THAT conference keynote - you are not alone

So the email I got says, my experiences with loneliness on the job search. One bullet point reads, there's going to be an amount of anxiety and loneliness about interviewing that can't really be helped. Got to go cold shower style with it and jump in. But outside of those interviews, my network has helped fill the void and made that shock more manageable. Not hearing back from recruiters, hiring managers, and people on LinkedIn is very isolating, especially after an interview. It sucks. I feel like I was in a vacuum until I started regularly attending meetups, livestreams, and conferences. I just added the conferences because we're at one. Having this network has minimized what type of anxiety I have to manageable levels. Another email I got about being alone. Hey Taylor, hope this email finds you well. I find myself feeling alone more these days even though I have so many people around. To be honest, there are times I feel better that way. It gives me time to see and feel me. However, at the end of '22, I was let go from my very first developer job, and that was a culture shock for me. Let me say imposter syndrome on crack kicked in. Took me a month to get over it, and at that point I made a decision to take a break. I have someone to—it says it is great to know I have someone to lean on who knows what you are going through. So pray for me as I seek to find a better fitting job. Another message I got on LinkedIn. Actually, this message. came from the live show I did with JD, who's sitting next to me. I'm at work, so I'm wearing white painter clothes at the moment, but my new John Wayne Gacy t-shirt is getting delivered today. I don't know who that is. If anyone would like to talk metal and code, I'm here for it. I'm always afraid to flex my metal knowledge while venturing into tech, but I'm happy to see I am not alone. Another gentleman says, it's one of the reasons I got into the tech community. The willingness to collaborate is so vast. It truly lets you know that you are not alone. Another guy, for those of you who know Garth Henson in Raleigh, so appreciate— he goes, I appreciate these day in the life posts, Taylor. I just posted yesterday about feeling a bit down in the job search. There is some solace in realizing we're not alone. I need to do a better job of just going for a walk and stepping away throughout the day. Also, definitely happy to see I'm not the only one consuming far too many cups of coffee. So here's the deal. First off, my name is Taylor Desseyn. I'm a recruiter. I will always be a recruiter, except I've kind of switched recently. I went from agency recruiter to now Working at gun.io. Is anybody familiar with gun.io in here? Raise your hand. We're the freelance part-time platform. Cool. We got a lot of work to do. So my goal in this talk is to let people know you're not alone. One of the things that I've realized throughout my career of 12 years of helping people, guiding people through the job search, and even hiring managers figure out how to hire and scale their teams the best they possibly can One thing they realize that— one thing I've realized for them is that they're alone. Some of the people that you idolize and look up to on Twitter that are here speaking, I have had multiple conversations with them that they are alone. So, this is something we deal with. I'm going to do a raise of hands real quick. I'm really big on audience participation. We're going to— Raise your hand if you're alone. We're going to get a little bit lighter-hearted here soon, I promise. But for those of you in here who feel comfortable raising your hand, how many of y'all have felt alone this past year? Raise your hand. Look around, look around. You're not alone. You can put your hands down. So, I want to thank Clark. I want to thank that conference for having me here. This is a dream come true, and I may cry a little bit and get emotional. I feel it already, so I'm going to try not to. It may be nerves or the lack of not having breakfast. But for me, back in 2018, I attended Scenic City Summit in Chattanooga. Anybody been to Scenic City City? Scenic City in Chattanooga? A few people. I watched Reed Evans. Reed Evans is out of Knoxville. He's a developer, and I saw him keynote, and I said, man, that's really cool. It is a dream of mine to always keynote. Well, fast forward a few years, and here I am, and this is a dream come true. I don't take this lightly. I'm not a developer. You can ask my wife. My problem-solving skills are really, really bad. I'm terrible at math. I took pre-algebra in college. So I feel like I don't belong here. I feel alone in a way. But one thing that I want to give props to every single individual in here and every single individual that has talked to me over the last few years in the tech community is I feel accepted by you all. Thank you. I've never met a group of people that are more kind, that are more accepting than you all in this room. And coming from somebody who's a recruiter, that means a lot. I know I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. I know I am. So I don't take this lightly. I don't take this lightly standing up on stage because at the end of the day, I'm the type of person that you hate at the end of the day, right? The cold DMs, the cold emails, not knowing the difference between Java and JavaScript. I get it. Actually, I still don't, I just lie really well now, right? Don't ask me. So, again, I'm thankful to be here. So, real quick, before we kind of dive in, I got a lot of other things to talk about today, but one of the things I like to do, if you've attended some of my talks, is I'm really big on networking. I'm really big on networking. I think a lot of people here talk to the same 3 people, I know I do, 'cause I'm an introvert. Anybody else in here an introvert? Raise your hand. Okay, seriously, more, some of y'all are just not being truthful with yourself. So real quick, open up your phones. If you came to my talk yesterday, A Manifesto in Hiring, I did this. Open up your phones. Everybody open up your phones. There's a lot of y'all just staring blankly at me. Go get some coffee. Let's wake up. Open up your phone, go to LinkedIn, and talk to the person to the left or right of you and connect with them real fast. I'm gonna give y'all 90 seconds. I'm not asking to share Social Security numbers. I'm not asking bank accounts. I'm not asking you to even have a conversation because let's be honest, no fruitful conversations happen before 9 AM. So, go ahead, connect with the people to the left of you, right of you real quick, say hey, and we'll, and we'll, we'll get back to this here in a second. Alright, we about done? A lot of talking. Hey, look, there's a lot of smiles going on. It's almost like y'all enjoy each other. Alright. So, there's gonna be multiple more times we're gonna do this, so don't worry if I'm cutting you off mid-conversation. We're gonna do this a few more times. So, I wanna kind of lay a little groundwork about myself a little bit more, just so you know where I'm coming from, to kind of set the stage of what we're gonna talk about today. But we're gonna talk about 3 major areas about not being alone. Not being alone in your career. or the job search, not being alone once you get the job. So many people think they're going to find a new job and be completely satisfied, and then they find themselves even more alone than they were. We're going to talk about that. Then we're going to wrap up today. We're kind of going to be talking to the leadership side of things, engineering leaders, people leaders. We're going to talk about how to make sure that your teams do not feel alone, something I'm incredibly passionate about. So, a little bit about me. I moved to Nashville, Tennessee in July of 2011. to pursue music. I'm a drummer, was a drummer, still am. I went to University of South Carolina, go Gamecocks! Any SEC football fans in here? Yep, all 2 of us. We're in Big Ten country right now, so I do realize, like, I'm not the target audience. So, I moved to Nashville to pursue music. Anybody else in here a musician? Guitar, drums, clarinet, flute, anything? No? OK, a few of y'all. So, I moved to Nashville. So, I grew up in the restaurant industry. My dad ran the Outback Steakhouse in my hometown for 25 years. I still say this to this day, don't me, Outback Steakhouse is the best chain restaurant there is with the bread, don't me. But don't eat the bloomin' onion, it'll tear your stomach up. So, I moved to Nashville to play music and serve tables, and I thought I was gonna make a killing because my dad, what I didn't realize is that in Nashville, nobody eats chain restaurants in Nashville. So, I was working 6 nights a week, I was a drummer, I didn't write music, so I wasn't playing music and I was losing money and I was working every single night and I felt alone. Like, there's gotta be something else out there. And as somebody who grew up in the restaurant industry, I knew about 9 to 5s, like, I knew they existed, but like, I didn't know how to find them. I didn't know how to find them. I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna take— and guess what, my idiot self, I was gonna take another nighttime job. I was like, again, not that smart, thankful for my wife that she married me. So, I was serving tables and I felt alone, I was losing money, and this kinda goes into the first part about not being alone in the job search. I started the network. I felt, 'cause I just started to reach out to people like, hey, who do you, like, who do you know? Because I didn't know anything. I didn't know this existed. I didn't know developers existed. I didn't know anything, so I felt very alone. So I started to ask, do you know anybody? Do you know anybody? So then there was this girl who I knew. We all moved up here together. We all moved to Nashville from the same town together. I was like, who do you know? She was like, well, I nanny for somebody. I was like, well, that person can afford a nanny. I want to do that. So, she was like, they're like, well, they're looking for a recruiter, and I was like, great, that sounds good, I'd love to be a recruiter. I had no idea what a recruiter was, so I showed up. A few days later, I got the job, and the rest is history. But one of the things that I see time and time again is we isolate ourselves when it comes to the job search. We close up, right? I can do this myself, I don't need anybody else, I'm good. When in actuality, you're not. Nobody's good. We as human beings are not meant to go through life alone. I know COVID has done a number on a lot of people, a lot of relationships. I know multiple relationships that have ended in divorce because of COVID I've had one of my— one of our guys, one of the guys that used to do our studio stuff in my hometown, He passed away because he OD'd during COVID COVID's been tough, and COVID has taught me one thing, that we're not supposed to go through this life alone. So, I want to encourage you today, and we'll get here in a second, to double down over the next 48 hours at this conference to network, because I will tell you this, I'm a huge introvert. If you find me outside of speaking, I don't like talking. This is where I do best, right here. I can talk and run my mouth, but at the end of the day, if you find me out there, I'm gonna be a shell of myself, I'm gonna be quiet. But I will tell you this, every single person I've met here, I'm like, man, I'm so happy I found another person to be friends with. And so, I encourage you after this talk and throughout the rest of your time at that conference, please network. Please talk to the person to the left or right of you. Please say hey to somebody, you know, and one of the things I talk about a lot is I had somebody come up to me the other day and go, hey, Taylor, like, I'm planning a 30-minute elevator pitch to meet somebody. I said, what? He goes, yeah, 30 minutes. I go, I don't want to talk to anybody for 30 minutes. Let's shorten that back a little bit. I think what we do is we get this, like, This— we are— one thing, and I'm going to talk about this, I'm going to talk about this here in a few minutes about counseling and my journey through counseling, because I will tell you this, there's not many dudes that talk about their journey about counseling. I want to talk about this to every gentleman in here that we need it. There's a lot of trauma as men to work through, and women, but I'm a man, so I'm going to talk to men. There's a lot of trauma that we have, and I will tell you this, the more that you can dig into counseling, and I'm going to get to this in a second about my journey, the more you're going to heal and the more you can connect with somebody because your heart becomes soft again. And that's my goal, again, to make your heart soft through networking. What you realize is you talk to people and you share your stories, and again, it doesn't have to be 30 minutes, right? Go up, shake somebody's hand, it's great to meet you, where are you from, what do you do, and move on. But connect with them on LinkedIn, right? The next thing I want to talk about where you don't feel alone, content. Anybody in here, if either like producing content, like puts out a ton of content. It's so funny, all the people that do content are all sitting with each other, right? A few of y'all. And the reason why, and I'll tell you this, the individuals who are sitting together creating content, you know why they're sitting together? 'Cause they've met each other online, they're not alone anymore. Content is one of the greatest things that's ever happened in my entire career. Now, I'm not gonna sit here, you're probably like, great, here comes another individual telling me to create content, become a content creator. I'm not, but I'm telling you it'll make you not feel alone in some ways. I am here because of content. I am here because I invited James Q. Quick on my podcast a year and a half ago, didn't even know the dude, just slid into his DMs, hey bro, I love you, can we hang out? Right? He said yes. A year later, he introduces me to Clark, and 6 months later, I'm here. All through content creation. When you put out— we live in a digital world, right? How many of y'all, like, just are on your phones a lot? Let's just be honest, raise of hands. Who's on their phones a lot? Everybody look around, everybody look around. Exactly. So, how do you reach the people in the room that are on their phones? You do it through content creation. It opens doors. I've met some amazing individuals. Because of content creation. Now, listen, you can go to one of James' talks, you can go to Morgan's talk, well, Morgan already had her talk yesterday about content creation, but there's a lot of talks around content creation. I would go to those talks and learn a little bit because I think moving forward that you need to start putting yourself out there on the internet. And as an introvert like myself, the easiest way for me to do that is to put myself out there on the internet. Now, again, I'm not gonna go into the nuts and bolts of it, but I encourage you to start telling your story online. You know, I caught up with Tejas just now, he goes, man, he goes, and again, like, I do these vlogs and like, it's mainly about like my dog and like, you know, some of the work I do. And Tejas comes up to me, he goes, man, he goes, I love your vlogs. Again, Tejas is like across the world, like he's not here, he's like over the seas, right? And he's like, man, I watch your vlogs, I love them, I love them. He goes, I know more about you because of your vlogs. And I will tell you this, I do those vlogs, I'm like, no one's gonna watch this. No, like, who is gonna watch me in my pajamas get ready for work, walk my dog, see my daughter, kiss my wife? Who cares? A lot of people care. And a lot of people want to know more about you. The problem is, is that we feel alone. We feel— we kind of retreat into ourselves. And what my— again, my goal for you for this talk is to not retreat. I think one of the biggest flexes, and I think one of the biggest ways that an individual can conquer a lot of insecurities, is to talk about out in the open. I have a big head. Let's address it. Me trying to get fitted with this mic just now was ridiculous. Right? Let's talk about it, right? I have trauma in my life around certain areas, right? Not speaking up, conflict resolution. I'm terrible at conflict. You'd be like, I hate you. I'd be like, all right, same. Bet, right? I'm terrible at it, but like, let's talk about it. Again, I want to encourage you. Now, I'm not asking— you're probably like, Taylor, are you really saying I got to talk to the person who left me about my childhood traumas? No, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is, this is such an amazing tool to start connecting with people and resonating with people. Also, next thing, community. I am a freak when it comes to community. That sounds a little weird. I'm really passionate about community. This is community. One thing I admire about Clark is his passion for people. Like, Clark and I, I've never met a man who cries more than me. I think Clark cries more than me, and I love that about him because I know his heart is soft. And you know why his heart is soft? It's because he pours into people. He hears their stories. He cares about every individual in this room. Like, Clark gives big dad vibes, right? I want to be like Clark when I grow up. You know what? Clark is fiercely, fiercely passionate about every single individual in here because community is where it's at. Woo! Right? Like, I can't tell you enough the type of individuals I've met and become friends with because I've been to meetups and coffee chats through Discords. I mean, I'll tell you this, there's probably 1,600 Discord channels all in this room that you could join. I got one, James Quick's got one, Danny Thompson's got one, Becca's got one. We all got Discord channels. Join one. Who in here is a part of a Discord or Slack channel? Raise your hand. That conference has one. I'm sorry, Clark, that, literally, that conference has one. Sorry, Clark. All that being said, I will tell you this, what I've seen as somebody in the market who has been very observant of, like, trends, especially when it comes to community, meetups have gone away. And I'll tell you this, there's a lot of conferences that have gone away, and I'm gonna say this, please keep supporting Clark, please keep supporting that conference, because I tell you what, It can go away like that. That was a terrible snap. That. I know so many conferences that have folded, that have not done stuff this year. This isn't a— this is not normal. This is not normal. I want you to know that. Like, if you've only been to that conference, like, this is one of the top conferences I've ever been to. Woo! So, this is not normal, and I think a lot of times human beings, we become so used to things, right? How many of y'all are married in here? Raise your hand. A lot of us, right? We can talk about that later, right? We can go through this life together being married, all of us. I don't know about you, but The thing that you fell in love with about your significant other is now the thing that annoys the living hell out of you. Let's be honest, right? Right? We become so used to the thing we fall in love with, and we start taking it for granted. And I will tell you this, communities, meetups, conferences, Slacks, Discords, they could go away tomorrow. I've seen conferences fold. I've seen communities fold. I've seen meetups. I mean, I don't know about y'all, but like the Nashville area, like there was like, I was talking to somebody, I was talking to Kevin Griffin the other day. He used to run Rev Conference that folded in Richmond, and he and I were talking at lunch last Monday, and I told him, I said, Nashville used to have like, I'm not kidding, probably 25 meetups in town. There's maybe 2 or 3 now. Gone, like that. And there's a lot of people sitting on the sidelines that are craving community, but they don't know where to get started. Come find me afterwards. Let's talk about how to get you into community. I think the first thing is join that conference Slack and be involved, and then take those conversations offline, right? Clark is so big on this, and so am I. I think networking online is amazing. And I think you can do it at scale. You can spend 15 minutes on the toilet every single morning liking and commenting people's statuses and not feeling alone, but if you are not meeting with them and trying to cultivate in-person relationships, you are gonna miss out. Because again, we're human beings. We're not made to go through this life alone. We need to be in community with the person to the left or right of you, right? Don't take for granted the person to the left or right of you, because again, all this could go away tomorrow. Amen. And then we're gonna be like, oh, no, but at the end of the day, you didn't put the work in and support the communities you're a part of. So, real quick, I want you, everyone stand up. I want you to pull out your phone again. I want you to ask the person to the left or right of you, if you could be an animal, what animal and why? Go. I want to be a dog. All right, real quick, does anybody wanna share? Let's just say this, anyone wanna share like, like a really weird animal you wanna be? Dinosaur! Which kind though, dude? Come on. All of them! Say what? Maka! I don't even know what that is, what is that? Okay, Eastern Australian animal, probably meant to kill you, isn't it? Oh, it just smiles? Hell yeah, I wanna be that animal. Alright, so the next thing we're gonna talk to you about, about not being alone in your job. How many people have taken a job and they think it's gonna solve all life's problems, and then you're 6 to 9 months into it and you're like, what have I done? Raise your hand. Look around. Everybody look around. You're not alone. You're not alone. So I'm going to talk about this. So how do you not be alone in your job? How many of y'all have a mentor-mentee program at your job? Raise your hand. Right. That is not a lot of hands. That is terrifying. All right. So if you're an engineering leader in here, get this done. Get this implemented. One of the ways That you cannot be alone in your job is mentor-mentees. I will tell you this, I could not be where I'm at in my career without the mentors that have poured into my life early on in my career. One of the ones, Scott Gordon, I wanna give him a shout out, he poured into me like crazy. And I would not be the type of person who cared. Scott Gordon was the original OG, if David Neal's in here, David Neal and Scott were BFFs. I would not be where I'm at today if it wasn't for Scott, because Scott told me as a recruiter to shut up, go to meetups, and don't say anything as a recruiter. And knowing my personality, I peacock a lot because that's who I am. Again, trauma. We can dive into that here in a second, right? I try to be somebody I'm not to try to get the attention of others. And Scott told me to shut my mouth. And what that did is that helped me be a part of your community, the engineering community, the tech community, at a really, really early stage in my career where most recruiters are the type of recruiters that show up to meetups, leave halfway through, and only give pizza. If you ever went to one of my meetups, I never gave pizza. So mentorship. Please find somebody, right? Now, let's talk about the mentor-mentee relationship because I think it's a little nuanced and I want to get this across. If you seek out a mentor, You have to drive that conversation. There's nothing more awkward than when somebody reaches out for me to mentor them and I go, alright, what are we gonna talk about? They go, I don't know. And I'm like, oh, well, come on now, right? You need to make sure you are driving that conversation, you are driving that relationship. But I will tell you this, who in here has benefited from having a mentor in their life? Raise your hand. Marriage, personal, look around, look around, look around, look at all the hands. Look at all the hands. That's what I'm saying. You're not alone. That allows you to not be alone in your job, in your career, in your personal life. Let's talk about personal therapy. Who in here goes to therapy? Raise your hand. It's not a lot of hands, y'all. Here's the deal. I'm gonna tell a little story about me, about hitting depression for the first time in my entire life in 2018. Like I said, I'm an introvert. And one of the things that I— I never went to counseling. You know, counseling for me was always something that really messed up people went to. I wasn't messed up, I was good. I'm good, floral shirts, vibing, we're good, right? 2018, I took a trip with my wife overseas, we came back, and the trip was amazing. It was awesome, awesome, love my wife, just, it's great. Exploring 2 and a half weeks in New Zealand. By the way, that entire country is about to blow up just any minute, it's kind of crazy. Got back into town and something snapped inside of me. I hated everything. I hated my wife, I was resentful towards her, I cried. I cried. Every single day. I didn't want to work. I didn't care about what I did anymore. I just didn't. And I didn't know what was going on. I didn't. I didn't know what was going on. I mean, I felt broken. I felt alone. If anybody has gone through depression in here, it is awful. I don't know how to describe it other than like you feel like you're never going to be happy again. And so, we were in marriage counseling. I'm a big fan of counseling and therapy and just talking about your feelings, because like I said, there's a lot the human heart takes on that we're not aware of. It chips away. Chip, chip, chip, chip, right? 3 years later, you have a chipped away heart that is cold and hard, and then you act that way towards others, right? So that happened to me. So I went into counseling in 2018. I worked on myself a ton. Found a lot about myself that I never even knew, and it sucked. Cried a lot. I'll never forget going to Christmas. I went to my parents' house in South Carolina. I went to Christmas, and I remember just crying in the kitchen, and even talking about it now gets me emotional. And my mom was like, what's wrong? And I was like, I feel broken. I feel broken. Feel alone. And I was like, man, I never want to feel this way again. And so, I'm encouraging y'all today, if you are going through some stuff, please seek help. And when I say help, just go talk to somebody. You know what? If you're like, you know what? Counselors are dumb. And listen, I've heard the argument, right? Counselors are dumb. It's a waste of money. They don't do anything. We just talk about the same thing over and over and over again. You know what? That may not be a bad thing. Because I've talked about sometimes the same topic 6 weeks in a row, and all of a sudden the 7th week, I figured it out. So again, I encourage you, if you feel alone in your current state right now, please seek out Please seek out counseling. It works. It has helped my heart, it has helped my marriage, it has helped me be a better dad, it has helped me be a better friend, but you know what? I'm nowhere near done. I actually have my counseling session this Friday at 10:30 AM, for those of you wondering. One-on-ones with your manager, this kind of goes with mentorship a little bit. Who in here has a one-on-one, like they meet consistently one-on-one, either weekly, monthly, whatever, like in your organization? All right, that's good. I like that. Love that. This is a wonderful way. I actually have my one-on-one with my new boss this afternoon that I'm going to do. It's so key. I think there's such a wonderful opportunity for you to feel connected with the individual who you're reporting to or you're working with. Also, too, let's be honest. People want to know how they're doing. People want to know where they stand within your organization. Am I doing a good job? Am I doing a poor job? How can I get better? People want it. If you're an engineering leader in this room or even an individual who in your organization there's no one-on-one, reach out to your manager. Managers, if there's no set parameters around one-on-ones, set something for yourself with your employees, because I will tell you this. When somebody can go through a one-on-one session, they feel heard. They feel seen. And I will tell you this. That's one of the things that most people do not feel in life and in their job. And you as a manager could be that for that individual. I can't tell you the amount of times during my one-on-ones people have cried about where they are in their life. People have opened up to me about personal issues. That I never would have thought they would have opened up to me about. And you know what? It's developed a tighter bond. All the people I used to work with, my team, we are still really, really good friends and we still talk to this day. And I truly believe it's because I was able to sit down with the individuals and listen and meet them where they're at. I feel like in today's world, especially working remote, one of the things I've realized more than anything else is we're overworked. Raise your hand if you feel like you're just overworked. and tired, right? Look around, keep hands up, look around, you're not alone, you're not alone. But if you don't make the time for your people within your organization, they're gonna feel more distant, more alone. Also, another thing, reach out to other individuals within your organization, not even like in a one-on-one setup, just more just hanging out. So, I have a podcast called The Unicorn Finders, a little shameless self-plug there. And me, Dan Thompson, and Jake Shepherd, we're all dear friends outside of work, and we wanted an excuse to hang out, so we created a podcast. And it's been wonderful. I'm able to see those guys consistently. Now, I'm not saying you have to do a podcast, but reach out to people. Set up a time to have coffee with them. Set up a time to go to lunch with them in your organization. It's such a wonderful way for it to be in more of a relaxed setting and to make you feel heard. not feel alone. All right, next thing, I just want to reiterate here, have the humility and awareness to know where you're at in life, because I think a lot of times, especially as men— I'm speaking to the men here, but women as well, I'm sure— we have a sense to just like hunker down. Like, we kind of like put on these blinders. We're like, you know what, I got my family, I got my job, I got to talk at that conference next week. I'm just trying to make it, I'm just trying to make it, right? You know, anybody in here have kids? Raise your hand. Right, a lot of us have kids, right? I have a 3-year-old, she's like a 3-nager, right? She also feels like she runs the house and she tells me 2 more minutes, I said, we're not— this is not how this goes, right? She's got my personality, which is a good look in the mirror for me. I think, and I don't know parents in here, do we— I'm sure you find yourself, man, we just got to get to bedtime. We just got to get to dinner. We just got to get through this event so we can get home, put the kids down, right? There's so much beautifulness with having a kid, but I think a lot of times as parents we kind of are like, if I can just kind of get to the next thing, get to the next thing, get to the next thing. Let's finish bedtime reading and get to the next thing. And we don't have the awareness To look up and be like, you know what, this isn't right, this isn't right. And we just kind of power through life alone, and then we look up after 5 years and then we're going back to that hardened heart, that hardened heart where we're just like, you know what, what happened? What happened? Last 5 years are gone. Like, we just celebrated my daughter's 3rd birthday this past weekend. Like, what? It's crazy. It goes by so fast. And for those of you who have older kids, you can obviously agree with that, right? So I encourage you, have the humility, have the awareness to seek out help, because again, we're not meant to go through this alone. Everybody stand up. Go talk to somebody you haven't talked to yet. Ask them, do you eat or drink soup? Soup. Go. Alright, there's some, there's some debates. I see a lot of hand waving right now, a lot of hand waving. Real quick, real quick, who in here, who in here says do you eat soup? Raise your hand. Holy cow, y'all are animals. Drink soup? Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a better— why is, why are we less than that? I feel like you drink it, you don't eat it. Anyways, y'all sit down. By the way, I Googled yesterday random questions to ask people. That's where I got these from, so. I was sitting on my balcony, I was like, wait, what do I ask people? Alright, y'all, this is kind of the last bullet point, then we'll wrap up here, probably the next, you know, 6 hours or so. So, alright, you're not alone when it comes to hiring. How many in here have gone through the job search? Recently-ish, or just how many people have gone through the job search and felt alone? I feel like some of y'all aren't being truthful because that's not a lot of hands, right? I recently went through the job search. I was at the same company for 12 years. 12 years. It is terrifying to go out and find a job right now. I talked to a few individuals yesterday that have been at their jobs for 25 years. Y'all, I get it. I get it. It's scary. You can feel very alone. And so what I want to talk to everybody right now is kind of about going through the interview process. I know we talked about that a little bit, but I want to talk about on the other side about the leadership side, right? I don't want you to zone out on me for the individuals in here that aren't in leadership, because I think it still very much applies, right? Let's talk about culture. How are you building a culture that supports inclusivity where people do not feel alone. How do you do it? I think a lot of things I've already talked about. One-on-one, job descriptions. Anybody went to my talk yesterday? Talked about job descriptions pretty much for like the whole time, right? Bringing an inclusive environment, making people feel heard. One of the things I hear time and time again is, I don't feel heard. I don't feel heard. I feel like they're not listening. Right? Any spouses in here sometimes feel that way with their other spouse? You don't have to raise your hand, that's just a trick. I know my wife tells me that, and she's right. I don't make her feel heard. I don't. I gotta work on it. I'm always on my phone. Anybody else on their phone always? Yep, just me? Cool. How are you building a culture within your organization where you don't make people feel alone, make sure you feel included? I think one of the things, again, as engineering leaders where I've talked to time and time and time again, it's, I'm too busy. I'm too busy. I'm too busy. I'm too tired. I have too much going on. And you're just trying to survive, and you can't pour into the people within your organization. We've got to change that. People leave jobs because of managers. Or whatever that saying is, right? We all know that saying. At the end of the day, people leave jobs because of the managers. And so what are you doing to promote that so people don't feel alone? You know, one of the, one of the things yesterday we talked about in, in, in my talk is somebody said people are the core of an organization. People are the core of your organization. So why are we not spending more time with our people? Why are we not spending more time and being more intentional during the interview process? Why are— you know, we talked about giving feedback. I get it, HR, I get it. But again, there's ways to make people feel heard through the interview process. I've talked to so many developers over the last 12 years of recruiting and being in community with engineers. You know what everybody's told me? If a company offered me feedback, even if I got rejected, I would refer my friends to that company. Right. I see a lot of head nods there. I struck a chord there. Right. So again, you got to meet people where they're at. Right. Somebody can have a really bad day with interviewing. Right. How would you want to be treated if you had a bad day interviewing? You would probably want to feel heard. You would probably want to feel that that person knew you had a bad day and they heard you. But I think what happens is, is we get into these jobs that we have and we don't put ourselves into other people's shoes, and then we wonder why people leave our organization. Let me ask you this, would you want to go through your interview steps right now? How would you feel going through your hiring process? How would you feel going through your onboarding process? All of that Can make people feel very, very alone. Hey, we'll figure it out. We got documentation somewhere. Go read it. Really? What if someone told you, go read it? How would you feel? Right? Hey, you know, just— I tell you what, go reach out to that person. Well, okay, cool, but like, can you make intros? I don't know this person. Right. Again, how do you want to be treated? People feel alone, especially when they start a new job. So how are you building that culture? Leadership. Again, we kind of go through the same thing. Again, ego, humility, right? Being aware. I talk to so many engineering leaders day in, day out on my podcast, Guidance Counselor 2.0, just for the record. Right. One of the things I constantly hear is, is Leadership in tech is broken. It's broken. Because at the end of the day, all of us aren't— none of us are perfect. So we have imperfect people leading imperfect people within an imperfect organization, right? It takes a lot of intentionality. It takes a lot of intentionality to change that. So again, I encourage you from a leadership perspective, if you— and you don't even have to be Like, even if you're not a manager, you can still be a leader, right? I want to get through that people's heads right now, right? If you're an IC, I will tell you this. I tweeted this a while ago. I said, some of the best leaders on my team in the past have been, like, brand new because they come with fresh ideas and because I try really hard to take on those ideas Because I will tell you this, sometimes the people who haven't been in the organization for a long time have a different filter on how you do things. And one of the reasons why I've been able to grow teams consistently throughout my career was because I really, really tried to listen to the new people. I think a lot of times we're like, well, I'm going to listen to the vets. Great. So the same people that have the same type of groupthink that you do? Again, what are we doing for the people who just started at the job? How are you leading them? How are you shepherding them? It's where they don't feel alone. Right, we talked about onboarding for a second, right? This is the biggest area, right? I-9s, W-2s, Social Security, bank account routing number, all this data, learning the platform, learning the codebase, reading documentation. A lot of it's like, you just go, just go, just go do, just do it, go that way. Come talk to me when you need me. Really? Is that how you want to be talked to? Because I will tell you this, if you came up to me like, yeah, yeah, we'll talk later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be like, Jesus, I feel alone. I feel by myself. Right? Again, things to be mindful of. Last question, and then I'll close it out here. Stand up. What is your favorite deli meat? Ask the person next to you. All right, I see a lot of hands going. I see hands about layering. We're getting really serious about layering here. I see some like how to build a sandwich. All right, y'all go ahead and have a seat. You wanna have a seat. So, I, I grew up, I grew up Southern Baptist, and I'm gonna be honest with you, some of the most awkward moments where the pastor goes, hey, turn to the left or right of you and tell them, say hey, that terrifies me, so of course I made y'all do it. All right, y'all, so for the most part, that's it. I just want to encourage you all today as I wrap up that everybody in here feels alone in some way, shape, or form at some time in their life. That's one thing we all have in common. So, if you can leave, my hope and prayer and wish for you all today is that you leave This group, this setting, and go out into the world and treat others the way you want to be treated, but also realize that everybody has their own battles. Everybody is struggling. Everybody feels alone either right now or has felt alone. And so what are you doing to give back to the community? What are you doing to connect? Because I will tell you this, going through the job search and going through your career can be very, very lonely. And my encouragement for you all in here today is that not that you don't feel alone ever again, but that you put the people and you put the tools around you to make sure that you help with that. Because what my prayer is for you all today is that you don't go through life with this chipped-up heart, right, where you start to become cold and hard and just looking for the next— just kind of going through life the next day, the next day, the next day. 'Cause I don't want you to look up after 10 years of your career and be like, what happened? Why didn't I take advantage of this? It was 'cause you felt alone and you closed off. So again, Clark, that conference, thank you so much for having me. This is a blessing. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.