In this conversation Ben speaks to James Carey, VP of Engineering at Paradine. The conversation centres on the question of instinct, and how we can make rational working decisions while acknowledging the “nag” in our brain that tells us what our gut believes is the right course of action. James discusses the importance of values alignment, and the negative consequences of companies and managers not adhering to their own professed values. He offers insight into the causes of, and his learnings from, his own experience of burnout, as well as the reasons why seemingly fantastic opportunities don’t often appear at the ideal time for us to take them. He offers insight for anyone currently interviewing with a company that’s looking to cut through the facade and find out how much autonomy is really afforded by their managerial culture.
In this conversation Ben speaks to Tom Szirtes, co-founder and CTO at BODYSWAPS. Tom’s career has been heavily influenced by his passion for both music and for video games. He describes how these shaped his early professional years, and the convoluted journey that led Tom into the world of virtual reality. He discusses the choice between specialisation and generalism that engineers face when they reach managerial seniority, and how personality type impacts the decision. Tom reflects on the way that happiness can be found in mitigating our innate urge towards control freakery, and how being yourself, authentically, around people who share our interests and values is the most effective way to grow our network.
In this conversation, Ben speaks to Ahmed Ahres, Founding Engineer at Heron Data. Ahmed knew from early on that he wanted to one day found his own company, and his career choices - from joining Revolut, finishing his education early, and joining Heron Data early in the company’s own journey, have been steered by a clear focus on this ultimate goal. Ahmed discusses how to make decisions with clarity as opposed to certainty, and how one of the most important realisations in his own career path has been to focus on people who inspire him, rather than focus narrowly on technical or professional fields when choosing where to work.
In this conversation, Ben speaks to Jonathan Cutrell. Jonathan is the former Director of Technology at PBS and now works at Guild Education as an Engineering manager. Jonathan also hosts his own podcast, Developer Tea, which has over 13 million downloads. Their conversation discusses why focusing on shorter timeframes and the day-to-day has a bigger impact on our lives than the long term. They cover the use of ‘why’ in defining how we compare ourselves to others, how we grow and how we find meaning in work.
In this conversation, Ben speaks to Sean Gabriel, the Director of Delivery at Red Badger. Sean previously worked at Microsoft for 8 years as a Program Manager, before beginning his journey at Red Badger as a Senior Delivery Lead. Sean shares his insights on systems and system thinking - how one node in a network can vastly change its effectiveness, regardless of whether it’s a network of things or people. They also talk through how feedback loops affect the work we do and how we improve, while grounding these ways of thinking in our approach to assessing our current working conditions.
In this conversation Ben speaks to Youssef Ahres, the former Director of Data Science at Instagram. Youssef has since left Instagram to form his own start-up which is currently in stealth. Youssef found himself at Instagram almost by accident after leaving Stanford University. He and Ben talk through his journey upwards from Data Scientist to Director and the signifiers that led him to move on. They discuss compounding effects, and how continual small positive changes results in a vast amount of change over time. They also speak about how to identify our internal motivators, and what drives us to do our best work, whether it’s how we grow up, or what we can learn from people that interact with our work.
In this conversation Ben speaks to Ines Elloumi, Senior Product Manager at Amazon who has also worked for Yelp, Veamly and IBM. Ines’s career trajectory began with her exploring various different fields, including Machine Learning and, later, Design, and they discuss the positives and potential pitfalls of taking an exploratory approach like this towards our fields of work. Ines also speaks with candour about the imposter syndrome she has felt at times during her career, and draws on her experience to discuss ways of addressing the feeling. These methods, fundamentally, revolve around acceptance - of our limitations, alongside our strengths - and they discuss the liberating feeling that comes from being able to overcome our own natural inclinations towards perfectionism.
In this conversation Ben speaks to George Bevis, founder and former CEO of Tide and now founder/CEO of CanDo, a start-up incubator focusing on socially beneficial business ideas. George and Ben discuss the role that luck and “the conveyor belt of opportunity” have on the decisions that business founders take, as well as the concept of identity at work - both in terms of the influences on ourselves that shape the work we do, and the extent to which our work selves are separate and distinct from our true identities. They discuss how stress can lead to growth, as well as the concept of optimising for legacy which has led George to founding CanDo. George enlightens Ben on the different phases of our “Best Work” we pass through, as well as how courage and ego do and don’t benefit our working selves.
In this conversation Ben speaks to Brad Jayakody, Director of Engineering at Motorway. After a 25-year engineering career that began with him training as a psychotherapist, Brad’s range of insight into engineering and managerial work, and the psychological aspects of these, is unique. They discuss the itches that different types of work scratch, and how these itches change as our careers progress. They discuss being our full selves at work, and the kind of choices and decisions Brad has made throughout his career - and how he views these in retrospect. As well as that, they discuss how learning from other people, as well as from introspective conversations with ourselves, shapes who we are at work and as people. And finally, Brad tells Ben why he can’t wait to delete his LinkedIn profile when he retires.
In this conversation Ben speaks to David Kadavy, host of the “Love Your Work” podcast and best-selling author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. A deep and often lateral thinker about work, David is profoundly self-aware of how the cultural programming he experienced growing up conditioned his attitudes towards work. In their conversation, he shares with Ben the steps he took and the challenges he faced in overcoming these mental barriers, as well as the systems-based approach he now uses to identify productive avenues of new, creative work. They discuss the importance of randomness, of overcoming our fear of failure, and of identifying and embracing our innate curiosity in assessing our work. David also shares his own experience of how meditation can, and has for him, been an almost oxymoronically productive use of his time.