Embedded - 386: Not Managing Robots

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Ingo Muschenetz spoke with us about software, management, podcasts, and interacting with people.  Ingo’s LinkedIn page Ingo works for Axway, they are hiring: Axway Careers Ingo keeps up with many podcasts, here are some of his favorites: Podcasts that talk about a complex topic, provide insight Throughline Planet Money Indicator  https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money Freakonomics Podcasts with interviews and discussions about lives and careers Conan OBrian https://www.earwolf.com/show/conan-obrien Andy Richter  https://www.earwolf.com/show/the-three-questions-with-andy-richter/ Fresh Air Podcasts that don’t fit into a category other than “interesting”: 99% invisible 20000 Hz RadioLab https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab Podcasts that Ingo didn’t mention but meant to: The Daily: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily Software Engineering Daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/ The Bugle: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/ Switched on Pop: https://switchedonpop.com/ Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/

Welcome to Embedded. I am Alicia White, alongside Christopher White. We've conned a very good friend into being on the show to talk about software, or food, or podcasts, or possibly something else. Our guest is Ingo Muschianetz. Hi, Ingo. How are you doing? Good. How about you guys? Smoky. I'm tired. Cranky. Well, hopefully I can fix that. Wait, you didn't want a real answer.

Could you tell us about yourself as though we met for the first time 30 years ago? Met for the first time. Do you want like the career sort of overview? Want like the what am I doing now kind of overview? Whatever you can fit into 60 seconds. All right. So I have a long history of working at startups. Went through a number of those.

Maybe we'll touch on those later. But really now I'm VP of architecture at a company called Axway. Most of you might not be familiar with Axway products directly, but you probably use their products as part of your everyday interactions. So my job is overseeing the architecture for all of our products, counting about 700 engineers across six engineering sites around the world. And the things we're known for are stuff like managed file transfer, API management, supply chain stuff, business-to-business interactions.

So that covers companies like Apple, TSMC, BMW and Mercedes, or at least half of the world's top 25 banks, healthcare, energy production, about 11,000 customers in all. And so this is pure software. There's no hardware aspect to it, right? No hardware aspect at all. I mean, the closest we get is to like a virtualized appliance that someone might plug into a rack, but that's it. Okay. That's a little odd for our show because we do have the embedded title, which indicates maybe some sort of hardware aspect.

But I wanted you to be on the show to talk about software because we have plenty of hardware engineers on the show. And so embedded software is often quite different than regular software. And hearing the perspective, I think will be useful. Great. We're going to do lightning round. You've already heard about this, so you ready? Yes, I'm all ready. Go for it. I'll start with an easy one. Favorite fictional robot. So my favorite fictional robot is not actually fictional. It's the Omnibot 2000, if you remember that one. That was the robot I dreamed of

when I was a kid. And I actually picked one up at a garage sale a little while ago. Well, actually more like a couple years ago, and it's sitting up in the attic, waiting for me to fix it up. But that was my dream robot. That was the one with the little tray, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And there was the Verbot, and there was a bunch of other things around it, but the Omnibot was the one that really captured my imagination. I so wanted to save up for that. It just wasn't in my means at the time. And now it's in the attic. That's kind of sad in a different way. Well, I'm worried because when plastic gets old, it kind of gets colored. So if I wanted to display it, I'd want to display it so it doesn't yellow across time.

So I'm just waiting for a moment when I can properly take care of it. Because I'm worried if I bring it out and I display it, then it'll age further. And then I'll just feel sad. So I want to be able to devote that appropriate time. There are de-yellowers that retrocomputing people use. I've done that. I actually thought I used, on some old Playmobil, I used a, what is it? It's like some kind of, something I got at a hair care store, actually, as part of the hair coloring process.

And I used that, set it out in the sun, and it worked. Some toxic potion. Yeah. But it did a difference. It was good. Okay. I have to warn you now, you're totally failing lightning round.

Oh, yeah. It's follow-ups. That's our fault. That's totally our fault. What is the best font? The best font. Hmm. I love many, many different fonts. You're going to get me stuck in typography for a moment.

This could be the whole show, really. lot. Myriad and Minion are sort of the two, and I can never remember which one is the Sans Serif and which was the Serif version. But that was always the most interesting thing to me when Adobe created those because it allowed you to have a whole variety of widths, and they were kind of like dynamic fonts. So it wasn't that they had straight widths, but you could craft widths in between depending on what you needed. It's just a really clear, easy-to-read font. It gets used a lot of the place. I think it was most commonly used in the Frankfurt Flughafen, but it's been used in a lot of other things since then.

I know. Listeners, have you ever had a professor that you knew that if you didn't want to have the lecture today, you could just ask them about something. That's, yes, always ask. We can do font talk. I'm totally down for it. Last week was time zone talk or the week before, so. I can talk about my typography class in college if you want, but probably not the purpose of this show.

Favorite kitchen tool. Oh, God. Favorite kitchen tool. I really love ricers. So for those people who are not familiar with a ricer, a ricer is kind of like a mechanical steel press, usually has little tiny holes in it. You put a potato in there, commonly is what you use, and you push it through and it gets the fluffiest sort of texture. Way, way better than using a potato masher. I'd recommend a ricer if you don't have one.

Either that or a mandolin. A mandolin is also highly useful, but get a ceramic one. Now I have more questions about that. Which Lego minifig best represents you? Hmm. I don't know which one best represents me. Well, okay. So as a kid, I really loved the space set that came out when I was a kid.

So if you were to say, like, Benny the astronaut from the Lego movie probably is a good analog, although mine didn't tend to get the crack in the helmet like his did. All mine did. They were all cracked. No, I don't think I might have a crack. You must have been taking more care with them. Probably. But I mean, as a counterpoint, my son's name is Emmett. And so I actually have an Emmett Lego minifigure sitting on my shelf as a connection to him.

Favorite restaurant not in the United States of America? I really do love, what's it called? Is it Lastu Falafel? It's this falafel place in the Marais district in Paris where they have falafel sandwiches. And there's always a line. You can't go on, what is it, Saturday or Sunday? One of those days they have off. It must be Saturday because I think they're Jewish.

And I just love their falafels. I just love street food in general. I think street food's awesome. I was really expecting there to be a Michelin star involved. I have a real, like, price to value sort of ethic. So the number of times I've been to a Michelin star restaurant and been knocked out of the park is low. But if I'm spending $10 and I get something that is amazingly delicious, it just feels, I don't know, I can have a lot more of the $10 experiences than I can going to the French laundry.

Do you have a tip you think everyone should know? It's going to be cooking related, and that's brining is really important. But I think people tend to think of brining really as a lot of times like brining a turkey, where they'll put the meat in salt water and then let it sit. But brining really encompasses other things like dry brining, where you salt a chicken or you salt some other piece of meat and you let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days and the salt really permeates and helps hold the water in while it's cooking. Or beans. I was reading a Serious Eats article and most people don't salt the beans

when they're soaking them or cooking them. And it actually helps keep the beans a lot more creamy and the shells tend to explode less when you do so. So I've started doing that and it's really made a difference in the quality of the legumes I'm cooking. Okay, software. Software this time. You have years of wisdom. Can you summarize them in a few sets of words of wisdom? I have years of experience. I don't know if that means I have years of wisdom. Well, let's see.

Is there some aspect you want me to focus on or start with? Is it software management? Is it software development? Where would you like me to focus on or start with? Like, is it software management? Is it software development? Where would you like me to begin? New college grads, what do they need to know about going into the world of software these days? So a lot of times when we get new college grads, or more more specifically often interns we've had come in, I think it's really important for them to try a bunch of different things because you may not be very familiar with all the various ways in which you can contribute to the software development process. And you might find out that you really like being on the strict R&D side, the engineering side.

You might enjoy the testing aspect. Now you might enjoy either DevOps or something related to SRE. So having the ability to try a number of those things out, I think, is really interesting and can help formulate the sort of career you want to take as you move through an organization. I think it's also really important to find good mentors. You're going to want to have someone who is going to help you understand how to become a better software developer, give you ways to challenge yourself,

give you good feedback on how you're doing, where you can improve. So if you can find someone who really can act as that guidance, I think that's really helpful. I totally agree about being exposed to different areas. I mean, I never would have found Embedded if HP hadn't been pretty good about wanting us to try everything. You started out in startups, a lot of startups, and I started out at HP. Do you think that the startup gives you more insight into lots of different options, or do you think having it be more structured gives you a named view of all those options? I don't know if it's important to try one first over the other, but I do think both of them are really valuable experiences. Because the corporate experience teaches you about structure. It teaches you a lot about communication and trying to work across an organization. Like, for example, at a startup, it's very easy, or at least it's much easier to say, today maybe 100 people to go ahead and say, this is where

the company is going and figure out exactly how you're going to contribute. In the case of a large organization, oftentimes there's a lot longer lead time. You may have to organize with multiple departments. You have to learn how to communicate with people who may have different goals, different biases, different agendas. So I think having those two experiences are both very, very helpful. I think also from my experience with startups, gaining new experiences sometimes is just, it just happens because you have to do like eight things because there aren't enough people.

Well, that's what happened with me with my first startup was like, Oh, look at these six aspects of software I've never done. It's somebody better do it. So I guess I'll learn. So I think it's startup. Sometimes it's a necessity or,

or just, it just happens that you see a lot more different things. Whereas with corporate, sometimes you probably have to go out of your way to seek it out. You're definitely going to get more exposure to more different things quicker at a startup. So if, if you want to, to, you know, jump in the deep end of the pool, that's, that's definitely the way to go. And, and I think that's great. It's not for everyone though. I think you have to be the kind of person

who is basically willing to say, what do you need me to do today? And I will do that, whether it's X, Y, or Z and all of them are very different. And some of them is just a menial task to get us to the next point. And some of it is a very high level strategic thing. And that kind of context switching can be very interesting. good one because there are people who do well by having to do well and there are people who do well by learning to do well and the differences are not good or bad they're just different

i definitely find for me i often need to do something firsthand to have better insight on how to improve it. So for example, let's say there's something we're doing at work, there's a new technology, or there's a process that needs improvement. I really get value out of trying to get in there, experience it myself, and then I think that provides me better feedback than just looking from the sidelines. And I'm comfortable doing that. I don't mind doing that as a way of furthering the ultimate goal of making something better. I have a question on that, and don't take this the wrong way, but a lot of people find it annoying when a manager steps in to do something hands-on. How do you get experience with those things without people feeling like you're tinkering

with what they're doing? Well, I try and do it in a respectful way, so I don't feel like I'm stepping on their toes. I think in a lot of cases, I view my role as a manager oftentimes as sort of the oil or grease that facilitates everything else going on. So quite oftentimes when I'm stepping in and working on something, I'm not working on the main thing. I'm facilitating someone else getting their work done, but that still gives me enough insight. Now, I do have another technique, which annoys some people, but they've come to appreciate it, which is I will ask the team to work on something. And for whatever reason, they're too busy.

They can't get it done. So I will do what I call a poor version, a crappy version. And they'll be like, oh, my God, I can't believe he did that. And they'll step in and then fix it for me. But at least I've gotten them to, you know, through their annoyance with my poor imitation, which honestly, I don't actually think is that poor an imitation, but at least it gets them enough that they can then comment on a current proposal as opposed to starting from scratch. That's a good thing nobody at your company is going to listen to this.

No, they, they, we talk about this all the time. I'm not saying anything, anything new. We we've, I've had people discuss with me, like how they,

how they are annoyed with this, but they also find it useful. I'm like, okay, fine. Well, it works, doesn't it?

So, I mean, it's a way of writing a spec sort of, you were a software engineer to start with, like 25 years ago. Sorry, we just celebrated our dating anniversary and it was a lot larger number than I expected. It was like four. No.

Anyway, so you started out as a software engineer and you have become a manager and then a vice president. And how have you learned to do the new jobs? Were there difficult pieces where you had to wrap your mind around having a different perspective or was it all pretty incremental? Well, I was sort of thrust into the management role pretty early on. Actually, my first startup, because my boss decided to steal some computers out of our computer lab and got fired. So, like, overnight, I was thrust into managing 14 people. But I was also the game designer on the particular game we were working on. But I had a million-dollar budget at that point. It was managing 14 people. Again, this was like, what is that? Late 1990s. And so I had to figure things out. And I did some stuff that was good. And I figured out stuff that was, or did some stuff

that was stupid. Like I slept under my desk for three days before E3, trying to get a demo done. And I learned, never again, don't do that. Never trade your health for work. But I think one of the things that I definitely had good role models, particularly early on, who gave me good feedback. And actually, that's sort of an interesting segue in that later on, you tend not to get as much feedback as you'd like when you go up the corporate ladder. People, people, I mean, like the last time I had serious reviews, it's, it's, you kind of have to go out of your way to get that feedback. And that's something that it becomes harder to get meaningful insight on where you can improve. But going back to, I did watch other people. I listened to a lot of, you know, read books or listen to podcasts or things like that. And I just try and be, I just try and see whether or not I'm communicating, whether or not what I'm doing works, and then iterate on that to see how I can make it better. So it was a lot of interactive learning about this worked, this didn't, this worked, that didn't, and then see where that

could take me. Do you read books about management? Do you have any things you would suggest? I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review. That has some interesting pieces in it. I listen to podcasts. But realistically, a lot of the things you're going to see about management, whether it's in a Harvard review or it's in a book or in a podcast or any of those things, it's often pretty much the same. I I was thinking, I was listening to a podcast with Michael Schur who did Parks and Rec and The Good Place and other thing at Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

And he was talking about the writer's room in Brooklyn Nine-Nine and how important it is to create psychological safety. You know, you're kind of shielding your writers from the notes coming from the studio and you're making sure that they feel happy as writers to be creative so that they can write good, interesting scripts for the show. And I think if you have that psychological safety, that sort of suffuses into the show itself. You

feel that the show is well-written as a result. And that's no different than software engineering or anything else. As a manager, you're trying to prevent interference from executives or people on top getting in the way, but you want to set enough context to make sure they understand where they're going, why they're working on things, and you want to make sure they feel like they can be productive. You need to listen to them when they have issues, when they have a problem, try and solve them, try and address their concerns. So the sort of things that we face as managers in software aren't that different from managers in almost any other field.

And sometimes it's sort of refreshing to listen to people in other fields talk about it because they say, okay, yeah, we have the same problems. And maybe they have a slightly different take on it, but it's always very interesting. And perhaps there's things you can use to learn that. Dive a little deeper into the shielding role because my worst experiences at companies, either as a developer or as a manager, have been when that shield breaks down and there's just no way to maintain it. And it's happened to me at several places where a new vice president comes in, he's got lots of ideas, and he calls lots of meetings and demands that all of engineering be added to them. And suddenly it's a very flat organization, de facto flat organization, even though it's got a hierarchy on the org chart. And I've had trouble

with that as a manager as well, where people just insist on talking directly to your reports and, you know, getting out from under you and stuff. So how do you, what's, I don't know if I've got a good question here, but how do you maintain that shield in the face of attacks, I guess. Well, I mean, there's the glib answer of, is that the great organization to work for? Well, right, right, right. I don't know. Assuming that's not an option. You know, I think in some cases, I don't, I personally would never have an issue with a, or at least I've breaks down across an organization, and I find a lot of value in trying to talk to as many people as possible. I think there was a – what was that? There was one story I listened to a while ago,

and it talked about the most effective CEOs. And the most effective CEOs tended to be people who actually spent a significant amount of the time talking to the workers directly, just to kind of get the pulse of what's going on. So in that case, I think it's okay to have those kinds of conversations, but it's also important to have a very direct line of communication with the people on your team to say, what are you guys talking about? Assuming they feel comfortable. I mean, if they're complaining about you, maybe they feel comfortable. I mean, if they're complaining about you, maybe they won't. But in general, say this is what's going on. This is why they want to talk to you. These are maybe some things to ask them about to communicate directly. I think there

are ways to facilitate that. But at some point, you may just have a bad manager, and that is a difficult situation to deal with. I don't think that was the issue. I mean, you may just have a bad manager, and that is a difficult situation to deal with. I don't think that was the issue. I mean, you sound like you're talking to other teams' engineers, listening to other teams' engineers, and good CEOs listen to the people who work for them. Yeah. This is more of a case where you're being told to or asked to, but by somebody who is far senior than you, to do something that your boss either forbid or doesn't know about or isn't in your priority list. And you're being pressured by somebody else and your boss can't protect you or doesn't protect you?

In those particular cases, well, I mean, ultimately, it depends on who the person is asking. But let's say the CEO is asking, you know, this is what we got to do. And you may have reservations. But in some cases, it's their prerogative. The best way I've dealt with those cases is I've tried to strategize with my boss and my team is how can we address their concerns most effectively? And I guess maybe another way of looking at it is sometimes what that person wants is different than what they're asking for.

Oh, yeah. Like, so it could well be that, you know, I've gotten cases where you have product management or something really dictating a technical solution. And you're saying, okay, well, we don't agree with that solution, but what are you trying to achieve? And I think that's one of the things that oftentimes comes the hardest part for me. And I'm assuming this applies to lots of people is what are we building and

why are we building? And the how really should be in the domain of R and D, but oftentimes people get into the, no, I want you to approach this tactical, this particular technical solution. And as much as possible, I'd like to, if I don't agree with that, I'd like to go back and say, well, what are your end goals? How are you trying to achieve it? Let me give you some options. Can I present a set of things that I consider acceptable that also achieve those end goals? See if there's a way you can work through that particular issue. I'd like to add that it's

never tattling to tell your direct manager. It is a matter of them needing to know you're being asked to do things beyond your scope. And yet, I have felt pressure to do something and not been told I can't tell my manager, but just that they shouldn't be involved. It should be a simple thing when I know darn well it isn't. I think if someone, well, I would hope that I have a good enough rapport with my directs that they would feel comfortable telling me, hey, so-and-so asked me to do something and not involve you. And then if I found that out, I would definitely go talk to that other person and say, this is inappropriate. I've had situations like that where people have tried to go around. And then I think that you have to nip in the bud.

Of the issues that you deal with commonly as a manager, is there one that is particularly difficult that also happens often? This could alternatively be phrased, if you had a magic wand, what one business slash work problem would you solve? I don't know that it is a problem I would solve. And it's actually part of the enjoyable part of being a manager. But I think the interesting thing about being a manager is that we're managing other people. We're not managing robots. So they have issues. They have concerns. They have career goals.

They have vacations. They have all these other things that they do. And you need to help them with whatever those things are. You need to facilitate their career growth. You need to mentor them where you think they could be stronger. You might need to talk with them about an area where they perhaps acted inappropriately or said something wrong or did something potentially career limiting that you thought was a bad idea. And I think that kind of engagement, although it can be exhausting at times, particularly when it's all happening at once, I think that's the thing that makes it

really interesting. And I don't think I would change that. I just think that's one of the things that managers or new managers might not get is exactly how much time they will spend trying to facilitate everyone engineer to technical lead. And then suddenly, instead of trying to control the robots or computers, now you are trying to deal with people who have feelings. Or worse. Oh, I'm sorry. What was worse than feelings? I had nothing to that. Okay'm sorry. What was worse than feelings? I had nothing to that. Okay. It is a big shift.

Why do we keep pulling our management from our technical staff instead of... I thought you were going to say, why do we keep using people? Yes, that is always my question. I mean, I don't think that it's wrong to pull management from technical staff if that's where they want to go. I do really like, and we have this at our work, where there's two tracks, right? You can become a principal engineer and you can go as far up the technical ladder as you like. And you will lead teams, but you will lead them technically. You're not going to be approving their vacation.

You're not going to be giving them performance reviews. You will sit in on other people's performance reviews to give your feedback about how they're doing. And I think that's really appropriate because that's something I always ask an engineer when they're sort of, you know, probably when they're reaching that principal phase, maybe even a little earlier, depending on how they feel. Do you want to manage people or do you want to really manage technology? And some people say, no, I do like actually being that people manager kind of person. And some people say, that's really not for me. I really just enjoy leading the technical aspect. And I think it's important to give people those two options and not say the only way you can progress in your career is by becoming a manager, because that just seems unfair. At HP, it was tough to get high into the technical track without at least doing a small stint as a management track, as a people manager. Do you think that's a good idea? Well, when you, a small stint as a management track, as a people manager. Do you think that's a good idea?

Well, a small stint as a people manager, like how much people management is that? Is that like leading a team of a couple people? Like a team of five for a year or two. I mean, full management title and responsibilities, but maybe not doing it for a long time. That you should get a taste of what management is before you can become a higher level individual contributor on the technical track. I don't think it's a bad idea.

I've not personally been at a place where that was part of the rules. Certainly, once you're a manager, you see other things and you become perhaps a little bit more sympathetic to the plight of a manager when they can't facilitate or act on something quite as quickly as you'd like. You're peeking behind a certain set of curtains that you may prefer to close again later if you don't want to see that again. So I don't think it's a bad thing, especially if it's only a small group of individuals. If you're effectively leading a technical team and you're responsible for them for a year, that would probably be fine. The challenge is what happens when someone has a medical issue or they have some kind of reason they have to go do something else, or they're just not performing well because they're not motivated in an area because their boyfriend left them, or I don't know what it is. You're going to have to make sure that you have a strong mentor in place that can guide them through those experiences. Because a new manager,

it's going to say, oh, so-and-so just quit. What in the heck am I going to do? Or so-and-so is facing this issue, and they need a pay raise, or they need whatever else. And they're just completely unequipped to handle that situation. So as long as someone can help them with that, I think that's meaningful. It's going to be tough though. Do you think the small teams tend to bleed those two roles together you were talking about of the technical management

and the people management? That seems to be what happens for the 10 and under sized teams to me. I would say, probably, I would say maybe even a little smaller than that. I think a team of 10, I think you could reasonably, I mean, if I had 10 one-on-ones a week,

that's a significant part of my week. And for a good manager, you should be probably having one-on-ones with your directs at least every two weeks, if not more often, depending on maybe my senior architect, I might have that weekly just to check in. And I'm part of, it takes a lot of time. So I don't know, I've seen issues, and this is like, one of the things I was thinking about as management advice. I think if you are trying to be a people manager for a team of like seven to 10 people

and the lead architect on that team, and you put yourself on critical path for completing projects, you're not going to do them all successfully. I've met this person and they don't do them successfully. It's me. It's why I burned out several times.

No, you usually delegate okay. You've mentioned good mentors and good role models. I guess this is probably a three-part question. How do you find them early in your career? How do you find them as you reach mid-career? And how do you find them when you reach senior level? Goodness. I mean, because they're different mentors.

And I mean, once I reached mid-career, I didn't know who to talk to. So I don't know that you get much of a choice early on in your career. The best you can probably do is try and reach across your organization, find people that seem interesting, and talk to them as much as you can. Do you invite people to lunch? I didn't learn that as a secret weapon until far too late in my career because people are weird and they need to eat and they like to talk and eat. It's just so weird. You certainly can do that. I just don't know that as a young engineer, I would feel comfortable doing that. I mean, I certainly know that people have talked or,

you know, there are ways in which some people can show that level of initiative, but I'm going to guess most young engineers are on the introverted side and probably not prone to going up to some senior manager and saying, hey, would you mind meeting me for lunch? I together, just random, whoever wants to show up, try and seek those things out. And then there's also some of these things would need to be facilitated by HR or whatever else. But there's also cases where you get these random pairings where you say, we're going to pair you with some other person in the organization for 30 minutes and just have a conversation about whatever. And I've seen those kinds of things really facilitate sharing across boundaries that normally would be difficult to cross.

So if you can find those kinds of opportunities or suggest them, maybe to your manager and say, hey, I'd like to meet other people. Is there a way we can facilitate maybe a lunch and learn or something like that? That might be a really meaningful approach. Mid-career, I don't even know how to answer the mid-career. I know how to answer the later career, which is typically I don't really find them in my organization. Typically, I find them by listening to other thought leaders who worked at other organizations, going to conferences like South by Southwest or architecture conferences O'Reilly puts on once a year. Those kinds of areas are places where I can get a lot of insight from other leaders at

high levels in the organization. Is that really a mentoring relationship at that point, or is that more role models you don't talk to? listening to what they have to say. But I do think some of those cases can turn into mentoring conversations if you feel confident enough to strike up a conversation with them. But it's not going to be the mentoring aspect that you're going to get by someone having one-on-ones with you weekly and then giving you feedback on how you're doing. That's the hardest thing I've tried to find in an organization, partially because the people above me are just even more busy than I am. And at best, I'll have a one-on-one with them weekly, and I can ask those kinds of questions. But I guess maybe the thing is, you can probably get it in your organization,

but the higher you go, the more you're going to have to actually ask for it as opposed to just be offered. Like as a young person, people are probably going to say, well, you know, this is where I think you could do better and really volunteer it. As you go up, you're really going to have to seek it out. With my mentors, I tend to, and mine are not within my company because my company is super small, but there are people who have come to me and said they wanted to be mentored. And so it's kind of a one-on-one about career goals. And they set their expectations, and I just try to make sure that they can meet them. Is that, I kind of feel like I'm a manager of their not job. Not their life, but their other piece.

Is that what you think of with mentors? Or do you think your manager can also be your mentor? Your manager can also be your mentor. I mean, can your manager be your mentor as well? I think so. I wouldn't say that's always the case, but there are definite, well, I definitely have learned many things, both how to do something and also in the negative, how not to do something by watching a manager, my manager, work through certain issues in the organization and see how successful or not successful that was.

So that has been very informative. Some bosses I've had have been able to be mentors, both in the very tactical things about this is how I would solve this particular organizational issue. This is what I would suggest you go do, and you kind of learn that as a tool. And then they also have life experience or how they progress through their career, which they can also give, ideally, they can put you into roles where they think you will be successful and have the chance to grow by having an understanding of what you'd like to do later in life or where you're trying to go, and they can help facilitate that. I see that. And I've had at least one or two managers that were also mentors even after I left their teams. But for many of my managers, expecting them to be mentors for my career wasn't a great idea because they had the loyalty to their company and their need to get things done. And so having me move

out of their organization as early as I could have wasn't in their best interest. Yeah, there's some inherent conflict there. It shouldn't be a large one. I mean, for a good manager, it really shouldn't be a large one. But for a manager who's overworked and can't deal with everything, it could be a pretty big one. And then I've had people who've decided to mentor me who I rather they hadn't. At startups, who were my managers when I was a manager, and they decided that I wasn't any good at it. But it turned out they weren't either. Give us details, Chris. No, it's fine. I definitely, I can see that, but I don't know that a philosophy of hoarding resources ultimately is going to be particularly successful.

So, I mean, if I really like working with someone, I think that person is brilliant. I'd much rather she be able to move to somewhere else in the organization and stay at the organization and then leave. So if I have the choice of one of two options, you know, I think this person's going to grow and I want to facilitate that. I just want to facilitate that as opposed to saying, no, no, I'm going to, you know, keep you in my organization and not help you become a better person. I mean, the most enjoyable things for me is when I have helped someone progress in their career and then ultimately like they're this, you know, the CTO or CEO of some other company later. And that just, that just feels awesome that I helped them maybe in some small part. I hope I was in some small part, get to that point by whatever career advice or guidance I gave them.

So that is really rewarding to me. If somebody wants to start a mentoring relationship with you and they're outside your organization, what is the best way for them to go about it? A mentoring relationship with me? Wow. Um, I would be honored. Uh, probably they can contact me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to chat with anyone. Is it a matter of reaching out and saying, hi, will you be my mentor?

Or do you want more than that? Will you adopt me, please? Yes, exactly. I have to admit, I've not really been in the situation where someone externally has asked for me to help mentor them. So it would be a new experience for me too. I was yesterday looking at a company like Plato HQ. I don't know if you guys have seen them,

where it seems like they set up some kind of more formal mentoring options that may be worth an investigation. I don't know. I think at this point it'd be pretty informal because I haven't really done it before. I've done it internally in my organization. I think at this point it'd be pretty informal because I haven't really done it before. I've done it internally in my organization. I've just not done it externally. For external, since I have, and I know that some people have emailed me that I haven't responded to about mentoring, it's very time consuming and I'm willing to do it, but it has to be at a time when I have time and when I think,

I don't need value to come back to me, but I don't want to waste my time. If you're going to ask me for advice, I expect you to take at least a third of it. As long as it's good advice. I mean, you can argue with me and stuff, but for folks who just want to complain at me every week, that's not going to work. It's better if you have a goal. I have a mentor in Ghana who wants... Mentee. Mentee. Mentee.

I hate that word, but sure. It's a terrible word. In Ghana, who wants to build a pedometer. Now, he could buy one, but that's not what he wants. He wants to learn. And it's been so much fun to introduce him to the various pieces and to talk about algorithms and how to me with an idea that I could help him through and at the same time talk to him about his job and options there and if he has questions that are technical. And it's been awesome. But it isn't an insignificant amount of time, and I don't regret it at all.

But when you come to me and I don't know you at all, it's hard to know if that time is going to be useful for both of us. No, I get that. Although maybe you could hire this person down the road. Maybe they'd be a good employee for you as well. I would, but I don't like employees. Hey. Oh, wait, no, not you.

I don't report to you just because you're 51% of the company. Okay, changing the subject, what motivates people? That's a very broad question. It's a broad question. I just figured, you know. I think most people want to, gosh, I'll take it as software context, because otherwise that's really broad. I do think most people want to feel like their work is being used and appreciated. So I would hate to be on a product that never saw the light of day.

That is always debilitating to me. So that's part of the reason why I like open source software is because if the company went tanked, at least this code would live on in some way, shape, or form. But I do think, you know, if what I am building brings some happiness to a person. Like I often, a lot of the work I did was, and still continue to do, is really around developer tooling. So there are things that are not used by the average consumer,

they're used by a developer. And I would like that when a person either goes to the website or clicks on the application or whatever else, that they're not dreading that double click. They are thinking, ah, this is a tool I enjoy using. This is a product I enjoy interacting with, and it helps me get my work done. That's the kind of satisfaction I'm going to seek.

And I think for a lot of people, even if it's consumer or whatever else, they just want people to enjoy using what they built, that it was a worthwhile expenditure of energy. I totally agree. Seeing my toys on Target's shelves was just mind-blowingly cool. And when LeapFrog canceled my line as it was going to manufacturing, I was heartbroken. I had spent so much time on it. But it can't be just that. Like, okay, right now, we are in pandemic land, and people are very burnt out. And it seems like there is about to be a giant shuffle of jobs, that people are going to just are just sick of their current jobs and are going to be going to new ones. How are you going to keep people, or how would you recommend other organizations keep their employees as we've gotten to this point of burnout?

Well, I think one thing you have to recognize is that some people it's going to be hard to keep because they're just tired of the problems they're working on and they want new problems. They're just interested in doing something else. And you can try and keep them and you can try and give them options, but that may be challenging. So there's some group there. And then there's another group, which is you just have to recognize

that we've been through a lot mentally. And we need time to recover. We need space to take a little breather. And you can't just say, now we're going to go back to exactly the way things were and nothing's changed and everyone's going to work twice as hard in order to make sure that we make up for any perceived lack of time. So the motivations for – it's not going to be universal. I mean, I think it's very individual. Some person may say, you know, I've got this time now, and I really like working from home, and I'd much rather move across country so that I can live next to my parents because I miss them.

I'd like to work remote. And then hopefully you can make that work. In some cases, someone say, you know, I really want to go work on hardware instead of software. No, we're a software company. I'm sorry, we can't facilitate that. So, but you try and do the best you can to keep them engaged. And other people say, well, I didn't like doing this particular thing, but I do like doing this. And then you try and facilitate their movement across the organization as something new.

It's a very individual conversation, depending on what it is. But I think the main thing is, kind of going back to what we had before, is everybody's human. Everyone has different needs, different goals, different issues. And you have to listen. You have to figure out where they are, where they want to go, and what you can do to facilitate that. And of companies are going to be going through this. And your point about people wanting new problems really hits home for me because to some extent in the past, changing jobs, it comes with a honeymoon period of having interesting new things to learn about. And it often feels very different. And I bet there are a lot of people out there, a lot of other people, including me, who are looking for new problems

because not only they're tired of the technical ones they have at work, they're just tired of all the problems right now. I'm looking for no problems. You'd be bored. I am bored. Well, yes. Separate discussion. I do think, I mean, to me, a lot of that issue in many cases comes down to morale. And morale in remote work environments is probably the hardest problem to solve, for me at least, trying to make sure that people continue to feel engaged.

And a lot of the things that I've seen work well around that tend to be cases where you don't make the touch points just about work. So for instance, if the only reason you talk to your coworkers is at a stand-up, and then maybe some kind of sprint planning or whatever else it is. We can talk about Agiles in a separate topic. But if that's all you have, and you're no longer in the office, then you don't have that personal connection to your coworkers that I think is a significant part of why people stay at a particular job. They often stay even when perhaps the problems aren't quite as interesting right at the moment because they really like who they work with. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I think recognizing that people are human, recognizing that, you know, don't make every conversation about work.

Try and have some fun. I've seen people do, you know, they do Jackbox. What's Jackbox? Online game thing. Oh. That's an online game thing. It was You Don't Know Jack. It's the next version of that.

Yes. Still not helping, but that's okay. But, you know, if, well, no. Okay. Well, you don't remember You Don't Know Jack? It was so popular in like the 90s. He'll show me a video later. It's still not happening, but that's okay. But, you know, if... Well, no. Okay, well, you don't remember New York, Jack? It was so popular in like the 90s. He'll show me a video later. It's fine.

It's fine. Anyway, but the point being that if you can find those connections or times to spend together that aren't just about coding or just about technical problems, I think that can help preserve some of those personal connections that make people feel like there's a reason to stay here just beyond what they're working on, that they really enjoy the community, the community people they're with. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I think that's a really big piece of it. At least for me, when I was thinking of quitting jobs, the hardest thing that made it the most difficult to do is, oh, I have to tell so-and-so that I'm leaving, or I'm

not going to work with this person, and less about, oh, I'm not going to get to work on this particular product or, you know, compensation or anything like that. It was always, oh, I don't want to say to this person that I'm out of here and I'm leaving. Well, we're also, we're not seeing each other and talking about non-code things. We're also not seeing other people in the organization. I haven't always been close to the marketing folks, but sometimes it's fun to walk by and just see what they have to say. Taking my dog to work and watching the VP of marketing spend his morning playing with her was bizarre, given how much I knew he was being paid. It was just, there were other things.

And we are missing those. Inside our team and out. But if you add things like Jackbox, Jack in the Box? What the Jack? Jackbox. If you add things like that or other playdates, magic shows, whatever, is that work? Because people have things they need to do at home and forced fun has never actually been fun. How do you balance that? Well, if it's forced fun, yeah, I would try not to call it forced fun.

You don't just put that as the title of your meeting? No. They might be trying to solve a mandatory fun, I think. It's really interesting. I think one of the challenges that I've seen is that certain people, I think it takes a while to become good at remote work. I think you can do it, but to actually become really still connected to an organization while you're a remote worker is not that easy. And it takes a little while. Like the teams that are fully remote, they'll have like channels that have water cooler talk in them. They'll have a music channel,

which is what we're listening to. And like someone basically acts as DJ and then everyone listens to what they're doing. And that's a point of conversation, but it's, it's very sort of in the background and that tends to still make them feel very cohesive. Whereas if that's not what you did previously, you know, you were just used to chatting with people directly in the office, that're now going to do games every single week in order to facilitate team building. But I do think there's some lighter touch ways that can get people into sharing a bit more of themselves beyond just the technical conversation or even just provoke technical conversations like, hey, I read this article about this new technology. What do you think about it? And just start to thing. Um, and that's, you know, that requires a lot

of self motivation, but then the other kind was what you're talking about where I'm part of the company. And, uh, even though I'm fully remote, I'm talking to people constantly on Slack or whatever, um, maybe about work and maybe not about work. And that, that's where I've, you know, you can maintain those connections if you can maintain communication that way, but it does require you to realize that those things are there and that you can go talk to somebody on your team randomly about whatever over IM and, you know, if they have time, they don't mind. And that that's a part of your job.

Yeah, yeah. And that it should be, I guess we started this with the psychologically safe. Yeah, yeah. I know there have been some Discord and Slack company channels that have gotten very political and they wedged the company because it isn't safe for anybody. And that would be a hard thing to deal with. I haven't had to deal with that, and I'm glad. But I could see how that would turn what should be a safe space into a not safe space. Changing subjects, you mentioned open source.

How much of your career has been working on open source? So a fairly significant percentage of it. I would say, so it's about 15 years ago now. I started a company called Xamlon, which became Aptana. There was a context switch in which Microsoft didn't like the product we were working on at Xamlon, which became Aptana. There was a context switch in which Microsoft didn't like the product we were working on at Xamlon, and so asked us to cease and desist, and we had to change our entire business model. And so we created an open-source web IDE, effectively, think, a competitor to Dreamweaver at the time. And that was really my first experience with open source. And then strangely enough, that company was bought by Accelerator, which had an open source

SDK for mobile development. And then that company was bought by Axway. How many companies deep are you now? I'm three companies deep. How long has it been since you had to interview? I haven't had an interview in like 15 years. How do you make money doing open source software? The perennial question.

Well, as a startup, you start with a lot of VC money and then you give it all away. I don't know. In a lot of cases, well, in particular, I think one of the areas that was challenging for us is if you're doing open source, I think open source can give you a revenue stream, assuming that you have some kind of support model or premium model. And there are companies that have been very successful, again, something like Red Hat, Elastic, MongoDB. You can quibble with the kinds of ways in which they've approached open source and how much open source that really is, but they have proved to be profitable.

I think the area we face, again, something like a web IDE, was it's pretty hard to make money doing developer tools like installed on your laptop kind of thing. So, for example, Microsoft bought Xamarin. Or I can't think of many other IDEs that exist in a case where you pay for them apart from JetBrains. So, you know, if you're kind of... Let's see, there's MPLab, but that's only if you want the optimization. There's IAR. In the embedded world, there's a few still out there for some reason. Yeah, I'm thinking from the software world.

JetBrains is really the only one that really works, but there may be some in the embedded space that work. But it's tough. And I don't think you're, you know, if you're thinking about a VC-funded company, they don't want you to be small. It's not like a lifestyle business, right, where you can sell enough to kind of keep the company going. You need to go big or go home. And so that's really challenging. I'm not sure. I mean, you've talked about the freemium where you have some free and you have some premium.

But you're talking about big companies doing open source. Is it managing the community to that offer both an open source and a paid-for model. Oftentimes, what you're really interested in is having someone support that particular version. So, for example, we use commercial versions of Red Hat software because they have taken the open source bleeding edge where we have community contributions. And then they vet them, they review them, they pull in what they want, they run them through additional security scans, and then they provide support. And oftentimes for longer than the open source version exists. I think Docker has done this, whereby if you use the open source version of the engine, you get like a quarter's worth of support for that particular version,

as opposed to the commercial version gets a year or something beyond that. And most companies just aren't interested in doing that kind of bleeding edge adoption of the latest code. When Red Hat switched from CentOS to CentOS Stream, which is effectively the bleeding edge of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that's just too much risk for some companies to take or too much churn. And so they'll happily pay for the security they get knowing that if something goes wrong, they can call somebody. And that works for a big company. It's harder to do that when you're not part of an infrastructure product, but you're just a tool

being used as part of the development chain. Okay. Different topic again. You listen to a few story. Because one of the things I think of as an architect is I'm really trying to take a vision of a what and a why and convert that into the how. So explaining a technical concept in a non-technical fashion is always an exercise I enjoy other people doing. So, you know, I was thinking about a word I really like, which is throughline, and I actually like the Throughline podcast as well, because they explain the context behind something in order to get to where you are today. I like podcasts like Planet Money and The Indicator. What else do I like? Sometimes I listen to Freakonomics, and there's a variety of other sort of incidental podcasts where I like that idea of them trying to talk about a complex topic and provide some insight. Or there's other ones, in that case, it's more about the particular person that's being

interviewed more than the actual podcast itself, where I find that person is really thoughtful about how they got where they are and the particular area of expertise. And I find those ones really interesting. And those can be anything from Conan O'Brien or Andy Richter to Fresh Air, things like that, where that person has had an interesting career. And I'm always curious about how that person got into that particular position where they are today. How many hours of podcasts do you listen to a day? Not that many. But I actually... helpful to listen to when I'm doing something else. I find that it's really useful for me to step away from the problem

sitting at the computer and go do something else. And so maybe I'll go cook, or maybe I'll go garden, or maybe I'll go take a walk. And listening to a podcast at that time sort of takes my mind out of the focus on what I'm looking at right now and broadens it. And I find that to be very helpful. And so if I can steal a couple moments away to do that, I think that tends to be when I perhaps have a different approach to a problem I'm trying to solve at this particular point in time. And that happens to be very valuable. I find if I sit directly at a computer and try and read something, I often get interrupted by an email or an IM or something else. So actually stepping away to listen to something helps me context switch less and

allows me to focus a little bit more. I find that really useful. Are there things that make podcasts bad? That make you turn off podcasts or make you just not want to listen to them? I mean, the ones you listen to are all very high quality sound. So I'm going to assume that if they have poor audio quality, you're probably ditching them. Yeah, and I forgot 99% Invisible and Radiolab. I listen to those.

Oh, and also 20,000 hertz. I listen to those three a lot too, which are even at the higher end of the audio spectrum, right? I don't know. I'm pretty selective about what I pick. So I'm not into, I don't know, just listen to the first five minutes and then turn it off. It doesn't seem the conversation is going to be particularly useful to me. But I don't know if I can identify specific qualities that make a podcast good or bad, apart from, you know, does it at least seem like it's an engaging conversation? Do you like our podcast?

You can't ask that question on the guest of the podcast. The whole show is going to be just about. Of course I do. Okay. Can you give us a performance review, please? Jesus. You don't have to. Let's talk about Agile.

Let's talk. No, I do actually like your podcast. I've listened to a bunch. Go ahead. Agile. I was talk. No, I do actually like your podcast. I've listened to a bunch. Go ahead. Agile. I was mostly kidding. Yeah. You went to Harvey Mudd like we did the Harvey Mudd College.

Why did you go? I was really pressured by my mom. So, no, I'm dead serious. So I was looking at various colleges and universities, and I looked at Stanford and UCLA and Berkeley and I think Rice and Cal Poly San Luis Obisciplinary in that there's a strong emphasis on things apart from just science. And at that point, when I was about to graduate, I had seriously considered going into graphic design. And I minored in studio art. So I had a – well, actually, no. I minored in studio art at Harvey Mudd, which kind of facilitated the graphic design. But before that, she just thought it would be a good place for me, and it was small.

If you look at something like Berkeley, I was going to be in a class of thousands of people, and Harvey Mudd is a couple hundred. So she really pushed me forward to that. But I thought it was a great choice but she's the one that instigated it why did you go to Harvey Mudd? I can't remember I think my guidance counselor was super hot on it

and I know we got the stupid stuff in the mail I don't remember I mean I went and visited and stuff so it just seemed cool once I started researching it and I don't remember. I mean, I went and visited and stuff, so it just seemed cool once I started researching it. And I didn't, like Hingo said, I wasn't super excited about, my high school was smaller. Mudd was very, very small. I think our actual incoming class was like 120 or something.

That was 160, but something. It was somewhere around there. My high school class was like 20. So I wasn't super thrilled with the idea of going from a class of 20 people to a class of 20,000 at some of the other places I was looking at. And I wanted to stay in California. So, yeah, anyway. Cool. My high school was also about the same size as Harvey Mudd. So about 600, 700 people total at my high school.

My class in high school was more than 600 people. Yeah, so you downsized. I went the other way. And I went because of the irreverence that I don't know that they still pride themselves on.

But they would send out this, you know, you're getting all these packets that go to apply to Stanford and all of these other awesome sounding places. And this one just marked itself as junk mail. And every bit of it was just kind of anti-authoritarian. And I was in, I didn't even, I didn't even go to the campus. Which is funny because it was closer to you than my house. No, I didn't have wheels.

You could have bicycled to it. I know, I couldn't. Okay, well, Ingo, I've heard that your company, whose name is Axway, is hiring. Is there anything you want to say about that? Well, I said a little bit about what we work on. I think the kinds of problems that we do are pretty interesting. Definitely the sort of places we get used are mission critical. So if the idea of working on really, really large scale problems at mission critical functionality is interesting to you, you know, please check us out at Axway.com. And there's a variety of careers listed there. And then feel free to contact me on LinkedIn if you're interested. And I'd be happy to chat with you more about those kinds of things.

And do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? A couple quick thoughts. I think that there's just some ideas that have stuck with me that I find useful to refer to now and then again. So one of them is a lot of people think they're really great at multitasking, and some people may actually be really great at multitasking. But there are times when you should stop trying to multitask and really be present in the moment. Like when you're in a meeting,

and it's really important that you're listening, or especially when you're listening to another person, you know, be present in the moment. Don't think about the next thing that you've got on your plate. Try and really focus on. One of the things that stuck with me is someone talked about presidents, and I think they mentioned President Clinton in this particular point. But one thing that stuck with them is when they were in the room talking to President Clinton, it was as if they were the only person in the room, and how meaningful that was

that he was really listening to them and really understanding what they were trying to say. And I like that idea. I like the idea that I am able to make a person feel like they are really important and that I want to hear what they have to say. And sort of related to that, I think a lot of times people aren't really just listening. They're just waiting for a moment to talk. Like they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever you're going to say, I'm just going to interject with my new thing. No, no, you actually listen to what they have to say. You can respond thoughtfully, but your goal is not to interject with your own opinion afterwards. And then one last thing I saw, which I liked as well, is the first half of life is accumulation.

The second half of life is editing. So I heard that from a guy who founded the Joie de Vivre hotel chain, and then he became a mentor to the CEO at Airbnb. And he mentioned that at South by Southwest, talking about being sort of a technical elder and trying to communicate his wisdom throughout the Airbnb organization. And I thought that was a really interesting thing to talk about, both, you know, from a pure stuff perspective, as well as, you know, as many other ways as you can apply that set of knowledge. Well, I like the last part of the message. The first part I wasn't listening to because I was checking on quotes in your outro.

Our guest has been Ingo Muschanatz, VP of Architecture at Axway. A list of his preferred podcasts will be in the show notes as well as a link to Axway's hiring page. Thanks, Ngo. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting, and thank you for listening. Hey, Rene, I hope you feel better and that we can talk again soon.

And you can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with from J.R.R. Tolkien. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.