What is your mindset? That's one of the questions that you'll ask yourself as you listen to today's episode, the second part of my interview with Carl Yates Perry. Carl joined us in the first part of this interview and talked about things like hard career transition decisions. Encourage you to go and listen to that first part if you haven't listened, and then jump into this second part. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in your careers. As we said on the last episode, we bring guests on like Carl because it's kind of a good injection of clarity, perspective, and purpose. You're likely to hear something in today's interview that sparks one of those three things for you. And when you do hear that thing, I encourage you to do one of two things. One, you might already. You might not have subscribed to the show, but if you haven't, then that's the first thing to do. Subscribe to the show. The second thing to consider is to share that moment, that spark, whatever thing that you heard in this episode directly with another person that you think could benefit from that same moment. Let's jump straight into the second part of my interview with Carl Yates Perry. So this idea of stressing and stretching that you've outlined here. I love this idea because as we get into the startup culture, especially in early days, and I've done this, I've been at two different startups now, and certainly you have a lot more experience with this than I do. So I'd love to hear more about when you feel like that transition happens or how to encourage that transition to happen when it needs to. But it feels like early on, there's a lot more. Of this, of this sense of stress, then there is a sense of growth or, or focus even. So I'd love for you to kind of share, you know, your experience in that transition and whether you think it's, it makes sense to push for it. Are there times when, you know, where that stress is actually significantly better for us or when they're one in the same, where we feel like we're actually being stressed, but actually we are more on the opposite side of that. Of that kind of continuum that you've set up here. Yeah. So I think I'd said before, I haven't had a ton of experience in startups. Actually, I came to square late and the two other companies I've worked at are Amazon and Microsoft. So they're, they're pretty late stage, I'd say beyond late stage, but I have worked on teams that are, that are, you know, as best I can, I can tell are more startup in particular when I was on S3, it was that way where we were going through a hyper growth phase. You know, lots of things were happening. More and more people were using us on a daily basis. And, and, you know, from talking to my friends and coworkers at square, many of whom have been here, you know, one of my coworkers who's one of the other GMs at square, I mean, he's been here for 11 years, I think he's, you know, been here from the beginning and, you know, we hear him talk about it when it comes to stressing and stretching. I mean, number one, you know, stress can sometimes be everybody agree on what the stress is. And for others, other times it's based on, you know, personal. Value system, what you're focused on. Oftentimes the best way to look at it, in my opinion, is like, make sure that the job, the company, the role you have gives you energy instead of takes energy from you as much as possible. There are going to be days where energy is just sapped from you. And that's just, that's just a fact of life. And sometimes, you know, you go through hard times, you go through easy times, go through challenging times. But if, as long as, as you go through that kind of the growth that you're going through in any company. And you have a way to connect back to the things of what made you passionate to join that company. And those are still true. You can really gather energy from that. And it changes situations that could be stressful into situations that are, they're stretch full, not stressful. And so, you know, I think there's a lot, which is grounding and making sure that the role you're doing and the company you're working at is something that you really believe in along any number of dimensions. Right. And that it gives you energy more often than it takes. So that when you hit those rough patches or those times where you're just scaling like crazy, you're needing to solve really hard problems that the resolutions aren't apparent. And it's really hard to go and figure those things out. You're able to gather that energy from other places and just the day-to-day work that you're doing. And, you know, as you find these hard problems, they don't completely wear you down to the point where it's really stress on a daily basis. That's been my experience personally. And I found it most in S3 when I was there. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. And that you identify the kind of energy as a heuristic for whether or not you, you know, are you in a period of stress or stretching. I've known a lot of people who truly love their jobs and they love them to the point of burnout. And it's not a negative experience that they're having. It seems that it's actually quite positive, but the positivity of it doesn't necessarily make up for... The toll that it's taking on them. And it's kind of an interesting thing because I think if you would ask them, hey, is this, you know, is this giving you life? Is it giving you energy? Do you feel good about this? That most of the time they would say yes. That actually they're very energized. That's why they, you know, work on the weekends for this, whatever venture it is. And they enjoy it. So I wonder, you know, and it seems like you had this experience at S3 where you actually for the most part enjoy the work. But at some point, the energy that it was taking, the balance problem that it created for you, burned you, maybe not burned you out, but you had this moment of turning, right? Where the moment that the personal story that you shared about your daughter and all of this kind of came to a point. But would you have said, you know, a month before that, that you felt that your energy was being taken from you rather than being given to you? Yeah. I mean, I think so. One of my coworkers at Square, he uses the term work-life integration. And I actually like that personally myself more because I think that balance is a really inaccurate word for how you want to manage time in your life. There are certain times in your life where you're going to want to put more into something like, like, for example, my son joined a basketball team this last year. He did it the year before and I was the coach and he did it again this year and I was the assistant coach. And so for me. Making sure I was available during that timeframe for him, I just had to set certain boundaries and I realized that that was important to me. So knowing what's important to me and making sure that I allocate the time for it enabled me to have better work-life integration. And I made certain trade-offs, right? I wasn't staying at work as late on Mondays and prepping for practice, right? I was leaving it too. And that was just a choice I made and I made it a priority. And that was the thing I didn't do before in my life was I didn't look at, at this point in time, what's a priority? Yeah. I just let, I let the work. I let the work and my, my lack of focus on kind of outside of work, pull me along. And I think that happens to a lot of people. You there's, there's no intentionality to the decisions you make because you're so wrapped up in trying to make this thing successful and really focusing on what's the next thing I need to do. And, you know, there are times where it makes a ton of sense and it's super exciting, you know, it's stressful or stretch full depending, but you need to make the choice. You need to take time every once in a while to decide, do I need to balance things a little bit differently than I had them before? Um, and that's what I didn't do, at least for myself. I didn't think about it on a regular basis. I just let it carry me along. And I think a lot of people do that. You kind of get wrapped up in this thing that's kind of all consuming on some level. And, and, you know, you don't take the time to pause and say, Hey, how am I feeling about this? Am I making the right choices? Am I feeling, am I getting energy? Am I missing anything outside of work? Is there more I want to do in work and, and being able to make that trade off yourself? Um, I think that's the most important thing you can do is take the time on a somewhat regular basis to checkpoint with yourself and say, am I, am I happy? Am I challenged? Am I growing? Am I getting the things I need out of work and out of personal life and, and, and other things. And, you know, I think that it's not the only thing you do, but I think that just at least, you know, having that checkpoint with yourself lets you at least pause. And if you do the honest evaluation, there are going to be times where you're like, you know, I'm really not doing the things that I think I need to be doing to feel, be happy with my job or my personal life or something else. Um, and I need to make some choices. And then, then the hard part. So that's, that's the easy part. If you actually do it somewhat regularly, but the hard part is actually following through on that, right? Okay. Well, how am I going to carve out that two hours a week or four hours a week? Or how am I going to rebalance my working schedule to, so I can go do this, you know, this, uh, social thing or this, this exercise thing or whatever. That's the hardest part. And I find it as difficult for most people to go do. And I think that's where, you know, you get back into, you leverage your network and your friends, uh, to help you hold yourself accountable. Um. To reinforce the importance of it and things like that. Yeah. I think, I think the idea of integration is a much better way of looking at it because I think, you know, when you think about balance, it creates this kind of necessarily, uh, um, kind of opposing position or, or antagonistic position where you have to counterbalance your work with something that is not work. And, and I think that that can be damaging. Um, I think that that can be damaging to our perspective of the work itself. And, uh, very often I think people end up creating this antagonistic viewpoint to work in general, rather than taking advantage of, you know, the possibility that, Hey, maybe you will actually love this. And it's about balancing the things that you love rather than balancing the good with the bad. Right. And I think that's, uh, you know, and it's not to say that, um, that we're going to love every minute of everything. Every job that we ever take, but rather, you know, I like to think about it. Like I have many people that I love, but if I spent all of my time with the person that I, you know, theoretically love the most, however you quantify that, then I would be kind of in an imbalance where I'm not really, uh, that priority priority lineup is, is incorrect. Right. I'm not really, not really doing the right things. And, uh, also it's, kind of in the same way when we stack up our priorities and we say, okay, well, I'm going to prioritize, prioritize my family, but to the point that I'm no longer employable. Well, that's not, you know, it's, it's complex, right? That's, that's kind of the point of that. And, and so when you, when you deal with that complexity, I think it's useful to have heuristics rather than trying to create a perfect algorithm for is my life balanced or not? Well, I'm going to measure it by, uh, did I spend three hours in? This area? Well, that's probably going to run you into a wall at some point. Yeah. You said something. It reminded me of something. I strongly believe I said it to somebody and they looked at me weird, but it's true. It's like, you know, somebody who's like, do you like this more or that more? It's like, it's like my children. I love, I love both my children equally, but there are times where I, where one of them needs more love from me than the other and they need more time for me than the other. Right. And that switches. And so you need to be attuned to that. You need to know that. And there, you know, when my daughter needs more love from me, time for me, I put my efforts in there. And, you know, sometimes there's tensions as to, well, I can't do it all. Then you make choices, but you do, you do this kind of weaving of different things in your time in your life so that you can focus on things that are most important at that point in time and then transition to the other focuses as they become more important. These things become less important. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it is a complex thing. We, I think we, we think about prioritization wrong, even, even in our jobs as developers, we think about prioritization wrong. Uh, very often. Because, you know, instead of thinking about it in terms of, uh, how do you meet your priorities as a, as a group or like interconnectedness, like you said, integration, uh, how can I integrate my priorities so that one feeds the other rather than one eating the other, you know? Um, and, and it kind of goes back to that duality between stretching and stressing. Can we stretch, uh, in this particular area as well? I think that's incredibly insightful. Yeah. Yep. So we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've, we've covered this, this incredibly dynamic career that you've had. And of course you said you haven't spent a lot of time in startups, but you've spent time on teams that were new. You've spent time in companies that were new for you. What were some of the, some of the lessons that you learned about, you know, especially moving from one job to another in those first, you know, in that first year, first couple of months, you must've felt like a beginner on multiple occasions. Kind of resetting to a totally different company, even though you, you have this long career. What was that experience like moving from one team that did something totally different from your next team? Yeah. It's always a really exciting time for me. I think, um, you know, there's a, there's a bit of like butterflies, you're nervous, but it's always really exciting. I mean, I think you do a couple of things and I think, and just as an, as an individual, you know, the first thing she'd like to talk to people, you ask, you know, you go ask what's happening. You go ask what their perception is of the work that the team that you're on is doing, the, what the struggles are, what the great things are that the team does. So you go around and I think the first three months is really just learning about that and getting a sense of what the perception and kind of gathering data of your team from everybody outside. Right. And that's super valuable. You learn the connections, you know, you ask who are the right people to talk to. And, you know, initially the first five people are probably the people you're going to interact with the most or have had the most interactions with that team in the past. And so you get a sense. You know, based on what they're saying, you know, what's going really well for the team, where does the team need help? You know, what, what, what, what can you bring to bear? I think one of the things you have to be really careful of, especially as you move between companies is, you know, I've heard a lot of people like they hear somebody say, you know, well, we've been doing this. And oftentimes I'll be like, if it was me, like, well, when I was in Amazon S3, this is what we did. I mean, it's like the worst way to talk to anybody about it. So you, you've really got to just like understand. Start to live the perspective of everybody else and then start to understand how you can have an impact. What are the things you can bring to bear? Where are the biggest problems that you need to go in and dig, dig on and help the team be more successful? And I think secondly, as a manager, one of the things you want to do is you really want to ask two questions of all your employees, you know, and have a deep open conversations like one, what, what do you want me to continue to do? What do you want the team to continue to do? What are specific things that you're really happy about? And then what are the, you know, one to two things that you want to stop, want us to stop doing? And then what are the one to two things you want us to start doing? Right. And just get everybody's perspective. And that really helps to, you know, over time, as you talk to a group of these people, you start to identify the threads of things that, you know, the team really values, really drives the team's success, helps them form a cohesive unit. You want to make sure you double down and get those things continued and have them go. And then you, you know, slowly you'll start to hear about the things that, you know, have been bothering people a little bit. And you want to see, you want to choose one of those things. You want to go make a change, a change for the better for the team. And it could be a really big thing, or it could be a really small thing. It actually doesn't matter. You want to, you want to know, you want the team to know you're hearing them and you've identified those problems and that you're actually going to go and make things better while not removing the things that are most valuable to them that they, that they really think are, you know, great. And obviously there's going to be some, you know, disagreements and things like that, but you can generally find these things. So I think as a manager, you want to go do those things. That's kind of like your first. I mean, three months, two months, whatever, right. You're still doing your job, but these are the things you need to do outside of your job. Um, and the thing that, you know, I think the most important thing I've learned while being at square actually is, um, you know, I'm a believer in platform, like high and building solutions for developers. Like you don't need to convince me of anything. I, I strongly believe that this is an incredibly important, hugely strategic thing for the company. Um, I've built, I've worked on platforms most of my career and I'm super passionate about it. Right. Like not everybody, not everybody's a believer, not everybody in the darkest of nights is just going to keep going. Right. And I think, you know, and it's, I, I logically know that emotionally it's hard for me sometimes to get behind, but the fact that what this job has taught me is like, I have to, I have to have something that I tell everybody about why this is strategic and why it's important, how it connects to the company's mission and purpose. And I need to say it 10 times to every single person. And I need to have. Differing levels of what that is. I need to have, you know, the elevator pitch. I need to have the, the, the, you know, one paragraph or one page, or, and then I need to have the deep dive. Right. And making sure your leadership team, you know, your peers or your directs all say basically the same thing. You know, we've gone through this recently as we've made some shifts on some things and it's been really important that everybody says exactly the same thing. And, you know, I never really thought about it, um, because I've always, you know, we've had a. A small group of people focused on this thing. Um, it was the core of the company, you know, core of whatever team we were on and the company and the platform was new to square. Um, and so it was just like entirely big, massive shift for the company. And they're like, why are we doing this thing? Like we built products. And so it's been really fascinating. And so anybody coming into a team, that's a leader, not a manager necessarily, but a leader in that organization. I think it's important that you find the, the, the words that you use to talk about why this is an important space and why we're impacting. The company's trajectory and most importantly, our customers lives. And, you know, having that story that you can tell everybody that, you know, they hear it the fifth time and the seventh time that they start to connect to it and they start to become the voices for it. I think that's really critical early on when you go to a team. As a leader, um, that can be an individual contributor that can be a manager. Um, when your role is to really help, uh, make that, make the custom, the company and the customers and that team more successful. Those are the three most important things I think having gone through my career that I would do in the first. You know, three months or so. Yeah. Wow. So that's, that's kind of covering the 30, 60, 90, almost. Uh, it sounds like you've probably, you've probably done something along these lines where you walk into a company. It's like, okay, I've got 90 days, basically 90 days to start right from, from, from my first day here. And a lot of this actually, you know, I've, I've recently been thinking a lot about hiring and hiring processes and how a hiring process makes such a massive. Uh, difference to that. That first 90 days for that developer and explaining like, what is the value of this position? Not just, Hey, we need to fill this position, but why did we strategically, you know, filling this position is a big effort, uh, for, for this company. And it's not as small, you know, we didn't just decide one day that, oh, I think we, you know, we want to open up a position for a new developer. No, it, it, there's a strategic reason that this position is opening up. And if you can explain. Explain that in the first interview and carry that through all the way through onboarding all the way through to your one-on-ones. Then the clarity that that, that engineer comes on with is far and above better than if they came on thinking, okay, we're going to figure out, you know, why you're joining this team, right? Like we're going to be flexible. Uh, you know, all of those things are, are nice words to hear. We, we like to hear those things as developers because it's like, well. You know, we can kind of shape my career around what I'm good at. And all of that is, is, uh, there's, there's nothing wrong necessarily with, with job shaping. In fact, there's some good research around that, but I think having that clarity walking into a job and everything that you're talking about here, using the same words, right. That's so critical. It's so critical to be able to have that consistent language for a new hire for candidates. And I think that's, that's, that's a really important thing. And I think that's, that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really important thing. How is this person going to fit, you know, in the bigger picture? Because confusion, confusion, especially on a team, like the team I'm on right now, a remote team. Confusion is, uh, an opportunity to fill in the blanks, right? And, and we have a negativity bias when we fill in the blanks. Typically we're choosing bad things to fill in the blanks with. Yeah. I mean, your point actually about, you know, if you repeat that message through the hiring process. And multiple people say it on their first day, the first couple of one-on-ones. The thing that, that struck me was you said that it was like, you're not, you may not get a believer, but you've got somebody who knows what their expectations are of what the focus is and what's most important for the team, for our customers to be successful. And the repeat repetition of that probably, uh, enables a level of buy-in that you won't get if you don't have that. Right. So they come in expecting this and then they see it repeat and they're like, this is it. This is one of the reasons I joined. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's totally the way it is. And that's awesome. I'm excited about that. And it helps. It probably helps people, I get even more invigorated and excited about that new role that they're in, in the organization. Yes, absolutely. And if, if so, for engineers who are searching for a job, one of the best questions you can ask is what is going to change on this team as a result of this hire? Like, what is the goal of, of changing? And, and if, if a hire has no change, then why is that hire happening? Right. If the change is, well, we're going to increase our capacity, then that's, that's a reasonable, you know, that's a very common reason to hire. Right. But knowing what that is so that you can come in with, with a kind of a heads up for why you're there, you know, and how, how you're going to be evaluated and, and don't just limit it to the job search. Ask that question. Can you continuously exactly what, what you're saying, Carl, I think is one of the most critical things that can happen. And maybe not every single one-on-one because it might get a little bit tiring, but the question about, you know, what should we keep doing? If a direct report asks me that kind of question, and it gives me an opportunity to ask them that kind of question, our feedback cycle, and not just what can we, you know, what should we keep on doing, but also what, what new thing should we adopt and what things should we stop? Those three questions are, are such a good, uh, basis for a feedback. I think a lot of, a lot of one-on-ones are just to catch up sessions. Right. I think that can be really problematic because it's this opportunity. It's an opportunity for feedback for, for bidirectional feedback. Yeah. Um, so I, you know, I really appreciate that you brought that point up. I'd love to know, you know, in, in the, in the one-on-ones that you've had, has, has there ever been a point where you felt like the feedback that you were either giving or receiving was kind of scales lifting off your audience? Yeah. At the very least, you may have taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the pl expectations in this area and you kind of get it, it clicks. It's still freeing. It's frustrating, but it's still freeing because you're like, I get it now. I know what I need to go do. And I think that it's hard sometimes to take feedback that comes in and really identify a couple of things. One, I've gotten this great new insight. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to continue to reinforce the behavior I have? Am I going to change a behavior? What do I need to change about the behavior that I have? Or am I going to take different actions? And I think that understanding where the feedback drives from and what its intent is in order to help you, positive or negative, like there's positive or constructive, is probably the most important thing. We all get feedback all the time, right? And I like to say it's all data. You get to choose what you do with that data to construct a story and a set of actions that you're going to take going forward. And in the cases that I'm thinking about, it was definitely like, hey, this is an area you're not doing a great job. And let me explain to you why I got it. I was like, okay, I understand it. Now I see what you're saying. Now I'm going to go take this action. One case it was hiring. Obviously, we talked a little bit about this. It's like, okay, I need to make my job scaling this team and focusing on hiring and leading the team instead of doing the work itself. I'm blocking the team and I'm the limiting factor. And once it was, I remember the conversation was like, the way they said, I was like, oh, now I get it. Now I get it. And then they gave me some more instances of where this was limiting the team. I was like, okay, I know what I'm going to do now. Yeah. Having feedback that changes or is like counterintuitive, right? This is one of the most valuable pieces and types of feedback that I've received is you think that this is happening when you do X, Y, or Z, but actually, maybe not the opposite, but some other downstream effect. Is occurring as a result of that. And if you just adjusted it this way or let somebody else take that responsibility, it totally eliminates that downstream effect that you don't want. That kind of feedback I've received on multiple occasions and it's totally changed the way that I work, at least in that narrow frame, at least. Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by X Team. X Team is the most energy-intensive, energizing community for remote developers. You can work from anywhere for the world's leading brands and get supported to do more of what you love. And I mean, quite literally more of what you love. X Team has this awesome thing called Unleash Plus. With Unleash Plus, you're going to get $2,500 per year. 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So, you know, I'm going to shift gears a little bit to kind of looking back over your career and then forward, taking some lessons that you've learned over the years. the course of this, you know, these many kind of shifts and transitions that you've had. I'd love to know if you could look back 10 years ago, is there something that you know now that you think about totally differently? Is there a concept or a belief that you had that you no longer have? The thing that struck me, let me think a little bit more while I say this, but the thing that struck me wasn't something I didn't, I guess I didn't have it, but it is like, you could do anything. I've always believed that. But I think like, so I come from a non traditional background, I have an English degree, as we discussed. And I've done lots of different things. I've kind of grown throughout my career, I've taken on lots of really amazing challenges and opportunities. And I've been very lucky. But I think that there are times where I haven't tried to do something because I don't have a computer science degree, or I didn't do this, or I don't have that pedigree. And I think that, you know, over the last four years, five, five years, my mentality has wholly changed. I've always been very much a growth mindset person that I can go do it. But, you know, I said that one of my co workers said there's opportunities everywhere. And I would say don't limit your choice of opportunities. Be wide open to take on new challenges. That's the thing that's amazing about, you know, the Bay Area, San Francisco, Silicon Valley is that just the myriad of opportunities that are here, the different ideas and different challenges, like, it's incredible to see how much creativity and kind of things are happening. And what I would tell somebody, you know, myself 20 years ago is like, look, this is your job. Now, do just think about what you want to do and go try it. You know, you're young in your career, there's there's very little impact you trying new things. And, you know, I don't know that I would have been more successful or, you know, you know, have a bigger house or, or be happier. But like, I think that there were definitely times in my life where I limited whether I should go try something or not. And, you know, I think that that probably held me back. And I think he'll help hold a lot of people back, even people that have the expertise in the domain. And my feedback to everybody is like, of course, you can, you know, it may require a massive amount of effort on your part, right? Can I be a gymnast at age? You know, I'm in my I'm 48 now. No, I can't be a well, I can't be an Olympic gymnast, obviously. So that's, that's past. But early on, maybe if I really wanted that, and I committed to it, I could have done it, right. And I think that's the mentality that everybody should have. And I think oftentimes, we hold ourselves back. Yeah, because we're scared. It's not because, you know, maybe we think we can't do it. But actually, it's just we're scared of trying and failing. And, you know, I've learned at least in my career, that trying and failing can be one of the best things. And as a, as a parent, you know, with my children, I definitely, talk to them about like, you know, what if, what if I don't do good? It's like, you'll learn a lot then, you know, and I think that if I just, if I just wrap my arms around that idea that I get to learn a lot by failing, and going and doing and trying, I probably would have had a very different path. And it would have been, you know, I've been really happy with my path. But like, I would have learned a lot more, probably, and I wouldn't have been excited by that. So yeah, this is great advice. I think, you know, this advice is echoing something that is a theme on the show, actually, which is around questions. Questioning your, your kind of presumed truths, right? And the assumptions about the path that you need to take, or that you have to take, you know, the path to a particular job, who is allowed to walk that path? Or what are the right kind of milestones along that way? And I think a lot of people, unfortunately, they limit themselves. I think it's an implicit fear. To your point about being scared, I think people tend to not want to stray from what they believe is the correct path, because it seems to be well trodden, it seems that this is the right way to do it. And you're telling me that I can go to a totally different industry? That sounds crazy, right? Or I can take a job that's two jumps, you know, on the on the ladder, on the career ladder, I can go straight to that. That seems I don't feel qualified for that. And the more common truth is that these pathways that we think are well trodden pathways are still in the course of humanity brand new, right? We don't really know what it means to jump tracks from being an individual contributor to being a manager. We kind of know, but we don't really know who's going to be great at that. We can't look at somebody's resume. You know, speaking from hiring experience, I can't look at somebody's resume and say, Yes, absolutely. This person is is qualified and could be successful with this, right? I know that there are people who have two years of experience that speak louder than five or even 10 years of experience sometimes, you know, depending on on what they've done. And so that resounds so heavily with me, because I have watched that be true with people that I've worked with in my own life. So I sincerely appreciate that, that insight. Yeah. So I'd love to know, you know, what do you believe that you perceive now, that might change in the next five or 10 years? Let me think what what I believe now that might change in the next five to 10 years. Um, that's interesting. The first the first thing I thought is the, at least as I get older, my physicality, my physical limits. And, you know, this is, this is it last 10 years, fitness has been a big part of my life. I had gotten extremely heavy, and I decided to make some changes. And as a result, got in very good shape. And, you know, I'm 48 years old, you know, I'm not in the best shape of my life. That was about four years ago, but I'm in pretty good shape, you know, and I think that my perception of where I'll be in 10 years is probably limited. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.! And so my guess is I'm probably going to be in far better shape than I anticipate. And not just like physical. That then builds into my life and personal. Probably the thing is that I think I'm going to live here for the next 10 years where I live right now. But that's probably not true. That's probably the thing I would point to in my personal life. No, it's a really good question. I don't know. I don't know. I actually don't know something right now that I think is absolutely going to be wrong. I probably have lots of assumptions based on where we are in terms of technology and in terms of solutions that help make our lives better. That I'm massively far off in what I think is going to happen. But I can't point to any one thing. Sorry, it's not really an interesting answer. I apologize. No, I think this is a commonly difficult question to answer. Because if we thought that we were going to change our belief, then what is holding us back from changing it now? And typically this answer reveals that there are uncertainties. There are certainties that all of us have. And I think that's, you know, it's really critical for me as a developer to know the things that I'm kind of grasping onto that I should probably hold more lightly. You know, you just said something that reminded me. So recently, so we have an event that we do at Square Oats for developers to come and see what we're doing. It's called Unboxed. But at that event, our CEO, Jack, interviewed, gosh, I'm spacing on his name. He's a developer. He's a developer. VC. He's found in many companies. He's a great guy. I forget his name. I apologize. And it was on Bitcoin. And I haven't really been a, like, I haven't followed Bitcoin much. I mean, a lot of people talk about it. But ever since then, I've gotten more interested in it. And I would say that if you'd asked me this question, but I knew what I was going to think in, like, three months, I would say that the money system as we know it is probably not going to be what I think it's going to be in 10 years. I think it's going to be dramatically different. It's going to be more different than anything I even understand or comprehend. And so that's probably the one thing I feel confident saying is I probably have it wrong. And I think it'll be really interesting as to what happens. I think Square actually has played a part in changing the way that we think about transactions. And Square's not paying me to talk about Square at all, just to be clear. Square is a sponsor of the show. But, you know, I think that... That the idea of being able to integrate payments as a developer, I can sit in my, you know, in my living room and I can build an entire application, launch it to the world and people around the world can pay me for, you know, software that I'm building. This is relative to, you know, business as we know it. This is brand new, right? This kind of accessibility. It's not saying... It's not saying that global business is brand new. Of course, we've had trade for, you know, as long back as we've had travel. But having instantaneous global business that's given basically to anybody who can read, right? Essentially, anybody who can read and can understand how to build software to some degree. And that bar is getting, you know, lower and lower. That's an incredible kind of move towards mobility for... For people who are building their, you know, the smallest thing, right? The smallest app that you can imagine. You can go and build a small app and make money, like, right out of the gate. It's amazing. It's amazing what has changed. And even 10 years ago, 10 years ago, that was not the case, right? As much... No, I mean, the internet has... I think we're just... We're in the beginning of its impact on the world. And, like, the fact that anybody in the world can go write an application and deploy it to... Millions, if not billions of people to potentially use is unprecedented. It's historically never happened before. And the fact that the distribution lanes are no longer controlled by monopolies and large companies, and instead that anybody can participate and drive through there is an amazing idea, right? So I realize... I remember his name is Balaji Srinivasan was the person that Jack was interviewing. And it was a fascinating interview on Bitcoin and kind of the future of money and commerce. But, yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that I've been doing is I've been doing a lot of research on Bitcoin. And one of the reasons I joined Square is I was really impressed with the company. You know, I remember, you know, when they started seeing it first in farmers markets, right? It was just absolutely freeing and incredible for the sellers and then for the buyers as well. And so when I, you know, when this opportunity came up, that was clearly a part of my rubric in evaluating whether this was a company I wanted to go to. And, you know, the answer is yes. You know, Square has innovated in a space and was really the first mover and did amazing things. They completely revolutionized this space. And so it's exciting to be part of that company and moving forward into the future. Yeah, incredible. So, Carl, I want to ask you a couple of questions that I like to ask all the guests that come on the show. The first one is kind of a cheat question. If you could talk about anything, what do you wish people would ask you more about? Maybe, so I'll give you two answers. I'm into CrossFit, so CrossFit. But I have this really interesting passion on like making things and in particular like woodworking. So I'd be excited for somebody to talk to me and ask me about woodworking. Very interesting. Most people have a very hard time answering this question and they tend to want to answer it in ways that are more, that are less tangible than that. But I really like the idea of just, hey, you know what? I like working with my hands. I have a couple of these things. I actually am recently I've purchased a 3D printer. I haven't really got into it enough yet because I just don't have the time. I expect to have. But I think woodworking and 3D printing have some similar kind of qualities of structure, structural thinking. And I'm really I'm very interested in woodworking, but I don't think I have the space to actually do it. Are you taking any classes? No, I did a bunch in high school, did a bunch of stuff with my grandfather when I was younger. When he passed away, I got all his tools. So when we were up in Seattle, at least. I had basically a full woodworking shop. I could do whatever I want to. It's it's not like really nice furniture or anything. It's just like I like working. Like you said, I like working with my hands and making things with my hands and kind of building things is something I've really enjoyed. So that's very cool. So the second question that I like to that I like to ask is if you only had 30 seconds of advice to provide to developers, regardless of their background or experience level, what would you tell them? So I'll say two pieces in three. I'll say one is to always, always, always have a growth mindset and take on new challenges and learn new things. It will be the most valuable thing you can do in your career, regardless of what you learn or what you do. That mentality will change things for you in a meaningful way. And the second thing is find sponsors and work with them and mentors. Those are two separate things. Mentors are people that give you feedback, help you understand where to improve, help you tackle hard problems and understand how you might want to respond to them. Sponsors are people that help you. They give you they reach out their hand and they pull you into opportunities that wouldn't other be either be open to you or available to you. And I think that in every career, having both sponsors and mentors is really valuable. Yeah, I love the distinction here. And I appreciate that that piece of advice as a manager. I think it's important to to keep those two things in mind as well, that sometimes we need to play those roles as managers. Yes. I mean, I think I think as leaders. Managers tend to fall into a pseudo mentorship role and can fall into a sponsorship role. But I think leaders need to take on that role proactively. Both of those, you know, participate in communities or organizations that can help you mentor. Find people that you're impressed by who are in different roles that you really think can make a big difference. Maybe not in your organization, but other places, other roles. Invest in them and help them get those because, you know, that can be transformative for people. And, you know, not only will it help them, but it helps the people around them. They move into that role and they help the company and the team and then the customers by by their effort be just more successful. Yeah, absolutely. Carl, thank you so much for taking the time now in two separate interviews with me. I really appreciate everything that you've that you've provided to the listeners in terms of thought and value and investment. Thank you so much for your time and for joining me. Thanks. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed talking about it. I love the questions and hope everything goes really great. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. My interview with Carl Yates Perry and a huge thank you to Carl for joining me on today's episode. Don't forget, today's episode was sponsored by X Team, the most energizing community for remote developers. Head over to x-team.com slash developer T to learn more. Today's episode and every other episode of Developer T can be found at spec.fm. And today's episode was produced by Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Thank you. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon.