Passion and products - Jose Guerra

00:00

I do think a background, a technical background, an understanding of software development is important. But often what happens is that there is a look specifically for a person who has been doing the job before to then start leading people, where if you just open your mind and if you really look at, okay, what are the skills you need for this leadership role right now, maybe it would happen that you would bring people from functions like QA to lead an engineering team.

00:42

How's the way that you align your purpose and a company's purpose changed from the beginning of your career to now?

00:52

At the beginning of my career, there hasn't been always the purpose, the mission of a company, hasn't always been top of mind to me, and that has changed. So I would say that now I'm exactly at the point where working at a company like simpleclub, I've matched the two, I mean, my sort of [ikigai 00:01:16] or where my vocation, my passion, and what's good to the world meet sort of... And that's because I believe now it's easy, right. To explain, so I'm in a place where the vision of the company is educating the world, is bringing a next generation for an education platform to personalize education for school students and vocational training. And I can wake up every day wanting that in the hands of my nieces and nephews. I can relate to that and I can and see the result of my work in an area that I really believe can change the world, which is education. Previously that was not necessarily one of my priorities.

02:19

My priorities were building my skills, working in environments that offer me path to develop myself and to just learn the ropes. That's how it evolved. In between the realities that I've gone through industries that also sort of on paper are doing the right thing, but maybe the direction the company's taking is not necessarily the one I agree with or the one I believe with. And so that also evolved, right? So it's not just about the industry per se, but also about the approach, the specific mission and vision of the company. So that's how it's been kind of growing and progressing.

03:16

How would do you define ikigai?

03:18

I wouldn't define it. It just came to my mind because it's the term that I recently kind of learned about. But so it would be a Japanese term for purpose and meaning of life, right. Or meaning to life. So my definition or the definition that I found is where you meet what you're passionate about, what you are good at, what you can be paid for and what is good to the world, what the world needs, sort of the intersection of these four things is where I believe basically you're happy. And if you're happy, you're at your highest level of productivity, for example, right. So, that's how I would define it.

04:15

Sounds like that was the kind of plan from the beginning as it is from for many of us, but that it came to you through layers. You said, you built up your skills and spent more time focused on that when you were earlier on in your career. And then that changed as you progressed, is that right?

04:39

I would say so, without it being necessarily planned. So had I met the exact crossroads of all of these aspects in my first experience, I would obviously have said that's fine. Who wouldn't? But I've been obviously growing. I've been obviously, and its been pretty much a part of who I am. I'm in this constant seek for learning and for growth. So my first priority was getting in the working world, getting a set of skills that I could build, that I could use later on for whichever area I felt was the most appealing to me. But so yes, without it being necessarily planned, that it's exactly how it's...

05:34

Your career's really fascinating because your time at fiber, you go from being the director of QA through to the director of engineering and the senior director of engineering and then the engineering leader. Through now, now obviously the VP of engineering at simpleclub, but you've come to this leadership position through QA, is that the standard approach?

05:59

It's probably less standard than it could be, than it maybe even should be. It is a bit... how I came to leadership in general has been asked of me and so an invitation for me to join and the transition from the world of QA and in fact, not just QA, but support engineering as well and teams of business intelligence before, comes through a path of building skills, building knowledge and then being at sort of at the right place at the right time and being invited to lead the development team, a development team where I could use my knowledge, could use my domain knowledge as well, that was very important at the time to then be able to transition into leading the engineering team as a whole. So the combination there was an engineering team that was looking to improve quality, me being a manager, already a leader of teams already, having acquired a lot of domain specific knowledge and that opened the door for me to actually play that role. And then from that point on, I just kept evolving. Yeah.

07:44

What do you mean by domain specific knowledge?

07:46

So there is knowing the product you working on very well. There is knowing the industry you work on very well. So an example, a very concrete example there would've been, we were developing a library, an SDK to be used by gaming companies, applications to show advertisement. Through the years and through my experience through QA, I've basically seen the entire system. I had knowledge of the system as end to end. Given my engineering background, I could also understand someone in depth what was being done, how it was being done, maybe because of my observing skills as well and my aptitude to listen, to understand what's being discussed on architectural discussions, on technical design discussions, I've gained that knowledge that was end to end, right. And that's what I mean with that domain knowledge. So at some point there, was when preparation met timing, I guess. And it made sense for me to lead the engineering team.

09:18

Why don't more QA managers or directors of QA move into directorship positions or VP of engineering positions. It sounds as you say that, it sounds like it makes total sense.

09:35

So I think there has to be... I'll be honest. I never thought about it so deep, but I do think there are different approaches to engineering leadership, right, and different needs in the engineering leadership. And I think that's what's very important to identify, you have very specific technical leadership, right? You have your principal engineer, right. Your system architect kind of role and you have a team building leadership, a organizational building leadership where you make sure that information flows, that the processes are in place for people to be empowered to make decisions, that people are growing. And I operate more on obviously on the second, right? So I have been a developer for a short period of time. I have known the ropes of developing, but I quickly became a lead, whether that was it QA lead or not, for me made less of a difference, right.

11:07

Because I quickly became a person that was managing other people. So back to your question, I do think a background, a technical background, an understanding of software development is important. But often what happens is that there is a look specifically for a person who has been doing the job before to then start leading people, where if you just open your mind, and if you really look at, okay, what are the skills we need for this leadership role right now? Maybe it would happen that you would bring people from [inaudible 00:12:01] functions like QA to lead an engineering team. So I think it's really probably about when you look for the person leading a team, is your role very well defined and more often than not, it's probably easier to just continue what's always been done, right? That is promoting a developer into a engineering team lead. Yeah.

12:33

It must have been quite the decision to leave fiber once you've accumulated all of that domain knowledge. When did you know the right time was to move on and how did you go about that process?

12:48

So that was at the end of a test to resilience, if that makes sense. Through a period that was super interesting for me to go through from a management point of view, change management point of view. And I left at the point where I was rather comfortable, very comfortable, and having spent so long in the company or that long in a company, the prospect for a significantly new challenge was not necessarily there. I felt my mission at that point was also complete. And so I was ready to try out and that's exactly how I left. The period was we had... So this was a post layoff merger of teams kind of situation so we had been sort of acquired.

13:56

I was again, asked to lead the global mobile group. So merging teams from different culture backgrounds, from different working or corporate backgrounds, if you want and deliver an entire new product, so shifting complete direction of all of these organization. And I felt I couldn't leave also my team with that problem to be solved. So I took it as a challenge. And at the end of that year and a half to year period, when we were about to launch that product, or we had just launched that project, the product and the team was in a motivated mode, I felt, okay, this was the moment to look for something different and new.

14:58

As you described that, it almost sounded like what you wanted to do is make sure that you kind of didn't leave the team on an uphill, but you wanted to almost try and get to the summit where you felt like the team was in a place where if you left it, it could then run downhill if it wanted to.

15:18

So certainly that was a big part of it. I felt we had built a pretty solid atmosphere environment, a team that was happy and very productive. And I felt it wouldn't be the right point to left it at that stage, for sure. Yeah.

15:43

Yeah. So, what did you do next?

15:47

After fiber?

15:49

Yeah. How did you go about joining FREE NOW and well, MyTaxi even at the time, probabbly been.

15:54

MyTaxi had actually reached out to me and I had been sort of secretly in love with the company. I was a user of the application. I felt the mobility industry was quite an interesting one. And I felt... A funny story there was that at some point, I was in my mind magic in a feature that FREE NOW could have, which was about sharing a taxi, sharing a ride with somebody else. So, reducing cost the passengers and kind of being able to have a fair price for the driver still. And shortly after I saw the future coming live on MyTaxi and that's when I clicked with the company and said, yes, they are in the direction and that's exactly what I thought. So here's a good purpose company, doing the things the way I could imagine them doing.

17:05

So I clicked with them. The challenge that was proposed to me was also very interesting, which was about first of all, a company over already different size than fiber. So we were talking about already hundreds of engineers, opening a new tech hub and me joining to help building that tech hub in Berlin, which I ended up doing then together with a colleague. And yeah, that's how it came to be. I was secretly in love with the company and they happened to reach out to me exactly at the period where I was happy to leave fiber.

18:00

Sounds like there were kind of two core bits there. One is your super found love of the product and being able to see them going in the direction that you wanted it to go. And then also the opportunity to build up a team at the same time. If either one of those had not existed, do you think you still would've joined MyTaxi?

18:25

Very hard to say now in hindsight. The reality is my plan was to take a break and I ended up taking a break between jobs, right? So it was, it is a passion of mine to travel and I decided I need to travel. So very likely had that not been the case, that coincidence, I would've likely taken the time, travel and then decide what would I do next or find what would I do next. But that was just too appealing to let go in a way. And so I ended up joining, agreeing a date where I would start and taking still some time to travel and start with the job, but you're absolutely right. That has been a very happy coincidence at the end. What I was defining is that I was looking for at that point was starting a team, there was one option. So starting a new team in a larger organization, that was certainly something that was on my radar.

19:45

The difference being that since I had taken over teams and I obviously helped building them, the next interesting challenge for me would've been to sort of build it, if from scratch or almost from scratch, right. So actually build the initial team, that was the interesting factor to me.

20:11

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

20:27

Yeah. What I did at FREE NOW was there were two components to it. On one hand I was leading the tribe and there was delivering on the tribe's goal, which was the whole pricing for FREE NOW. But on the other hand, also setting up the tech hub, right, so looking into how do we hire for the tech hub, setting up office, for example, and all the aspects that you need when you set up a new tech hub. So there were two components to it that when I now went into the next stage, kind of help in this VP role. But yes, certainly now it's about having seen a larger organization with hundreds of engineers as well, be able to take my learnings and design it for the next steps, as I would love to see an organization operating and being built. Yeah, at all levels, basically.

21:53

You've managed to see it from a few different points of view at companies that are at different stages, that have gone through mergers and where you are playing a different role in that organization's hierarchy. And for so many of us, we're all different and we find our fit in different places, our ideal fit. Has one of those positions or one of those phases been a better fit for you?

22:27

I certainly felt that positions where I've freedom to make decisions to build things are the ones where I feel the best, where I can build just having a trust relationship with peers, with my management, where I look for alignment, of course, but I have the freedom to make those decisions. That's where I am at my best. So I think those would've been positions like now and yeah, but also in the past. So even managing through change, through merge, through the mergers, it's been important to find my kind of sphere of freedom to make my own decisions. And I've always worked and I've learned to work with my management to find that space basically. So building a trust relationship where obviously by delivering results, obviously by creating expectations or setting expectations very clearly, and having some level of alignment, building my area of where I can make the decisions. And then frankly, it's less depending on where in the other hierarchy one is, I would say, but more about how out of comfort. So how much are you growing versus how much kind of freedom you have to learn, to grow, to make decisions basically.

24:36

How do you know whether you are at the point in your career where you should be optimizing feel sphere of freedom or your kind of an intense learning period where you're getting a lot of input from others to develop those skills? It almost seems like in some cases, they can't exist at the same time. You use that sphere of freedom to exercise those skills that you've learned, probably not in a sphere of freedom, but in close relationship with others. Has there been a pattern to the way that you've balanced that?

25:10

I feel there will be moments in your career where you're going to have somebody who can just mentor you on something, right, and is right sitting right next to you and moments in your career where you need to look for mentorship in peers, in your network, in your own learning, right. And that's something that I do. So whenever I feel myself in a new area, I have to look into what are the best sources for me to learn what I have to do. I'm an avid reader. So I usually have books next to me on the topics that I'm covering, but nothing replaces doing, having to go through the work, right and having the confidence that you can go through the work and having people you can reach out to for advice or for nudges, or even to just avoid pitfalls, that's always something good. And they might sit in your organization, but often they also sit outside, right? These are people that you've met along your career that you learn to rely on for advice for specific areas and to exchange advice with, of course.

26:43

It's a wonderful phrase, sphere of freedom. It reminds me of Warren Buffet's sphere of competence. And how have you known whether you are going into an environment that's going give you a sphere of freedom. It can be so difficult to know from the outside when you're deciding to join FREE NOW or deciding to join simpleclub, how have you made sure that the company that you're joining is going to give you that sphere of freedom?

27:17

That's a very good question. Something that I definitely learned, and also that is meet the people during the interview process, take the time to talk with the people you work with, be prepared with the questions that are the most relevant to you on the day to day. And that's pretty much what I've done. So joining simpleclub has been almost a no surprise to me by the day I started, because I have learned to really understand during the interviews, I am also interviewing, right. I am also understanding if the people are joining the company, I'm joining matches with what I am looking for. And at the end of that interview process, for me, it was a clear, yes. I had exactly met people that I had aligned my values, with my principles with, we talked openly about how would I approach work and how would they see that? So we pretty much made an exercise of setting expectations and aligning on principles of work during the interview process. That's what we did.

28:55

And that would be something that, to a certain extent, maybe the interview processes nowadays are rushing up a little bit on, in trying to get to through the hiring process as fast as possible, because there are offers, right. Candidates are having offers rather quick from different companies, but both for the company and for the candidate, meeting the people with whom they will work in a context of an exercise to be solved, or just in a relaxed conversation, feels to me super important.

29:44

Are there any nonverbal or subtle cues that can give you a sense of what are you looking out for in those conversations?

29:54

I'm looking to understand people's values and how they work, what are their principles, so those would be sort of what I'm looking for, the cues I'm looking for. More concretely, I would ask on the day to day, how would things look like, right. So I might bring an example of a situation and just ask, how would we handle a situation like this, if we were to face it, what do you expect of me in this and that and that topic or area, how do we expect us to work together? And that's similar to an exercise that I do with everybody on their first day of work and that I tend to do with everybody I work with is sort of expectation exercise. So what would you expect from me, what I would expect from you, what I would not expect from you and what you should not expect from me and through that, trying to get to an alignment on how we will work together.

31:20

And then you need to look for consistency, right, through the conversations that you have and understanding whether you're really speaking to the true nature of the work, of how things will actually happen or not. And that's, I guess, as with any interview, your intuition, also your gut feeling telling you.

31:46

Alignment itself requires your ability to be able to understand the other party. And it also requires an ability to understand yourself and what values you feel are most important. How have you gone about understanding your own values?

32:10

So some of them were very clear from an early age, I would say to me. Values like the will for freedom of decision, independence of thought, those were values that to me were pretty clear from a young age. Wanting to build my own path, those were very, very, pretty much there. Then there were others that I've learned through interactions, through also putting them to the test. So in moments where you have to decide, are you okay with the situation at work, say a decision that is being made that you don't agree with for example, or a decision or that you agree with, but especially in a situation where you don't agree with, you learn to ask yourself, is this a principle? Is this against my values? Or is this a challenge, yet another challenge that is presenting itself to me. And through that, I think I've learned what my true values also are.

33:39

And there have been moments where they were broken. And at that point, I felt, okay, this is a true value for me. And there were moments where I just, it felt not the right thing to do, but my principles, my values were intact. So that's how I kind of learned about.

34:01

Like a stress test.

34:04

Sort of. And not that I wait for them to define my values, but that has definitely helped finding what are the true ones, right? What are the ones that really make you tick that you really live by?

34:18

Thanks so much for sharing how you've navigated those values over the course of your career. I've loved it.