Growth and work - Andrew Boland

00:00

There's some situations where you just need a job, you just need to get money. And that's fine, there's a place for that. There's a different strategy for that, I guess. But if you're looking for what we're talking about in terms of meaningful work, work that helps you grow in the direction you want to grow in, then that's the kind of thing I feel you should be considering. And it's definitely something that's in the back of my mind, maybe not always as fore as it should be but certainly always there.

00:27

What direction do you want to grow in? And then, what do you look out for to make sure that the company you're joining is going to enable you to do that?

00:41

The first thing that comes to mind is quite simple.  It's just technical growth is what I'm prioritizing right now, being so early in my career. Technical growth is really important. So what I'm looking for is an environment where you can learn the skills that will help you build the things you're most interested in. And maybe a place where you can afford to play with ideas, suggest things, not necessarily always even implement them, just discuss them. Rationalize the processes, get the benefit of more senior developers' experience. So that's definitely top of the ranking.

01:22

And then I think what I'm hoping for in terms of exposure to people who really know what they're doing is to then identify where the next growth step will be. That's the short/medium term is to understand and to get really good at the technical skills. I get a lot of satisfaction in understanding best practices and understanding why they're best practices, and how to maybe step around them when you need to, when it's justified, how to justify it. So thinking about the work at a higher level, in terms of the technical skills, that's the highest priority for me right now.

02:03

When you choose what projects to work on, sometimes it differs depending on the stage in your life.

02:10

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And in fact, that's a step, I'm not even that close yet because I'm so early, I'm only in it one year. So the question hasn't got that close. For me, it's more like which companies do you choose to work with based on the kinds of products that they're creating or kind of projects that they're creating. I don't have the benefit of choosing a specific project in my work life. I'm very much told which one to work on because as a junior it's more about skill-building, as far as I can see.

02:40

But if I can identify a company that pursues the kind of work that I get a lot out of, then that's enough for me. I don't have to funnel a closed set of projects.  I can do that on my own time but you have a lot less time and effort to put into those once you've given so much to your day to day.

03:00

How have you gone about finding those companies?

03:04

Yeah, well, searching for work is a task in itself, totally unrelated to the kinds of work that you're trying to pursue. Mostly it's been trying to leverage the technologies that we now have access to, things like job boards and LinkedIn, the ones that pretty much everybody is using. I came across Chord and that offered a slight difference in the process that ended up actually being really significant.

03:41

Once you have a platform to start to sieve through companies with, then it becomes identifying what kinds of work it looks like they're performing, what kind of product do they see as meaningful and worthwhile. And with some of them, in say early consultancies, they might just take on whatever projects they can get access to and try to prove that their name is good and they can do whatever work comes their way. But then as things progress, maybe they become a bit more selective.

04:25

If you have a product, an idea that you're building around, maybe you're looking for people that align with the kind of product ethos that you're building. And identifying that ethos is definitely the most important step in finding work that's engaging and meaningful for me.

04:46

How do you work that out? It's so difficult to understand what a company's ethos is from the outside.

04:52

It's almost impossible and so that's why it becomes this incredibly frustrating game of numbers where you just have to see does it loosely resemble what you're looking for? Because you can't be too restrictive at the start otherwise you won't find anywhere or you'll miss out on opportunities that actually might have been a great fit. And so you have to be willing to go through that process over and over and over.

05:19

On the other hand, you actually gain more intuition for finding what you're looking for. You might know what you want to do but in terms of reading it from a job posting or an interview, that's a difficult skill to cultivate. So hopefully through that process you'll get better. But really, it seems to be a numbers game. Like I say, read the people, even the hiring managers, see are they trying to put you into a job for the sake of doing their own job, just have a candidate into the position or are they looking for somebody that fits quite well into the vacancy as it exists. How does that vacancy complement the strengths of the employees already?

06:06

Why is ethos the thing that you prioritize there?

06:15

I think I might be using that kind of loosely, but basically the way that a company conducts itself in that process is, I'm hoping, a good proxy for how they value their own work day-to-day. Trying to get a sense of what's important to them, what's not important to them, what will they be pursuing when you actually join them and what will be maybe more of a shiny Russian egg that they're trying to show you and won't actually come to be anything.

06:56

You're actually using it like a... less that you want to work in a nice environment and more, "I want to make sure that if I can figure out that if this company is giving me a good experience during the interview process, then they're probably a good company to work for."

07:14

Yeah, and good in that sense, good experience doesn't necessarily mean pleasurable. It means an environment where you think you can grow in the direction that you want to grow. And I think that has to be the role of the interview if you're doing it right.

07:32

There's some situations where you just need a job, you just need to get money. And that's fine, there's a place for that. There's a different strategy for that, I guess. But if you're looking for what we're talking about in terms of meaningful work, work that helps you grow in the direction you want to grow in, then that's the kind of thing I feel you should be considering. That's definitely something that's in the back of my mind, maybe not always as fore as it should be, but certainly always there.

07:57

You've said in the past that from the scientific process, you learn the value of criticism and how it is essential for personal growth. At what point do you criticize yourself when you're looking for work?

08:17

Well, it's a constant process and it's by no means a negative process. The criticism is the same as in the scientific process, running an experiment and finding something you didn't expect. Which is the whole point. That's what make it worthwhile, is that while you're running through that experiment you think it'll go one way. If it went that way, it'd be incredibly boring. So when you're looking for that criticism, it's looking for places that you can grow, identifying places where your skills need to improve in any capacity. And that can come from yourself or it can come from others.

08:59

So that discussion of, say you submit some code, and somebody's reviewing it and they're saying, "Never do this," that could immediately be a reflection on yourself. And you say, "Well, I'm no good, that code is no good, I'm just going to recede into myself and say okay, that's fine." Or you can pursue the meaning behind what they were saying. Why would that be not a good idea? In what situations is that going to do something that I didn't expect? How can I avoid it in the future? Are there any situations where that's a good idea?

09:34

At what point does that self-criticism become self-loathing?

09:41

I feel like they're, depending on your definition of criticism, they're completely separate. You can allow it to become, if you allow it to become. If you repeatedly get people saying to you, "This is all bad. This is terrible," then you're going to have to get pretty creative on how you rationalize that one so that you come out feeling two thumbs up. But I think it's really unlikely, especially when you're on a journey, an iterative journey where... I'm not going to jump straight for a super-high ranking position because I know that the feedback won't be good, because I don't have the skills required for that position. So long as you're taking the steps at a breath that respects where you're coming from, I think you can easily maintain a position where you're reasonably comfortable, confident with some of the skills you have and you can identify the ones that are lacking for the place you want to go.

10:47

So it's kind of like when you're working out or running or something, you don't just sprint from the get-go. You just rein it in a little bit. You're pushing yourself but not so much that your body can't keep up with where you're trying to put it.

11:00

How do you develop the self-awareness to know whereabouts your body's at in that moment?

11:06

Same as exercise. Keep doing it, see where it hurts. And then when it hurts too much, pull back a bit.

11:13

What do you keep doing, the self-awareness part?

11:18

It's with any process, if we're talking about the jobs applications process, you just keep applying to jobs. You keep trying to get a sense of where your limits are, where your aptitude lies and then find a balance between reaching for something and not reaching so hard that you sprain something.

11:42

What do you think stops people making that feedback loop faster? It strikes me that the people who have figured out how to become successful in one way or another have a shorter and shorter feedback loop between the outside world, their actions, their self-awareness, and then their areas for improvement. But for whatever reason, it does take some time to shorten that loop and I certainly remember a time in my own life where that loop was pretty big. What are the obstacles that stop it shrinking and becoming quicker and that process becoming easier and more natural to someone?

12:25

I think the first one that comes to mind is if you're in a system where you can't control the pace, then you might consistently feel like you're underachieving because somebody else has set the bar. So I guess if you tried to prevent yourself from falling into the assumptions that somebody else has placed on you, then you might be in a better position to choose when you push and when you pull back. You can't automatically just be at the same pace as another athlete. You have to find it out yourself.

13:04

And so, for example, a situation where you might begin to really believe that sort of more self-loathing perspective is if you spend a long time in a system that isn't your own construction, like for example, school. For one reason or another, if you don't jibe with that system, you might come out with some pretty unhealthy perspectives on self-value and self-worth. That one's hard to undo because it's probably been going on for quite some time.

13:39

So I guess if at all possible, and it is possible, certainly, in the situation that we're talking about where you're pursuing work, because you choose where and how to pursue, then controlling that level of expectation is definitely the most useful tool that I've had.

13:55

Was that experience at school something you experienced?

14:00

For the most part, it actually wasn't. I was fortunate to slot into that system very well because I like to focus on a small set of things at a time. And that might not be immediately applicable, to, say, taking... In Ireland, you take seven Leaving Cert subjects at age 18. But you can work, you just focus on this one today and then you focus on the next one tomorrow and you can come up with something that leverages your best skills. And that worked out for me, thankfully.

14:36

Have there been any other... I'm trying to think of some other environments where-

14:41

Where it would break.

14:43

That might be the case, yeah.

14:48

I won't assume myself in that position because I've never been in something... I've needed work before but I've never felt like if I didn't get it, I was going to suffer terribly for it. So I can't assume that position. All I can think is that you would change your expectations so that you can satisfy the needs that you have now. Needing money is possibly at a time in your life more important than pursuing growth at the rate that you desire it.

15:21

And so if you can pursue just that static, stable level of survival first and become comfortable there, you sort of let all that cortisol jive for a sec, let all that adrenaline just level off so that you can start to think again and occupy your own mind. Then maybe you can take a step and feel out that next step. Maybe you start applying for something else that you really want to push for. But like I say, I can't assume that position because I haven't been in something that dire before.

15:53

Yeah. As a society, what steps could we take to ensure that more people have the chance to experience their own growth?

16:04

Yeah, that's a good one. So I guess it depends on how much we want to assume what growth looks like, definitely individualized. Some people can get a lot of meaning out of being hypercompetitive and pursuing accolade and sacrificing everything for that, to be on the top. And that works for some people and it can be exciting, certainly, in the process. I don't know how it works out at the end but they seem to be enjoying it in the process which a lot of the time we're reminded of living in the present moment, it can be really enjoyable. Maybe they project into the future. I don't know if it's the accolade that drives them.

16:47

What I could say is that for my own point of view, the times when I've been able to do that best, the level of introspection required to decide what positive healthy growth looks like, it's been a time where I'm not overworked or overstressed or pushed beyond what I feel are my means. That is not to say that you can never do that. That's often a really useful tool to be able to pull that. Again, in terms of fitness, when it comes to competition, you can push really, really hard for that one-day performance, or in terms of work, maybe it's several weeks, a project, you don't know. But if you're going to take a moment to reflect, "What's the direction we're going to go in?" instead of just plowing forward with it, I think you require a silence and inactivity for a bit or at least just lowered activity.

17:45

So in terms of society, there's all sorts of values that are becoming popular in terms of... like things like a four-day work week which restrict the amount of working time, explicitly. I've heard some words about that being beneficial, both in terms of productivity and also health, psychological health and wellbeing. So I would imagine if I was to guess at something, not being a politician or somebody who's designing policy, it would be something along the lines of cultivating a space, and that usually means chilling out a bit, where people can think about these things for themselves. Little practices that work for some people could be things like meditation or yoga or exercise or whatever.

18:34

As you spoke about that, it struck me that essentially it's not a one size fits all model and for some enabling a growth mindset is giving them that huge challenge and for others it's giving them more time and alleviating other problems that they have, to at least just give them the shot.

18:55

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

18:57

What do you want your relationship with work to be like in ten years time?

19:04

Ten years. I'm not even going to be me in ten years' time. I would find it difficult to say what my ideal relationship with work would have been ten years ago and I've already been there. That's a hard one. In ten years' time-

19:21

We could lower the time, if you like.

19:26

Yeah.

19:27

Five years, maybe.

19:32

So five years, relationship with work. I don't know which is more important but there's two things at the fore. They're sort of competing for priority in my mind and that priority will certainly change over time so I can only speak from where I am now, but work is the thing that you do to allow you to pursue the things that you want outside of that time. So to be able to build the life that I'm looking for in terms of down-time and leisure and family and relationships with the people I care about, and maybe working towards the kinds of problems that I would like to see solved, that's all technically could be outside of work.

20:26

Work has sort of come in to the place of... It's been given in part the responsibility of defining meaning in our life so now we have to sort of see how those two relate. They can't just be exclusive, they can't just be "Punch in your time and have the money now and then do what you want with it," because you'd be miserable during those hours that you're working. I think it would be more than satisfactory for it to be possible to pursue those things outside of work and to be working towards problems that matter to me, personally, in a way that leverages the skills that I most enjoy practicing. I think that would be pretty great. That would be hard to achieve, I reckon, but that's sort of what this process is about.

21:25

Interesting that you'd choose skills and the pursuit of skills there over pursuit of meaning.

21:35

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, in terms of the day-to-day, the meaning would come from the problem that you're trying to crack. Who are we really helping here? So it can't just be for the sake of finances. I wouldn't want to be just practicing the skills and getting money as the only return, that's the only meaning of that work. But the reason practicing skills is important to me is because that what makes the process satisfying. So if you have the process enjoyable and the outcome enjoyable, that seems to be pretty ideal.

22:12

Do you have a weighting there or a preference between the two? How heavily do you weight the practice of your work as opposed to the eventual outcome of it?

22:23

So now, like we were saying at the top, the process is really important because that'll allow me to get to the places that I want to be. So getting those skills up to scratch as fast as possible and being in a position where you can play with them and leverage them in a way that you're no longer thinking about the skills, necessarily. You're just using them to crack something which is more meaningful. That will come later, that will come in time. So in this five-year scenario, I would hope that the weighting is more strongly towards the problem, the domain that you're solving problems within. But you still have to do it, so the skills are still important. It wouldn't be 100% in that direction. It's important to enjoy what you're doing. But yeah, it would be, I'm sure, very strongly in the direction of purpose.

23:16

Andrew, I love that. Thanks so much for taking the time out. Your perspective's really valuable.

23:23

Thank you very much, Ben. It's been really enjoyable.