The CTO Podcast

We try a brand new format this week with a group discussion.  Debbie Chen, PhD sits with a few geeks and talks about her mission to measure hydration in elite athletes.Check out: hydrostatis.comAlso, find your peer group of CTOs: 7ctos.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

There’s a misconception that people in tech aren’t big on networking and connecting socially. Our guest today has busted that myth and shows us the power of community building with CTOs.Dr. Tony Karrer is one of the founders of the Los Angeles CTO Forum, and is also an inspiration to me. He’s built multiple start-ups, is currently the CTO of several companies and holds a doctorate from USC.Listen in to hear his wisdom on the topics of community building, scaling up and scaling down and much more on today’s CTO Studio.In this episode, you’ll hear:What is a fractional CTO?What lesson did he learn from scaling in the dot com era?When do you know if you need a CTO?Is there a way to ensure you find the right advisors?How do you know if a CTO is a first class citizen of their C suite?And so much more!We begin today with Tony telling us how did the LA CTO forum came to fruition. There is a small group of people who founded it over a decade ago. Back when InfoWorld was running a national conference for CTOs and creating local CTO groups.Doing so inspired a group of people - Tony included - to form their own local CTO group in the LA area. Originally there were 8 of them, and they would gather together to talk about their problems and get ideas from each other. Their original group met in 2001, and they've been growing ever since. In fact, they still help each other today. Tony tells us about how someone from within the group helped him deal with the recent GDPR updates.We also talk about the ebb and flow of this group and how he decided to stick with this idea for so long. Of course, the core reason is that it provides to him tremendous value in return. While the group ebbs and flows, its core is always there and always strong. Staying in that core group doesn't feel like it's a chore for him: it's a great group of people who provide incredible value to each other and to the larger ecosystem.And that commitment has paid off, they are a well-known group in and around Los Angeles. They’ve become so big they have also expanded to neighboring areas like Santa Barbara, Pasadena and Orange County.Our next topic is TechEmpower: Tony was a CTO at two start-ups in the 90s and TechEmpower came out of those experiences. He would get excited about the strategy and how the company should leverage technology.  In both instances, he realized once things got going with the company there wasn't a whole lot of strategy left to execute.  Instead, it became all about coding.He knew he was passionate about the strategy and wanted to do more of that, so he wondered how to make that happen. It was the tech boom at the time and everyone wanted to have a start-up. So he opted to do three of these at a time, and he quickly realized his next problem: he needed people to help him build those three start-ups and everything that went along with them.Soon he had tapped out his pipeline of people, and was soon faced with the formidable task of hiring the right people. It seemed like a natural solution to build up a staff of his own. He was teaching Computer Science at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) all during this experience, As a teacher, his former students and currently graduating students were a natural resource. From there TechEmpower was born.In its earliest days, TechEmpower was run out of a lab at Loyola Marymount.. Before long there were 10 people working at LMU's lab. This was during the summer so when the department head saw so many students working in the lab, he asked Tony what they were doing. Tony told him the truth, explaining he had provided them with some work experience opportunities. The department head took it in stride, but a week later a memo was issued saying no commercial enterprises were allowed in the labs at LMU! Tony followed the new ruSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

Technology and the internet go hand in hand, as does the innovation both engender. Nowhere is this more apparent than with Nativo’s CTO Oded Cohen. He joins the CTO Studio to tell us what it is like to be innovating as a CTO in online advertising today.We’ll also talk about why he’s a startup guy at heart, how Nativo continues to innovate their offerings while also building and scaling their teams. This is an in-depth talk about the world of online advertising, and how innovation from that world applies to every industry within tech today. Join us to hear it all on this episode of CTO Studio.  In this episode, you’ll hear:What does it mean to be a "startup guy"?What's the difference between native advertising and banner ads?Why advertising is still effective.Does the paid wall approach work for all publishers?What is the dirty secret of cloud storage?And so much more!Today Oded Cohen is the CTO of Nativo and is based in Los Angeles, but he is originally from Israel. He was working in an Israeli start up that went public, after which they were acquired by an American company. A few months later he was offered a job in Dallas in a more corporate setting. He took the job and moved his family to Dallas, but it didn’t take long for him to realize he is a start-up guy at heart.What does he mean exactly when he says he is a startup guy? Oded explains he likes the excitement and fast-moving environment in which he can have a meaningful impact and embrace challenges. In bigger companies you often have to get approval for more things and you have to plan things out or execute on someone else's plan.So with that realization he moved on about a year later and after exploring some options, he found Nativo and felt it was a good fit. He and his family moved to L.A where he joined Nativo as Senior Vice-President of Engineering. Today, he is the CTO.When he joined there was no product, no marketing but there was an operations and there was sales. The engineering team was 7 people and everyone was doing multiple things. I asked him to expand on the sales aspect of what they were doing at the time - were they a consulting agency? Their business has two sides: one side is the publishers. They provide technology to publishers to help them monetize their site using native advertising (which is how they got their name, Nativo).The other side is the advertisers (brands). So their sales team goes directly after advertisers to get them to run native campaigns across all sites that embrace their technology. Their platform also act as a supply side platform (SSP), which allows publishers to auction their inventory in real time and serve the highest paying ad onto their site, maximizing the yield for the publishers.The idea behind native advertising (versus display banners) is to provide a better user experience for site readers by adopting the characteristics of the rest of site, or in other words being more “native to the site”. That means if you go to a particular site looking to read articles in a specific topic, you will be shown ads on similar topics, with a headline and an image promoting sponsored articles (or videos)When you actually click on the sponsored content ad, you read the article on the same site (whereas banners will send you to some other site). With their sponsored content you stay on your original site giving you a true full native experience.We then move on to to talk about what it's been like to be the CTO of Nativo and his teams there.Going from SVP of Engineering to CTO hasn't been much of a change, according to Oded. He's now managing 40 people and working very closely with the VP of product and his team.He's still a technical guy so he'll sometimes get involved in the coding. He might be even deploy some of the code himself, asSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

We’ve seen the disruption of many markets in the last decade, so is healthcare next? It is and that disruption is already underway, according to our guest Unmesh Srivastava. Unmesh is the CTO of P3 Health Partners, and he’s been in the healthcare industry for over a decade so he knows where the industry has been, and where it is going in the future.On this episode, we talk about his journey to becoming a CTO in the healthcare industry, what we can learn from even the most humble of jobs, and why he doesn’t see his tech team as different from the other teams in his organization. Join us for those topics and more on today’s CTO Studio.In this episode, you’ll hear:What is the currency you have to spend to build connection?Why is connection the key to earning respect from your team?How sales applies to every aspect of your organization.What's a problem he often sees with technologists and tech leaders?How do you build a team so your developers so they have a balance of business knowledge and development and coding?And so much more!Unmesh left India for the States in 2008 to pursue a Masters of Science in Engineering Management at Cal-State Northridge. His undergraduate degree is in electronics and communication engineering, but he's always been a people person and enjoyed the managing people aspect of projects.2008 was the peak of the recession and no one was hiring, it was very different than how he imagined it would be! But he learned a lot as a result. His first campus job was being a cashier at Burger King, not a job he was entirely happy to have. Looking back he says it shaped him a lot. Now he sees the value in it: he had to talk to all different nationalities of people, and he learned the art of selling even though he was not incentivized to do that.And the concept applies today whether you are working in a multi-billion dollar enterprise or a mom and pop shop: how can you sell your services and have the most positive impact on the organization you are working for?This applies not just on the front line of the actual sale, but down to the way your team is built and managed, and how your product and/or service is built so your entire organization is sustained long-term. He shares how he's developed this, but the foundation was there from the way he was raised in his family (especially from his mother).Also on today's CTO Studio, Unmesh continues this story by sharing why he saw graduating during a recession as an opportunity when a lot of other graduate students were delaying going out into the workforce. With six months to go before graduation, he left Burger King and the tutoring he was also doing to completely focused on preparing for interviews.And after that preparation, he got a call from a management firm for an interview. He met with them, had a great interview and started working with them as a solutions consultant on their Kaiser Permanente account. That's how he got started in healthcare and how he realized this was the industry he wanted to work in.For almost the next three years he was at Kaiser, a role he loved. His team was devoted to the next generation of products and builds for Kaiser, which was an amazing experience because Kaiser is one of the most innovative healthcare delivery systems in the world.From there he went to Toyota (still as part of the management consulting firm he was hired by after graduation), where he learned everything about business process management. He learned how to use Six Sigma and use process mapping to solve problems.Even though he loved what he was learning with Toyota, he realized his passion was in healthcare. So he moved to North American Medical Management, which is part of Optumcare.He was with them for 6 years until very recently deciding to move to a smaller organSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

It's no small feat to go from the second developer in a company to its CTO, but one man who is up to the task is Jesus Lizama of Studio 3. Jesus is joining the CTO Studio to talk about his career progression, as well as what it's been like to live here as a DACA recipient.Jesus is an engineer who has become CTO of Studio 3, a rapidly growing agency. In fact, his agency is growing so fast they are doubling their revenues every year! They are now a two-time Inc. 5000 company.Today you'll also hear about how he is managing his team through this tremendous growth and what he's learned along the way. Plus he has a very special story to share on the topic of immigration and DACA. Listen in for that and more on this edition of CTO Studio. In this episode, you’ll hear: How has being CTO changed things for him?Does he still see himself as a developer?Where did he had to grow the most after becoming CTO?Why does his team choose their own tools?How did switching to Slack and Airtable help his team?And so much more!We begin our conversation with a discussion about Studio 3: Studio 3 is a all-encompassing marketing company. They specialize in digital marketing, but also do print, and other media. If you have an idea and you bring it to them they can give you a product.Prior to joining the agency, he was going to college and was working at the university as a math mentor. He was on break and he wanted to start programming. He went out on Christmas Eve and decided to try to get a job in the field. He sent out a bunch of resumes through Craigslist and that is how he landed at Studio 3!Right away they threw him into a project and had him build a web site. He started at a time before mobile responsiveness was really big, but he had them build for that and he changed a few other technologies he knew would be helpful. After a year or so he became lead developer and the company kept growing. The company now employees sixty employees, ten of which are engineers.What about becoming CTO - how did that transpire? It all started during a meeting he had with HR, the person he was meeting with asked him where he saw himself in five years. He replied honestly telling her he saw himself as CTO of this company in 5 years.It turns out the CEO of the company at the time was thinking the same thing. The CEO took him to lunch a week later and he told Jesus he wanted to make him CTO. A few months later he became CTO.He says now that he is CTO it hasn't changed much for him, hierarchies are non-existent to him. The main difference is now he is involved in the company's strategy, and that is something he is still learning about.What about his nomination for 2018 CTO of the year by the Los Angeles Business Journal - has that changed anything for him? It was amazing, he says he felt like he didn't belong! He was among big name CTOs: the CTO of the LA Clippers, Los Angeles' CTO, Playboy's CTO, Verizon's CTO and Disney's CTO, etc. At the dinner for the nominees he sat at a table with LA's CTO and he had a great conversation with the Clippers' CTO. He was nominated again for 2019!Also on today’s CTO Studio, we dig into his actual experiences as CTO a bit more, I asked him to share the first obstacle he had while CTO.  One of the first tasks he was given was to build a reporting platform. His background is primarily building web sites, which were mainly static or perhaps had a few business logic components involved but not too many. A reporting platform on the other hand is a full-on MVC application!  In addition to being the CTO, he was also a developer so there were a lot of technologies he had to grasp very quickly so he could build an MVP. After many iterations and a year later, they finally had a working system  that was useful for the companySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

If you were considering joining a start-up as their CTO would you have a formula to evaluate its potential? Our guest on today’s CTO Studio does and it stems from his years as a CTO, an advisor and mentor in the field.Sergey Sundukovskiy is the CTO, CPO, co-founder of Raken. He's also a mentor, advisor and father of three. Sergey and I have a great conversation about the formula for evaluating start ups and how to manage and keep healthy development teams. Join us as we dive into those subjects and more on this episode of CTO Studio. In this episode, you’ll hear:What is the benefit of being both CTO and CPO (Chief Product Officer)?What are the two sources for ideas?How has their product changed since its inception?Why compromise doesn't always work to solve disagreements.Should all CTOs mentor?And so much more! We start with a discussion about Raken: what it is and who it serves. Raken is a field management solution. They serve the construction industry by helping supervisors and job foremen keep track of what is going on on the construction site. So often the people in charge realize there is a problem when the job is running behind schedule and off track, Raken helps avoid that scenario.Raken helps construction companies to keep the construction projects on time and on target through daily documentation and labor/project insights, as well as serving as a Worker Time Management app for payroll purposes. Sergey explains what it does in more detail: If you have ever been on a job construction site you know jobs are broken down into roughly 3 separate buckets. Prep time is one bucket, the second bucket is the actual build stage of the project and the last bucket is the transition stage when you are completing the project. They primarily serve the building stage and the transition stage. In the building phase you need to be sure you are on time and things don't need to be adjusted.Basically Raken is project management software for the construction industry projects focused on field management tools. Normally, construction projects are driven by the management office in the office/field trailer and then what happens on the job site. The project gets conceived in the office and planned in the office. Raken's approach is to service the field. They serve the field workers so the field workers can keep track of activities, and to do so in a simple and easy-to-use manner.Raken helps Superintendents to document what is being done as it is being done, rather than having two hours they would normally have to use at the end of the day to make note of the progress on the job.Sergey says they are staying focused on the construction industry and not branching out right now. I was curious to know how Raken came about - where and how did he get the idea?He was a late stage co-founder for the company so the idea wasn't his. But in general ideas come from two different sources. The first is industry insiders who have been working in their field forever and eventually start their own business to do a particular thing in a better way.The second source is industry outsiders who see a better way to do something that others haven't seen.Their co-founder, Kyle, fell into the second category: he decided to create Raken after recognizing that the construction industry lacked a reporting tech solution that could alleviate major pain points. So Kyle set out to fix that with Raken.As a CTO with a rich history in software development, management leadership and previous CTO roles, how did Sergey know he wanted to join Raken? He met Kyle about a year into his 2-year earnout from his previous company. At that point, Sergey knew he wanted to join another start up. He knew he had three choices: he could form his own start up, join an existiSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

Have you ever found yourself working on a side project because you thought you had to and not because you wanted to? Our guest for this episode of CTO Studio has and he also found out why it’s okay not to finish that side project.Evan Phoenix is the lead engineer on the private Terraform enterprise  at Hashi Corp, and the Director of Ruby Central. He’s also been a CEO of a start up and regularly finds time to try out side gigs of his own.Today he tells us how he carves out the time for fun engineering projects and why sometimes it’s okay not to finish those side projects. You’ll hear from Evan on those topics and more on today’s CTO Studio.In this episode, you’ll hear:Is it okay to do something even if you think you are not the right person for the job?Why everything we do doesn't have to become a business.What is the "for market" challenge?Why does he prefer Go over Rust and C++?How to put the fun back in your side projects.And so much more! We start off by talking about Evan's scariest childhood movie and how we met at a Ruby conference and became friends. Then we segue into talking about his current role at Hashi Corp: he is the lead engineer on the private Terraform enterprise.He came to that position via his previous start up, Vectra. Vectra eventually became a logging SaaS and Evan and his team worked to build it for 8 or 9 months before their financial runway was depleted. At that point, Evan had to figure out what to do next. After struggling with the decision, Evan realized he didn't like being a CEO and so they decided to close Vectra. Along the way, he and his team had been talking to Hashi Corp about what they were doing. When Vectra closed Hashi Corp invited them to come over and work there.For Evan it was the best case scenario. He didn't like being a CEO, but he liked working on interesting problems and have some say in what he worked on. Hashi Corp is the perfect place that allows him to do both.I was curious when he first thought of being the founder of his own company, and why that interested him. Evan explains he wanted what he thinks every founder thinks they are getting when they start their own company: control to do whatever they want to do. They make all the decisions. If they don't want to do something then they don't do it, and vice versa.But the reality changes when the business involves more than just you or you and another person. If you take on investors you no longer have complete control. In Evan's case his family and friends invested in his business so not your typical investors, but he was still aware of risking other people's money. And that awareness changed and altered his own risk tolerance.So now he gets to enjoy his work at Hashi Corp and have fun projects on the side. He says he start a new project every couple of weeks and he does it for him. We go on to talk about engineering simply for the sake of enjoyment, before we discuss his time at Living Social and Splice.We also talk about how he manages his time as a family man with a wife and two daughters: when does he work on his personal projects? He tries to be kind to himself and he works on them when he has the time.In the past, he would've beaten himself up for not getting more done on something, but now he doesn't. Instead, he talks to his wife and tells her he wants to work on something. She tells him she wants to do her own thing and then they do their own thing in the evenings.On the weekends his daughters still have nap times so when they nap he works on his projects. But sometimes he uses those two hours to watch a TV show or do something - and he is now kind to himself about it and just does what he wants. If he wants to work on his project then he does; if he wants to watch Netflix then he does.We then taSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

There’s a lot happening in the world of cloud services today and Jonathan LaCour of Mission is here to tell us all about it. Jonathan is CTO of Mission, a managed cloud consulting service based in Los Angeles.On today’s episode of CTO Studio, Jonathan and I talk about all the issues related to cloud and cloud migration and owning your own data. Be sure to listen in to this fascinating conversation on today's CTO Studio. In this episode, you’ll hear:Why doesn't it work to just throw people at a problem?Why the CTO and the product team ultimately have the same goal.What is the most difficult thing for most technologists?What is the #1 most important value a CTO can hold?What do people ultimately value?And so much more!Mission helped sponsor our first CTO conference, the same conference at which Jonathan gave a talk. So it's fitting to actually we recorded this show from Mission’s headquarters with Jonathan. We start off by talking about Jonathan's journey, how he became the CTO at Mission and what they do there.Jonathan got into computing young, his dad was a Presybterian minister and also an engineer who went to Georgia Tech. His dad even worked on the space program, and has always been a technical kind of guy.In fact, Jonathan's dad would bring home his portable computer when Jonathan was little. This computer was a Mac Plus with a handle on it! And that's where Jonathan started to code: on that little Mac Plus. He started with HyperCard and Pascal and eventually C, etc.In high school he began writing code professionally and started working at an enterprise healthcare business. He went through a few acquisitions with them, including when they were bought by an enterprise document management business so he was heavily into enterprise in its early days.From there he did a hard right into startups and went into business with his sister and brother-in-law. They created a type of SaaS application in the photography space called ShootQ.They built out a cloud native app (back in the very early days of cloud) and grew ShootQ to become an industry standard, after which they sold it to a company in LA.Which is how Jonathan met Simon Anderson (the CEO of Mission). Simon was the CMO of the company who bought ShootQ before he became the CEO of DreamHost. Jonathan and his family moved from Atlanta to LA so he could take a role with DreamHost. He had 5 different titles in 7 years with them. In those 7 years he did a lot of different things including building out cloud infrastructure, engineering management, etc.When Simon became an entrepreneur-in-residence at a private equity firm out of Boston they worked together on a thesis for the managed cloud space, which is how they both ended up at Mission.Also on today's CTO Studio, he tells us why the firm chose Mission (formerly Reliam), how they expanded to a company of 100 people today over the course of a year and what they do at Mission presently.Honing in on that kind of growth in such a short period of time, I asked Jonathan to talk more about how his team has changed and evolved as it has grown. He explains that because they are a business that does a lot of professional services and consulting a lot of Mission's technical resources work on a team other than his team. His team represents the glue that holds things together. When he started it was just him so over time he has been pulling in people who are the best fit for what they are doing.I also asked him how to decide which cloud (or clouds) to be in and he says it is about picking the best tool for the job. It's like any other exploration a CTO will undertake so the way he helps people understand the hyperscale cloud providers is simple: ultimately you are looking for someone who is going to provide you with as many shoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

Joining us to explain how CTOs can best utilize recruiters is my friend and expert recruiter Kimberly Owen. Kimberly has been a recruiter for 23 years, starting in London then Silicon Valley during the first dotcom boom. Now she is based in southern California.On today's CTO Studio, we talk about what she's learned during those two decades as a recruiter in tech including why recruiters have a bad rap, what CTOs can do to make the most of their relationships with recruiters and what does the term "culture fit" actually mean?Listen in for the answers to those questions and much more on the topic of recruiting in the tech world today on this episode of CTO Studio.In this episode, you’ll hear:What was it like recruiting during the first dotcom boom?Why do recruiters get a bad rap?What language should you avoid when listing a job description?What is the proper format for a resume?How can CTOs improve their relationships with recruiters?And so much more!One of my first questions was when should a CTO stop using their networks and start using a recruiter like Kimberly? She says it depends on how quickly you need the product development to happen. How quickly are you bringing your product to market and what is the trade-off?Once you answer those questions then you can decide if recruiting is your best choice or if you should check with your network.If you are going to use your network, her advice is to be active with your social media presence. You should specify on LinkedIn what you are hiring for - especially those top positions. You should be advertising those roles. If you have an internal person who manages candidate flow they need to get an outreach campaign underway and that needs to include your own network.So after social media, what else? Kimberly says meet ups are an option but you need to know if these events are where people are asking for help and talking about vacancies and openings. If they are not then the meet ups won't help you.And how can CTOs work on their brand and their messaging to ensure they are attracting the right candidates?The job description is really important - she sees a lot of awful ones! Be sure to talk about the vision of your company and where you are going and what this person will contribute towards that vision coming to life. Candidates want a story. They want to know why do other people like working at the company, why would they want to work there and what life-changing things will they impact by being on the staff of this company.In summary, you should be capturing the story that includes the vision and the values of your company.Once you've done that be sure the job description is in the right places and having the right filters in place for whomever you enlist in your organization to sort through the candidates.And if you still can't find the right person then go to a recruiter like Kimberly!My nextSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com

Who better to help us understand the psychology of people in tech than a former engineer now licensed psychologist?! Joanie Connell is that very person and she is here to talk about the issues CTOs face in leading their teams.Joanie works with dev teams and technical teams on their communication. We talk about how she does that, what some of the common issues are regarding team communication in tech today and a whole lot more. Join us to hear more about the psychology of people in tech on today’s CTO Studio.In this episode, you’ll hear:What are the top challenges she sees regarding communication in tech today?Why it's important as a CTO to expand your communication toolkit.How can you deal with feeling triggered in the workplace?Why addressing uncomfortable feelings often brings people closer.What are tell tale signs you are too deep into the tech effect?And so much more!Before becoming a psychologist, Joanie was an engineer for eight years in Silicon Valley. She began as a data communications design engineer for Tandem computers. Tandem was one of the big computer companies back then right alongside HP and Apple.Tandem made mainframe computers and they had parallel processors (hence the name tandem) for everything so they would never go down. One of their biggest clients was the New York Stock Exchange. She did data communications which meant she helped mainframes communicate with modems to other computers.I asked Joanie how she made the switch to psychology - what happened that convinced her to work with the people side of tech? Joanie recalls she had gone into engineering because she thought it was a good stable job with a good income. She didn't want to be a millionaire, she just wanted a good living.People had always interested in her but it became obvious when the other engineers were so into their work they would be debugging til 2am, and she couldn't wait to leave. She realized then that the work wasn't satisfying and she felt stagnant in her work.One story she recalls is a time when there were 12 in their group and they had a manager who they met with once a month. They'd get into the conference room and you could feel the tension because no one wanted to be there. The manager would go around the room and each person had to update on their project. By person #12 everyone would be ready to leave. When that last person finished it was like school was out and everyone would run out of the room!She saw the people she was with didn't want to be around other people and they didn't have the skills to work with others, either. Engineers are trained to design, debug and code and they are not trained on how to interact with others. Joanie realized this could be a space in which she could make a difference; she coulod help engineers and other tech people communicate better.To bring more of her skills to the people side of the working world, she tried marketing and then consulting. But eventually she decided to go back to graduate school because she would find herself being pushed back into engineering roles and more technical positions. She realized she would have to re-specialize so people would see beyond her engineering background.But before making the leap, she took some night classes in Psychology to be sure this was the route she wanted to go down. And before becoming a psychologist, she considered being a therapist or counselor. A volunteer experience on a hotline convinced her otherwise, so she opted for social psychology with an emphasis on organizations and the workplace.After a few years of working for a consulting firm and teaching at university, she formed Flexible Work Solutions. Her company provides assessment for leaders and teams of people, her personal niche is with technical people.What types of scenarios does shSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ctopod.com