Continuing Season of Interviews - William A. Adams

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews and we're into part two of our interview with the William A. Adams. And this gets into the weeds a little bit, but this is also one of those episodes that I think applies to almost anybody that has anything to do with working in IT in general, whether you are hiring, whether you are building a team, whether you are just a member of a team, whether you're managing a team, whether you have teams that work for you, whether you are the CEO of an organization that has IT as part of what they do really in any way, form or fashion. I think this is something that needs to be heard. This is one of those kinds of episodes because we're going to get into how do you really get the most out of your team. And it's not necessarily what we've talked about in the past. We're going to take a little bit of a different tack. And I think you will find this a very useful episode to listen to and to think through some of these things. We have covered bits and pieces of this over the years in other episodes and other topics. But I think this conversation just sums up in a nutshell the best way to approach building a team and embracing what each member brings to the table. Hopefully I've set that up properly. We're going to get right back now into our conversation with the William A. Adams. So my journey in tech was in 2015. I just came to a realization. It's like, oh, OK, well, writing code, shipping code, fixing bugs, that's all great. And at that point, I've been doing it for 30 years or whatever. What else? I came to a what else moment. I'm old enough. I'm middle aged at that point. And it's a what is the value of what you're doing? And I came up with this. I asked someone in our company, you know, what's a key, what's a hard problem? And they said diversity hiring, you know, women and minorities. And I said, I'm going to go jump on that. So I did. You know, I jumped on the grenade. And initially, I would say I did it as a work from an engineering mindset, right? Break the problem down. How hard could it be? Just go find the people and bam, you're done. And I got into it. I created this program called Week, which is about its best description is it's an internship for adults, people who are career switchers, moms returning to work. We found these people. One thing led to another cohort after cohort, and now it's a thing. Seven years on, it's a nationally accredited program and and whatnot. But my journey for it was realizing that, oh, this can be transformative to people's lives. I mean, forget about the fact that go find the people and checkbox the numbers. It's like this is transformative. And I quite literally have the emails where people have said to me, you changed my life, right? And it's true because tech puts you in a certain wealth category, right? You're suddenly earning a lot of money compared to what you might have been doing. Otherwise, your kids probably have different school possibilities compared to what they were going to have otherwise. And you're creating intergenerational wealth because you own stock, because it's part of the pay package and on and on. So I stumbled on this epiphany. It's like, oh, this is this is my civil rights moment. This is what I must do for my tribe to help them get to the next level, to get a leg up. Right. And I was uniquely positioned to do that because, first of all, not a lot of black folks in tech and black folks in tech who had past experience in training adults in technology and had the credibility and the Rolodex in the company to pull it off. And it's not easy. Right. And we still don't do good minority and women hiring across the industry. But at least we got started on this. So I was uniquely placed. We pulled it off. It's been going for seven years. We do cohorts at a time. They're probably up to like 30 cohorts that we've gone through. Hundreds of people hired. It's all good. Right. So that's the best way I got into the whole thing. It was just I was at the right place, right time, right age, right experience. And then the spark of desire hit me. And after one cohort is like, oh, I'm supposed to do this. It's not an option that I should or should not do it. I must do this because if I don't, the next opportunity is years back. Right. It would be like if Martin Luther King. You know, got to the starting line and went, yeah, never mind. Yeah, I don't want to go on down to some. I'm just going to say. So anyway, that's it was just an epiphany. I was the right age. You know, I was awakening. I'm midlife. I'm questioning what the value of my future is going to be. And bam, here comes this problem to solve. So excellent. Well, and that's part of the, you know, that lifetime learning thing is, you know, you sort of keep I think you sort of get accustomed to looking for problems, not necessarily creating problems to solve, but, you know, what's what kind of things are out there that maybe people haven't touched. And that's just had your you've got the right mindset to say, oh, hey, this is something that I don't see anybody else doing. I'm going to go take a shot at it. Yeah. Or even even the doing part is like we were doing something and every company was doing something, but it wasn't hiring blacks or minority and women and minorities. We spend literally millions of dollars on these pipeline things and they're all feel good checkboxy things like, oh, we we're we're helping the pipeline. We're educating K through 12. We're donating money to all these nonprofits, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, but are we hiring anyone? That's was the missing piece. And the answer was no, they're not. They don't meet the bar. Well, let's get to it. So that's that gives me it's a great lead into the next question is. So there's this search for diversity, people, you know, you hear companies all the time, we want to diversify, diversify, diversify. And they and I know there's companies who'll pour money into these systems and programs and down at the K through 12 level. And I know that there's a lot of places are pushing STEM programs. How much in your experience, especially now, you know, having several years seeing, particularly with your your cohorts and how people have have come through in the successes or lack of success in their cases. How much of it is, I guess, for lack of a better term, is like an ignorance of a of a group that, hey, this is out there and this is something, you know, it's almost it's not even it's like this is something you can do is giving them somebody that just says, you know, this is not blocked to you. This is a an avenue you can take and you can be successful in it. And how much of it is is a barriers to entry that's almost like prejudices kind of things of just saying, well, you know, everybody that came out of nothing good came out of that neighborhood. So we're not going to bother hiring there. Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it. I mean, the the most important thing to to understand about this problem space is that it's about culture change in your organization. It's not about the pipeline. The pipeline exists. I mean, MIT, for example, there's a bunch of folks that graduate from MIT. And we go to MIT, the recruit, but we don't look at certain people. So there's a lot of talent that gets left on the table, if you will. And we don't know how to capture it because they don't look the right way. They don't have the right classes on their their CV. And when you look at community colleges, there's plenty of talent at community colleges, but they don't have the right classes. They don't have the right professors. It's like, yeah, but these people are experienced and they're way more hungry than that MIT grad is because the MIT grad is silver spoon dollars life, whereas these people are are pursuing it at a passion. You know, so I think part of it, the bigger part of it for me is changing the culture of the organization, right? Not prepping the talent. The talent is is prepping itself. You know, the talent is everywhere, literally. I mean, I was in the slums of Kibera, which is in Kenya, and I'm talking to these young people who had masters in engineering and computer science and blah, blah, blah. But they're in the slum in Kibera. There's no one in Microsoft who's going to walk into the slum in Kibera. Except me and say, I wonder if there's any talent here. But you got to believe it's like there's a million people in that slum. You've got to assume that a few of them are smart. Right. I mean, it's not like all the dummies went and lived in Kibera. No, it's like intelligence is is universally spread, but the opportunities aren't there. Right. And I sat and talked to those people and they were extremely smart. I was like, I want to work for you. You know, but we have no way of we don't have a mindset that says, I bet a slum could have some good talent in it. You know, all we will do is as philanthropists will say, well, slum, OK. Well, they need some toilets and some schools and some roads. Oh, no, no, no, no. We're not thinking of hiring them. Right. We don't have the mindset. So you have to have that mindset that just opens up and says and it starts with inclusion. You have to have a mindset in your company or personally that says inclusion is the most important thing. If I want to sell good product, I need to include as many diverse opinions, perspectives, experiences as I can, because it's going to broaden my total addressable market. Right. There's just another example is I was interviewing a bunch of these people going through the LEAP program. And I remember one of the questions I asked people is, oh, if I gave you unlimited money, you know, five hundred million dollars or whatever, what would you do? And I remember one woman said, oh, I create a program that tracks women's ventral cycles because there's nothing like that. It was like five years ago. Nothing like that exists. And that would be a very useful thing to do. Now, can you imagine a bunch of dudes from MIT coming up with a menstrual tracking program? No. Is that surprising to you? That's the first thing I think they'd come up with. But I did notice the recent Apple Watch has exactly that program because they got women on the team. You know, dudes aren't going to come up with that. And that is true for just huge swaths of things. If you don't have any people who've had any farming experience, you're not going to come up with any solutions for farmers. Right. Or if you do, they're going to be contrived. And you're probably not going to test it with real farmers. So you need people who have farming experience. Right. And that's true of any set of thousand set of attributes that you could possibly list. You need people with those experiences to be included in your team. So it really starts with the culture of the company. They need to have a broader view. And then in terms of actually hiring people, cast a wider net. Don't raise bars. Right. You need to scoop people up in a net rather than trying to prevent them from getting in because the bar, you know, the unnamed bar. So there you go. So how do you feel going into the that bar discussion is? Because this has been a this is a challenge. And it shows up in the news on a regular basis is where it's the we're just going to we're going to get this person because they just because they look this certain way. And we're just not going to bother going through, you know, whatever else or normal standards, we're just going to say, oh, we're going to just, you know, push you through. And and I was a little bit. Go ahead. I was just going to say that's the worst way to do it. But yeah, I get it. That's exactly what people do. And that's and that's where like so, for example, like when you go through your your program, because to me, that actually is is almost detrimental because you you take somebody that's not that maybe didn't earn that position where there's somebody that does that owns that earned that position. And you're you're swapping out the quick fix versus, as you said, sort of casting that broader net. So as you as you're and I'm assuming as part of it, as you're working people through the LEAP programs, how are you helping them maybe find a way to get into a broader net? Or how are you having that conversation to say, this is how you cast a broader net. You don't just go to that, you know, it's you don't just go to jobs dot com and find somebody or, you know, one of those places is how do they how does a company that wants to do this? What are some things they can do to to make that happen? Well, if you want to playbook it, it's basically like I said, it starts with the changing the culture of the company, not it actually doesn't start with the the talent, the talents out there, you know, and it's all over the place. You cannot throw a stone and not get good talent. So it doesn't actually start with the talent. It starts with the company's culture. Right. The hardest part of what I had to do with the LEAP program was train the hiring managers on how to look at people differently. So realistically, the LEAP program, the first few cohorts was really just a training ground for the hiring managers and the candidates who went through the program, those first few cohorts were just props. You know, it's like, here's how you here's how you look at the resumes. Here's how you interview them. You're trying to suss out collaborative skills and problem solving and other things without just resorting to your typical whiteboard problem solving, right, which is standard for tech. But here's how you talk to them, because they don't have CS degrees. So you have to think differently about how to you have to take different assumptions about what you think they already know. Right. And here's how you really leverage their skills. They're probably awesome collaborators. Why don't you make them team leaders? It's like, well, I haven't been in a long enough. It's like you think that college hire is a better team leader than someone who's been a VP at a bank. So give them some responsibilities and and value their experience and elevate their experience and they will be teaching your team how to work better. And that's what happened. So it starts with a culture and then certainly either in parallel or soon thereafter, it does say you have to look at the pipeline and you have to go off the beaten path wherever you're typically getting your people from. You have to go elsewhere because that typical path is not going to give you the diverse talent that you're looking for. It's going to give you whatever you've been getting. Right. So it's going to keep reinforcing it. So you have to look at different paths. And you also have to you can avoid the the checkbox exercise where you just go on down to the HBC use and hire you some black folks, put them on the bus and bring them in. You write it's like, no, you have to think about what kind of jobs are you going to have them do? How are you going to bring them in? How are you going to assimilate and acculturate and not just knock them down and and knock off their rough edges? It's like, no, you brought them in because they're different from you. So don't don't bring the women in and say, you got to wear pants like me. You know, it's like, no, why don't you listen to what their perspectives are and include them in the conversation? Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. Right. That's the key part, because if you can't change yourself, you're not going to be inclusive. You're not going to bring in different perspectives. You're just going to make everyone try to be like you. And they're going to fail because they're not you. And within a year, they'll be gone. So so that's the playbook is like, well, changing. You got to change your culture. You've got to look at different places for the talent. You've got to have a plan for how you're going to onboard that talent, because it is going to be cultural differences and you're going to have to deal with it. Right. And if you do or you can't, they'll be gone in a year. Right. Yeah, that's a that's actually an excellent point, because we've a few years ago, I worked with in the IT and recruiting the IT recruiting world, and that was one of our focuses was connecting the HR people, basically the recruiter side to the technical side and how to, you know, to to get through the checkbox of you, you did this or you have this thing or you have this degree or you did that and turn it more into a conversation about how does this person add to your company. Yes. And it's on both sides because it's it's helping people understand that you have your experience, like you said, if you're a you were a VP for a bank for 20 years and now you're starting out, you're not just some, you know, schmo that came out of college. You have incredible experience. And for the company, they have to recognize that to utilize you properly. You're not going to be just some schmo out of college. They're not going to just throw you in and have you like write code. There is value you bring to the table. Like you said, if you try to force them into every other position you've had, you're going to lose that that value of that diversity that you have. You're not going to touch the areas where they actually bring value to the table. And so it is it's it really is. It's changing that conversation and saying, look, it is not. That helps everybody no matter what is changing that to say it's not about checkboxes and saying you have a, b and c skills and you have this this many years or this that you've done. It is actually finding the people that fit your culture, that have that personality fit and that are they will bring things to the table that you never realized they would. But having that conversation and realizing, oh, I was going to get somebody for this little position, I had this need. But this person feels that need and all of these other things. Often growth needs that, you know, we're going to have something down the road. And even just like product needs and stuff like that. You know, you mentioned that where, you know, the a bunch of guys creating a menstrual app. I don't know how many times I have talked to people about product ideas they have from other cultures in part of my interview with them initially. You know, what do you want to do? What's the problem you want to solve? We all have a comment along the lines of like, wow, that's a problem. That's a thing. You know, it's something they've got this. And they sometimes have turned it into very successful businesses where I had no idea that was even, you know, anything but the deepest niche. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's a niche where there's four billion people that need this or something along those lines. And I would never have it because, like you said, if you're, you know, going the same, you drive the same way, you got the same neighbors, you got the same environment. There's all of this stuff that you're never going to see. And it doesn't serve, you know, I don't think it serves your company well. It doesn't serve you well to be in that bubble. It's there's so much more you can get by expanding your horizons like that. Yeah. And back to the culture thing, there's some mechanical or tactical things that you might have to do. Like, for example, we used to have a requirement on almost every tech job. Yeah, it's pretty universal. Where it would say CS degree required. Right. And when I did the program, I got our company to change that. I said, CS degrees are not required. Right. The experience is required. So getting that single sentence removed from our job descriptions makes all the difference in the world. Right. Because you go from, well, why don't you come back to us after you've gotten a CS degree? It's like, no, I'll take you right now. And we can always teach you how to program anyway. So so you might have to do stuff like that, where you just look at your your current list of requirements that you're putting out there in the world, the bars that you're putting out there and say, is that really needed? Or is that just keeping people out? Is that just a barrier? Or is it actually helping us find the best people? And most of the cases, it's not helping you find the best people. You know, it's just a barrier that doesn't need to exist, especially now. I mean, it's like CS degree really. Probably not. And that wraps up this episode. We are going to continue. We've got one more. We are not done speaking with Mr. Adams. And if there's before we leave, if there's any real point, I want everybody to get out of this. It is that that last little bit really that we're talking about. We're talking about degrees and expectations and all these. We'll call them check boxes that often we put for other people to do a job or a task, and we even do it on ourselves. For example, he's talking about a CS degree where people would just not apply because they either saw that it said it required a CS degree or they assumed it did. And then they're like, well, I don't have it. This is going to need it. So they're just going to, you know, get rid of me out of hand. They're just going to ignore me. Don't allow that to slow you down, to be an obstacle to you, to progressing, nor to accepting that, you know, maybe there's some help or bringing somebody else onto the team. Look a little deeper. Surface level is just that. If you just look at surface level for your team, your relationships, your work, your jobs, your life, just about anything. If you look at surface level, that's all you're going to get. All you're going to get back is just the shallowest result. But if you dig deeper, you will find gems. You will find highly valuable things that are hidden to other people. The deeper you dig, the more likely you are to find some of those gems. And as a individually. Do what you can to bring that out. Try to be less surface, particularly like interviews and things like that. If you're going in, you're trying to find a job. You want a certain position. Find a way to sit back a little bit. Think about what you do bring to the table. Try to steer that conversation away from the check boxes that you maybe don't have or that maybe aren't where your strengths lie. And instead, sell where you do bring something to the table. Sell on your strengths. While what we've been talking about here in this episode is when you're looking for people, look a little deeper. But this is also where if you're not out there trying to hire somebody, but you're wanting to advance your career, you're wanting to move to, you know, move up the ladder or get a different job. You're on the flip side of this. There are things you can do to help bring out where your strengths are and to sort of, you know, I don't know. It's not necessarily a mask, but to to set aside all of those potential objections that really are surface and meaningless and instead say, hey, this is what I'm going to provide to you as a as an employee, as somebody that's working with you. And I do think that you will get value out of it. And that selling in itself, that understanding of what you bring to the table often can be that it can make or break a deal. It can be the thing that says, you know what? I wasn't sure I was going to even talk to you. But now I want to hire you or maybe better yet, I want to hire you for even a better position than you thought you were applying for. So this is like I said, this is an episode that I think there's a lot of value here personally, as well as working with your team and how you your relationships and your socialization work in through all your life. So this is a heavy one. I'm going to let you sit on that a little bit, but we will come back and we're going to get right back into it with the William Adams with part three and wrap this up next time around. But until then, you got to have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. One more thing before you go, Develop-a-Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us, be great if you go out to developer.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, even a little would be awesome. In any case, we will thank you and maybe I'll make you feel just a little bit warmer as well. Now you can go back and have yourself a great day.