Become The Engineer Everyone Wants to Work With

Hi, in today's video you can expect to watch a short lesson that we did together with John Cricket last year. You learn all about how important it is to be a team player as an engineer and a great person to work with. We are defining the key points that make you a great engineer, and we also share what managers think of such engineers. Let's get straight into it. All right, hi everyone and welcome to the Become the Engineer Everyone Wants to Work With Lightning session. I'm I'm always curious about this kind of events and I'm always questioning like from which countries are you guys calling from. So make sure to put your country or your city in the chat so we know from where you're calling from. I'm calling from Slovenia and John, I believe you're calling from England, right?

Yep, that's correct.

All right, awesome. I see people from India. I see Fernando from Florida, United States, the United States, Pakistan, Turkey. Awesome, great, great group of people. West Africa, awesome, amazing. All right, um, we will obviously have some more people joining in the next couple of minutes, so before we dive into the topic, I would just like to do a quick introduction of myself. My name is Gregor Ojstersek, I am the CTO, and I am also an author of the newsletter called Engineering Leadership, where I help everyone to become great engineering leaders. I have over 10 years experience both as an engineer and also as an engineering leader. Um, and with me today is, is John. John, would you say a few words about yourself?

Hi, I'm John. Um, I've led engineering teams, been an engineer, and currently I'm spending most of my time writing the newsletters, coding challenges, helping people level up their coding and development skills, helping them level up the leadership and soft skills. I've been doing software engineering for nearly 30 years now.

Awesome. I've known John for a couple of years now, and I know he's doing a lot of great stuff, especially with coding challenges. So make sure to check that out. We will have the link later. So let's get to the agenda. What are we going to talk about today? First, we're going to go through a quick story of why becoming a great engineer to work with is very important. Then we will talk about why you should become someone that is great to work with, a great person to work with, how to become such a person, how managers think of such engineers. And also we will have a bonus section, how to become a credible engineer. So the one, the one side is you want to make sure that others perceive you in a great way, and you want to also make sure that you build up your skills. We will also have an exercise included, which you can, you know, you can take it and solve it after this session. The key idea is that you can immediately apply all of the learnings that we will talk about here today with John and finish the exercise, and you can immediately apply that in your own position, in your own role. And we will also have a Q&A at the end, so make sure to post your questions in the chat. Make sure to also upvote if there's a great question that, that you like, that someone put it in there. Make sure to upvote it as well. We will have also a giveaway, so one of the people that will ask a question will also get selected and will receive a free t-shirt. We will select that person from the chat. Okay, so let's start with a quick story and Yeah, you know, when I started my career as an engineer, I always thought that I should be, you know, competing with others and not kind of share my knowledge with others. I wanted to hoard my knowledge to myself and I didn't want to share it with others. I don't know, like, looking back why I did this, but I wanted to learn everything myself on my own. And this brought me to the place where I didn't build such good relationships with my colleagues, and it hurt my progress overall. And, um, you know, then I realized that my progress would, would get a lot better if I would be, you know, collaborating with others, if I would be learning together with others, if I would not compete with them and instead collaborate and learn together and learn from each other's mistakes and so on. So I moved my focus from myself and, you know, from myself, my, my only my tasks and everything included with that, to more to the team level, more to the organizational level. So I started saying we a lot more instead of I, and that's where I saw a big progress in my career. I became an engineer that others wanted, wanted to work with. That was kind of like my, my eye-opener for me. How can I provide a lot more value to the team, to the overall company, and so on. So let's go to the next one is why should you become the engineer everyone wants to work with? Already from my story, you can find some things of why that's so important. But yeah, let me ask you, John, why should everyone listening become engineers everyone wants to work with them?

Well, software development these days is a team activity. We don't build anything of any significance on our own. So that means we've got to work with other people, and those people have got to want to work with us. And they're going to do that if we're somebody that people want to work with. We become that person that people want to work with because we're sharing knowledge, because we're nice to deal with, we're helpful, we're collaborative. If we don't, then it's going to be unpleasant and not very productive working with this, as your story showed, Gregor.

Yeah, 100%. I can't agree more. Software development is, is a team sport, right? And you can't build like a Facebook or, or let's call it some other complex software on your own because, I mean, you can code it, but when we talk about scale or when we talk about that kind of like big infrastructure and code base, You can't maintain that yourself. And if you're a great team player, then you're much more valuable to the team, to the overall company. And yeah, I just want to also highlight what John mentioned is you have much, much greater time at work if you're a person that others like to work with. You build good relationships with your fellow engineers. And also managers value such engineers, you know, a lot. Me personally, I like to work with engineers that I know that they come with that positive attitude, they come with being motivated, driven, and I know they're going to kind of inspire others to be the same. So that's really, really important to keep in mind. Not just technical skills, also like, hey, attitude and mindset, that's very important. I almost always hire solely for attitude and mindset. I look at technical skills that are very important, but attitude and mindset, that's what's, what is really, really important to me. So don't forget about that part as well. So John, you also created the LinkedIn post where you mentioned that being easy to work with is an ultimate career hack. Why would you say that that is true?

Because everything we do, as we said, it's working with people. So whether you're talking to that recruiter and getting actually to that first stage interview of your next role, whether you're talking in the interview, every single stage from that application through to actually getting the role, you're dealing with people and they have to want to work with you. They have to believe that you have the right skills. They have to believe you have the right attitude and aptitude, as you said, and that's all about being easy to work with, being an effective communicator. You can be a firm person, but still a nice person, and you can help people, and you can level them up, you can share your knowledge. And all that attracts good people to working with you, and attracts people to want to work with you. So, if you're a manager, you might have a team follow you to other opportunities. If you're an individual contributor, you'll get sought out to come speak at conferences, to get involved in things, to do things like this. And ultimately to work with people. So it opens up lots of new opportunities, as we've both found over the last couple years, collaborating with other people and with each other.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with this. You know, we, we both met when we started posting on LinkedIn, and yeah, without, without like our collaboration, we wouldn't like be, be doing this together, like this, this presentation as well together. So, um, yeah, that's also kind of sums up like my first experience with content creation as well. Like, first 6 months just posting on LinkedIn and not communicating with anyone. Also with my newsletter as well, just doing a weekly newsletter and leave it at that and don't kind of like collaborate with other people that are on the same space. The results wasn't as good as they are right now when, you know, We are collaborating a lot more with people that are on the same path as we are. All right, so I believe you also have some tips for all of the listeners to how to become great engineers to work with. What would you say, like, are the top tips from your side for all of the engineers that what they can do today and they can already implement tomorrow to become like a better, better engineers to work with?

I think the absolute first one above all of these is be curious, be interested in other people. It's far easier to build relationships with people if you're interested in them. So learn people's names, find out about what they're interested in, find out what they care about, understand their values, understand their concerns, and that enables you then to do the other things. You can appreciate what they're interested in, you can appreciate them for who they are, you can get to know them and build that relationship, and that then builds you trust so you can then develop some influence with people. Again, if you then do things like criticize and complain, you undermine that trust. And that trust is so important because at some point, whenever, as you progress your career, it becomes less and less about technical skills and more about your ability to influence and have a bigger impact. So all that trust, all that empathy, all those personal relationships and network you've built, by being somebody who's good to work with gives you much more leverage and I actually have a much bigger impact, right?

Um, I always say like the first thing that you should do when you get to, to, uh, let's say, let's call it like a new project or a new team, or you take on a new role, always start building good relationships as soon as possible. Um, that's, that, that's very important because that's gonna make it so easy for, for you to collaborate effectively with your team, with your stakeholders, with your manager, with your colleagues. And you can already start doing that before you even get to the role, right? Before you even start your project, you can already like start building a relationship via contacting directly people on LinkedIn. And you can already start, hey, I'm excited to be working with you, looking forward to collaborate. That would already kind of like put you in a good position where you start, you already know some people. And then once you get into the role, to the project, to the team, you, you're ready, you know, you have that foundation already set and you then just keep nurturing it to be better and better. And then, you know, just what John said, try to be interested in others and try to kind of try to predict or try to solve other people's problems because everyone has issues, everyone has problems, everyone has difficulties. And if you can be that person that can predict like what is the one thing that is burning for your colleague, that person, and if you can help with resolving that, that person is going to be very appreciative that you have done that. So yeah, be a team player, make others around you better, taking ownership and responsibility, that's very important. If you get assigned a task, If you get assigned a certain project, make sure to, you know, not just do what's assigned to you, but you want to make sure that you finish it with good quality, you finish it timely, you showcase yourself as a professional that knows what they're doing. And as I mentioned in the story, move focus from yourself only to we as a team. Always do what's the best for the team. That's very important. Offer help when you see someone in need. That's going to go a long way. That person is going to be very appreciative if you do that. And one thing is very important that I didn't quite understand it until I was very close to burning out. That was to— you need to have good work-life balance. We are all doing this for the long run. You can't just, you know, be working 24/7 or think about work 24/7 because you need some time to recharge as well. And you need that time to kind of stop thinking about work because we are all doing this for, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. And that's how we can build consistency. Doing good work long term is a lot better than doing great work for a short period of time. And then we are close to burning out. And yeah, also take a look at John's top tips as well. Don't criticize, don't complain. Is there something like you would point out as one of your top tips that really makes like a big impact, John?

I would re-emphasize that curiosity again, because if you take that curiosity and apply it to all these, rather than criticizing or complaining, you can start by asking questions. Why did you do it? Start understanding their approach and start understanding their behavior. And again, when that comes to correcting people, instead of jumping in with, you did this wrong, you can say, why did you do that? What was the thought process that was going? And then you can draw that out and have some learnings from it and make it a constructive discussion and help them develop rather than criticizing them. And again, that curiosity can make you step back and think a little bit more. Do I have to win this argument? Does it really matter? So in that case, we can focus on what matters, right?

Right. I, I like to say, if you're trying to win an argument, then we have already lost as a team, uh, you know, because, uh, if someone is winning, that means someone is losing. And if someone is losing, we are all losing as a team together. Um, that, that's kind of how it is, and that's the reality, because, um You really want to have everyone working together in a team towards the same goal and not like everyone individually working towards being and doing the most themselves and don't care what others are doing. The goal is that we as a team are progressing towards and being the best versions, best version of the team that we can be and providing value, value to the business. So yeah, very, very, very important and great that you pointed this out. And this is also kind of a great segue to code reviews because we as engineers, we are doing code reviews regularly. And I've been there. I'm sure, John, you've been there as well and some others here as well that sometimes you're passionate about certain solutions and we try to be smart on code reviews and say, no, this is the way to go. No, you should do it like this. You should do it like that because We know, and maybe it's also our preference, but we should always consider like, how would we feel if we would be on the other side, if we would be the author of the code change, of the PR, and then we would get like someone coming in and saying, no, this is not the way, you should do it like this. I can't believe you did it like this or something like that, right? And you know, that may be the first instinct that we may do, but it's not the way to go. As you said, John, asking questions is the way to go, trying to understand the why behind it, why some code change has been done by that person, and try to lean into curiosity, as John mentioned. Understanding the why is going to be one of the biggest allies. For you in your engineering career. That doesn't go only on PRs, code reviews. That goes to making architectural decisions, that goes to making technical decisions, that go to making technical specifications. You need to understand why we are building this in the first place, then you can actually start thinking about technical solutions. So always keep this in mind. Don't try to, you know, try to do strong opinionated statements on code reviews. But rather ask, lean into curiosity and ask, ask for why and try to understand the why behind it.

And by asking questions as well, we help build trust. People feel heard, people feel that you value their opinion, you value what they have to say. So that trust will make it a lot easier to work with them in future, a lot easier to sway them to your opinion when you do really feel that it matters.

Yeah, 100%. If you try to be approach to someone negatively, they will remember that, and it will be hard to get into a good healthy relationship later. So yeah, really, really good point. All right, let's talk about managers. What do managers think about such engineers? And yeah, you know, I'll say also, I'll say my part after you, John. So why do you think, you know, I mean, as a manager, How do you feel about engineers that are great to work with? Would you promote them first?

Yeah, as we said before, as you go up the ranks in seniority and you move through your career, you're going to spend more and more time trying to work with other people, whether that's customers, product owners, project managers, and understand their requirements. You're going to spend more time with other parts of the business and trying to get them aligned on things. So You need enough technical skills to do that, but you absolutely need the people skills and the soft skills to be able to do that, to actually create that alignment, to have that influence. If you're not easy to work with and you're not somebody that other people in the business can work with, you will fail in that role. And promoting you to that role will, quite frankly, be cruel to you. It will do you a disservice, put you in an uncomfortable position. So, yeah. Technical skills at some point become a hygiene level. As long as they're good enough, it doesn't matter. And what becomes far more important is those people and soft skills, and that you are easy to work with.

Yeah, well said, John. And yeah, you know, also like myself as a manager, I mean, that may sound selfish, but I look for people, I look to promote people that can solve my problems in the best way possible. And that's the truth, right? That's how a lot of people, a lot of managers are looking at things. And, you know, I don't want to promote a person because, I mean, they have like 10 years experience or 15 years experience, but, you know, they are providing the impact and they are solving business problems. They're solving the actual problems for the team, for the organization. And this is also very important to keep in mind to get promoted to any lead roles. Because as soon as you get promoted to lead roles, you try to, you, you, you become a kind of, uh, not an authority figure, but you become an influence for others. And, uh, I'm always looking for people that are great to work with, that are, um, that have the great attitude and mindset. And also obviously technical skills are, are important, but attitude and mindset is the most important because those people are going to have the right organization, not organization, the right set of skills. And they're going to inspire others to be quite similar as well. And you're looking for those people, that those kind of people. And yeah, if I can delegate a certain problem to one person and I just know they're going to take care of it, they're going to solve it timely with the correct quality, they're going to get others involved in the team as well, they're going to make sure that everyone also understands what we are doing, they're going to share their knowledge, Those kind of people are one of the biggest assets that you can have inside a team. So I'm certainly looking for such skills. They are good. Those are the people that get promoted first. All right, let's talk about credibility. And we talked about a lot about, you know, how people perceive you. And attitude and mindset is very important for how people are perceiving you. You need to be perceived in a good way as a responsible, with great attitude, great team player. Great mindset, but what about building up your skills? What would you say, John, like how would you recommend like to an engineer to build up their skills?

So building up your skills in this area really is to focus on how do you communicate effectively. If you want to enhance your credibility, you need to better tell people what you did, why you did it, and how it was beneficial, what was the impact. We like to think as software engineers, if we do good work, it'll speak for itself. The reality is, if we do good work, it'll mostly go unnoticed. So you have to take on an element of self-promotion. And we don't want to sound like estate agents or used car salesmen. We want to do that in a nice, authentic, positive way. So you need to build that sense where people trust you, where people are interested in hearing what you say, people enjoy talking to you. And then you can promote what you did and you can do it in a nice way where you're saying, hey, we did this thing. It was great. It had this impact. And then you can take that a bit further and share the knowledge, share the learning with other people in the organization. Again, start building your credibility, building your personal brand within the company, and become known as somebody that people want to work with because you're going to level up their knowledge, you're going to solve problems, and you're going to share how you did that, and you're going to lift up those around you.

Yeah, personal brand is a big thing, and that doesn't only— that can be expanded also outside of your organization or of your company as well. That can be expanded into, you into other parts like, you know, writing a blog, writing a posting on LinkedIn, and that goes a long way. That gives you just addition to your credibility. And the more, the more credible you are as an engineer, as a person, easier you're going to get the buy-in from the stakeholders, easier it's going to be for you to get a promotion, easier it's going to be for you to kind of like inspire others to be on the same path and also get them to buy into certain things. My recommendation is to be an expert in one thing and be good in a lot of others. For example, if you're a front-end developer, be an expert in front-end technologies and then be good in a lot of other things like quality assurance, backend, product management, understanding the product, understanding the business. Try to build that kind of a breadth of knowledge that's going to help you that you can be going deep into details on the front-end development and then you can talk about a lot of others other topics. And yeah, as I mentioned, the coding challenges from John are really great way to build up kind of like that expertise on certain, on certain particular, let's call it the programming language. Um, and definitely take a look at that. And a big thing, a big kind of suggestion for me is also take on as many different projects as possible, many different roles, many different teams. Because, for example, freelance work for me has been one of the biggest things for my growth in my career because while, while having a full-time job, I also worked on different projects. I think I finished around 50, 50 projects overall, and that was like different mobile applications, desktop applications, web applications, websites. That kind of gave me a lot of experience that I wouldn't have if I would just be working full-time. So that, that was really one of the biggest things for And here we go also with the exercise. So here is a QR code that you can scan. This is something that you can do later after this session. Let me also just open here really quickly. So I will share this on the chat and you can make sure to bookmark this and you can immediately apply some of the things that we have been talking about here. And you can apply it in your case. So first thing what you want to do is you want to list up your skills that you have and you want to mark where you are an expert. And if you think that you're an expert in 6, 7, 8 different programming languages, then you're doing something wrong, right? You should be an expert either on in one or maximum two of them. You can't be an expert in all of them. And then there's also a column, how can I improve here? That's one thing you want to kind of build up your skills. And another, another thing is improve the way people perceive you. That's, that's very important. Make sure to go through all of this and write down where you can get better in every particular aspect. That's going to really help you to, to like have actionable goals, actionable steps for you, for you to improve in, in this area. And trust me, how people perceive you is 50%, like the importance of credibility. You, you may be surprised how important is that someone has a good first opinion about yourself. That's, that's very important. So yeah, make sure to, to go through it, mark this exercise and go through it later. Okay, we are getting close to the Q&A session. So I see a lot of good questions here. So that's really awesome. Make sure to also point out if there's any more questions, we will have 5 to 10 minutes to go through questions. We will go a little bit more longer. So yeah, key takeaways are be someone that you love to work with. That's, that's very important. Keep, keep this in mind. Think about who is someone that you would love to work with and be that person. Don't compete with others, collaborate instead. That's going to make it so much easier for you to progress in your career. It's going to be much, much more enjoyable. You will be, you will build great relationships with others. And credibility is a combination, not only your technical skills, not only your skill set, but also how people perceive you. You want to be perceived in a good way. You want that people have good opinion about you. And we also, in my course called Senior Engineer to Lead, Grow, and Thrive in the Role, this is something that we dive very deep into and we go into different specifics on what makes you a great engineer, what makes you a great person to work with, and what specific things you need to do in order to grow to a lead role. And this, what we are talking today, today is one of the important things that you need to do, but there are a lot of other things that you need to do. So we have an upcoming cohort on September 10th, that's in 5 days, and then another one is in, in November. You can scan the QR code or you can also check it out on this URL. Okay, so that's, that's all from us. Now it's, now it's your turn. Let's go to the Q&A. We also need to select one of the questions to be selected as the one who is getting a free t-shirt. And I see one question has two hearts in it. So how do you balance being technically strong with being approachable and helpful to the team members? What do you think, John?

I think that this is something that has to change over time. So when you're at the beginning of your career, or you're starting off in a very technical role, focus entirely on the technical skills, focus on getting that baseline of skill that you need, build that up. Then as you get more settled in the role, as you get more comfortable in the technology, or as you progress and move up, you need to increase that balance, increase the amount that balance is tipped towards the people and social skills and about being helpful and being approachable. So, you know, perhaps as you get to senior, it's getting more 50/50. As you go to staff or engineering manager, it's going to bounce, you know, more to the people and the influencing and the credibility side. So maybe at staff, we might say it's about 60% on the people and soft skills. Engineering manager is going to be more, more like 75%. If you progress to director and then above that, again, it's going to be getting close to 90, 95% of people in soft skills. If you go that way. You stay more the technical route, it's maybe going to get up to 80, 90%, depending which way you go. The balance is going to change.

Yeah. Well, well said. I would just add that, you know, being technically strong and being approachable is not mutually exclusive. You can be both, you know, because the best engineers I work with are the ones that are approachable and are the ones that are helping a lot of others to become better. You know, if you make others better, like, if you make 10 people better by 20%, you're gonna, you're gonna get, you're gonna deliver a lot more value than if you're just getting better yourself. So it's not mutually exclusive. You need to have like a mindset that you want to help others. You need to have that, that kind of a thing in mind that you are here to provide value to others. That's how you provide the most value to the company, to the organization. That kind of mentality is really important. And that, that is not mutually exclusive. Build, build, become strong technically and share knowledge, share that, that strong technical skills with others. And while sharing this, you will also become stronger because when you teach others about certain things, you also actually become better and you cement this particular knowledge in yourself. So yeah, make sure to do that. Uh, Manish, thanks, thanks for this question. Please, um, please provide LinkedIn, your LinkedIn, uh, link in the chat, and I will contact you, and you're gonna get a free t-shirt sent to you. That was a really great question. Uh, let's get to the, uh, to, to another, to another question. Have you or anyone you know has ever experienced betrayal trauma? Or negativity from toxic workplace damaging your career? If yes, please share your perspective. It will be great inspiration for me. Thanks. John, maybe you have such experience?

Um, I have seen this in the workplace. Um, I don't want to bore you with a whole story, although traumatize you perhaps with a whole story. Um, but I did make the mistake once of taking on a role a fairly senior role in an organization where it was clear at the interview there were challenges and there were definitely some toxicity. And that really became apparent at the end of my first week as I was walking home and my new boss phoned me up and proceeded to swear at me and tell me what a many lewd words, completely incompetent idiot I was. And that was a horrible place, and for some reason I stuck it out for several months before I left. My advice for that is if you're in that kind of environment and you have the choice in any way, leave it immediately. It is not worth it for your sanity. It's not worth it for your career. It will traumatize you and be unpleasant, and you know, it'll make you feel bad for a while. It just isn't worth it. Walk away as soon as you can.

Yeah, I would also share my experience. When I was a student, I had a job, and I had a horrible boss, and she was always very, very negative to me and always saying to me, um, if you don't get better, you're gonna get fired, or something like that. And, uh, it was quite, quite a bad experience. And I was there for about a couple of weeks, and after that I, I went to the HR person and I said, well, what's happening? And I also then resigned from, from this particular role., and I found a new role. Um, and, um, you know, you, you, you need to find a new role as soon as, as soon as possible if that's, that happens. But also you need to have that kind of a mentality of yourself that, um, they are losing you because they are, they are like that. You need to have like a good— you need to value yourself, and you need to always look at it from perspective of, okay, I bring a lot of value to the company. If they don't kind of like, you know, if they don't value me here, that's unfortunate for them. Other company, other organization is going to value and get value a lot more. So yeah, you know, just get back, have that positive mindset no matter what happens. That's always the way to go. Always look at things half glass half full and always take everything as a learning experience because that experience that I had told me that how, how a bad, let's call it a bad manager looks like. And then I, I understood that, and I valued when I had a good manager. So, uh, you know, every experience is a good experience. Always, always take it like that. Um, let's go to the next one. How can I secure opportunities to undertake impactful work from my manager or upper management? How can I secure opportunities to undertake impactful work Yes, you know, you need to, you need to have your eyes wide open on impact, and you need to, you need to find, find ways to, you know, ask a lot of questions to, to not only your colleagues inside the team, other engineers, but also your product manager, designer, other business people, let's call it compliance managers, sales, customer support. Always be curious, what is the, the, the biggest problem currently for the, for the business, for the company. Try to figure that out and try to suggest and propose, propose things. Don't wait for things to come to you, but you, you are the one who are striving to getting things and trying to, to, to find out what's going to be the most impactful. Um, John, would you, would you add something to it, to this?

Yeah, the second part of that really is make sure you understand your domain. So When you go along and have a meeting with your product owner, your product manager, whatever, and they say, we need to add this feature, say, you know, great, just curious, I'd like to know why we're adding this feature, what's the benefit, how will it help the customer? So don't overdo it perhaps, but be interested, be interested in why you're adding the features, what the impact is, what the customer value is, and why things are priority for the business. Too many of us as software engineers don't ask those questions. So it's normally appreciated when we do, and it helps people think through, and it helps you then get that feel for what's going to have an impact.

All right, we can have one more question. We are running out of time. John, you have maybe some favorite question in the chat?

I think there's one there about working with difficult and insecure people. I think I would try and reflect that, that when people are being difficult and when people are insecure, it's not about you. It's more often about them. So hard as it is, try not to take it personally. Try to view it as they're struggling with an issue and try maybe again, be curious, wonder what, what they're struggling with. Why is it that they're being difficult? And try and put yourself in their shoes, show some empathy, ask questions and be curious. And help them express that. And then maybe you can work past that and have a productive relationship with them. Sometimes it won't happen and it'll be toxic, and maybe you don't have to. But more often than not, they're just striking out because they're looking for help, they're looking for support. So if you can be that person that can bridge that gap, you can have a bigger impact, you can get rid of that uncomfortable situation for you.

Yeah, well Well said. You know, working in our industry, engineering industry, is really awesome because, you know, people are very— there's a lot of, let's call it, interesting characters, a lot of introverted people. And I had a pleasure to be working with a lot of different variety of people, and I kind of learned that you need to find ways to to connect with each other, and everyone has like different interests, everyone has like different wants. You want to find that mutual thing that kind of like combines it together and bonds it together. For example, like if one of the person, one of the people likes sports, if they want to talk, if they like to talk about basketball, you know, try to, try to sway the conversation in that particular way. And as soon as you find like that mutual mutual thing, it's going to get a lot easier for you to work with that person. It's going to get much easier for you to collaborate. And, you know, like, for example, but with insecure people, you want to be the one who is approaching them, you know, but you don't want to, like, overwhelm them with too many different things all at once. But you want to, you want to see that, okay, if you help them here, you, you make sure that they start, you know, they see that you're the one helping them, uh, with certain things and so on. Try to find like those, those small wins that can combine you guys together. And, um, yeah, building good relationships is very important. And there's many different characters all over the place, but that doesn't mean that we can't get along even if we have like different views in, in the world. Awesome. Well, thanks, thanks everyone for joining. Thanks, thanks. Thank you, John, for, for being part of this. It was really awesome hearing, hearing from you about your experience on this. And yeah, any last words from you, John?

Well, thank you for inviting me on, Gregor, and I hope it was useful for everybody. As you said, we're both on LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. Reach out if we can help with anything else.

Amazing. Yeah, reach out anytime. We have our LinkedIn and Twitter here as well. If you have any questions, yeah, make sure to reach out to us. And yeah, I wish you a great rest of the day. Thanks again for joining. And yeah, yeah, bye-bye.