The people who shape our work - Chris Parsons

00:00

If you try to get in the club, you will never be in the club. All you can do is hang out with people who you find interesting and who you genuinely like being around. And then you will find yourself in a club that no one can ever take you out of.

00:16

If finding your best work is less to do with finding the work itself and more to do with the people that you work with and alongside, how have you gone about finding the people that you've wanted to work with since the right beginning?

00:38

That's a really interesting question. I think at the beginning of my career, I had no clue about this and wanted to work in games. And therefore, that was what I wanted to do. And didn't really understand the difference between working in a small place in IT, which is my very first job out of uni.

00:57

And then going to work for a kind of top video games company in London. I didn't know what the difference would be until I walked in for my interview and couldn't believe the energy in the room and the excitement and just loved it at the moment I walked in and realized that I really wanted to work with these people.

01:16

Luckily they said yes, which was nice. And I think I realized... I was young at the time, so about 22. And I feel like I just loved hanging out with them. I loved spending time with them. And I loved we were making games.

01:31

I wasn't actually directly involved in the games. For the longest time I was mostly doing kind of the IT side of things. That's where I started. But I just loved working with the people. And I think then after leaving there, pretty much I kind of abandoned most of those relationships, which was such a shame because most of those people have gone on to do amazing things in different places.

01:55

Most of them not in the games industry. Some have become internationally well-known and all of this. And it's a shame because I think those... I'd love to and will at some point put some work into rekindling those relationships, mostly because they really inspired me and I'd love to say thank you. But also because I really liked hanging out with them at the time. It was fun.

02:23

That was me counting the cost of not doing that, I suppose. And what was my priority at the time was family. My wife was about to have a baby. I was commuting from Winchester to London every day. I couldn't handle the commute and the hours and it just wasn't working well.

02:39

So I decided to jack in games completely and went to work as a kind of fairly small time contract web developer and didn't have any connections doing that at all. I had one client that I found on the internet and that was it.

02:53

I had a letter from my CEO at the time, Mark. It was a handwritten letter, which even in 2004 was unusual. It's almost unheard of now. And he said, "It was great having you work with us. Relationships last longer than companies, and I'd love to keep in touch." And I remember receiving that thinking, "That's fantastic," and I lost touch with him.

03:18

So that was entirely on my end. And what a shame. What a great offer. But that kind of stuck with me, that lesson when I was like, I don't know, 25 or something when I left. Relationships last longer than companies. And it's true. They do. So I think going about finding those people is making sure that when you pick a company, you need to like the work and love the vision, but you've also got to love the people.

03:48

And it's got to be as much of it with the people as it is with the place that you're working or even the culture. I think those relationships do last a lifetime and are so strong. I just hired a couple of people yesterday to do some two weeks of work with me.

04:10

One of them I haven't worked with before, but have known for maybe 13 or 14 years in the kind of tech industry in London. Another I worked with last, perhaps about 10 years ago. So almost 10 years ago. I think I've only seen him a couple times since then. But that relationship has lasted.

04:27

I've had sort of four or five different things I've been doing in the meantime, but that's still there. And I just knew who to call as soon as I needed some help with something. So I think that is so powerful.

04:37

What have you done differently to maintain such close relationships with some people versus others?

04:46

I think I've become more intentional. So when I finished and did my kind of small time web consulting for a bit, I'd started hiring people and built an agency because I had too much work and it was a bit of a tech boom in sort of 2006-2007. And I heard a bunch of people.

05:06

And then started going to conferences in the kind of Ruby Rails scene in about 2007, 2008. It was kicking off. It was quite big and exciting at the time. And I remember just meeting a whole bunch of people who were really interesting and who would love talking about the same things that I did.

05:27

I realized how important these relationships are. I think I went to my first industry conference in like 2008 or 2007, somewhere around then, and just realized just how important it is to be with people who are like-minded and who are passionate about the same things as you.

05:49

Note that this is completely different to the idea of trying to get into an in crowd or trying to get into a group or into a club, if that makes sense. C.S Lewis wrote an amazing commencement speech 50, 60 years ago now. I think it's called The Inner Ring.

06:08

It's an incredibly insightful piece for a bunch of Oxford University graduates, I think, about how to navigate the world and connections and relationships in work. And it's all about how if you try to get in the club, you will never be in the club.

06:25

All you can do is hang out with people who you find interesting and who you genuinely like being around. And then you will find yourself in a club that no one can ever take you out of. And it's much more fun anyway. Basically, that's the summary of it. And that is just the answer.

06:42

It's a really worthwhile read because that, again, was quite transformative. So I basically decided to find people who I was inspired by, who I felt spurred me on in a way, and who weren't people who wanted to know me because of what I could do for them, but genuinely were interesting and interested, I suppose. And those are the relationships I stuck to.

07:10

I met plenty of people along the road who you could tell were just sizing you up to see whether or not you could be of use to them. I wasn't so interested in continuing to chat to them. But I think that's just natural human relationships, isn't it? We want to be around people who we like and who are interesting and interested in us.

07:27

Why is it that that works? That actually just being genuinely interested in people was the thing that gets you closer rather than just going for it.

07:38

I have no idea. It's a fascinating topic, social dynamics and how that all works. I think it's all down to emotional connection with people and how if you find people genuinely interesting and you have an emotional connection to them and you ask them lots of questions, then you learn something.

07:58

I think it's very connected to a love of learning. I find that one of the key things we hire for at Lollipop is love to learn. It's like always be learning, always be sharing as a key operating principle. And through that, what we end up with is people who like learning obviously new skills.

08:13

So they also like learning about people and about experiences and about people who are different. So it almost helps us with building a really diverse and interesting team, as well as people who are genuine and genuinely want to get on with people.

08:28

So that desire to learn covers a huge number of bases in terms of kind of the sorts of operating principles we want to hire in for, which is quite interesting. I don't know why it works, but I think that that's part of it. Being curious and interested in people is fascinating. And I find people like that really interesting.

08:52

It's like that phrase be interested, not interesting.

08:56

Yeah, I suppose so. I think there's a lawful lot of stuff. You can spend ages reading threads on Twitter about how to network. And it's all about make sure you ask the three questions before they ask you or something like that. There's all of those kinds of things.

09:10

But I think it's quite simple. It's about just being yourself and just being interested, I think, and not worrying too much about yourself. Because ultimately, just focus on the other person, don't worry about you, and then you'll feel much better. Yeah. That always worked. That and really good whiskey. That helped.

09:32

No comment. On a practical level, how do these deep, authentic relationships kind of manifest themselves day-to-day? Are these relationships that you've picked up through working alongside another? Or are they relationships that you've picked up through other people? Or could productive working relationships be picked up by going to places where everyone is there to try and get into the inner circle, like networking events? Where practically do they pop up? And have they popped up for you?

10:13

All of the above, I think. I think networking events have some value. I've done lots of them in the past. When I was very much into tech and hiring tech people, I went to tech conferences because that's where they all were. So it was easier.

10:27

When I was thinking much more about software craftmanship, I went to craftmanship conferences. And that really helped. I think for me putting my name out a bit and starting to speak at events really helped.

10:41

I haven't done that much for a long time, but around 10, 12 years ago I was doing quite a lot of speaking. If you talk about the things you are interested in, you end up having great hallway conversations with people who are also interested in the same topics. And those things tend to kind of propagate.

11:03

One interesting story is how I got to be at Lollipop, which is a story that started in around 2008. I met a chap who is quite well-known on the London tech scene called Doug Feral. He cold emailed me up saying, "Hey, I saw a talk that you gave. I love what you're doing at your company, which is my agency. I'd love to come and visit."

11:26

So he popped down from London, came for a day, worked with us for a bit. We had a great lunch out. We chatted. And over the years, I kept in touch with him. And about three years later, he got in touch with me. He'd just taken a new CTO job at a fintech company for kids called Osper.

11:47

And he wanted my take on how the team was doing, just a second pair of eyes. So I popped in for the day. I did a days consulting. I just wrote a little report on how I thought the team was doing. Quite simple. And through that, I mentioned a bunch of other people, including someone called Tom who was the COO of Osper at the time.

12:08

I remember him being in a meeting, but didn't actually say anything to him really. But I remember him. So fast forward. So then we went into our separate ways and kept in touch over several years. And then just went out for lunch every so often and just made sure we kept in touch for several years.

12:29

And then to the point of which he said, "Hey, if you ever wanted to do something about games again, then give me a call. We'd love to talk about that." And that didn't really happen. So it's almost like you try and find ways to work with people and it doesn't always work.

12:43

And then eventually he did much more consulting. I was trying to start a video games company. It didn't go so well. But met a whole lot of other very interesting people through that whole thing. Different story.

12:59

But back to kind of London tech. I think I just happened to email him saying, "I want a coffee." And then he called me that night saying, "Hey, your email was at the top of my inbox. And just so it happened that I needed someone to help me with this other company that he was consulting at called Lollipop, where he just needed some help with recruiting. Just a little bit of interviewing. That's all he needed.

13:23

My previous startup, my time there was coming to an end for a number of reasons. So I needed a little bit of extra work and he had some. And then he said, "Oh yeah, the CEO, I think you might have met him. He called Tom." And he was the person I'd met 10 years before at the startup.

13:37

And now Tom obviously didn't remember me because it was a long time later. But we got talking and [inaudible 00:13:45] said, "You should meet him. You'd really get on with him. I think you share a lot of the same principles and ideals." We met. He was absolutely right. We hit it off.

13:54

And within, I don't know, a couple months, I was co-founding Lollipop with him. So it was those kinds of things that just came from random serendipitous connections that just kind of circle around you and you just end up spending lots of time meeting lots of interesting people and eventually something like this comes up.

14:16

So that's how I've done it. I think there are much more efficient ways of doing that, but that worked for me. I think if someone at an early career goes and works for a really interesting startup that is only hiring amazing people, and there are a few, then I think that super accelerates that process.

14:36

And I had that when I worked in games back in 2000, 2002. Unfortunately, I didn't really capitalize on that time, but that was completely true at that point. But I think a company like that, and there are a number of companies in London doing that now, will have the same effect of doing what I've described, but compressed in time.

14:55

I see people now who I'm working with and talking to about work who have managed to find great companies to work in and great networks and have achieved in terms of kind of their ability to find the right kinds of work more in three years than I have achieved in 15 or 16 years. I don't regret that, but I think it's really interesting to me that it's possible to do that. And this is something I've learned this year.

15:27

How do you know that you are joining a company like that or a team like that?

15:31

I think it's about the kinds of questions they ask and the kinds of people they are and the kinds of things that they're used to and that they've done. I think if they're majoring on low-level technical skills in the interview and they're very, very keen to check that you know this is particular language and you can code this particular function.

15:56

For example, if it's a coding interview, that's one thing. If they're asking you higher level questions about your general ability to think and process information and move quickly, then that's interesting. They should also be asking questions around operating principles and have a very clear understanding and idea of what they stand for.

16:19

And that has to match with what you stand for, because then you are very likely to go there and love working there and love the people that work there. I think that's a good signal for a company of interesting people that are doing interesting things. Whether the company makes it or not, who knows? That's a little bit of a roll of the dice.

16:39

But ultimately looking at the founders, looking at the other team members and seeing the companies that they have worked for in the past is a good leading indicator of whether they're going to succeed. But ultimately, that's not a guarantee. I think given that that isn't... Believing that the vision is good is good enough at that point.

16:57

But trying to gain a sense of the sorts of people that you are working with and the sorts of things that make them tick. And also whether they've really thought about that. So a great question to ask is, what do you consider to be the most important thing about working together, for example?

17:13

Or how do you balance great feedback with high empathy? Those kinds of questions are great questions. And I love being asked those questions because it shows me that a candidate really cares about these things. And we've thought about them. So we've got good answers, which is great.

17:26

But also, that's what I want to see in someone because it means that I'm more likely to want to work with them. So I think asking those really insightful questions about culture and about how the work is done, as well as trying to gain a sense of what people have done before, but also how much they've thought about their culture and their direction is really important.

17:54

For you personally, what's at the top of that list? What's the thing that you hold in highest esteem that you're looking for when you're trying to figure out whether you want to work with someone?

18:09

I think the biggest flag for me, which is probably an easier question to answer, is when I don't get a sense that someone wants to learn. Someone who kind of their cup is full, if that makes sense.

18:24

Because ultimately, unless I'm hiring a consultant, who's done exactly what we're doing and knows exactly what the playbook is, then I wouldn't expect anyone to come here and not learn. I think even then, everyone is always learning.

18:46

So I think someone who isn't really listening and who thinks that they have the answers, or even may perhaps insecurely trying to portray themselves as someone who has all the answers is the biggest turn off for me. Because ultimately, nobody has. I certainly don't.

19:04

And I'm looking for people who are prepared to kind of think from first principles and figure out what the answers are and have the raw character and the humility to be able to do that. For me, that's much more important than technical prowess for coders or anything like that.

19:18

Clearly there's a bar on those things. But ultimately the ability to learn, the ability to jump in and just be fearless in making changes, even if they make mistakes, is super important too. And I think just being a genuine human who is interested in people and asks great questions and thinks well about people and about the work that they want to do.

19:56

The sort of person actually who's probably listening to this, who really cares about finding a place to do their best work. I mean, that's a really good strong signal. Another is, and this is, I suppose, the counterpoint, spending too much time stressing on details so they matter and moves fast and thinks big about what we want to do.

20:16

Because ultimately, as a startup, you have to have that kind of in you. It's not important for job, but it certainly is for me here. So I guess to summarize, that would be the ability to be humble and learn and be part of something bigger than just you so that it's not just about you.

20:40

In whatever sphere you are coming into, the ability to really intentionally think about that. The ability to learn. The ability to be ambitious and just fearless about the work, as well as just moving at a breakneck pace, probably faster than they're comfortable with, and not be afraid of that and not be afraid of being pushed and stretched and learning about how to do that in a way that's sustainable.

21:07

We have a great example that we use internally called Kipchoge not Bolt. So we think it's great that the same Bolt goes at goodness knows how many miles an hour he goes, but he only runs a hundred meters. Whereas Kipchoge was the man who ran a marathon in under two hours. And he managed to run, I think, four and a half minute miles, 26 of them. That's the pace we want to get to.

21:33

We're not there yet, but we want to run at a steady pace, but at a fast pace, if that makes sense. And that's difficult to make that work without burning out. And we want to make that work. I can't take any credit for that. That was all Tom. But think it's great.

21:48

That's a beautiful line. As we've explored the personal relationships, there's this underlying part to it where you are only able to engage in those relationships and those connections if you have a deep understanding of yourself and who you are and the types of things that you are looking for. What incentives drive your decision making?

22:21

In the context of self-awareness? I'm not quite sure what the question is.

22:28

What incentives guide your decision making when it comes to work? So when you are pursuing your best work. It could be day-to-day or year-to-year. What incentives exist underneath your decision making that are guiding them?

22:47

I think that they've changed over time. I think if you asked me now, I'd give different answers to... Well, you are asking me now. But I would give different answers now than I would've done maybe five years ago. And then again, 10 years ago.

23:03

I think 10 years ago, I would've said flexibility so that I can be there for my kids, so that I can take as much time off in the holidays as I want. So therefore, I was a contractor and that worked brilliantly for me at the time.

23:16

I very much always had the attitude that I wanted to put my family first when they were younger. And that was really important to me. As they have grown up, I've spent more time on the road. I've spent more time traveling. And that's been okay.

23:32

But I think in some ways, you almost have to... Going through your work life is a little bit like riding a flume in a swimming pool. It's not a straightforward run. You're kind of bouncing around, off the edges. But you get to the bottom at the end, if that makes sense.

23:50

So I think at times I've probably done too much traveling and that's been hard on my family. Other times I've probably been at home too much in the sense that my wife's saying, "Are you actually going to go and do something today? You've been at home for three weeks." And that's fine.

24:06

And that wasn't that I wasn't working. It was just it probably didn't look like it. So I guess it's just different. Perhaps cut that bit out. Please. But I think it's more that now what I'm looking for is I want to do something big and ambitious and make a difference because I feel like I have more capacity to do that now.

24:31

When my kids were small, that was my big thing. That was my making the difference. I wanted to raise my family well and be a good dad. That was so important to me. And it's still super important to me. However, I don't need to focus on that nearly as much as I used to when they were tiny.

24:47

They're now teenagers. They often don't want me around. They're often not here. So now I have more capacity to do that. I think I want to work with people who are better than me. I think that's really important to me.

25:01

I want to be in a place where I'm not the most knowledgeable or smartest person in the room. Because otherwise, I'm never going to grow. So that's super important. I always want somebody where I can learn and where I can grow. If I'm not learning, I get bored. I'm very much the kind of phase one person.

25:18

If you've heard of the kind of pioneer settler town kind of approach to work. I'm a pioneer. I like starting things. That's really interesting. So a pioneer settler or a town planner is where... Different people are like different stages of projects and companies.

25:33

So a pioneer is someone who lands on the beach. They're the person getting everything set up. Nothing works and potentially there's no food, but you're just kind of getting started and you make something happen. But it all kind of falls and nothing will last.

25:50

So you are the person who hacks together the website, who then maybe gets you your first three customers. Whereas a settler is much more like, "Okay, what you did was great, but now we need to get organized." So they're the ones who kind of build.

26:03

They put in good processes and structures and help scale. And the town planners are the people who come in later and say, "Okay, this is all great, but it could be twice as efficient if you were to just change all of these things and save this much money." And they're great at maintenance.

26:16

So I am the pioneer who has learnt to do the building and I quite enjoy it. But ultimately, I love just building new things. I get bored at the town planning stage and I like hiring people to do that kind of work.

26:28

So that's kind of... I'm not quite sure where I was going with this now. But for me, because I'm a firm pioneer, I know I want to work in startups because it's the most energetic and dynamic place for me. I've never had a job in a company for bigger than about 70 people, apart from a short stint at contracting when I worked for GDS.

26:47

But yeah, I've never had a permanent job in a company, big agency because I just love that kind of new stage. So that's an important decision factor for me. So I suppose to summarize those thoughts, I think it's doing something that makes a difference working with people that are smarter than I am and starting something great and new that's super important.

27:12

Everything else, to be honest, is table stakes. Like I suppose working with highly empathetic people who are wanting to create a brilliant culture is like table stakes for me now. I just don't work with anyone who's not like that. I think that's an easy decision. And I suppose it is a decision called factor.

27:41

Yeah. There's this conflict between a pioneer and a long-term kind of overflowing ambition. And it takes such self-awareness to recognize that you can be one type of that. It's that classic there's a big difference between being a founder and a CEO.

28:08

I think one of the really tough parts is anyone who is a pioneer is in part, and this can be not true in some exceptions, but ambitious and someone who wants to create some kind of new change in the world.

28:24

And naturally, if you are that way inclined, it can be quite difficult to also accept that what you want to do is stay at the forefront and at the early stages and not accept that later stage. Is that something that you've reflected on yourself?

28:39

It's something I reflect on most weeks. My job at the moment as a founder of a growing company seems to change every three weeks. As we grow and we hire new people, the job that's required of me is constantly changing.

28:56

For example, I couldn't believe how quickly I stopped coding. I was coding pretty full time on the project. I had two or three people working with me on the code up until I think November, early December. I came back from Christmas, I've written almost no code since.

29:15

And going from full time to zero with just a couple of people starting was an incredible shock. It completely changed my job. It took me about two weeks to adjust to that and to understand that that was okay. And I think for some people, it isn't okay and they want to always be hands-on.

29:32

And then you get into a bit of a mess because the CEO coding on a project after a certain size, a CTO or CEO, sometimes it's CEO, is usually some kind of flag that something isn't quite right. And if that's not being acknowledged, then that can be a problem.

29:51

I've worked with lots of teams because I'd spent some time consulting and I've worked with people who are in middle or senior management who are constantly trying to work around the CEO's or CTO's inability not to keep fiddling with the business or the code or whatever it is.

30:10

And they seem to spend all their time undoing what the CEO is doing, which is very inefficient. And I think it's quite a common failure pattern probably for the reasons that you describe, which are that the work is very different. It's a different type work.

30:23

And I think any hyper-growing startup requires hyper growth of the people within it, especially the more senior people. The more senior you get, the faster you have to grow and the more uncomfortable it is. And you have to be prepared for that.

30:38

Do you hit a limit there? Can you hit a place where you become so far detached from the detail that you no longer want to scale?

30:47

I think so. I think everyone has their limit. I think some people would hate the idea of coming into a startup, but love working in a 7,000 person company as a kind of senior manager. Great. That's not me and I don't really relate to it.

30:59

But I absolutely understand that that is a perfectly valid and a reasonable place to want to be. Completely fine. For people who do like being at the beginning, I think there's a lot of people who will just sit at the kind of 5 to 10 person company stage and be quite happy there and potentially will spend their whole career there. And that's okay.

31:22

I think there's a different type of job or a different type of person who suits every role. And I think one of the most challenging things is actually moving through the gears as a company goes from small to big.

31:33

I think that's more challenging being in a small company or being in a big company. It's the growth through those stages because it requires you to change what you are doing and almost reinvent your job and yourself at every point.

31:45

So I suppose absolutely there's a limit, but it can be quite hard to see. I've not hit it yet, but we're not that big yet. Because as I said, I haven't worked for a larger company. I don't know where that limit is.

32:02

But I certainly plan to talk to Tom and also my team about when I've hit. I want to create the right kind of culture and atmosphere that people could say, "Chris, this is no longer for you. You need to find a slightly other type of role here that will work well with what you want to do."

32:21

I've seen enough places where that conversation hasn't happened to know that I absolutely want that to happen to me because I think everyone will be happier.

32:32

I'm going to have a go at asking you a random ish question and I'll see how this goes.

32:38

I love those questions.

32:38

When we reflect back on the decisions that we've made, what we typically do is we reflect on the ones that we're conscious and the ones that we/re active, the ones that we kind of know that we made. And we don't reflect on the ones that we didn't make.

32:57

Do you look back at some of the moments in your past at some of the key decision making kind of times or timeframes and ever reflect on the decisions that you didn't make, the kind of failures of omission?

33:13

Yes, I do. I think that's part of getting older. I think I'm kind of now mid-career and thinking about all of the things that I could have done, that's something I struggle with, if I'm honest. I think maybe if I'd kept up relationships with my first company, maybe I could have done something different.

33:36

I think if I had hadn't gone and spent like seven years trying to make video games independently, then I could have joined a tech company and done some really interesting things. I often will see people who are doing the similar sort of work to me at different places that I've been in and I see where they've gone now.

33:53

A number of them are much more senior than me with much bigger jobs. And I think maybe I should have done that. I don't know. Then I look at people who were my peers when I ran my agency, other CEOs of agencies that I knew at the time.

34:10

My agency closed without making any money. I didn't sell out or anything. It literally just closed. We ran out of money. Lots of my friends went on to sell their companies and they did quite well. And some of them have now started and sold another company.

34:25

I haven't done that. Does that invalidate what I've done so far? I think that's quite hard. However, I went through... I don't know if you've come across the Wait But Why blog post or blog site, where he talks about my life in weeks.

34:46

I did that exercise recently, where I mapped out my life in weeks and posted on Twitter. It's a really interesting exercise to see how my career has kind of taken shape. And it's very random. But equally, it's quite interesting in some ways when you look at it.

35:01

Because I've done lots of different things and I haven't necessarily got hugely far with lots of them. But it's been a blast when you look back on it. And I think, yeah, that's actually been great.

35:12

So I suppose I have gone through that exercise recently of trying to make those unconscious decisions a bit more conscious in order to make better decisions going forward. Not that I'm... And I'm doing now. It's amazing.

35:25

But I think it was more, how did I get here? And what can I do next? And what would be the ideal for me for the next 20 years? And how can I make sure that I really learn the lessons from all of the different things I've done?

35:42

Such a fine balance between self-reflection and self-sabotage.

35:46

It is. It is a very fine balance. And I think I've definitely walked over that line in the last two years, probably with COVID, actually. I think COVID was a tough time for the company I was working with at the time. It was a film business company.

36:00

We were helping movie studios release their films efficiently, but then no films came out for two years. So it was a bit of a challenge to sell that kind of product. So that was a really tough time.

36:13

But I built a team at that company that was really quite high-performing. The entire team left. It's not surprising there wasn't... We had to put everyone on furlough. We weren't paying them their normal rates so they went to find other jobs. So the more secure industries that made sense.

36:28

I think that was difficult to watch over sort of eight months. I think at that time, I definitely found myself reflecting more about where I got to and whether it was the right time. I stuck with it as long as I could.

36:46

At the end, it wasn't the right place for me to be because the company needed to be very small. And that was okay. They're still going and they've survived and that's great to hear. So I suppose I think probably unfairly on myself.

37:00

It was a very tough time to try and reflect on how we've done in our careers. Because I think everyone was finding it difficult and everyone was struggling with mental health at the time. And I think for me, I was very lucky in the sense that I did not have...

37:20

I'm very privileged and I have a a lovely family and I had a lot of support. And people had it much worse than me. My struggle was more around, am I doing the right things? Have I done good things with my work and my life?

37:33

And what could I do differently and better in the future? And have I got enough time make a difference now? It was kind of the brutal truth to myself. After 25 years, I've got probably another 25. What does that mean?

37:54

Like I said, it wasn't nearly as bad as some people had it. But that kind of self-sabotaging is I guess a tendency if one is prone to self reflection and something I've tried to just put away and get on with my life sometimes. Sometimes you just have to do that, right?

38:10

Yeah. It strikes me that it's almost the timeframe that is the big clincher. What is the timeframe that you're making this reflection or this decision on? It's a bit like you can't connect the dots looking forward. You connect them looking backwards.

38:26

It's like, well, okay. But at what point should I look backwards? It's like, when? Should it be at 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? All of the struggles that I've had up until this point, it's like, well, actually, in 10 years time, those struggles are the creation of this success that would not have been possible without those struggles.

38:49

It strikes me it's the timeframe that's the thing that kind of eludes us. That it's so difficult to know just in what reference frame we should be reflecting and trying to figure things through.

39:01

True. I think I mostly reflect over sort of five-year periods, I suppose. I think about five years from where I was, five years is when my video game came out, for example. Five years before that is when my company closed. So that's worked for me.

39:15

And most recently I've reflected over 25 years of work and roughly 25 years out of uni. So that's been, I guess, a milestone for me. And I also hit 20 years married as well. So that was a big milestone for us as a couple, and just thinking about our lives and where we got to and what we've achieved.

39:35

And that's all great, actually. So I guess there's celebration in it too. And that's a really important part of self reflection to actually celebrate the things that we have done and we have achieved and the things that are really important.

39:49

Me not selling my company 10 years ago ultimately it's not as important as working with great people, preserving the relationships we care about the most and investing in those. And ultimately through all of the kind of work that I've done over the last 25 years, building great companies is great fun.

40:14

When I look back, if one of those had become a unicorn, then maybe I'd feel differently. But none of them did. None of them have particularly succeeded. At the moment, hopefully this one will. I've got high hopes because it's going really well.

40:31

But I think the interesting thing is that the relationships are the things that have been standouts. And I'm working with people now that I've worked with over 10, 12 years. And that's been really great to be able to kind of pull all of my favorite people that I've worked with over the last 10 years to get at that and get them involved in a company that I'm enjoying and working with.

40:56

So I guess celebrating those relationships is another great thing. And something the pandemic taught us actually, the importance of connection and we can't take for granted seeing people every day and how important it is just to call someone up and say, "How are you doing?" It's just great.

41:12

What has being a dad taught you about your own working journey and how has it changed it?

41:22

I have been a dad for 17 years, so it's been quite a long time. I think I only worked for perhaps three to four years before being a dad, maybe a little bit longer, maybe five years. I remember the day that my wife called me on my brick Nokia 3310 at the time to tell me that she was pregnant.

41:48

And I remember going back to my desk out of the office kitchen and thinking that my entire world had just changed, because it had. I remember that quite clearly sitting down at my desk. And I think it gives you an elevated perspective on everything you are doing.

42:02

So at the time, it was all about the work and going out to the pub with my friends and having fun and hanging out with my wife at the weekends and going to see her parents every month or whatever it was. It was very short-term. We're living in the week by week, month by month, perhaps booking holiday, for a few years. And that was fun.

42:19

But ultimately you start thinking longer term and you start thinking bigger picture. We had... I'm trying to think. We were thinking about moving out of London at the time, and then we definitely knew we wanted to.

42:34

It became more important for us to do that, because we couldn't stay practically where we were. We were in a too smaller place. So we had to move. And that then changed pretty much everything and caused me to need to find...

42:54

I originally stayed in the same job and then needed to find a car because the commute was too much. So I guess it changed everything on a kind of surface level. In terms of the work that I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to work from home and I knew I wanted to be a dad who was present and around.

43:12

I remember thinking that quite clearly when I was younger that that's the sort of dad I want. My dad was that, he worked from home. So that's the kind of dad I wanted to be. And at the time I was working in an office five days a week, so that just wasn't going to work. So I guess that became more important.

43:28

And I think it's really interesting to see 20 years later now with the rise of hybrid working, we're both I'm guessing working from home at the moment. I'm guessing from your background that you are as well. So I think that kind of move to a hybrid working environment, where we can all work, I don't know, a couple days a week in the office and spend a lot of time at home just works brilliantly.

43:59

And I think I'd be more likely to spend more time in the kind of the world of work than rather than coming out and being a contractor or a flexible consultant if I had had this opportunity back when my kids were really small.

44:13

Because I think this just works so much better. It works a lot better for people in our company with smaller kids. We work in the office two days a week. That's very much up to two days a week, it's discretionary people.

44:27

People like getting together and we have a nice office. But there's no pressure. So it just works so much better for families with flexibility. And I think the decision points are different now than they were.

44:40

It's easier to do your best work from mixed in with having small kids than it ever was, I think. Even just, I don't know, four years ago, the technology just wasn't there to do conversations like this. It's amazing.

44:59

We forget sometimes how recent it has been possible to do online video chat in a way that actually works. I'm thinking back to... Yeah, it probably has just been five years since I did my first kind of video chat.

45:13

I remember doing a video interview for a contracting job that I was doing about four and a half years ago. It was so weird just to jump into a meeting with a bunch of people thinking, "Oh my goodness. Now I have to talk to these people. I don't know who they are. I've never met them in person." That's only five years ago.

45:31

So I suppose the parameters have shifted so much that the decisions are so different now to the ones that they were when my kids were small. And I think that's a really good thing. I think it's great to be able to combine those things.

45:45

You used this beautiful phrase, which was you feel like having kids, or when you had kids, it gave you like an elevated view.

45:54

I was looking down at my work in a way. Sorry. You were asking a question.

45:58

I was just going to say, what did you mean?

46:02

I remember just sort of almost having a fresh perspective on my work. I remember sitting at my desk with my screens and the code that I was writing at the time. Previously, I'd been all about the work in the moment and then I'd cycle home and I'd come back to work. And I was thinking about my work.

46:19

For the first time I thought, "Okay, do I want to be doing this type of work? What kind of work life do I want?" And I think it wasn't that I suddenly became more self aware. I suppose that thinking pattern was imposed upon me by the fact that my wife was pregnant.

46:37

I suppose I suddenly realized that I had new responsibilities. And uite an odd realization for someone who was only like 23 at the time. Because I was quite young when I had kids. So I hadn't had time to kind of develop that self-awareness. So it was kind of imposed on me.

46:52

So I suppose for me, that was quite significant because I didn't have much time to adjust. I hadn't gained any kind of work maturity at that point or hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do. I just knew that I was doing a job in which I was having fun and was happy.

47:07

Whereas now, I was thinking more about from a kind of different point and was looking at myself thinking, who do you want to be? And what kind of work and what kind of life do you want for the next 20 years when you've got kids at home?

47:21

As we finish the conversation, I'd love to bring it back to in a way where we started, which was those personal connections and how they've influenced your working journey. I guess the difference between then and now to a certain degree is that the way that we create those connections is more distributed and is online. And it can be harder to create those connections that can mean so much. How do you go about it now? And if you were starting again, how would you go about it now?

48:02

Yeah, that's a really relevant and important question. I think it's absolutely true that the way that I've built connections, it just doesn't quite exist in the same way as it used to. And it is much more online.

48:18

At the time, I think there was more of a sense that going to a tech conference with a new and upcoming technology, which tended to attract their kind of brightest and best people was the right thing to do. I think going to an online tech conference, for which that's true, it's just not the same.

48:37

You need that kind of hallway track where you can kind of wander around and just meet people and get a sense of the whole feel of the whole thing, I suppose. I think it's very, very hard to do that online. The point of being online is one where that would work.

49:01

So at a tech conference in 2008, the point of being there was ostensibly to learn about tech. You went to talks and you learned stuff. I kind of listen to the talks, but my point was just go meet people. And you could do both at an in-person event.

49:23

At an online conference where it's just the talks and there's just an online chat window, you miss all of that. It's just impossible. So you just don't get that. I think if you were able to join an online community where it's possible to and encouraged to build those kind of connections, supplemented by in-person interaction, I think is the best way to do it.

49:46

If I'm honest, one of the best ways is to join a great company at the moment. Because yes, you can be online, and you can be remote, but you can also be dragged into an amazing culture that meets every so often and builds relationships that way.

49:58

I have to say, I think that's more important than it was when I was younger. I think you could be more itinerant. The connections were easier to form because we all kind of hung out in the same city. It was mostly in and around London. So that was easier.

50:17

And I think it was true of the valley as well, probably 5 or 10 years before London it was like that. So I think that's still true. And I think it will be true again to a certain... I don't think it'll ever be the same, but I think there's too much value in getting together in person for it to vanish.

50:34

I think we've all had the novelty of being online and forming connections that way. And it was a novelty for a while. But honestly, it's good to get together. So I think that will come again. For now, though, there aren't many better options than really evaluating the kind of environment and culture that you are in as someone who works in tech or something similar.

50:59

And think, what are the great tech companies I should be working for that are going to help me build a great community of people that I love working with? And is the one I'm in one of those? Ultimately there has never, ever been a better time to try and find a job in tech.

51:15

I can't tell you how competitive the market is for finding great people. It's incredibly difficult as companies to find great people at the moment. So if you are someone who tech and wants to do your best work, I would say hold your company to a high bar for creating that place and that community and that environment. And if that's not working for you, then move.

51:40

I love this. Thank you. That's pretty meaningful.

51:45

That's probably quite controversial, but it's true.

51:50

Meaningful and practical. Yeah. Just thank you so much. And thank you for sharing your whole story.