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June 24, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:42
1096 Interviewing for Management Positions - A Video Conference

http://www.blip.tv/file/1019732

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Time Text
Well, thanks everyone.
I guess this is for Nate in particular who has a job interview tomorrow.
He's actually going for a job at Chippendales and he wants to audition for us his moves.
So Nate, if you'd like to just do that thing where you make that tattoo on your belly button look like me.
Not seeing anything yet.
Okay, no, don't. Don't!
Whatever you do. There's only so much that the internet can take, and if FDR is known for anything, it's known for quality.
So, Nate, you have a job interview tomorrow, which is for one of your – it's your first job interview for a potential management position.
Is that right? That's right.
And you had a couple of questions about, I guess, concerns or pluses or minuses.
You're sort of ambivalent about management, is that right?
Right. It's more like a senior tech role, senior network admin, where there's some management role involved, team lead type of role.
It's a step up from anything I'm ever used to, and it does involve some management of the other techies.
So, yeah, it's very different.
Well, first of all, if you're going to go for management, you do not want to refer to them as other techies.
Toenail gunk, minions, slaves, coffee fetchers, back rubbers, and people who can curl your paper clips back into their original shape after you've used them to clean your ears.
Those are all acceptable terms within modern management, particularly in the IT world, or just, hey, geek, that's another way of doing it.
And you want to stop bringing these terms in when you do the interview process so that people can get a sense of where you fit on the hierarchy, somewhere between middle management and insane, and I think that would be the way that I would approach it.
Right, which is why I now run a show from my room.
So you had some issues around would it be more stressful or would it be too stressful or would it be something that would cause you to lose your tech hands-on kind of stuff?
Are those the issues that you had?
Yeah, well, it may be all of that and then some management.
So Right, right, right. Yeah, and certainly project management is kind of that limbo in many ways.
Like team lead is like, we're not going to pay you more, but we want lots of extra skills and time commitments from you.
And the same thing is a little less true that would somewhat occur with project management as well.
So you had some, like what are the pluses and minuses for you for going for the management position?
I thought maybe we could clear it so that you could figure out if it's something you want or not.
Well, the minuses would be my level of confidence in managing a project is very low.
Managing other people is even lower, mainly because my experience in leading any group of people has been either like herding cats or Or kindergartners or, you know, trying to organize a flock of seagulls.
Well, in addition to, I had a chance to get into a quote-unquote leadership role in military school where they made me the squadron leader or whatever for like a week and That was probably the most humiliating experience of my life because nobody really wanted me there.
You mean wanted you in the military school at all or in the military position of leadership?
Well, if they wanted me there at all, it was to ridicule me.
Sorry, were the kids that you were supposed to be in charge of or others?
Yes. them and everybody else.
Often people make this mistake, particularly in a military situation.
When they get promoted, they don't introduce themselves as tip-top tally-ho chappy, which often is what you need with enough eye contact to really get that kind of respect from people.
That can absolutely get you soundly beaten on a regular basis.
I just wanted to mention it.
Nice day, fellows!
Who's up for a spot of cricket?
Anyway, don't worry, we'll have to get to helping you in a moment.
I'm sorry? You can call me Pip?
Right. So you have some ambivalence about management.
Now, let me give you just a couple of things about management that you may or may not know about, and I say this having had some experience in management.
It's not less stressful in management.
Frankly, stress has a lot to do with the factors that you can control and the factors that you can't control.
And if you are not in management, then clearly you have factors that you cannot control.
And so, you know, that crap rolling downhill, so to speak, ends up down on the programmers.
They get the rug pulled out from under them.
You know all of this stuff because you're on the receiving end of it, right?
Yes. So when you move up, you do gain additional stressors for sure, but you also do get stressors detached from you.
And the fact that you're expected to see further than today's or this week's tasks allows you to have some more forward planning and so on.
And it allows you to have more control over your environment if you're in management.
Now, there are other stressors that are involved in that for sure, which is that you are going to end up with situations where You're going to have to do sort of more negotiation, more social skills kind of stuff.
You're going to have employees who are going to, you know, it's like we get this process.
We're all afraid and resentful of bosses and then when we become a boss, we realize what it's like on the other side and we're like, you know, I was that way for this long and it turns out it's a tougher job and so on.
But you definitely will lose stresses as well as gain stresses when it comes to moving into management.
So I think that's important.
It's not like your job plus social and negotiation pressures and all these other kinds of management people kind of pressures.
Somebody was going to say something?
No, I'll ask later.
I was just going to say that depends on where you work.
No, it doesn't. To some degree, it doesn't depend on where you work because the worse the environment is, the more crap is going to roll downhill.
As you move up into management, you just do gain control over some – it's not a net gain in stress.
You do gain control. Now, there are some managers who try and hang on to their existing – like parachutists go and try to go back up to the plane.
They sort of do try and hang on to their existing responsibilities.
They won't let go of the coding but they take on the management and for sure, Those managers will end up with a greater degree of stress, but that's something, of course, that you negotiate up front, right?
Well, one of the things that I saw where I used to work, especially with titles like senior technical rather than actual management label, was that you were expected to carry a portion of basically the same work that you were doing as a technician as well as the management work.
So... You weren't getting paid for two jobs, but you were doing two jobs.
Well, but the key phrase there is portion, right?
And that's something that you negotiate.
What you do have to do more in management is you negotiate.
I mean, that's a useful life skill to develop whether you're in management or not.
So I think that's not a bad thing to get a hang of.
But you negotiate that, right?
So when you sit down with a job, you say, you know, there'll probably be a few more hours, at least certainly while I get started.
But, you know, what proportion of my job What proportion of my job is one way or the other?
And then it's up to you to retain the boundaries, right?
One of the things in life that is very true is that somebody will say, okay, well, you only have to have 25% of your job as coding, right?
And then inevitably, people will try to give you more, right?
I mean, that's just inevitable.
There's no way that's ever not going to happen in life, right?
And what happens is we feel paralyzed and resentful often in those kinds of situations because we want to say yes, we don't want to be troublesome, we want to do a good job and we're afraid of standing up in those situations.
But, of course, it's not up to other people to set your boundaries.
I mean, it would be kind of great in a way if everybody knew exactly what percentage you were at this week in terms of your 25% and said, well, I don't want to give you anything else if, right, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But it's just not the way the world works, right?
The world is like a river in flood, right?
The water comes up and it just seeks to find any avenue that it can and it's up to you to build the dikes, so to speak, if that makes any sense.
Some sense, yes.
I've never been there. That's good.
That's progress, I think. But that's just an important thing to recognize that there will be some additional stressors which come from learning new things and negotiating on the social side of things, but there are fewer stressors in that you can see further.
You can see more what's coming.
Being an IT programmer, a lot of times, it's like being in a boxing match with a blindfold on.
It's like you know bad stuff is coming at you.
You just don't know from where and when and how hard it's going to be.
Whereas when you move into management, it's like you get one squinty, broomy, bloodshot eye that you can open from time to time and stare over the horizon a little bit, and so you can see that freight train coming, and you can throw your employees in front so that it slows down as it hits you.
But no, that's just something to point out and this is the kind of stuff that if you go in for this kind of position, I think it's worthwhile up front saying there is always a risk when you go into these kinds of positions that you get two jobs for the price of one which obviously isn't going to work for the company in the long run unless they're a total buy and burn shop in which case you don't want to be there to begin with.
But just put it up and say, well, what are the expectations?
Are people in the organization – like are you going to make people aware in the organization of the fact that I'm only 25% coding or is that my job to do?
I mean obviously it's probably some combination but is it going to go out as a formal memo?
Like Nate is available at a 25% basis for coding and you have to go and ask and so on.
Is that something that's going to be generally known?
The smaller the company, the easier that can be to get up front.
But of course, if they say, no, it's just something we kind of wing it here, then you just know they're setting you up for the massive dike overflow, so to speak.
So that might not be a good place to work.
But that's the kind of structure that you can ask for up front, whether that's going to be propagated throughout the organization because that will help you, right?
Because you don't want to have to create these rules after the fact.
You want to negotiate up front.
That gives you something to stick to as you move forward through your career.
Right. And having listened to a number of your podcasts today on management, I remember some things that stuck out as far as what – What their methodology is for making decisions and how they track changes and, you know, if they have, you know, a Ouija board or a change management system.
Or if it's just like, if you think it needs to be changed, go change it, you know, and hope it doesn't crash.
And if it does, you'll be here all night.
Greg, I don't mean to startle you, but much though it is lovely to look at your baseball cap, it looks like you've just nodded off.
Remember, you're on video.
We don't want to know.
Oh, there we go. He's taking notes, ladies and gentlemen.
It is recorded. Now, the other thing, too, is that they may ask you...
I mean, the whole question of being a manager, of leading other people is a very interesting question.
I only have a couple of thoughts on it, but they're all about three days long.
My approach has always been, and I haven't always been able to achieve it, but this has been what I've generally tried to achieve, is a manager is judged or has value To the degree that he is a valuable resource to his employees.
In what respect?
Like a technical resource?
Well, a technical resource, the more successful you are as a manager, the less you will be available as a technical resource to your employees.
That's just an ugly fact of floating up through the management biosphere.
Because the whole point of you as a manager is to create people who are not reliant on you, to train your successor, right?
Because you want to make sure you pick someone in your team who's going to be able to move into your job in a year or 18 months so that you can move up, right?
Because if you don't train anyone to replace you, you will never be replaced, right?
Because everybody will know that nothing can work without you there and then you get stuck in that layer, right?
And if you're going to go up through management, then you might as well aim as high as you conceivably can because there's more money, the groupies, the mosh pits, the free E, all of that kind of stuff can really, really help you get through the day, make it feel like 10 minutes or so.
But what you are is a buffer between client demands or outside demands, whoever the customer is.
You're a buffer between the customer and the programmers, right?
So when I was a team leader or project leader or a CTO, when the customer would get pissed, the programmers would be in the room.
I damn well dragged their asses into the room, right, for two reasons.
One, so they could get the clear communication up front, but also so that they could see the bullets that I was taking and the things that they didn't have to deal with.
So I would sort of sit with the client and I would have them sort of in there taking notes.
But the client would sort of rant and rave and rant at me and then I would almost always get like really great employee reviews shortly thereafter because it's like, well, he takes those bullets for us so we don't have to so that they're aware of your value.
And that way they would put up with my Atari 800 basic coding skills relative to what they were working on.
right? Yeah. So that's just something that – and also when other areas within the company would come thundering at them, when there would be technical problems that would cause delays as there inevitably are, I would be the one who would go to the CEO or the board or whoever and I would talk to those people about – What the issues were, what was happening, what we were doing about it, I would say, you know, and here's the Microsoft bulletin that says it doesn't work and so on.
And so they would understand that I was helping to really buy them time to get so people weren't panicking and so on.
So I was that sort of buffer in a sense between the business demands, the client demands and what the programmers were able to achieve and being able to translate that as a kind of Babelfish skill, right, to be able to translate tech to business and business to tech.
That can be very, very helpful.
So when you are a useful resource, when people look at you and say, I'm glad he's my boss because it means I don't have to do X, Y, and Z, or the stuff that used to happen that was bad doesn't happen anymore, which is good.
So the other thing, too, is going to bat for – you can use things like a train metaphor, right?
You say, you know, there's this train, right?
And my thumbs are the train.
Ooh, look. Visual graphics, right?
So you have this train, right?
And people say, well, you know, we want to add another...
Oh, God.
I'm out of thumbs. Greg, quick.
Move your hand to the right. Well, so you're going to add a new carriage to the train, which means the train is longer, which means that the due date gets pushed out further, right?
Because we're standing at the back of the train.
You want to add another whatever, right?
Or if you're going to change the forward date, you know that everything is going to change all at once, right?
That it's kind of linear. That's a little bit of give and take, but for the most part, it's linear.
Helping people stay out of...
The land of magical thinking when it comes to IT is really essential.
It's a hugely powerful thing that you can give because for a lot of people, IT is just magic.
It's just like, I don't know, I ask for stuff and it bubbles up.
They think that we're back there, I don't know, skinning cats and double boil and trouble and so on, right?
Yeah, it's a black box.
It's magic. If you glare at it, then it produces more, which does work with a lot of programmers, right?
Oh, I'll stay on the weekend or whatever.
But it's helping people to really understand that it's just like anything else, right?
So I would use the metaphor that say, well, we want to change this, right?
And they've already – it's already been on its way to be delivered to the dealership and you say, actually, I want a sunroof in it.
Is it more or less costly and time-consuming than if you'd ordered it up front?
People will say, well, yes, it's more, right?
It's like, well, that's the same thing with IT. So, it's – and also, you know, when clients request changes, not to just say yes, but to say, you know, I would be happy to give you a quote for that.
We'll sit down and we'll figure it out.
And that, of course, helps clients become happier, right?
When IT people say yes, clients end up not happy because they can't make rational decisions.
They live in this weird socialist paradise, you know, where everything is free and nothing ever extends to the delivery date.
So, they can't ever prioritize.
It's like that, you know, what – What Juan Misa says about the price, in the absence of price, you can't make rational calculations and so it's reminding people that things cost money and take time so that they can make rational decisions so that every conceivable feature that people want doesn't have to be implemented but once they see the prices and the due dates, they can make those rational decisions.
So it's bringing all of that stuff which takes a lot of the pressure of these magical expectations off the IT people That's hugely, hugely helpful.
It's an incredibly valuable service.
It makes a lot of people happy.
It makes the clients happier.
It makes the management team happier.
It makes the programmers happier.
I mean, if you can be that kind of hub, and I don't claim that I always did it perfectly, but this was always my goal.
If you can be that kind of hub person, then you can really, really make people a lot happier in their work environment.
It is a way, in a sense, of bringing philosophy into people's lives, rational expectations, managing expectations, giving people rational pushback when they have irrational expectations.
That's a lot of what we do in the realm of philosophy at FDR on the board and so on.
It's bringing a lot of those same principles into the business world and the result, of course, tends to be real happiness.
Right, and I think I have a very good idea of how to do that.
I kind of managed to pull off some of the tips you had given in the two job interview podcasts in this last interview with HP, which really...
I mean, they're really pushing towards trying to get me in, but they aren't actually making a move that...
That would get me in which is going up a couple of dollars.
That's great. When you can talk in terms of business stuff, it can be really helpful.
People really recognize the value of that when you can talk in a business context.
I just added – Colleen wanted to come in, but I don't know if she's – actually, she says she's fixed the problem, and the problem seems to have been photons.
So I think if that was the problem, then we have certainly fixed the problem.
Now, the other thing, of course, to talk about in the interview, if you're interested, and this is just a matter of negotiating up front, and I think it's well worth going for management positions just to see how you like the interaction.
Hello, guys. Hello.
Hello. Ah, excellent.
You are now orange.
You know what you look like? You look like every flashback scene from a Steven Spielberg movie, like it's shot through a honey brand muffin or something like that.
So if you could just get kind of dreamy and play some sad piano and pretend that you were once young.
Oh, wait. That would be me.
But we're just talking about – Nate's going for a job interview as master of time, space, and dimension.
We're just on the dimension part, so we're working on 2D, of course.
But the other thing, too, when you go for a job interview, for a management thing in particular, the question is – How do you know if I'm adding value?
Especially middle management.
Like a CEO, you've got the stock price and stuff like that.
And junior programmers, you've got stuff that comes out of their fingertips.
But for that kind of team lead, middle management stuff, it's really tough because you're kind of like a lubricant.
Actually, wear a lot of lubricant when you go in.
That will really help cement the metaphor.
Just dripping, WD-40 all over.
Just say, I see myself with a lubricant and slither up and give them a hug.
Oh, dear. We've lost them.
She's left in horror.
Oh, wait. No, she's going to get lubricant.
It's an entirely different show.
We'll have to put this on the adult YouTube channel.
Sorry. The question is like how is it that I measured in terms of value and productivity?
How will you know if I'm doing a good job?
That's really, really – for a senior manager who's interviewing you, I think that's always an excellent question.
Right. That's a very good one, yeah. And I actually thought I'd write that down before tomorrow, but I don't really read it.
And read it off your hand.
Yes. Man, if it wasn't for all this lubricant, I could really read this.
Like the nerd that's being coached by, you know, the jock guy that's being coached on how to ask a girl out.
You know, he's going, we write this down.
So, coming in from...
Sorry, Charlotte, go ahead. Sorry, hold on to your question, Nate.
Let Charlotte... Oh, you know what?
Charlotte, lean in. I can see myself in your glasses.
Sorry, go on. No.
The one thing that I've noticed being...
Obviously, I'm young, but since I always work for small companies, it doesn't really seem to matter where they put me, so I always end up managing an e-divity team, like four or five people.
And one thing that I notice is, in some companies you tend to be a glorified whatever you're managing, and in some companies you tend to sort of move up without ever really being in the sort of middle management thing.
And I've noticed that, you know, when I've been a glorified programmer, there tends to be A little bit of resentment because, I mean, you're making more money than they are for doing what is perceived by them as exactly the same thing.
So in a way, the people that you're managing are your clients.
I mean, you have to provide value to them, to the people that you're managing, as well as the company.
So I guess it kind of goes back to what Steph was saying.
I mean, you know, let your team kind of know what you're doing.
You know, there has to be a reason that they're paying you.
Because if you weren't there, all your programmers, whatever, salaries would probably be higher.
So they're paying you for something.
Yeah, and I think that what you want to do is show up in a horse and carriage as often as possible and wear gold.
So that they understand why you have these hugely high demands and just come out from the bathroom going, what?
Is it ready? Are you guys done?
Right, that kind of stuff. And then they can really understand why you are a money pit for the organization and they imagine, of course, that you have a fair amount of blackmail going on.
So that's cunning, right?
And they can respect that, I think.
We'll get one of those stereotypical...
One of those stereotypical 19th century anarchists to roll a bomb under your carriage and it will be just beautiful.
Right, right. Keep those stereotypes going.
But I think your point is excellent, Charlotte, that you do need to make sure that people understand why you get paid more than they do because otherwise they'll resent you and that's going to show up.
Like all the stuff we've talked about in this conversation over the RTR stuff in particular, if people don't understand the value that you're bringing, Then they will just resent you for what it is that you're getting paid for.
They'll resent your authority and when people resent your authority, you have no authority.
The credibility of authority and that comes from just doing things that other people don't want to do.
Some of that stuff is stuff that can be fun like negotiating and some of that stuff is not fun.
In every job that I've interviewed for a management position, I've asked if I can have some private time with the team.
And I've asked them, you know, what would be the fantasy manager for you?
And then I've come back as Heidi Klum.
So these are lots of possibilities, especially for Nate.
You've got the cheekbones for it, so you could really work that, sister.
But what is it that you want in a manager?
Do you think a manager is even necessary?
If a manager is necessary, what is a manager necessary for?
And the other thing to ask the people that you get to talk to who will be in your team is, Have any of you applied for this position or do any of you want this position?
Because that's important as well.
That kind of rolls right into my question because why are they bringing me in from the outside?
I'm coming in not knowing anything about their environment.
I don't know anything about how they have things set up for themselves, what kind of licenses they have, what kind of tools they have, what kind of tools they don't have.
All that stuff.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Nate.
I just wanted to mention that I wouldn't refer to your potential programmers as tools in the interview.
That's always better to do after you get the job.
Sorry, go on. I need to get my tools in place.
So how many tools are going to be working for me?
Sorry, go on. So...
Sorry, I'm still getting the image of you as Heidi Klum coming in with a wig and lots of lubricant, so I'm sorry.
I just lost concentration for a moment.
But I'm fine now.
It's disturbing and strangely erotic, but so sorry.
Go on. Steph, can I get you an adventure in Steph's mind?
Where's Allie when you need her?
I didn't tell you that it's a gross boy town.
Anyway, sorry. Go on. So, why haven't these people who are already on the inside, why haven't they worked their way up?
I mean, why aren't they there in that position, and why are they bringing in me from the outside?
That's not always their fault.
It's because they're tools.
I think we talked about those.
No, I mean, they may be just a bunch of people, like lots of people just go to work to get some food to go home, right?
I mean, they don't particularly care.
They're not particularly interested.
And so on, right? But there may be other people who've got a bad reputation.
You may have some issues in terms of that.
The other thing that's important to ask as well is why is the last manager leaving?
Did his heart literally explode out of his chest like that thing in Alien because of the stress?
Or what was the reason for his departure?
Was he rolled out in a carpet and dumped in the river?
I mean, why did the last guy leave, right?
And that's what I think was those...
I'm sorry? Or did this group even have a manager before you came?
Right, that's also important as well.
That's also important as well. And if they didn't have a manager, what is the company's policy around grooming successors, right?
Because if they don't have a...
I'm sorry, go ahead. I would say also, you know, if they didn't need a manager before, why do they need one now?
You know, what precipitated the need?
Right. And why isn't somebody percolating up from within and so on?
I mean, all of these things are – and if it's a smaller company, it's probably just they're aggregating to the point where additional management or management layers may need to be created and so on.
But if they're in that phase as well, I think if you're going for a smaller company, it's important to ask – You know, what are your goals and ambitions?
Are you looking to be Google or are you looking for a comfortable living for 30 people for an indefinite period of time, right?
But, Nate, you're mostly going towards larger organizations because of your own technical history, right, which is specifically big network stuff, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
I mean, most of the Citrix environments that need a Citrix admin that There's usually either a really big farm or they have a bunch of other stuff that they need you to manage as well.
Yeah, like it's a citrus farm, so they have a lot of fruit.
Yes. Spoken like a true manager.
That's great. Okay.
Sorry, other jokes came, but they were just too vile to actually repeat out loud.
So most of the companies that you're going for are pretty big and they would have probably pretty formal structures in place.
You could also ask them what are their policies for on-the-job training?
Do they reimburse for courses?
Do you have to be there for a certain amount of time before they will reimburse you for courses?
If they were looking at your resume and after the conversation, you could say if there were, say, three courses That you're – that the person you're intervening with, if there were three courses that you would like me to take, what would those courses be just based on our conversation and based on your understanding of my resume and so on?
Just ask those kinds of questions.
What is it that you see me missing in my history and so on that would make me a better employee?
Just that kind of stuff. Sorry.
Cancel that. We have lost the orange pair.
You know what? Because they're orange, they were probably totally offended by my citrus joke.
Citrus, that's right.
I'm fairly tangerine myself.
It was actually called citrus before, I think, 1994 when they finally came out.
It was about six months and they called it citrus.
Do you think I didn't know that?
Anyway. So now I'm wiser but older.
I never want to see that crap again.
Citrix can die, man.
Right. Thanks, Charlotte.
It's almost good to put in the stuff which we have to edit out to avoid getting sued.
That's helpful. I really do appreciate that.
If you could, I don't know, eat a Coke bottle, that would be great, too.
So is there anything else, Nate, that – I mean we've given you a lot to chew over and you do have an interview tomorrow.
Is there anything else that has got a yearning burning for you that you think would help you in the interview?
Well, you did say to ask a lot of questions about how I'd be a good fit in the environment.
That's something I kind of did with the HP interview.
Not even kind of. I really kind of came out with it pretty well.
I mean I impressed myself.
Because the questions just sort of came naturally.
So that worked, obviously.
Sorry, I just had an image.
Have you ever seen those videos of the cats going under the door?
Like there's this tiny little space under the door and the cats like fold themselves into something that's like a paper and then they come out the other side?
If you're sufficiently lubricated and you can actually enter the interview room that way, they will never ask how you can fit in the environment because clearly you can fit just about anywhere.
So I think that's great.
I would quite often just laugh to myself in meetings.
Steph's mind is like a Salvador Dali painting or something.
Is that really surprising at this point in our relationship after, what, 1090 podcasts?
But anyway. So the only advice he needs is to make sure that they have a casting couch, right?
That's right. That's right.
The what? So, sorry, to get back to your questions about the actual interview tomorrow, is there anything else that, I mean, we don't want to, you know, at some point filling your brain up with every conceivable option.
These are just things that I would go in and ask about or, you know, and ask them what they're looking for.
What would be the most valuable thing?
Where do you fit? Where do you not fit?
You know, how much of a gap do they expect people to close?
All of those things will give them a sense that you're used to someone who's asking for value because if you treat them...
If you treat your interviewer the way that you're going to treat clients if you get the position, that will make them feel.
If you ask those critical questions about establishing value and so on, then they'll get a sense that you will do that with their clients, and that is hugely helpful.
Right, either unconsciously or consciously or both.
Oh, yeah, for sure. You come in and you establish value, you establish boundaries, and you establish where things are going to be, what it is they're looking for, where would the job be in six months, and so on.
Just so that you're used to getting the lay of the land and so on, all of that is sort of primary leadership stuff.
Sorry, go ahead. Well, what I fear most, I think, with this interview is the deer in the headlight situation where they ask me, do you actually have any experience in management?
Or some question like that where I'm just sort of like, you know.
Well, I mean, there's some standard answers to that which can be helpful.
One I found to be particularly helpful is to say, I don't have experience in management.
I have extraordinary experience in self-management.
For instance, I'm totally itchy right now.
But I'm keeping my hands up here.
And just keep doing that.
I recommend bringing that one up whether they ask you that question or not.
Right. I thought we already...
With the lubricant dripping off your fingers, it'd be perfect.
No, no, no.
Avoiding itch all while I've boobed up wearing the wig and really itchy.
Do you know where your staff sanity is?
I thought we already had an answer to this question though, Nate, right?
Don't we? When they ask you, have you had any management experience?
Do you know anything about management?
You're just supposed to tell them...
I am management!
I am management!
You are management!
And if I could get some sort of Echo voice box in the room with you at the same time, that would just be fantastic.
That would be great. No, yeah, I've been managing myself for the past year and a half, so that's not a...
That's a very good example. Well, look, I mean, there's stuff that you can talk about, you know, that I was almost fragged in military school by my own troops, which taught me a lot about duck and roll management.
But... Well, I mean, I guess the clear answer is that – what I would say is that management is not like a two-level thing.
It's not like no management, all management.
You don't sort of make the quantum – it's not a quantum leap.
There's no hyperspace, right?
What happens is that – You begin to become a more valuable resource to the people around you to the point where – I mean, I view management, it should arise like a mountain over geological time.
It shouldn't be something that is just dropped into the landscape like a brick or something.
And so the way that management should work is that you should just be a useful resource that people find helpful to come to.
You think a little further ahead.
You reason things out a little bit more.
You have a little bit more confidence and certainty in your dealings with people.
You're able to set just a few more boundaries and make things a little bit more productive and avoid errors before they grow to be big problems and so on.
Through that process, you just kind of become a management.
It's like puberty. You sort of grow through it, right?
You know, you are non-pubescent.
You are, you know, Dom DeLuise, right?
It doesn't happen like that, right?
You just sort of go through this process.
You might not want to use the puberty metaphor.
Anyway. It's like, I will become management!
Well, but I mean, it's a process, right?
So, no, I haven't had a formal management position, but as I have received increased responsibilities in my previous position, and as I have become someone that people have found useful to talk to for help, then I have found that I like management.
And so I want to make it, I sort of want to formalize the direction that my career is going just through my own skills and interest, if that makes sense.
Very good. That would work.
I'll have them eating on my hand.
I would absolutely bring some peanuts.
If that's actually what you want, don't wait around for them to recognize the value.
Go get it. Right.
Because they won't.
I'm sorry. I just felt a cold brush of cynical death on my spine.
Greg, you had something that you wanted to add here?
Wait, I'm sorry.
My will to live is...
Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
No, I'm just saying...
Okay, scrappy.
Go on, Greg. I'm ready.
No, no, no.
It's... It's nothing.
Oh, silly at marriage.
I'm ready.
Sorry, I'm not ready.
Even the thoughts alone are too dark.
It's like a black wind. Anyway, sorry, Dave, did you have something that you...
I recommend that you bring this atmosphere into the interview.
When I see a black thing, you're starting down the hall.
That's like perfect management material, Dave.
Well, no, here's what you want to do, and this is worth paying for him to come.
You want to bring black and cynical Greg and have him interview for the job ahead of you.
Right? And then unless you actually come in dragging a body in a bag, you will seem like a ray of sunshine.
And then you can say, if you're not happy with me, I can absolutely bring Greg back in to talk to you.
Okay, we'll work perfectly every time.
Well, unfortunately, I think only three of us are laughing here, so we should probably drop this topic and keep going.
That expression doesn't look too...
I can almost see the neon scroll across Greg's forehead, you know, plotting his vengeance, right?
Bye-bye server. Why has my Windows server become Linux?
Anyway... I was going to say, I think that's actually something, if I take it away from Greg, like, legitimate.
Because, I mean, you want to go in there feeling like, you know, offering something to the table.
And you do. And, you know, if you...
I think they're going to get that from you and figure that out from you.
Well, I think that's true, but I don't think that you can't show that to anyone if that makes any sense.
Like if you just come in saying, I'm curious about the value that I could bring to this organization, right?
I don't know if I can bring value to this organization.
I don't know if you can bring value to me, but let's talk about it and see where we could fit.
But in doing that, you're communicating your value.
Well, you're communicating your desire for both parties to win in the negotiation, for both parties to gain value.
It's an exploration. It's curious.
Which is a management skill.
Which is a management skill.
How am I going to fit these pieces together to gain the maximum amount of value?
So in the RTR thing, we say, well, I feel this and I don't know why.
And it's like... I'm sitting in this chair and I don't know why.
I've come to this job because I think there could be value but I'm not sure and obviously you don't know because we've just met but I'm very interested in talking to see if we can find a way to create value because that of course is exactly – you're auditioning for how you're going to deal with the clients and how you're going to deal with your employees as well.
How are we going to work together so that we can create mutual value?
Right. It's like a two-way negotiation thing.
I mean, if you stalk and they're inside, I am the person that you need to hire, I am the best, whatever, whatever you'll ever find, that's going to, like, they're going to get that look that Steph just gave.
Yeah, but I don't actually need a used car, but...
What's going on there?
Excellent. We get the right close-up.
Here's your background. One arm.
He's dancing. Oh, no, he's not.
Sorry about that. I have a...
Oh, crap.
What's wrong, Greg?
I got a palmetto bug in the house.
Oh, no. He landed right on my screen.
If you're a programmer, don't talk about your bugs in the interview.
Anyway... Right.
And don't eat them. So, Nate, is that enough for you to work with?
You might want to have a chance to listen to this again before your interview, so we might want to wrap it up, but that was just the thoughts that I had about it.
That all works for me.
I think I've got more than enough information It's all going to come flying out.
I'm just going to give one long Steph speech and then they're going to just either fall asleep.
What you want to do if you're going to take that approach is you want to hand out a card saying, I prefer this tranquilizer dart over these other ones because it's more relaxing for me afterwards.
So, that would be my approach.
Sort of like a medical advice.
Right. Okay, well, thanks, guys.
I appreciate that, and I'll send this around, and we can hope that...
Best of luck in the interview tomorrow, which doesn't mean getting the job.
You're not going in there to get a job.
You're going in there to see if it is a job that you want and a job that wants you, just to see if there's a match.
It's like you don't want to be the guy who's going on the blind date saying, I brought a ring.
You want to be just like, hey, let's sort of see if we can figure out if we like each other and maybe move to the next level and then invite the manager over for a nightcap.
Anyway, so thanks very much, guys.
I'll talk to you soon. Good luck, Nate.
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