I was interviewed on “A Geek Leader” Podcast. Here is a machine generated transcript.
[0:00] John: This is the Geek Leader. Hey guys, John Rouda back with episode 102 of the Geek Leader podcast, and today on the show we’ve got Adam Gordon Bell. He spent 14 years or more as a software developer and he is a speaker. He also hosts a show called the CoRecursive podcast, and on that show he talks about deep dives into certain specific topics when it comes to software development, which is really cool.
[0:32] John: So on the show we talk about how he got started in technology, we talked about deep learning, we talked about his passion for learning, we’ll get into leadership talks, we talked about empathy and perspective-taking. It’s a really good show, so give it up for Adam Gordon Bell.
[0:50] John: So I wanted to start out just by getting a little background information for our guest. How did you get started in technology and kind of what’s been your path and journey and what are you doing now?
[1:03] Adam: I could, I could talk about that for a long time. We’ve got about an hour, so keep that in mind. I, I first got into computer programming when in my high school they had a class, I guess, on Turbo Pascal, and I didn’t really know like what computer programming was at the time.
[1:18] Adam: And in the class, we built in teams, we built a Yahtzee game. So it was like a computer game where you know you would like, you roll dice and then you get points for like three of a kind or whatever the rules were. And so we all those teams we built that and you know some teams got further than others. Ours had some very light ANSI graphic graphics, but some other people went like really in depth.
[1:45] Adam: And that, that was just super fun, right? Just, just building something on a computer that was amazing. And so that’s what I mean, I think at that point I was like, this is cool, I should do this with my life.
[1:57] John: Yeah, I kind of got hooked. Yeah, I remember the first time, my dad, he was a computer programmer, but this is back in the 80s when they used punch cars and things like that. And you like literally bring home wheels of tape that they were using for backups and such. But I remember we got a computer. It was a Commodore 64 and he bought me a game. The game actually came in a book and it was Visual Basic, and he had like type out the game. I type out all the code and then hit run and play the game. I thought that was like the coolest thing.
[2:24] Adam: That’s awesome. What game was it? What kind of game?
[2:30] John: The first one was, it was, it was, it was non-graphical at all. So it would like just say, “You’re at a dark room,” you know, “with three doors: left, right, and center. Which door you take?” And then if you take left, then it would have like a different scenario. And you know, eventually you would figure out, you’d remember the doors and remember the, “Oh, I know what, what’s gonna be behind each door” and kind of, you know, make it through there. Cuz you know, you did code it all, so you sort of, sort of knew it all.
[2:54] Adam: Yeah, that gives it away, I guess, the ending.
[2:59] John: I said get me that one. And then another one was a stock market game which used a bunch of random functions. So it was kind of neat because it would calculate out like the values of different stocks. You can choose to buy gold, foreign stocks, American stocks, silver, or bonds, and you start out with a certain amount of money. And then you would play against the computer and it would tell you like whether you’re making more money or losing money.
[3:25] Adam: That’s awesome. I, that just made me remember and even earlier memory is in school like in grade four or something, we had these Commodore 64’s and there, there was like, I think it’s called Logo, the like turtle game you like, you programmed this little pen to move around the screen, but it was a turtle.
[3:46] John: Yeah, I think I remember that. And then I also remember in, in, and I guess it was in middle school, we had a Mac lab and they had like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail, like a couple of games like that that were pretty cool.
[4:03] Adam: Carmen Sandiego was great and hard like…
[4:03] John: Yeah, it was so, so that’s how you got your love for technology and development. What are you doing these days with, when it comes to technology?
[4:15] Adam: So um, what I do right now is I work for Tenable Security and I do a static analysis of Docker containers, and I do that using the programming language Scala. We have a team that works on it and it’s, it’s super fun.
[4:36] John: Yeah, sounds fun. And you also host a podcast where you kind of go deep dives into certain areas of technology and certain core concepts. You talked a little bit about that.
[4:42] Adam: Yeah, it’s funny, I don’t think I really intended to start a podcast, but I used to listen to this podcast, well I still do, Software Engineering Daily, and I really enjoyed it and they did like deep dives into topics. And then I started doing some guest episodes for that show and I just thought, this is super fun, right? You can reach out to an expert and you can talk to them and have them kind of talk to you about an idea.
[5:09] Adam: And so I just ended up starting my own podcast. And so like I’ve got to talk to so many fascinating people and kind of have them explain to me about, you know, whether it’s how to build a database or functional programming or or dealing like incident response. Yeah, so it’s something I’m really passionate about.
[5:30] Adam: And I don’t know, I mean, it seems kind of cliched for me to say that everybody should have their own podcast because here we are, two podcasters talking to each other, but it’s a really fun thing to do.
[5:40] John: It is, it’s a blast. And I remember I started mine for one set of reasons but then I kind of changed to a different set. I started mine mainly to hold myself accountable for, you know, I would always want to be a better leader, but I thought, yeah, if I actually talk about it and put something out there publicly, I kind of have to live it, you know, so is a way to help me to hold myself accountable, but also to become a better speaker, to be better at talking in front of people because I was always really nervous about that, or a little bit nervous about it.
[6:07] John: I figured that there’s no better way than take practice and to talk more. That was my initial focus, but then as people started coming on the show and I started meeting guests, it kind of changed where, wow, I can learn more from other people than just me talking. And I get to meet really cool people and talk to really cool people that probably wouldn’t talk to me, you know, if I didn’t have a podcast.
[6:28] John: So that’s been kind of one of the really cool things that comes from, from hosting it. And yeah, I agree with you, there’s plenty of space in the podcasting world to have, you know, more shows and more people. There’s so many talented people that I meet at conferences that I was like, yeah, I could just listen to you all day, you know.
[6:44] Adam: And it’s fun, like as a listener, like, you know, as I listen to your show, people listen to mine, they get to kind of come along in that adventure, learn along with you. That’s kind of how I like, I try to, in my show, I try to put myself in like the learners, like I try to put on the learning hat.
[7:05] Adam: So I think that if I have an expert on, like, I, I want to be able to ask them kind of the stupid questions, both because I don’t know the answer and because, you know, that’s what people want to hear.
[7:19] John: No, I think, I think you’re absolutely right. And it’s also, I don’t know, I’ve been driven away from some podcast where I go to it and they’re talking above my level, you know, and I feel like I can’t relate and, “Well, this is too much for me, I’m just gonna bow out,” you know, this…
[7:34] John: Yeah, I’m a little bit interested in, you know, space and astronomy and things like that. So I’ll go and check out a podcast and sometimes if, yeah, the guest is just talking too high at a level that I don’t quite understand and I, I lose interest.
[7:47] John: So I think that’s a great approach to take the idea of a novice, of a learner, and, you know, asking the questions that people listening you’re probably having as well. That’s just a great approach.
[7:58] Adam: It’s, it’s super tricky. Like I don’t know if I’ve mastered it, but, but so I had somebody on who has built and wrote a book about, about building an interpreter, building your own like programming language and an implementation for it.
[8:13] Adam: And like so when we talk, we kind of get in the details of like, you know, how you would build your own programming language. Like what’s, you know, the first step and the second step in the third step. There’s basically three steps. And like, I think we get in kind of the weeds and I, and I kind of like that to get into specifics.
[8:32] Adam: But then at the same time, I feel like there’s this high level goal, which is that this person taught me that in like a thousand lines of code, you can write an implementation of a programming language, of a parser from, from, to back.
[8:49] Adam: And I think if people just get that, then, you know, when they have a hairy problem thrown at them, and they can say like, you know, like, “Oh, actually I think there is a way to just build something from scratch here.” So sometimes I think that, you know, it’s okay to get in the weeds, but you want to communicate that the high level goal.
[9:09] John: No, I think you’re absolutely right. And, you know, if you’ve identify what are the, you know, three key takeaways that somebody could get, you know, could get out of this that they can use, you know, in many different places, then you’ve hit that mark.
[9:15] John: And then when you go into the weeds, you may be excited, fire under someone that, you know, “Hey, I’ve never really thought about this problem, but now that you’re talking about it, I can see how I can relate this to X, Y, & Z over here.” And I think that’s always really helpful. So yeah, during your journey through technology, what are some of the, you know, best leadership examples that you’ve seen or leaders that you’ve had that you’ve kind of aspired to, or has there been any?
[9:45] Adam: To me, I think, you know, the best leader is somebody who just, who really has a lot of empathy and a lot of caring for the people they’re leading, you know, somebody who can see, see the good things, like see the potential in somebody and lift them up.
[10:06] Adam: And I don’t even think they need to be like their direct report, for instance. I think just the leadership can be about, you know, just showing, showing some, you know, seeing something that’s in, some inside somebody and helping them, you know, you know, grow into a role.
[10:26] John: I think you’re absolutely right. And, you know, some of the best leaders I’ve seen we’re not my director, you know, I didn’t report to them. And a lot of times their peers when it comes to a, you know, or chart or something like that. But the quality of being able to see something in you and wanting to spend time to develop that and grow so a skill that you have is what I think really, you know, identifies a good leader, especially in technology.
[10:50] John: Because, no, I don’t know, I feel like technology’s just a little bit different than everything else. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m biased, but I seem to feel that way.
[11:02] Adam: So I had, I just thought of this story. Somebody that I worked with, so if somebody was hired as like a Quality Assurance person for code, although they had like development skills themself, but, but they’re pretty new to the industry.
[11:20] Adam: And like, you know, as, as life went on, like there was just like, I think they wanted to become a developer, but just there was a lot of quality assurance work and that was the role and it was busy and important.
[11:34] Adam: But somebody else at the company who was more senior kind of recognized that, “Hey, this person, like they don’t want to spend their life in this role. That’s not, that’s not where they’re looking.” So he actually just had this guy who was Quality Assurance just, it just work with him on things and actually, you know, do development.
[11:56] Adam: And then at some point after he had done, been doing development like kind of as an extra effort, like led by this very senior person on the team, the senior person just went to management and said, “Tom here is a developer now. We’re gonna need to bring in another QA person.” And they kind of just pulled that person up. They weren’t there direct report. They just saw that this person could be bringing more value to the company and just kind of pulled them into that role.
[12:20] John: Wow, yeah, that is a great story. That’s, that’s so cool how things like that happen. And, you know, you really, in my opinion, I’ve never seen something like that happened in accounting or Human Resources. You usually happens in a, in a creative type field.
[12:34] John: I have seen it happen, you know, before with like video editors or something like that. But you see it a lot in development and in IT engineering and things like that where we, someone has a passion for something, they’re learning it and they’re building that skill set.
[12:47] John: And then it’s like, “Hey, we’ve got a need for this, this guy can fill that need, let’s bring him over and let’s just move him and, and backfill this position.” And I’ve seen it happen so many times and it’s great that you find someone that can just, you know, have the authority to do that.
[13:05] Adam: I mean, I think it could happen to encounter. I’m trying to imagine this right. So if somebody had an accounting, like they’re fresh out of school for accounting and they got a job as a bookkeeper maybe, which is like just kind of a not, you know, it involves some of the same skills, but not, but not really what they did.
[13:23] Adam: And then, you know, somebody, some accountant takes them under their wings. And this like, you know, “Tracy’s helping me on the quarterly report now.” Yeah, I guess it could, you could, you could bring someone up and say, you know, this person, you know, has been doing all their family’s taxes, so let’s move into tax accounting. And yeah, I guess you’re right, yes, it could happen anywhere.
[13:44] John: It’s just one of the things that I think is more prevalent and in development. Maybe it’s just because of the rapid change, you know, tax laws don’t change that often or adds to it, you know. Software development’s always changing. There’s always a new JavaScript framework that’s out there or something.
[13:57] Adam: And there’s credentials and gatekeeping like, you know, accountants have certifications and…
[14:05] John: Yeah, yeah, you got your CPAs and certain, certain degrees and things you have to pass and get to, to get through.
[14:11] John: I still has caught the topic of accounting a little bit. What are some of the failures that you’ve seen when it comes to leadership and, and some of the, the bad stories that people can try to avoid? Cuz I know for me, I’ve, you know, probably made almost every mistake possible when it comes to leading people, whether it’s losing my temper, not being empathetic, and not understanding that, you know, some people have had problems. What are some things that you’ve seen that maybe, maybe can people can learn from and try to avoid?
[14:44] Adam: So like in, in my role, in my role is like a technical leader, I think that a place where I could improve is that people will, I, so as I said, I’ve been doing software type things for a long time.
[14:57] Adam: And I think when you’re trying to work with somebody who’s new to the field that I can just not remember all the things that they need to know, right? Like I, I don’t, I miss the fact that they don’t know about whatever source control or etc and etc.
[15:15] Adam: So sort of, I guess it could be challenging as a leader to meet people where they’re at, like to know what, what their level of skill is and where they need to get to.
[15:26] John: I think you’re absolutely right. There’s a, I teach part-time at a university here in South Carolina, and I went to the University and one of the things that, you know, I’ve struggled is understanding that some of the things that I’m saying the students don’t know, you know, because you kind of forget that where you were when you were, you know, 19, 20, 21 years old, and it’s hard to put yourself in those shoes sometimes.
[15:51] John: So I kind of ask back to the empathy thing you were talking about. Do you have any ideas of how people can maybe get better if meeting people where they’re at and developing that empathy?
[15:59] Adam: I mean, it’s a tricky thing, right? It’s the human condition, but I think that there’s this concept called the curse of knowledge, which somewhat relates to this, which was in some book that I read. The idea was that like they found that the more the doctors knew about a subject, like an ailment that somebody had, like the, the less able they were to explain it.
[16:19] Adam: Because like as you learn more about a subject, like the basics become, you just, you kind of assume them, right? So, so like experts are worse at explaining things than somebody who’s very new to the concept who could explain it to somebody else new.
[16:39] Adam: So that’s, that’s just a human bias that I think we have to overcome. But yeah, I think you’re right, the empathy is, is a, is a great thing. So, you know, you have to use your senses to observe, you know, where are people struggling. And I’d be interested to hear if you have any tips. You know, I don’t work with people who are still in school, so that sounds even more challenging.
[16:59] John: Yeah, for me, I try to always like, one of the things that I do before I do a one-on-one with a team member, and I rarely schedule them back to back to back, you know, with the people, my direct reports, I’ll put some period of time in between them. And I try to spend at least 10 minutes before the one-on-one trying to think about that person’s day.
[17:18] John: And like, for example, if one of my employees lives 30 minutes away and she had a 30 minute commute and he has two kids, then I try to think about what was his day like waking up, getting his kids ready for school, maybe dropping them off, was traffic good or bad today? Is it a rainy day? If it’s raining, the traffic is always bad in our area. So I probably had to fight through traffic, get here, what projects is you working on? Are these projects going well? If they are not being, if they’re not going well, he’s probably hesitant on coming into this one-on-one because he’s got those things that he’s, you know, got to deal with and got to work on, and this is just getting in his way.
[17:51] John: So I try to get myself in his mindset prior to him coming in here so that when we talk about it, I’m trying to talk from his perspective. So that’s one of the things that I do. And it doesn’t take long, but about five or ten minutes is about all it takes for me to really put myself in that mindset.
[18:08] John: And then I, I’m not gonna come off as the boss trying to find out what you’re doing, right? You know, I’m going to be more compassionate, more empathetic. And I really struggle with empathy if it’s, you know, a stranger on the sidewalk, I really struggle to try to put myself in that person’s shoes.
[18:21] John: But if I can spend about five or ten minutes just thinking about the steps of this person went through right now today, then that helps me put myself in that she. And I did the same thing when I’m teaching. I always think, okay, this is a Thursday night class. That means most students don’t have classes on Friday, so they’re gonna go out and party after we get out of class.
[18:38] John: So what’s the mindset of this student? Let’s try to relate to that. Let’s try to tell a joke or something that’s gonna break the ice about that.
[18:49] Adam: That’s a great perspective. Like it’s obvious why you have a podcast about leadership.
[18:54] John: Well, those are some of the things I just try to do. It does take work. It’s not easy. And I know some people assume like empathy is just one of those things that either have it or you don’t. And I can assure you that it’s not something that I have, but you can work at it. You can build up to it.
[19:15] Adam: Yeah, I think there’s also a term called perspective taking. And I’m not clear on how it differs from empathy, but it sounds like what you’re, what you’re talking about, really, really spending the, the cognitive cycles to put yourself in their shoes. I think it’s a great idea.
[19:29] John: And what was that called again?
[19:29] Adam: Perspective, perspective taking.
[19:35] John: Perspective thinking, I, I don’t want to look it up right now, but I feel like that it’s related to empathy, but, but slightly different in some reason.
[19:42] Adam: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s really good because I, and I, I think a lot about perspective when I talk about it, about how what could be a win for you maybe, you know, not for someone else, and vice versa.
[19:55] John: So, yeah, I try to always think about things from their perspective. That’s another thing.
[20:01] John: Yeah, it is, it is a lot like empathy. You’re right. But yeah, I think that’s definitely something you should do when you’re trying to meet someone where they’re at and understanding where they’re at and help build, build up or develop someone from where they’re at.
[20:11] John: I had another question that I was just curious, what, what is it, what is it that excited you about continuous learning? Because that’s obviously, you know, a big passion of yours is always trying to find out more and, and stay on top of that. What is it that excites you about that?
[20:24] Adam: Well, you know, that is a good question. I don’t know, but I really like to learn things. I’m a curious person. I feel like that probably it worked out well for me that I ended up in the field of, you know, building software because there seems to be an unending number of things to learn. And, but I think the same is true for, you know, for many fields, I guess, but or even, you know, soft skills are endlessly learn about as well. I’m, I’m just fascinated by just all the smart people out there who are, who are building things, who are, you know, exploring new concepts. And yeah, I, I don’t even know why. It’s just I’m a curious person.
[21:09] John: Yeah, I know for me, I really, I also enjoy learning and I try to diversify my learning, you know. I think if you just stay in your lane, you lose out so much. And I was actually listening to a speaker talk about, I have, I have three kids. I have an eight, five, and one-year-old.
[21:27] Adam: And there’s a learning opportunity right there, no kidding.
[21:27] John: But I’m trying to, I was trying to figure out whether it was better or not to have them do one sport like and focus only on one sport to be good at or to kind of diversify them and have them learn multiple sports, which it’s kind of with the path that me and my wife have taken. We’ve, we’ve said, you know, I want you to play every sport that you want, you know, or that’s out there, whether you really like it or not, until you’re in middle school. And then you can choose whether you want to play or don’t want to play anything. But until then, I want you to do at least experience it, try, give it a fair, fair try. And, and if you absolutely hate it, then yeah, we’re done.
[22:04] John: But if you, if you like it and keep doing it. And instead of just picking one or pushing them into one, and one of the things that I, that I heard was that studies show that students that experience multiple things like, like multiple sport works, they actually learn, are there better adapt to learning in school. And part of the reason is because they have to learn different things in different ways.
[22:30] John: So you’re not just learning one game and learning to get better and better at one game, but you’re learning rules and to apply rules and to apply scenarios in multiple different games at the same time. And that kind of strengthens your brain. It goes through like almost like a workout of different steps.
[22:46] John: I think learning technology is the same way, you know, if you’re just learning databases and that’s the only thing that you want to focus on, you’re gonna get really good at that, but you’re not going to get as good at, you know, functional programming or something like in that realm. Does that make sense?
[23:00] Adam: I think it totally makes sense. One thing that I tried to, that I’ve been trying to focus on is like learning what I would call like deep knowledge as opposed to surface knowledge.
[23:13] Adam: So I think that, you know, in your job, you’re gonna have to learn a bunch of like specific things, right? Like whether it’s how some library works or how to do something in Excel or how to, yeah, like very specific things.
[23:27] Adam: But in technology, like specific trivia like turns over very quickly, but there’s deeper skills. So I think that like, you mentioned the database thing, so like learning the internals of a database, how relational database works, like you’re probably not going to build your own database or or use it. I mean, it might be a mistake, but I think that that deep understanding will probably inform some of your, you know, some of your future decisions. And like, it’s not going to age out, like databases are always going to be around.
[23:57] Adam: Or like learning about leadership, as you said, like that’s gonna be a skill that, that’s more deep that can be applied in, in many areas, and it’s not going to become like old.
[24:09] John: Yeah, yeah, I think you’re, you’re absolutely right. And I do, I do find a lot of value in, you know, digging deep into one area, but I also find value in to the diversification of knowledge.
[24:16] John: And, you know, I can take things that I just, I just interviewed Roger Nirenberg. He’s a orchestra conductor. Would he call this guy’s a maestro? He wrote a book called “Maestro” and is actually a, a boat about leadership, which is really interesting because he takes like the idea of an orchestra and though is a kind of a fictional book where a business leader comes in and his daughter’s learning to play violin or something.
[24:46] John: Anyway, this guy’s is learning from the conductor things that he can go back and apply in a leadership perspective. And I was just completely fascinated by it because, you know, to be honest with you, I don’t listen to music a lot. So I don’t know a lot about it.
[24:51] John: But to hear him talk about like, “Well, you have the violin section over here that really can’t hear what’s going on in the clarinet section over here, but you need a leader to kind of coordinate that. And if you go and sit with the violins, you can hear from their perspective, it sounds completely different than if you’re in the audience to see, which is where you want to, you know, the piece to come together.”
[25:09] John: And it was just very fascinating to hear how you can learn a little bit about the orchestra and take pieces from that and applied it in a different way to technology.
[25:25] Adam: Yeah, I think that type of cross-fertilization is really powerful. I interviewed this Andy Hunt who who worked, he wrote this book called the Pragmatic Programmer. But so I interviewed him about this book he wrote called, thinking and learning, I think.
[25:44] Adam: So he spent a lot of time like looking into psychology and how people think and learn. And then he took those skills because he’s like a software development guru, he applied them to, to people, you know, building software, which, you know, I think that cross-fertilization is great, right?
[25:56] Adam: Like what is this psychological study about how kids do in school? I have to say about how we should structure our workplace or…
[26:02] John: Yeah, I think actually read his book, Pragmatic Programmer a while back. David Neil recommended it to me a while back, and I read that it was fantastic. But yeah, that the idea of cross-fertilization is, is just super, I, I think you’re absolutely right on the importance of that.
[26:21] Adam: And he wrote his book Pragmatic Programmer like it’s 25 years old, and it’s a book about technology in it, and it’s still relevant. So that, that’s interesting in of itself.
[26:34] John: Yeah, you’re right. I read it probably about five or six years ago. I was up at code stock and David Neil recommended your one of his talks. I was like, I’m gonna pick that up. And sure enough, it, it definitely, you know, it had legs, it still held up to today.
[26:52] Adam: Yeah, and like this is just a straight plug for my podcast, but you can hear him talk in the interview about how he has a whiteboard and as a shower and how he’s like done work, done important work in the shower.
[27:05] John: That’s fascinating. Some of the other like key things that you’ve learned by talking to software developers that you still carry with you from your podcast?
[27:20] Adam: Like, like a ton of things, right? So I interviewed this guy, I can’t, I remember his name, James Buck.
[27:33] Adam: So James Buck, he was an important developer in like the Ruby ecosystem, like back when Ruby on Rails was really taking off, you worked for 37signals and built all these important things.
[27:46] Adam: And he, he like, he stopped enjoying his job like and he didn’t know why. And like, he actually just left his job and stopped doing software development. And so I talked to him about, about like burnout and how he was able to overcome that.
[28:04] Adam: And he, and he did overcome it, but it was interesting for him to talk about it because it was a very subtle process for him, right? It wasn’t like he was so frustrated with his job and losing his mind. Like he had his dream job in the sense and kind of it just, it’s, it’s not being enjoyable.
[28:21] Adam: And he, it took him years to figure out why. So that concept really stuck with me about enjoying your job and paying attention to kind of, you know, these kind of subconscious things about your actual enjoyment and stress levels.
[28:35] John: Hmm, yeah, do you think, I’m gonna bring this back to leadership a little bit, but I know at times where I felt frustrated and disliked my job, a lot of it came down to either that I didn’t feel like I was valuable anymore or providing value, or, or I felt like the leader that I had didn’t see that value.
[28:53] Adam: Yeah, I think that he, he had some, some differences of personality with some of the leadership probably at that company that was quickly growing.
[29:06] Adam: And then he, he just, like, it’s interesting like I can’t speak for him totally, but, but what he ended up doing was he ended up writing these books. He wrote a book called “Mazes for Programmers” where you kind of build like mazes, like children’s mazes, like using software.
[29:25] Adam: And then he wrote one called “The Ray Tracer Challenge” where you kind of use software to build these like 3D pictures and stuff. And the thing about both of those things is these are not practical books about software development. Nobody’s asking a developer to build a children’s maze or whatever, right?
[29:43] Adam: But what he did is he kind of embraced the fun things that originally got him into his job. And I think that probably a good leader could have tried to incorporate some of these, you know, like, “What do you enjoy about your job?”
[29:55] Adam: Like I think that the things he enjoyed about his job probably just dropped away, right? The things that I’ve got him into it. And so when he left, he kind of rediscovered this. It worked out great for us because we have all these kind of quirky like fun books that he’s produced, but probably not great for, for 37signals, I guess.
[30:09] John: Yeah, yeah, and you’re absolutely right. I think that’s one of the things that leaders need to do is to keep, keep asking those questions. We don’t want someone to get put in a situation where, yeah, they’re good at something, but they hate doing it, and just because they’re good at it, we make them do it over and over.
[30:28] Adam: I think that’s tricky, right? Or you really, you could really lean on somebody who’s very senior because they have the skills to deal with all these problems, but maybe that just that takes the fun out of the job for them.
[30:39] John: No, I think you’re absolutely, that was one of the mistakes I think I made as an early developer. Is I had one guy that was kind of my go-to guy. So I became a manager of a web and mobile development team. At the time it was just web, we didn’t do mobile apps until a few years later.
[30:54] John: But I had one developer is my senior developer, and he was my go-to guy. He always got stuff done, but I kept pouring onto him. So I would, I would just throw more work his way instead of kind of sharing the with the rest of the team.
[31:08] John: So there were times where he’s just underwater too, slammed, and I’m still hitting them up on, you know, messenger saying, “Hey, can you work on this? Can you do that?” Whereas the rest of the team is kind of just sitting there idle because he’s my go-to guy.
[31:20] John: And I ended up driving him off, you know, basically because I overworked him and didn’t, didn’t share the load with the rest of the team, which was a disservice of them because I didn’t give them a chance to shine. I didn’t give them a chance to learn. And, you know, it’s bad for both.
[31:37] Adam: It’s tricky, right? It’s a long-term game. And I mean, sometimes the short-term things take priority and then, yeah, you end up in those situations.
[31:48] John: Yeah, that’s kind of, you know, when it comes to management, you do have to manage the expectations of folks. You also have to manage the, you know, the short-term gains are sometimes very important, and, and you have to sacrifice some of the, you know, feel good leadership stuff in order to get tasks done.
[32:05] Adam: And it’s kind of one of those balancing acts that you, you just have to be cognizant of because you, you know, you’re leading your company as well as the individuals that are within the company.
[32:12] John: Totally. So what do you see is kind of the next steps for, for your career, your journey, and, and your podcast?
[32:26] Adam: So I, I do not know. So the podcast is easier to talk about. Like I just, I just, you know, I, I’m just gonna keep talking to people about, you know, interesting things that they’re building with software.
[32:38] Adam: Or I also really like to talk about academics who are working on kind of more computer science-y things. I just find that really fascinating. So I mean, for the podcast is just pursuing my interests and presenting it in a way where other people get to learn along with me.
[32:57] Adam: For my career, you know, I work at a great place. There’s a lot of growth work in an exciting area. My team of developers is growing, and I, you know, I just want to help see them get better and better at what they do and, you know, deliver value for the company.
[33:18] John: Awesome. Well, I want to throw one guest out that publicly, I think you should maybe reach out to his. God name who’s on my show, his name is Sergey Rosin. He is a faculty member’s, her PhD and artificial intelligence. He teaches at University of South Carolina.
[33:31] John: He’s also the CTO of a company called Swamp Fox. When they’re using AI to kind of build customer service type interfaces, but he might be an awesome guest if you want to get into, you know, an active to an app from an academic approach on some of the new things with computer science.
[33:50] Adam: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’ll have to reach out to him.
[33:50] John: Yeah, we didn’t really get into any of that on our show. We talked more about the leadership and going through, you know, taking, taking companies through mergers and things like that. But, but he definitely has a lot of knowledge. We talked, you know, offline about, about some of that stuff, and he might be a really good guest to, to deep dive on machine learning and some of the algorithms that folks are doing.
[34:07] Adam: That’s great.
[34:07] John: So how can people listen to your show and find out more about the things that you guys are working on?
[34:13] Adam: So definitely you can Google me, Adam Gordon Bell. The website for the podcast is CoRecursive.com. Or you could just search for it in iTunes or, or wherever. Or, you know, hit me up at Twitter where I’m at @AdamGordonBell.
[34:31] John: All right, yeah. How did you come up with the name CoRecursive?
[34:37] Adam: Yeah, that’s a good question. And I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on the podcast. But so I was reading this book about functional programming, and, you know, I think a lot of people know what recursion is, right? It’s like recursion, see recursion in the dictionary.
[34:57] Adam: Yeah, yeah, exactly, right. And in code, recursion is kind of the, the exact opposite. So it might be hard to explain, but if you could think of a recursive algorithm as something that takes a bunch of elements and reduces them, you could have a recursive adding function that adds numbers. You know, it adds the first to the second and then slowly reduce.
[35:23] Adam: So CoRecursive is just, it goes the other way. It starts at a single value and produces a whole bunch of them. So maybe similar to like generators and Python or something.
[35:29] Adam: So this is important to the podcast except the CoRecursive is something that produces a stream and, and a podcast is kind of like a stream of episodes that I’m putting out. So it’s, it’s a very nerdy plan words that is not important to the concept except that it indicates that the show gets in the weeds of a technology, I guess.
[35:53] John: Awesome, that’s really cool. Yeah, I was kind of curious about how you came up with the name for the show.
[35:59] Adam: Co recursion and I just wanted something, you know, that’s, that’s specific, you know, that people can look for, you know, something to Google.
[36:06] John: Yeah, yeah, like, you know, like hacker news, like Y Combinator, like the Y Combinator is like a way to introduce recursion into a language that doesn’t support it. But I don’t think that’s important to what they are except that it kind of indicates they’re kind of, you know, software roots.
[36:24] John: I think that’s really good. Well, I appreciate having you on, and it’s been a lot of fun talking about this. And I’ll definitely link up your show, your Twitter, and all that stuff in the show notes. And people can find that at ageekleader.com/AdamGordonBell. And all this will be there. So thanks a lot.
[36:39] Adam: Thank you so much. This has been great.
[36:46] John: So guys, hope you enjoyed that episode with Adam Gordon Bell, and you can find his podcast, CoRecursion, on iTunes or wherever podcasts are found. I’ll also link it to the show notes at ageekleader.com/AdamGordonBell.
[36:58] John: And I want to encourage you guys to leave a reading, rating in review for both my podcast and Adam’s, TV, if you listen to it and like it. The feedback’s really helpful for me, but also help for others.
[37:10] John: And I was talking to Adam off the air a little bit about podcasts and stuff in general, and we started talking about like ratings and reviews. I was telling how I get a lot of downloads, but the engagement, you know, doesn’t seem to be quite as much as the downloads when it comes to ratings and reviews.
[37:27] John: And you made a good point that probably my audience doesn’t do a whole lot of critics in reviews because he asked me when the last time I gave someone he can review was. I had to think about it. I reason don’t review my products on Amazon and my books and audible, but I want to make it a point to do that to help the authors out because it would help me out if you guys did that as well.
[37:44] John: So if you don’t mind, just tapped the little button, give it a, give it a rating and review, hopefully a five star, but whatever you guys think it’s worth. And, you know, all that information helps, and I like to read the reviews. It inspires me to continue to do the shows, and it’s really helpful. So thanks a lot guys.