Reverse Engineering Burnout with Nav Rao, CTO at Spoony

Welcome to the Foundation series. Your deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. Join me, Matt McFarlane, a People Operations Leader Turned Compensation Specialist as we uncover the strategies and practices driving success in tech startups around the world.

get insights from heads of people, founders and experts as we explore how to build robust compensation frameworks that not only fuel growth and retention, but do so in the dynamic startup environment that we all know and love. Let's get into it. So funny. I always find these sorts of things like a little preamble at the start we have each other. Like we've got like three other conversations here that are probably helpful to other people.

Yeah, like I wanted to ask you a question about your hat but and and where I could get one of those'cause like I love Rough in Jurassic Park, but at the same time the Chris Pratt movies have really irked me.

And uh and the latest Oh really? Yeah. Wha well the Jurassic World. I don't know, have you watched the recent Jurassic movie? I haven't. No. I I saw that um I saw it on the plane actually that that it was I saw it on the list of movies and um I saw it's Garley Hanson within it and I was like, I found that really interesting because I would have thought of her as like a an A list uh and um and I feel like

Like I don't know if Chris Pratt's in the new one or or what or if they've just like restarted or yeah, so I was kinda like, Oh, okay, interesting. Anyway, but no, I didn't I haven't watched it, to be honest. I've never even when I was a kid I was never really a dinosaur person. Um I was more of a I was more of a an aeroplanes aeroplanes is with me, jets and things like that. And um

But yeah, never never really got into Jurassic Park. Damn. All right. We're We're finding things that we don't like about each other. Um and that's a good way to start a podcast. That's a great way to start a podcast, um, which isn't about the topic of Jurassic Park. It's about the topic of burnout.

And um it's funny, I was thinking about the intro to this when um when I was uh it was probably when I was in the shower,'cause of course that's where everyone does their best thinking. Um don't say that next time. Don't ask me what I was wearing. And um and I was like, Oh, how do I how do I introduce you and like how we came to know of each other and all these sorts of things? And I was like

You know what? I feel like I spend a lot of time kind of shooting on LinkedIn a lot and like the challenges that that I have and and the issues that I have with it. But like for all of its problems. one of the things that it is quite good at is helping create connection, which is obviously what it's you know, one of its goals. And um because obviously that's how we met one another was through just engaging with one another's content.

And um yeah, I was like, Oh, okay, yeah, shout out. Respect respect to uh to LinkedIn for uh for bringing us together and to uh to talk about something that Graciously you've said you'll you'll share a little bit about your story and your your sort of background and experience with but um, you know, I've certainly flirted with it. Um I think most people have had an experience with it which is um which is burnout. But um maybe before we dive into that, do you want to spend

Just a little bit of time telling people who you are, bit of your background. All that sort of stuff. This is the part where I never planned. And I should have sat in the in the in the shower and I thought about this part. Um Yeah. So like I am a soft engineer by trade. And I have mostly work in startups. Oh, I should probably say my name's Nav. Hello. Hi. Hi, audience. Um and I've mostly just been someone who has worked in tech for over a decade.

Mostly because I just wanted to build things, wanted to do a start up. I was ingratiated by the great, you know, um, ecosystem of startup entrepreneurs and I just wanted to keep building. So I am originally from Fiji, but I spent my entire childhood in Hawaii, hence I have a weird accent. It has a little bit of a mix of like Fijian, New Zealand

Maybe Australian, I don't know. Like I really have a lot of Australian friends here and they sound insane. And um a little bit American as well. So that's that's probably why if you pick up a little twang here or there, it's gonna be like some offs like some offshoot, some residual effect.

Um creating a whole new accent. Yeah, yeah, creating a whole new thing. Like a dinosaur. Yeah. So I've just basically been in tech for a while. I have chronic depression and I've dealt with anxiety for pretty much as long as I can Define it and I've uh sort of discovered while being in my while doing my own startup. Like I was I did my own startup out of uni and I raged in success.

You know, like raging success. Um because there's no failure in the startup, there's only success. Remember that. And I did some agency work. I went through different verticals. I went through uh different domains. I did a little bit of front end, a little bit of back end, a little bit of cloud, a little bit of data engineer and all these kinds of things, I've just been someone who's just kind of done whatever piqued my interest because I don't know. I guess this is kind of exciting.

I don't even know if that's an introduction. It's just uh it's it's who I am, I think. It's it's it's who I am versus my resume, if that's better. Well, I mean it's always great in some respects that you don't plan this and uh and I think it's lovely that people actually get to hear the

Whether you want to call it oh well I was gonna I feel like I'd be rude to say ramblings, but you're your like your unfillets around like you and I how would I describe myself? I think that is it's it's nicer and that could be a little bit more rural rather than uh than uh choreographic. But I will give you the byline. The byline right now is that I'm a fractional Uh CTO, fractional being part time. If people don't know what that means. It's just another way word for part time.

um at Spoonie, which is a neurodiversity uh well, it's a platform, very intimate social media platform for people with chronic illness and neurodiversity.

and we have sort of a general component mixed in with a social media component and we try to create a new vertical around basically healthy, safer social media. Before we dive into sort of, you know, your experience. And I think I like I might start by saying as well, like this really is just about like, yeah, sharing your experience, sharing my experience, sharing our thoughts around like, you know.

I guess burn out and and and the role that plays and kinda how we can rid the world of it. It's not, you know, you speaking on behalf of all developers, it's not me speaking on behalf of all HR practitioners. It's really just yeah, just that. And it's very interesting. But I felt like One of the places it might be good to start, and it feels kind of naf, but it's like, what is burnout and what isn't it? And kind of like your thoughts around that, because I feel like it's a term that

People have become a lot more comfortable with quite rightly. And I think that's helped with things like disclosure and identification and and then, you know, you're gonna name the problem to solve it, those sorts of things. Um, but I also wonder if sometimes with these sort of topics that go too far the other way where it's like

you know, you being you waking up tired one morning isn't isn't necessarily burnout from my perspective. But yeah, i you know, should we start there and then I'd love to hear from you, like what is burnout to you and and what isn't it and and you know, what does it look like? Yeah, I mean I think there's definitely a lot of nuance to it, right? Because it's so relative to the person.

Well yeah, when people say what is depression and what is chronic depression and what is clinical depression, I'll kinda like come to that a little bit. But you know, people have a bad time in a day and then people have a prolonged bad time. People have this undercurrent of a bad time. And I look at burnout as that. It's a prolonged

undercurrent that is always there. And maybe not always there, but it's certainly not there on a particular Monday. You know, it's not a Garfield Monday. It's not a oh God. It's um It's you know, it's the weekend and this is Friday. I just want it to end the kind of burnout. It's something that you feel through the week and maybe even the weekend. And so I like I look at burnout as something that is

always hanging over your head. And whether it's that feeling of like waking up in the morning being tired, are you waking up and feeling tired Every day or on most days? Um, is it something where you're

depleted of energy and you you lost your interest in the work you do? Are you feeling anodonic? Like do you just have no desire to um function at work? Like absolutely no imperative to complete that task. And so without quantifying it as a singular sentence description, which I cannot do, for me it is. It is your battery is low and it continues to be low. And no matter amount, no matter how much you try to recharge it.

It seems like it's constantly draining, like an old iPhone. That's maybe that's a good way. It's an old iPhone with too many software up. Is it one or two years old that they got in trouble for uh artificially doing that. The the planned obsolescence or something like that. So hopefully that's not the same gauge for humans. I I'm telling you after I was two. Yeah, well funnily enough I think a career uh like two years in a career can can generally be enough, right?

Um, but uh yeah, my I've got a six year old uh iPhone eleven and I get maybe like three hours out of it. So In many ways. I I'd be I'd be very happy to get s three hours out of my work. So it's a good metaphor for I guess what I'm hearing is like it's a prolonged thing. It's not just like uh you you wake up one day and you're typing, it's like there's this undercurrent that you mentioned of like

Something is off, you know, it affects you during work, it affects you potentially outside of work. Um, when you think of like the symptoms and and kind of how sh how that shows up for people. And again, you know, neither of us are doctors, but you know, leading on our own experiences here.

Um, you mentioned there's kind of uh, you know, your your battery's kind of flat or it drains quickly, those sorts of things. How did how has that shown up for you? Or maybe when you've engaged with others that have had burnout, how have they described that? Um from uh from a real lack.

Yeah, symptomatic perspective. I might not be a doctor, but I have read Wikipedia. And I think that qualifies well, I think that qualifies me to be a doctor and I've asked AI a variety of questions on this topic, so I am very qualified. Um I hope should I have a sarcasm label? Like please do that. Anyway, I I'll give you an example of it. I I think I was uh a couple of years ago I was at work and

I have I had this person who would often reach out to me for help. Like a junior engineer, just sort of, Hey Nav, how do I do this? Hey Nav, how do I do that? And usually I I just answer with like, Oh Check this article out. Check this thing out. Um, if you've got 10 minutes, I can jump on a call with you right now. When I respond to that with

a sigh. That's usually the start for me. And so what I'll find is that there are physical reactions I have to certain scenarios that normally wouldn't have occurred. Whether it's this little rage that I will feel for them reaching out to me, like this anger over like, why are you why are you interrupting my time? I am so exhausted, I'm so tired. Go away. And So that's one thing. It's definitely like the way I react at work. Or at home. I mean, either way. And

The other aspect is how quickly I get to doing the work I'm doing. So as an example I could usually find myself going into work and spending the first thirty minutes just like producing my emails.

Looking at my tickets, um, maybe reading a few articles, and generally just jumping into it. But it just seems like it gets longer and longer and longer. And before you know it, I'm starting, like I'm actually starting my work at twelve o'clock. So these are little tiny things that I consider. Maybe symptoms that sort of highlight, okay, you are either burnt out or you are reaching that stage of burnt out.

Yeah, you're seeing like a little bit more like reluctance to to do some of the things that you might have ordinarily done um, you know, more natively uh had you not been burned out. I'm curious, like Where do you think? Or or do you think there's a relationship between burnout and and disengagement? Disengag's a topic that comes up a lot in in obviously in HR and people's circles and and we measure it primarily through surveys and things like that. Do you think it's a case of something like

you know, disengagement precedes burnout. Do you think it's a they're they're separate things? Like what's what what's your take on it? Yeah, I think that's I think there can be it can be both. I I I hate that that's the answer, but it can be both because From my perspective and I've worked in a company where I am literally talking to customers because I am the first hire or the second hire.

and only a team of like three engineers. So my job isn't to just write code, but it's actually to talk to people. And so I can see the effect of my decisions. I can see my code having an effect on someone's life or someone's business. And then I'd be in a company where I am a cog in a wheel. I am one of three hundred to four hundred and I do not see You know, m my work, I do not see it in the hands of the customer.

So I will feel a level of disengagement there in that situation, in that sort of like um ladder situation. And so in in in many ways, if you had to send me that survey there, I I probably would be quite disengaged. But now let's flip the script. And if I'm in that early stage startup and I am often dis uh I'm often engaged, my role is to be engaged and you see a slow, you know disentanglements, then I think you're also seeing the other side of it where

I'm I'm now just completely divorcing myself from the situation. Yeah. Nice. It's sorry Yeah, I guess yeah I find it interesting. Like some of the things you're hitting on there are like you know, there's like good what you'd call performance, you know, or

performance culture practices, which is like, do I feel connected to my work? And if if what I'm hearing is is is right, it's kind of like, you know, that those are the things that tend to lead to to disengagement. Like maybe a feeling that your work doesn't matter too much.

But actually like some of the like more advanced signs that potentially could be that be more symptomatic and burnout is actually like, Yeah, I'm not I'm not that interested in kind of going outside of my kind of core role, my like, you know, the the the the box of my position and what it is that I need to do day to day to really help kind of

the company take that next step or, you know, be more than maybe what I'm I'm being paid to do, helping helping your employees, um, you know, really going the extra mile on something and and kinda gold plating it or polishing it or something like that. Is that right? Yeah. I and it's so it's so dependent on the person, right? Because dog's I've been a manager in a situation where I've had to work with someone who honestly they just saw their work is worth

You know? And I I was just I remember just saying, like, you figured it out. I don't know how you've done it, but you figured it out. And In a situation like that, maybe you'd consider that sort of not engaged. Maybe you'd consider that as burnout. But really, I think they have a short healthy social life, a very healthy career. And so it just really and I hate that, but it really depends. It just so depends.

Because it depends on whether you're an early stage startup where you've hired people who are uh multidisciplined and are working with clients and customers. Or y it depends on whether you're in a team where your customers are actually your own engineers. So With the engineering teams, you'll usually have the separation of like infrastructure engineers. These are the folks who build the things for the other engineers to do.

And so their engagement comes from the other engineers using their tools, providing them feedback. for instance there's a lot of errors, there's a lot of problems, or if there's no appreciation shown in um in company circles for the work of the of the infrastructure team, then you'll find that maybe they're gonna get disengaged.

So there is no absolute and I wish there was,'cause if there was, then I think we would have solved this already. And yeah, it is there's so much nuance to it. Yeah, I hear you. It's um We we've I guess we've we've touched a bit on like, you know, kind of what it looks like, what it shows up like, um, you know, when it's maybe burnout versus disengagement, you know, how it how it's maybe preceding burnout, things like that.

What are the things that you think are like catalyzing that for people? And and I'm sure it can be myriad. I mean, I can you know, I can share my own experience and and this was never like ever like diagnosed as clinical burnout or something like that. But I I can certainly say that when I was at, you know, my lowest in my career um and and felt a lot of the things that you're talking about, it was because I was in a role where

You know, like physically I was I was healthy and I was, you know, doing good exercise and I was I was eating well and all sorts of things. It wasn't necessarily like a lifestyle thing. Um, but I think for me, what what I no just in and of myself was uh you know, a lot of what you're talking about I was kind of like, you know

just aren't interested in in being at my place of work. I was like not interested in, you know, if I saw something that it would have taken two seconds to fix, um, and and make something better, I probably wasn't going to do it because, you know, why should I try and help this this workplace. And for me it was driven a lot by um this sense of Just like it was just hard to get shit done. And it was just really hard to do my job. It just felt like whether it was a combination of um

ambivalence or like lack of clarity around what we were as a company and and what my team's role was and and and our purpose and all those sorts of things. Um Yeah, just it just rema and I I remember like a really the experience that really crystallized it for me was um and uh went names. I was working for a law firm and um It just I remember like they had a huge turnover onboarding, like early turnover issue.

So people would come into the company, lawyers would come into the company, they would start ramping up into um, you know, their billable hours or whatever it was, and um and within six to twelve months a lot of them would leave have really high turnover rate. Um, and now that is an obvious huge issue, if not for the reason that people that don't even want to spend twelve months in your workplace is a bad thing, but most of all because like any, you know

decent sort of company, most of those people had a ramp-up period. So they wouldn't build their full rates and the hours that they were expected to do in a week, um, until maybe after six months, something like that. So, you know, they'd start with zero billable expectations and then after six months they had full billable expectations.

And so you can imagine that when a lot of people are le leaving in that sort of six to twelve month period, um, the cost of an employee is huge because they're not they're not covering their own costs, let alone producing properly for the business. And so Um, that was something that that we tried to diagnose and and um we tried to to look at introducing a tool to to help us solving it as part of the the onboarding process. I think it was part of the selection and the onboarding process.

And I can't even remember the details around like, you know, what the tool cost and and all sorts of stuff, but it, you know, the ROI was so high on this thing if it could just achieve like a a real slight improvement in the the the early stage turnover process.

Then I thought this is like the biggest slam dunk in the world. Like we just have to keep a few more lawyers and this thing pains for itself in terms of the amount of money that they make just because they stay longer and and and they have more billable hours. And um and it just got knocked back. It was just like Yeah, nah. Like we're just not interested. Like there was no there wasn't any real like feedback. There were and and so for me, you know,

That was such an obvious thing and and we as a as a profession get crucified all the time for not being commercial enough and not being, you know, grounded in kind of the business needs and the and the and the commercial realities of the business. And here I was thinking, you know, I've I've Giving you something that is shown that it will likely help us make more money.

And yet it still can't even get approval or it can't get across the line for us to implement. And I just remember that being kind of the final straw for me where I was just like, it's actually one of the few times in my career where I've left a role without having another one. And and this is maybe something else we can talk about. But it's like,

I just felt like like I'd been interviewing at the time and I just felt like there the toxicity and my and whether it was my burnout or my just severe disengagement or dis dislike of this place.

Um, it felt like it was bleeding through into interviews and I actually reached a point where I was just like, I just gotta leave. I just need to leave and I need to get myself into a good fed space and and go back to some of these companies that I'm interviewing with and be more me and not this person who's jaded and and, you know, hates the world. wealth and stuff like that. But yeah, I I just it was at the end of a really prolonged period of just like

you know, not being able to do my job and just feeling like I was held up and spinning my wheels and trending water, all of those euphemisms. Um, the that for me was one of the yeah, the the moments in my career where I was just like,

Gosh, that was just a real slog and yeah, all of the things that you mentioned. But anyway, that was a really long way and could have sharing that one experience. But what what are the things that you think for the people that do experience Ben H or even just, you know, yourself.

What are the things that you think keep it off for? First off, there's so many things that I wanted to say there in that entire um Oh well let's do that and then you can really space I'll sort of explain why because before COVID I was working on a product as the first engineer, it was called Expotential. And this was in New Zealand. And basically we were like culture amp, office vibes, early start kind of thing. And our first user base, like everything that we did was basically law firm.

Um, it was because the CEO was basically a recruiter for a lot of these verticals. And so he knew people in in the in this in this business and he knew that there were huge retention issues. So we hadn't found a solution. Our goal was to

figure it out. And uh you know, uh a big part of that was just surveys and all that kind of stuff. And I I could see exactly what you're referring to. And one of the things that I definitely saw there was also just a general disengagement with the um qualitative feedback So you got the quantitative feedback, but let's face it, people just have to do that. You know, they're looking at it, they're like, Yeah, I'm a three, I'm a four, I'm a I don't care if it's higher or lower, whatever.

But the qualitative feedback is where you really see it. It's it's either the the absence of feedback or the word vomit or the thing that probably should have been a glass door review. It's all All absolutely useful. And the further that When COVID hit, um, the first product that they would get rid of is basically A HR tech, right? Like they were saving money. So all these potential customers that we had lined up

Gearing up for a raise, all these things just fell apart because every single company was like, Well, that's just HR stuff, that's just surveys. We don't need that. You know, we need to keep the business running. And to the point, I I I agree, like you need to keep the business running. You can't survey employees if you don't have employees, but At the same time, it shows where HR tech sort of

Yeah, it shows what they truly value, right, doesn't it? And and I think n you know, none none more so than a services business where their people are their product. Like it's not a SaaS business, right? Where it's kinda like, Yeah, well the thief's gonna keep running if the people are here or not in some respects. But

You know, y if you if you're people who, you know, deliver the work and in order for you to make the money and not doing that, then fundamentally your business is threatened. So yeah, it's it's crazy to me that and I'm sure the the legal, you know, industry isn't the only one. I'm sure there's many of them, but that was just my my experience and clearly yours as well.

Yeah, it it was a very depressing um experience there, not just because of COVID, but also, you know, um seeing sort of the this this business uh also come to an end. The other thing I wanted to say, uh it's such a prospective shift. You look at it as uh uh You're the enemy. You are the enemy. And I when I say that I'm like there's a general thing that says HR is there for the business. They're not there for you. They're there to protect the business from you.

And that is a and look, I'm not gonna say that is always the case, but it's always it's not also not the case, right? Like there's definitely situations in how individuals. Yeah. And It's so like strange to also hear from your perspective, um, that yeah, you are fighting for these features, these tools that are actually gonna benefit people.

But you're getting pushed not just because of a leadership choice, but also the bureaucracy of the choice. Like the the the hoops that you have to jump through. Um so at the end of the day, like Y to answer your main question there is yes, I do think these things that they put in front of you to slow you down or to to make things more involved or maybe it is maybe it's really, really important to do it in the first place.

But it definitely means that something that could have taken you a day and you could have gotten this instant dopamine hit. This to do item that went from to do to in progress to done is now to do in progress in review. And it's in review for months and months and months. And then you finally get Some degree of a response to the

Months later, but it is gone. Whatever context you had in your head, whatever ambition you had at that time is gone. Because you're completely a different person every day, let alone every month. And it's very h it's very odd to assume that anyone could just easily pick up a ticket months later and be able to just continue on from that. So

Yeah, I just think every single one of those steps definitely helps um create that burnout. Yeah. The irony that I find in in what you're talking about is that, you know, often And and I feel like this is a fever pitch at the moment, um, being you know, we're recording this in December and we'll probably go live early next year, but it's like there's such a like deep throated uh

you know, interest, desire, passion, whatever for like high performance and high performance cultures and and efficiency and productivity right now, now more than ever. And it it's obviously it's AI fields, it's all these sorts of things. Um But people want, you know, companies want high performance. Yeah. And yet the irony is is that the the high performers, the people that do go out of their way to come up with, you know, novel solutions and then they pursue it and they're, you know

They they they're the kind of people that these companies want, they're kind of putting these obstacles in front of them and you know, preventing them from being successful in a way and and potentially, you know, burning them out and and causing them to be, you know, just mediocre in in from an employee perspective.

Um I I don't even know what like if there's a I don't think it's necessarily a question there, but it's more just an observation around like the irony of of companies that try to you know, through whether it's through standardization or or whatever it is, they just, you know, think hey, this is gonna make the process faster but actually it just

puts the handbrake on people who, you know, maybe won't fit into the process and and help a company kind of do what it purportedly wants to to do. I want to add to that because I I feel like Uh very often um procedure is sort of demonized and y you know, like you you get into s stage where, okay, well, you got a high performing team, you should be able to just do it. You should be able to just go. and just ship it. Like that ship it thing, man, it triggers me. When I hear it, it triggers me.

Uh oh my absolute favorite one is like let's fucking go. Sorry, can I can I say that word there? Am I allowed to say that word? Why not? Yeah. Okay, all right. There's this like idea that you should just do it, man. You just just do it. But there's also sometimes a reason for a procedure and and it's there to sometimes protect the customer or it's there to protect the business.

But I think what makes it really difficult is when all these layers in between don't actually know what the dang procedure is. And so they're they're spinning in circles trying to figure it out. And they'll almost it's kinda like when you call a travel agent back in the days when you had to call it a travel agent and you said, I wanted to I wanna sh I wanna change this.

I wanna change this flight. I go, cool, I will talk to this person. Why do you need to talk to this person? You know, and So I don't think sometimes the procedure is the problem because in healthcare As much as startups like to say there's too much process. That's good. You're dealing with my health data. Yeah, yeah. It should be too much process. I'd like the process, thanks. Yeah, yeah. It's it's more a matter of like that process is so ambiguous. Uh it's so difficult to this

uh teenage um social media thing going on right now in Australia. It's so hard to get clarity on it. So dang difficult. And That just means a whole bunch of people are just gonna sit there twiddling their fingers, either making mistakes or not doing anything about it in the first place. So Yeah, I don't again I come to you with no solution. Wow, now that I can crack. Again, just speaking about what some of the things are that we think are are constraints here. I think

you know, you touch on you like I think you're right. It's not always the procedure. I think there's also there's like there's an apathy there as well. And you know, in and in my example, I don't think it was that I was held backed by procedure. It's, you know, I followed the procedure to try and get something approved. But I think there was an apathy from, you know, whether it was the so the head of my department or the you know, or her boss um or or or uh or his boss.

you know, about how it is that we can make things better and there's kind of a reluctance of of of doing that. And I think that for me is something that Indefinitely like if it's if it's felt at that level. you know, we know that how how much, you know, lead by example and all sorts of things then start to to ebb and flow through the rest of the business. But um

Yeah, so I think bureaucracy can definitely be something that's that's smothering, but I think there's just that general apathy as well that that others can have. And I'm sure there's many other other catalysts. And actually you touched on one that I wanted to come back to. You touched on something

Mostly sarcastically, I think, at the start, but you know, with with all of Australian sarcasm there's always a a grain of truth. But it was around this kind of like, you know, that startups can only be successful and and I I'd love to hear about, you know, How do you think that brand and contributes to it in the sense that, you know, do we always have to uh project this?

this brand of success and and and things can only be successful and and yeah, tell me more about that. I mean you yeah, you mentioned at the start about LinkedIn. I don't p I don't know if that part was actually recorded. But um that was my mainly my reason for being on LinkedIn. There is a chronic positivity and I'm not gonna say that my feelings on this are correct. It it it could be that I'm just chronically negative. In fact, I've got chronic depression. It's part of my my whole thing.

I it's really difficult sometimes for people to actually say, My business failed. Someone will come to them and man, I I can actually s I can literally no, not literally, because I I it's happened so many times, I can't count it. Um, they'll come to us, Oh, it's not a it's not a failure. Like you learnt something.

Well yeah, I know I learned something, but like can I not just say it was a failure? Can we just focus on the failure? Yeah. Just let me let me just say it was a failure. Like let me just you know it And and maybe I'm I'm connecting dots that aren't necessarily related here, but it's I had this uh Substack post that I put out recently.

where I talk a little bit about um, you know, some of my depression, some of the things that I've done, or that, you know, it's not very easy to talk about online. Now, if I put that content up, I have to use words that are, frankly, like childish.

You know. The this I I you cannot say this word. You cannot say that word. And again, an example is um I think you can't use the word um anger or something like that on LinkedIn without getting one of those little notifications that says that this is, you know, we've noticed messages like this. uh tend to be well, I'm it's not necessarily anger itself, but like there's a lot of things. Yeah, but it's something like that I Yeah, yeah. A certain negativity

A certain negativity in your content. Like if you said that, well, you're not a failure or if you just said, Well, you're a failure, sarcasm, you're most likely gonna get that little tiny dialogue that says, um Yeah. So i it doesn't understand nuance, right? Like this is AI. Um so I d it was definitely one of the things, one of the reasons um that I wanted to get on LinkedIn was to sort of express yeah. Yes I did learn something.

But I also learned that maybe entrepreneurship isn't always the answer to everything. It keeps being labeled as the answer to to everything. And maybe that's just a symptom of LinkedIn. But in those three years when I was in that startup, I have no retirement monies to show for it. I really hurt my um my health, like badly. And I developed probably the start of my burnout, like the genuine, absolute start of my burnout. That's kind of sh stayed with me since in a way. Um and Yes, I learnt a lot.

Would I change it? Yeah, actually would. I would change it. Yeah. I so I think it's just nice to sometimes reflect on what actually happened and and not try to sugarcoat it and let people make their own decisions because everyone's an adult. Well.

Sorry, I'll take that one. Most of the time. Yes. Yes. Uh yeah, I I agree c uh completely. And I I mean, you know, you've obviously lived in in many different cultures and I haven't. Um, but certainly the concept of tall puppy syndrome gets spoken about a lot here where there's a real fear of um Uh just sort of standing out but also like yes, being separate from the herd, we were obviously

through COVID, very big adherence to rules and we loved the rules in Australia. And um yeah, I think, you know, the the the person that's kind of different from the herd tends to be a little bit ostracized or Certainly I think it it prohibits or limits our ability to acknowledge failures and and things like that. Um how do you think some of this stuff like it it it obviously shows up at a societal level, LinkedIn, you know, one of many social media channels.

Um how do you think it shows up in an organization? I think it makes it difficult for you to actually be honest in an organization because if everything is l relabeled as Something other than what it really feels like to you, then it doesn't feel like you can be your honest self. I want to be able to go up to someone and say this Um I'm burnt up. I don't think this is a good idea. I think this is a bad idea.

You shouldn't have to always re reframe it in a certain way, just to sound political law, just to meet the prerequisites of their of this hyperstylized culture. It It makes it difficult for people to just communicate and be themselves. Yeah, sure. I'm not saying you should jump into a company all hands and say, This is an absolute failure. We are

You're all dumb and then just mic drop and go. But you should at least be able to communicate with your managers and your most immediate manager and your team. And if you feel like you can't do that, then I I don't even know why you have a manager. Like Yeah, it ties into another really popular concept around um

psychological safety and and having the ability to say, Hey, I've you know, I've stuffed up. None you know, no no uh industries is uh is it more important than, you know, medical and health industries, but being able to

to share when things haven't gone right or to yeah, to put your hand up and say, Hey, I'm I'm concerned about the assault or something like that. But I I like um Yeah, I like kind of what you're saying in the sense that it it really again, like most things, it needs to be role modeled from the top and and it needs to be

shown that these things are okay, um, to to help kind of create the trickle down effects so that those conversations can happen at the at the team and the and the individual level, right? Yeah, and I'm not going to sit here and say Look, this is what the CEO of Walmart needs to do'cause I have no concept of what it's like to be leadership in a company that size.

Uh, so I can only speak to, you know, a company of less than a hundred. And in that kind of situation, I really want my leadership to actually say We've we're hit we're hitting this problem. I don't need chronic positivity from you. I need honesty. And with that honesty comes a, you know, like this is what we're doing. This is why we're being proactive. This is what we're going to look at.

And I think it does a long it g it goes a long way. Now obviously the larger the org, the more the personalities. Um you're not gonna you're not gonna accommodate everyone. I think there was like this comedian that I like to often quote, Patrice O'Neill, would um say, you know, in a in a comedy room, fifty percent of the crowd's gonna love you and fifty percent of the crowd's gonna hate you.

I think that's w a whole lot better than fifty than a hundred percent of the crowd pretending they like you. So I will Yeah, again, I don't know what this this looks like in a larger org. Yeah, but I feel like there's like to to sort of

recap, I don't know, round the point on what you're saying there. It's like there's we need to we need to find a way to be more comfortable to comfortable to be ourselves in a in a s in a way as well, right? And and kind of be maybe a little bit more accepting of that and

And not feel this like and again, LinkedIn's a great example, and it's an easy punching bag. It's just like everyone feels like they have to be their best selves, and there's so much like hustled porn, you know, that sort of entrepreneurial culture, um, only successful, only ever made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff that I think just continues to create this thing of like it's, you know, I have to I have to project

uh success and and it has to resonate with everybody and it has to like I have to please all people. I I I know certainly that's something I've grappled with throughout my entire career is and it's you kinda have to uh you know, maybe it's only experience is the only teacher that that can give me the lesson, which is that you can only ever please some of the people some of the time, right? Like it's you you can't ever make everyone happy and um

Yeah, it's just it's just something that you have to acknowledge and and accept. Yeah. Do you mind if I ask you something? I uh Uh so in the roles that you've had, have you worked with any engineering heavy organizations? From uh from a software perspective, yeah. Yeah. And what have you noticed there, like uh in in in relation to you know what we're talking about? Is there anything that sort of stands out? With respect to Bent now.

Um very vague, very ambiguous. Like I'm I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean you know, a lot of the things that I think are are true in most of them, which is that it's like, you know, in engineers tend not to in my experience love uh unnecessary bureaucracy. So I think like to your point before, like a process is fine if it's a healthy process and if it helps us like deliver something more efficiently where we don't need a lot of like change or or or divergence from the process.

Um but I think where it's introduced and and you know, got this this is a real it's a it's a humble teacher when you try to um introduce something that is is seen as being superfluous or unhelpful to an engineering team because they will absolutely bluntly like let you know what what that is and and why it's useless. Um and And and to be honest, I love that about that group of you know, again the stereotype of that group of people because

Um it's definitely helped me be better at my job. And I literally wrote an article about this the other day actually, but about um job level frameworks. And I remember fondly a time where I tried to

uh apply a job level framework that I had uh adopted from another company and it was their job level framework and I represented their companies and tried to adopt it for a company that an engineering company that I was I was working with and very quickly found out that that was never gonna work because

It was for a different sized organization. It didn't speak to the kinds of roles that we had and it didn't it just didn't resonate. People couldn't see themselves in a

And um and they weren't afraid to to let you know. And so, you know, for me that was It was hard to accept but it was good because then I could go, Okay, well this clearly isn't right and I need to now, you know, evolve this into something that looks more like us and the only way you can do that is by speaking to the people that it you know, that it serves.

And um yeah. Yeah. So definitely you'll you'll know about it. Engineers definitely have their own version of that where you'll go into I this is a little bit of a joke, but I've always found You know when you've hired a new CMO, when you've got a new brand for your for your company. Oh, you know when you've hired a new um CP uh CTO or CPO if you've got

uh a whole different product lineup. Or y d you know what I mean? Like suddenly there's a giant restructuring of uh responsibilities and ideas and and features and processes. And um engineers uh similarly had the same issue where they'll take something that maybe worked in a previous company. or in a in a a very well to do company like Google, which loves to have its engineers write blogs.

And you'll you'll read that, you'll listen to a couple of podcasts and blah, blah, blah. And you're going to have these engineers come into your organization and they're going to try to bring their ideas in and their processes in. And that's how you have Jira. You know, that's how you end up with um uh something that doesn't necessarily work for that organization. And and engineers again, so such a stereotype, um, but they love systems.

And the hate systems. It's a dichotomy. And I have always found that often It comes at the expense of them not understanding the domain they're in. So yeah, you're right in that oh it's good to get that feedback from engineers. Um but I always want to challenge that and ask what is it specifically that you didn't like about it? Because if they can't answer that, then I'm kind of like, you're having an emotional reaction to this process.

And I say that because this is also an aspect of engineering. Burnout isn't always from the top down. It's also within the organizer, within your team. you will have these like 10x rock star engineers, which, you know, folks like Elon Musk love to um harp on about is like, yeah, glorify. And what they do to the team is also just as bad as what a bad leader does to the team.

because they create this idea of what this is how it should be, this is how it's going to be. And they remove the ability to democratize or even um yeah, communicate, you know, a lot of their um a lot of the problems within that uh with that'cause you have a heavy personality. Yeah. Yeah, it kinda leads into that concept. I think it was I don't know if it was Netflix or somewhere else that you know, the concept of the brilliant jerk, someone who's like obviously very good at their job but

generally has a negative impact on others or or maybe goes about it in a way that that negatively impacts others and kinda brings the the average down rather than the raising it and and so on. So Yeah, I I hear you I hear and and it's kinda like w potentially one of the concepts and it's a good segue actually to the the last question that I wanted to touch on with you.

we've kind of talked about some of the catalysts, you know, whether it's bureaucracy or apathy, which I think could be quite contagious in organizations, or if it's, you know, chronic positivity or a lack of ability to um, you know, have safety in in sharing failures or losses or concerns or something like that.

You talked about, you know, it's a from a top down perspective and it may it can also be at a team level as well. Where do you see there being a personal responsibility, like me as an employee, what's my responsibility to either, you know, not get burnt out or not not burn out, um or not create burnout and and the conditions for it in my team versus a company and and some of the things that they should be doing to ensure that their people don't suffer that.

Yeah, that's I you're that's such a oh man, I I wish you had this one to the very last minute. There's there's it really does feel like a part two, right? Because I you're right that there is so much personal responsibility. And it's very easy to to blame others, but um they're only part of the problem. Some types of problems also sort of you yourself are part of the problem as well. And I've noticed If I burn out of six organizations, I'm not sure if you're

What's the common denominator?'Cause not all those what's all not all of those six organizations are that bad. Um so the common denominator is maybe. And I've suddenly burnt out of there's some organizations where I haven't burnt out. And I've noticed what the difference is. And the difference is I'll give you an example of a a situation I was in where It was a very big company here. Um here uh and I didn't feel like I was suited to the role.

Because oh gosh, look at this giant company with all these millions of dollars and you know, little old me with my early stage startup experience. I'm not gonna be suited for this. And so uh during this great COVID period, I Figured, but this company is going to offer me a lot of money to be basically not a senior engineer. I can just kind of relax a little. I can chill. You know, I can learn from these people. And I took this job.

Sat in it and I realized, oh wow, I really could chill. I really could relax. And rest at best, baby. You know, I think what the what what are the Gen Z call it? It's not my personality. I just couldn't. I kept seeing things I wanted to do. I I the the environment was unique because now I've there's terabytes of data. There's opportunities to work in a different team. There's access to tools that never would have had before. There's access to people with skill sets that I never would have met.

And so now I'm just sort of oh, I'm gonna run uh uh initiative around mental health. Oh, I'm gonna run a hackathon. Oh, I'm gonna do this Why? For the love of God, man, you wanted to start this thing to chill.

But there's there's a personality trait in me. I want to do these things because I'm generally curious and I wanna like I want to do it. Now, leadership didn't say, Nav, you gotta do this. Uh there's probably some responsibility on managers to say nav, you shouldn't be doing that. And that wasn't there. But I was there and I made quite a few mistakes myself. So being able to Being able to know yourself.

If you know your your certain personality type and you can catch yourself going down a a certain a certain road, I think that's really important. So it's kind of like chosen your own ambition, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what do you really want?

Yeah, it's it's definitely something I think, you know, you are again before the recording started you asked me kind of how I'm feeling coming out of the uh the holiday and things like that. It's something going into twenty twenty six I'm really conscious of is like is

checking my propensity to get in you know, to to do more than I probably reasonably could in a healthy way is is made sure that I'm I'm not, you know, letting my excitement and my I I had shiny object syndrome. Um so I you know, but I also have developed a better ability to finish the things that I start. So what ends up happening is that I get

you know, excited by fifty things and then I try to finish them all and of course that that's no good for anybody. Um so yeah, I I I like that in terms of like checking checking your own ambitions around

you know, understanding it but also being kind to yourself in a way that you don't take on so much that you do cause your own burner. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, your manager should be able to catch these things. They should be able to see now if you're you're you're taking on too much work. You're you're uh um working light. You're working you're you know, you're uh you're making a few a few too many bugs.

Um, let's I'm not blaming you. I'm just like, let's have a have a chat about this. What is it you know? Um, do you think we could actually like push some things out of your plate? And If they can preemptively see that as well. And look, managers in some of these orgs, they have their own stresses. They're not your therapist. And I I have a a draft blog post about this.

Your manager isn't your therapist, not even your mentor necessarily. They're your manager. So it there's maybe we put a little bit too much on them sometimes. And uh you know, there's a little cyclical loop there where like if you make your manager burnt out, they're gonna make you burnt out. It's not it's just a it's just happened.

You know? Uh if you if they can't accommodate you, you have to accommodate yourself and then you're everyone's just gonna Yeah, everyone's just gonna burn out. It's just gonna the room is just gonna smell of smoke and burnt toast. So if I'm hearing it it's like the the the tip for personal responsibility is basically

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Under understand your limits so that you don't put yourself in a an environment where you you do cause your own burnout. And then on on on sort of the company side of things it's like for managers, like just I guess, you know, first and foremost, just kind of care about and be aware of your people and and then sort of secondly

be prepared to to speak up. I've got uh maybe one one small story here but before we wrap things up around um, you know, I I very much saw a lot of these sorts of things in a directory board of mine from a few years ago where, you know, they were working a lot about

um, all that sort of stuff. And and I had that kind of question where I was like, Hey, like I'm I'm starting to get a bit worried. I think you're doing, you know, too much and a lot. And um and their response was actually, you know, for me this is

I I feel like I'm in a great environment. I'm I'm feeling productive. I I know I'm doing a lot and I'm working a lot but I'm I'm so like deeply interested and engaged in the work that I'm doing and you know, and at the point in time I didn't have, you know

a family or family commitments and things like that. They would just really they love their job, which is, you know, the most any manager or any company could ever hope for. Um And they said the moment you know that like you know, they they appreciated me checking in and and they said the moment that you know that I'll you know, if you're having an issue is is when I feel like almost to my point earlier at the my previous example, when I feel like I'm not um

when I'm not seeing progress or I feel like I'm being halted from progress or or something like that is is typically um their own reflection of when burnout may may creep in. So it was, you know, it's recognizing that actually sometimes there are people who just want to do like stupid insane crazy amounts of work and and you need to keep an eye on it. But, you know, it isn't always

it is in a way that kind of contributed to benefit for them until maybe th their ability to do that is actually inhibited as well. So it's yeah i again it I think it just comes back to like just have a conversation, just care, just ask and and kinda go from there, right? It's like you know, we don't have to systematise Everything too deeply beyond that. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. It's it's not a very easily quantifiable thing.

Um, I've seen leadership courses where, you know, like one of the biggest things I have, pet peeves of mine maybe, is as soon as they I put a fractional or whatever, as long as as soon as I put a C suite title. on my byline or in my job thing, I just started having all these people saying, like, oh, what do you like some leadership coach?

And I remember like reading one of them and it was something like, you know, lean in when the person's talking to you, have a conversation. And I thought, wow, am I spending five hundred bucks for this? Like, I think it comes down to being human and I will I will it's I will say like one of the reasons and like not everyone has the same experiences, like you've sort of pointed out earlier that the cultural differences and things like that.

Um, but at the end of the day, I really like to think the w uh that everyone can have a degree of empathy and be able to communicate one on one with someone without an ulterior motive, without a grand ambition of some kind. And if you're a manager. You're managing humans. And if you're managed by a manager, you're managed by a human. And I just like I don't know where that doesn't, you know, come across sometimes. Yeah, we forget that sometimes in the the stories of the

Set up culture, entrepreneurial journeys, whatever, right? The the hundred million ARR stories that are always dominating our feet now in the revenue, huh? I wonder how much of those profits.

Doesn't matter. Well mate, this has been um this has been good. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you for for sharing your experiences. It's um yeah, I'm I'm sure that it will help a a fair few people, you know, identify it or at least uh potentially resolve it for themselves or for for others within the organisation. So I appreciate you taking the time and thanks for joining me.

Yeah, I appreciate you um letting me come on. Uh I I love talking about this stuff'cause every time I talk about it I kinda have a reflection myself. It's like one of those weird little moments where like it's only when you talk to someone else about it you kinda like capture this little tiny thing and you're like, Oh, hey, and I just remembered that scenario that I I put myself through.

And maybe maybe I should reflect the next time I have a direct report. So I really enjoy that. And I also think that. And maybe this is also a post that I made on LinkedIn once. I make mini rants on LinkedIn. Um, where I thought there's just way too much talk about founder burn. Like for crying out loud. Like they've had their they've had their time, you know? Like there's no thirty under thirty product designer in a startup. There's no thirty under thirty

support engineer in a startup. You know what I mean? Like the I don't think people in a startup that aren't the founder get enough um attention. Because I'm working on a social media product right now. Like I Maddie who is handling a lot of our like in like dialogue and community thing.

Not everyone's a nice person. And uh like they they degree they deal with a lot. When you're s connected to a customer, you're dealing with their complaints, you're dealing with so much. And I just think that maybe um I love any kind of opportunity. to speak to the people who aren't founders in an early stage startup because they're just as important as the person who makes it on the list. If not long. I think that. I am biased. But yeah.

I love it. All right, mate. Well with that we will leave it there. Thank you again for joining me and uh part two, right? We're gonna do a part two and we're gonna start the podcast and fifty parts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Thanks, buddy.

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