And then, you know, when you, when you scale the organization, when you treat them the right way, you're kind of showing them that, right? And then as they become leaders, they do that for their new hires and it just kind of spreads. And that's, that's, I think what happened at PayPal, you know, we made our fair share of mistakes, but it was an environment where we could be, you know, we could be honest with each other. It was no holds barred.
We would, we would argue about things all the time, but it was, it was a culture where, you know, everyone was encouraged to speak their mind. And if, if you felt like you were not being treated fairly, speak up and we'll listen to you and, you know, either agree or agree or disagree. So I think that, that's the, that's the culture that we were pretty successful in building there.
And, and then also just giving your internal people chances, you know, don't go outside too much, you know, we brought in some engineering leaders that were too far away from the code as we were trying to scale. And it was like organ rejection. It did not work.
And so, you know, bringing in, you know, people that can still review code for as long as possible, if not right it, I think is, is critical for startups where, you know, the engineers are going to either respect you or not depending on how technical you are as well as how you treat them if you treat them like a human. And so I think it, it sounds really basic.
But, you know, if you get those things right, you're going to have a good chance of retaining people that, that are really going to be valuable. Yeah, this is good stuff. And I really like your idea or a concept of this initial engineering team that, that, that begins the company.
And I really like this concept of that team carrying that DNA forward and focusing on those folks and making sure that they are fully engaged because the other ones which are going to be defining the next generations of engineers coming on board. And because I've seen companies following this approach where they say, well, okay, these guys were great in the beginning, but now we need something else. And I really never bought into this.
And I think, even though maybe they're not as great as new folks at larger scale things, but this is the foundation of the company. I think keeping that foundation of the company on the engineer's side is just as important as the founders themselves. Keeping the company going forward. That's right. And I'll just mention quickly as I think back about those PayPal days, Max Levchin was co-founder of the company, highly technical, very young. I think he was 23 or 24 when he founded the company.
He was a fantastic natural leader. And I think he was more interested in doing really technical stuff. And but people kind of encouraged him to be a people manager because they respected him so much. So that's an example where getting feedback from the troops is important. We tried to bring in a big suit that they got organ rejected. And then we decided, okay, they like Max. Let's try and develop more leaders internally. And that worked really well.
Tim, I would like to switch gears to the other side now. We focus a lot on the candidate experience. But how do you coach, let's say, first time founders as they're starting to build, we talked about this first engineering team is first, certainly a first experience for them. How do you coach them on the whole candidate experience? Yeah, I'll put the founders through the same training.
It's like an hour and a half interview skills training workshop, which is very interactive and give specific examples of mistakes that companies make. It's got some funny videos so they can kind of laugh at themselves. But sometimes you see a first time founder that thinks because they're so smart, they don't need help with anything, you kind of have to get in their face a little bit again tactfully and just say, hey, look, I'm the subject matter expert on this particular topic.
And you were rude to that candidate. And I don't really want to work with you if you're going to do that. Do you want to fix this or no? Right. So I think just being again direct with everyone including the founders is critical. And then if you do that, they're usually they're going to respond. They want to build great companies. So if you do that, they're probably going to respect you more. And then make sure that you're keeping an eye on that.
And if a senior engineer start leaving candidates in conference rooms, you let them know that you're not okay with that. And you set that standard. And then if you're well respected, they'll listen and then they'll give that same feedback to other engineers. And we were fortunate to have some fantastic early developers at PayPal and that they actually cared about it.
If they didn't care about it, I think they always cared about it, but they just were maybe too focused on the technical stuff initially, not enough on the human stuff. But with some feedback and coaching, they came around and we ended up I think with a really fantastic experience. And then that resulted in really fantastic hires. From your experience, just curious, you're dealing with first time founders, how many iterations does it take before you really get them on that path?
Because I can imagine, I mean, founders are, you know, by their nature, they're core, you know, they live their product or their dream. And I can understand how they would want to have full control. So from your side, how long does that typically take? It just takes a couple of conversations, you know, if they know that I'm coming from the right place, it depends on the relationship that someone that I've known for a while is a lot easier.
If it's someone that I just got introduced to and I'm new working with them, you know, I might be a little gentler, but by the second conversation, I'm going to let them know that this is something that's not negotiable. Just like if I was the recruiter trying to get them to change their tech stack, that wouldn't make sense either. So you know, it's putting things in perspective, you know, sometimes they don't get it at all.
And you know, I've seen plenty of founders, you know, get fired by boards, which is never fun. But, but yeah, I think just not being afraid to have the conversations, not being afraid of really anything or anyone being, you know, fearless and tenacious is usually the best path. Absolutely. Slava, did you have anything you wanted to add on that?
Yeah, I think I really like this idea of paying attention and also being direct in terms of the feedback, especially when we talk about or talk to first time founders. And I consult startups founders once in a while, particularly from my networks, not like it's not exactly a job. And I like it because I think this is the time when we can make the most difference in people's lives because they can set them on the right path.
And team like you mentioned, being gentle in the beginning, but maybe then being direct if they're continuing to insist to make their mistakes. And at the same time, I think there are approaches which can help a lot. And my favorite one, which I practiced myself when I started my own company, I was something like 23 or 24 long ago, three or four different lives back. And I only later discovered, it's not my invention because by that time it has already been discovered because it was 1992 or so.
And this notion, which is I most clearly expressed by Steve Jobs, that we hire experts to tell us what to do. And we're not hiring experts to tell them what to do. So, and when I was hiring first time as a founder, my company was like me and half of three of us as they say, me, myself and I. And I quickly realized that I should be hiring into the gaps I have. I did not have anyone to take over operational work, which I needed as a networking company.
I did not have software engineers to take on a. Meteorically increasing workloads that I had as a lonely, lonely founder. And then I think we had a co-founder later. And from moment on, when I started hiring into the missing parts in my company and in my org, it has become very easy because I was looking into the faces and eyes of those of the people I was hiring and I was asking them a very simple question. I need help. Can you help? And if you can, it's all going to be yours.
The moment I see that I can trust you, which is basically get one thing done, you own your own. All I'm going to be doing is just providing support and making sure that you have everything to be successful. And from that moment on, I didn't even think of myself as a manager. But from that moment on, this notion of hiring into hiring experts and letting them to do what they're supposed to do instead of driving them hard forward really worked well for me.
And I think especially for technical founders of the companies, it's super critical to understand that they have to learn how to hire into gaps instead of hiring themselves version to that all. And I've seen it happening and I've been to mention that sometimes people don't get it. I immediately lose interest when I come in as an expert and say, hey, you are trying is your founder. You have gaps in the chart, you have gaps in operations, you have gaps in systems.
And you are telling me that you know better how to hire while you never hired anyone yourself. And when you hire people, you are still hiring a software engineer instead of hiring into the gap. And that I think for startup founders and co-founders is super critical to be humble. Know what's your thing and drive that thing but also be extremely comfortable and delivered in hiring and accepting the fact that you hire an expert, they'll do their job.
Maybe that's not going to be the way you would do that job. And being prepared through the hiring process because people can easily read when hiring hiring manager, if it's a founder or co-founder, when they begin to tell them how they're going to be doing their job. You know, before they got hired, right? So I don't think that most of us ask for help often enough. I think it's seen as a sign of weakness and it really shouldn't be. I think the best people ask for help frequently.
Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, tying this into just a regular engineering manager experience, I mean, all these same things apply. You don't have to be a founder to practice hiring people that you know can tell you what to do and going back to that whole human exchange, people appreciate that. I, you know, I've been a software engineer before I've developed code. It doesn't necessarily mean today I'm the best coder anymore, right?
And so I have to, I always say, look, I feel like I should be able to do the job that my, my direct is doing as an engineer because like you said, that level of respect, but I never purport to be the best at it. And I want to learn every day.
So I think that's a really key lesson for all of the managers that are listening out there, whether you're endeavoring to be a, you know, move up the next step in your career or be a start your own business or be on either side of that whole candidate experience. It definitely works in recruiting too. You know, I always tried to recruit recruiters that were better than me and not pretend like I was better than anyone. And that setting that tone, I think, really helped. Absolutely.
Well, great lessons all across the board. For Tim, you know, we have covered a lot about feedback. We've covered the candidate experience on both sides. We've touched on recruiting, touched on your extensive experience and some great stories. To kind of start to wrap up here, can you provide a checklist that our listeners can start to use almost immediately to help in any of these areas? Absolutely. So the first is give real feedback to your team and ask them to do the same.
Set a culture of continuous open feedback. Two is fire fast. If you make the wrong hire and you know that it's not fixable, let the person go quickly and do it humanly. Three, be deliberate with your interview process. Again, treat candidates like you would treat a guest in your home and give them feedback quickly. Don't give them radio silence. It's a major turn off. Number four, care more about your people than you do the company.
And number five, make sure that your team understands their purpose. The work that they do is valuable, so make sure that they feel valued. I think on that note, that last one is so key. Making sure your team understands their purpose. Because at the end of the day, you're a family together and you should all be sharing common purpose. And I think that's such a key lesson. Well, Tim, this has been outstanding. This has been great having you on as a guest here.
We're a huge wealth of knowledge, I think that wisdom truly paid off. We really enjoyed having you. Hopefully we can have you again in the future for other sessions too. Anytime I would love that. Appreciate your time. Well, Tim, thank you. It was a good stuff and I'm sure our more good stuff is coming. Thank you. Appreciate both of you. And thank you and to our listeners out there, please let us know what you think of all of our episodes by rating us wherever you are receiving this podcast.
You can also reach out to us on the web at www.effectiveem.com. Email us at contact at effectiveem.com. Until next time, happy managing out there.