Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are in part two of an interview, a discussion with Brian Childress of Fractional CTO Fame. Fame is a strong word, but nevertheless, we talked about Fractional CTOs last time. We've talked about his growth into that position. And we're going to continue talking about that this episode. We're going to talk about really what it looks like and where he's going and some of the successes and the smart things he's done and the mistakes he's made. So that again, hopefully we can learn from his experience and where he was successful, repeat that and where he made mistakes. Repeat that. So let's get back into our conversation with Brian. In particular, because you've, you know, in these situations, you've come in as a, as a part-time, as a Fractional CTO. So there's, there's some level of, of, of comfort of having that, you know, partial, not employee, not full-time, not long-term kind of team. So do you keep that sort of, does that, that sort of, I guess for lack of a better word, sort of color some of your decisions moving forward because you're like, Hey, we've got they've already taken this big step in, in bringing you in as a, as a part-time employee. And so you're not going to be there as that team, assuming that team even continues, you're not going to be there. So is that something where you, that's part of you factoring in things like, Hey, if, if we're not really building a culture or we're not really building a whole team right now, do we just, you know, do a couple of, you know, do some part-time here, part-time there and go with that flow? Or is it something where you're, you're more stepping in more often trying to put everything in motion so that when you do step out, they can eventually grow to build or hire that CTO. Yeah, it's my goal is to work myself out of a job. And I do that by putting the practices in place, helping to develop the culture within the team and really putting the team in a good place where they can continue to grow and scale on their own. So, you know, I come into an engagement knowing that, you know, my, my time with them is going to be fairly short-lived, whether it's a handful of months or even longer. There is some kind of end date to our engagement. So I want to make sure that the team, the founders, the business owners, everyone is kind of aware of that and has, you know, kind of a shared understanding of where we're going and how I think it's best to get us there. But, you know, in that, I'm also looking for either my replacement or someone to fill similar roles within the organization. Depending on the engagement, I'll typically then also kind of step back into more of an advisory role where I'll still be available to the team, but I won't be nearly as hands on day to day as I may have been. Now, do you find that, is that a challenge sometimes walking into these organizations and being, for lack of a better term, the guy that, you know, sort of building this up? Do you find a lot of cases where you're looking at it being a short-term, I'm going to get in, I'm going to help you, and you're going to go on and grow and, you know, kick the child out, kick the baby out of the nest kind of thing? Or is it somewhere a lot of times you're sort of having to reiterate that to them and remind them that, hey, I'm not intending to be here full-time, that I'm intending to, you know, at some point I'm going to write off in the sunset? I think it requires a constant reiteration of that with the different folks, you know, whether it's in a team setting or in one-on-one conversations. I think it's important because if a, you know, and I've even worked in organizations where there is a CTO and I've been brought in, right, that can be a very uncomfortable thing depending on who brings me in to the project. You know, it can very much seem like, am I being replaced? Is this the person coming in to replace me? And I never want that to be the case. So I like to make sure that I recognize who is there, the efforts that have been put in, you know, really celebrating all the work that's been done, because if that work hadn't been done, there wouldn't be a business, there wouldn't be a team for me to come in and join. So I definitely want to celebrate that with the team. But I do kind of see it as an advantage because I come in with a known kind of expiration date of my engagement. So I'm able to come in and make a lot more, potentially more drastic changes more quickly to turn the ship around than I potentially would if I came in in more of a full time capacity where I needed to build up kind of that political capital before I could make bigger changes. So because it's a short-lived engagement, I do have a bit of opportunity there as well. So I just, you know, I kind of have to keep the team aware of how that's kind of playing out. You touched on something that's like often an interesting thing coming in as a consultant is the idea of political capital, internal politics and stuff like that. Have you been in having existed in corporations and then also doing the fractional thing? Do you see it as something where you come in and you have to be or you see yourself finding yourself more or less or about the same involved in politics and having to to play the political games within an organization? I would say I probably had to play them a little bit less because I am typically I'm being brought in because there has been a challenge that they need someone to solve. They see someone coming in with a different level or a different area of expertise. And so I'm able to kind of ride that for a while and then really kind of show my expertise. You know, I certainly don't want to upset or put off anyone in the team. But I do have, you know, I do have that opportunity to come in and really. Really impact the team in a really strong way, so I think it's important to kind of come in, show an impact, show expertise, show that I'm on their side. You know, at the end of the day, my goal is to help everyone succeed, including the team, including the business. And so I'm going to do everything that I can to to best support that. Now, stepping back a little bit, as you've grown into this, particularly when you think about an audience of people that are thinking like, hey, this may be a path I want to take. What are what are some things either mistakes, missteps or or things that sort of like held you back where if you could look back and you could talk to your younger self, you could you could either progress faster, better, smarter or avoid some sort of That's a really good question. I think one of the things that held me back quite a bit, you know, we we talk about it like, you know, imposter syndrome or self-sabotage, just. Leaning into fear, but for a long time, I didn't, you know, I felt like I was an imposter that I wasn't qualified. I didn't have the credentials or the experience to jump into some of these projects. And I think that really did hold me back quite a bit. One of the things that I think really helped propel me in my career was pushing against the fear that I had around public speaking. And I know that a lot of folks have been pushing against the fear that I had around public speaking. And I know that a lot of folks, you know, I'll get the statistic wrong, but, you know, most people are more fearful of speaking in public than they are dying. And I think that was largely true for me. But what I found was if I pushed against that fear and really pursued public speaking, that gave me an opportunity. You know, it just opened so many doors for me. You know, I got opportunities to travel internationally to speak at developer conferences. I've been awarded patents based on some of the content that I've been talking about in some of my talks. You know, I've really been able to impact a lot of developers in a lot of communities, hopefully in a very positive way, because I pushed myself through that fear, you know, recognize that it was there. To then get into, you know, doing things like speaking in public. You know, other areas, I think I, you know, if I was talking to my younger self where I wish I had pushed myself more, you know, continue to explore new technologies and really stay abreast of where the the industry is going and what trends are emerging. And are you starting to see different patterns? You know, one of the things I would definitely caution myself on would be jumping on the latest and greatest technologies too early. You know, I think it's great for us as technologists to understand what's out there and you know, what's kind of coming. But certainly, you know, any leading edge or bleeding edge technology, I would I would definitely hold back from bringing that into any of my client engagements. You know, that was definitely a little bit of a challenge for me. You know, ultimately, you know, never really was adopted by the industry. But now my my clients kind of are paying that price for it. You know, so luckily, that was a quick lesson learned. Yeah, I think those are kind of the bigger areas that I, you know, I wish I had done more with. What let's take that one sort of flip that on its head. So what are some of the things that you that you did right? What are some of the things where you look back and you're like, you know, obviously speaking would be public speaking, be one of them. There are other things where you you see that you made some decisions. You did a couple of things. You're like, yeah, that was that was the right thing. That has really helped, you know, propel me forward. You know, I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I do think that freelancing and moonlighting has really helped propel me forward. You know, I like to think that I worked a full time job and then moon lighting was almost another full time job and combined, they just continued to amplify the number of years of experience and lessons that I learned. Another thing that I did right that I always encourage engineers that I taught encourage engineers that I talk to and mentor is to start to capture and put out into the world things that you're learning. So for me, that looked like a blog. For a long time, I had a long running document of the things that I was learning. These would be like simple bash commands and little scripts and those types of things that I would just have for myself. And I don't know when it was, many years ago, I decided, well, let me just create a blog and put it out there then. And so anytime I was learning something new, I would write a simple blog post and then put it out. And I found that to be incredibly valuable. There's been more than a few occasions where I found myself on the first page of Google looking for a solution because turns out I had written an article about how to solve a particular problem a year before. I'd bypassed entire technical sections of interviews before because I had a blog out there that really illustrated my technical knowledge. And so I think that's one thing that I'll definitely pat myself on the back for and really encourage a lot of developers to do. The same with posting on social media. That was definitely a hurdle for me to get over. But once I started, I really got into a rhythm and I've really enjoyed the connections that putting valuable information out on social media platforms like LinkedIn has been really, really valuable for me. Well, those are great. Excellent. That's excellent advice there. Particularly, I think it's getting better because there's so many people out there that are live coding and things like that. There's YouTube channels where people are just writing code and talking through it and things like that. So we're seeing more of that. But I think in particular, it's interesting because if you go search for some sort of, especially deeply technical solution, it's amazing how often it's some blog article somebody wrote at some point where they're like, hey, I've got to solve this. Here it is. Here's my solution. Here's how I got it done. And so it's one of those, you could be that person. You could have been the one that wrote that article. If you're regularly putting some of this stuff out there, particularly if you're in anything, cutting edge, bleeding edge, even leading edge, that kind of stuff that you may be the first person or maybe the only person that's actually written something on that other than maybe, and sometimes even more so than a technical book or something like that that's come out. And so it is a great way to, very low risk, low cost as far as time to just sort of take your notes, put them out there as a blog article or something similar to that. And so you mentioned the hot technologies and stuff like that. And of course, the hot one right now basically is a whole AI world. And everybody's decided that's going to change everything. Actually, some people think it's going to end everything. It's going to be terminator machines running around killing everybody, especially in the sense you've been in technology for a while. What are your thoughts on AI? Do you where you see it at and where you see it going in the next, especially in the next few years? I think it's incredibly powerful. And you hear a lot of comparisons of it's the same as when mobile became a thing or the internet was invented. And I think it's maybe to the same level of impact on society. It's incredibly powerful. As a developer, I don't really have concerns about it, AI taking my job away, but I do think it will change how we work and how we interact with machines going forward. I see it as an incredibly powerful tool in my day-to-day development efforts. So I'm really excited to go and ask a chat GPT for a quick solution that before may have taken me an hour or so of cobbling together a series of blog posts and stack overflow articles to get to a working solution. That to me is really, really powerful. With that though, I think it's really important to understand the solutions that are being put out there. So when we look at AI as for generating code, I think it's still really important to understand the code that is being written. We saw something similar many years ago when stack overflow was coming into Vogue and where developers would find a solution, they would copy paste right into our code base without really understanding what was going on in that code. I think with the advent of AI and the integration with our tools, we're just going to see more and more of that. So it's going to be really important to pay attention to what is generated. But I think there's, all that aside, I think there's a ton of opportunity. There's a lot of exciting ways that we can leverage AI in the tools that we build for businesses and ultimately to support our end customers. So I'm excited to see where it goes. I try and keep my tin foil hat off when we think about some of the AI conspiracies and that sort of thing. But yeah, it's going to be interesting over the next few years, I think. So one question I definitely want to get before we wrap up, just because we sort of touched on it, is the, and because you made a really good argument for public speaking being one of the things that really has helped you out. How does somebody that is a developer that's sitting there going, yeah, that sounds like something I need to do. What are some steps or some way that somebody can get started going out there and testing that fear and pushing it against the world? I think we all have things that we're learning and interested in that we can share with others in the community. We don't need to be the deepest expert. We don't need to be the author of a framework or something along those lines to be able to go out and speak and share the information that we have. I like to use the measurement of, well, if I have a framework, I can go out and share my information. Meetups, now I think they're coming back. We're seeing a lot more in-person user groups and meetups happening. Those are a fantastic way to get started. Organizers are always looking for speakers to bring in new and interesting topics. And so I think that's those are a fantastic way to get started. Organizers are always looking for speakers to bring in new and interesting topics. It's a small group. It's a friendly group, likely of a lot of your peers. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there to start to explore, what is it like to put together a talk? What is it like to speak in front of an audience, whether it's virtual or in-person? I think there's a lot of opportunity to start to explore that and see if it's something that you like and want to continue to pursue. Sounds good. And one other thing before we wrap this up, the question goes all the way, it's sort of to circle all the way back. Early on, I asked you about, in your experience, dealing with non-technical CTOs or actually really founders and business owners and things like that. But now you also mentioned that you've had situations where you've been brought in and they have a CTO. So they have a technologist. And then we're thinking about the audience of people that are technical a lot of times and they're wanting to go out and do a side hustle, go do some freelancing. Or they've got a great product idea. They've got a great service idea. What are some of the things that you see are the challenges that technical founders and CTOs run into, particularly where you said there is that benefit of you coming in, where you're able to help them overcome maybe whatever that block is? I think a lot of us, we just have areas where we don't have the experience, where we don't know the best solution. And I think a lot of the CTOs that I've talked with, they're really looking for almost a sounding board, someone who is also deeply technical, has seen enough things, has been a part of enough organizations and a part of enough projects to then really be able to come in and bring a different perspective. A lot of times I may not have the exact solution in my back pocket, but together partnering with a CTO or a technical person, we're able to work together and get to something that really works well for their particular situation. I think there's a lot of opportunity to collaborate. And we all bring different perspectives. I have certain areas of expertise that some folks are looking for or may just be looking for a sounding board. And unfortunately for CTOs, the only other folks that they can really kind of lean on or feel comfortable in leaning on are other CTOs, which are typically outside of their organizations. Now, I want to be respectful of your time and thank you for coming on and offering a lot of great insights and information. But for those that are listening and saying, wow, I really need somebody to come in and help us out, either I'm a CTO or maybe I want to go work for this guy, because Brian sounds like an awesome guy. What are some of the best ways for them to get a hold of you? I would say the best way is through LinkedIn. It's probably where I'm most active right now. So it's Brian-Childress on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out, connect, send me a DM. I'm happy to chat. And we can schedule a call and find out how can I support you? I work and mentor a lot of engineers, folks who are growing in their career and CTOs as well. Excellent. And I'll make sure I get those links in the show notes so they can reach out to you via LinkedIn if they can't remember. And luckily that's pretty easy. It's not one of those really convoluted URL type things, where there's like 18 different numbers and letters in there. And it's Brian-Childress should be pretty easy to remember. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for coming on. And I guess I'll give you just sort of a parting thought. Do you have any parting thoughts for those before we wrap it up? I would say just really pursue the things that you're interested in and excited about. Behind that, there's usually a lot of opportunity, interesting projects, and there's just a lot of ways that we can use technology to solve some really interesting and fun problems. Excellent. Well done. Well, thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day. Awesome. Thank you, Rob. And that will wrap it up. Thank you again to Brian for his time, for some great conversations, and really a lot of in-depth looking back into his career and where things went right and where they went wrong and where he's learned and how he grew. And I think there were a lot of key points in there about what it is that he did that got him where he was. He didn't say it, but very much, I think, talked about the one year experience 10 times versus 10 years of experience. That, we'll say conundrum or whatever it is, where we can get into a job and we can get into a rut and we can get into something where we're just going through the motions and we're not really learning and growing. We're not building better developers. We're not becoming better developers. We're just doing the same thing, maybe a little better, but maybe a little faster, very much on cruise control because we've done this before, so we can just crank through it. If instead we push ourselves, if we get into situations where things are new and there are things that, we step into things that there's some risk there. It's like, we may not know how to do this. I'm not really sure this is something that I'm going to be good enough at and we embrace it, take that challenge on and try to learn, we will become a better developer. He gave us sort of the shortcut to go from just starting out to very successful. Now granted shortcut over many, many years, over 10 years or whatever, but you could take 10 years to get there or you could take 50 years to get there. You may never get there. I think there's some key points in there I will not belabor that anymore. I'll let you get back to your day. We'll come back next episode. We'll talk about some of these things and then don't worry, we will come back to interviews in the future as well. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time. 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