Tales From The Database | Big Bets

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Compiler • • Big Bets | Compiler: Tales From The Database

Big Bets | Compiler: Tales From The Database

About the episode

People react differently when they hear the word “risk”. While there’s the possibility of reward, it takes a lot to step out of the comfort zone. The Compiler team asks if there’s ever such a thing as a safe bet, and hears from experienced risk-takers on the best time to take a leap of faith.

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Just a thought about entrepreneurship and about this component of luck versus risk. I would say try to get as lucky as possible. Evgeny Predein is the CEO of Apiumhub, a software development company based in Barcelona. These are words he said to me in passing, but they stuck with me because I always thought luck and risk were things one shouldn't depend on. At least not too much. But obviously Evgeny feels differently. As long as you can permit yourself to bet on something, bet on it. Because life, it's more interesting this way. I think. I know how a big bet can pay off. The world is full of stories of people taking chances, but how safe are those bets? Can they be safe or safer? And how do you know when to make one and when to stay the course? This is Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat. I'm Angela Andrews. And I'm Kim Huang. We go beyond the buzzwords and jargon and simplify tech topics. We are sharing stories from industry veterans about how they found their footing in the tech industry. Today, we're sharing two stories about placing big bets and taking chances. My name is Linda Ikechukwu. I'm currently a developer advocate at Smallstep Labs and I'm based in Lagos, Nigeria. Linda attended university in Nigeria and soon after she landed her first tech job with a large company working as a cloud developer. They had a talent pipeline with my department and every year they would usually pick two or three students to come work with them. This were usually the best students in the department, and they did have this test that interested students were supposed to write, and those who came out on top were recruited to come work with them. That was how that happened. At first, the work was stimulating, but Linda noticed the skills she was picking up were only relevant to the ecosystem she was working in. And for me, I had wanted to optimize for the biggest paycheck possible while also doing valuable work and getting better at my craft. Angela, does this happen often? Do people when they first enter the tech industry that they end up kind of working in a very homogenous environment? I've seen it. Usually in the beginning, folks aren't sure and they take the opportunity that is presented to them. That feels good at the time, but when you start doing the job, you may begin to realize that, "This isn't where I belong. This isn't the role that makes my heart sing. I need to be doing something different." (03:10): And that can be for a myriad of reasons. So sometimes you have to realize and say, "Okay, thank you for the opportunity, but it's time for me to move on and do something else." And as the title says, sometimes betting on yourself is usually the safest and the best way to go. You can't hang your hat on promises or titles or the name of a company. If it's not for you, it's not for you. You have to bet on yourself. I understand what you're saying and maybe it's just me doing an episode on big bets because I am the most risk-averse person in the world. I don't gamble. You will never see me at a poker table, let's just say that. I am not the kind of person to take a big bet. And beyond that, I feel when we're talking about the work that we do and trying to find purpose, and it seems like all very altruistic. Yes. It doesn't seem like the place and time to be talking about luck or to be talking about risks and taking bets. It just doesn't match to me. The culture just doesn't, to me, there's no overlap there. Really? Yeah. Because I think every time you take on a role, you're betting on something, you're betting on the promises of this role, you're betting on, this is something that's going to help your career, help line your paycheck. You're betting on something. You're betting that you can be great at it. You're betting on a lot of things. And every time we take the risks, it doesn't seem like a risk. It seems like, "Oh, this is what we do." Right. But some of us stay very comfortable in roles and positions on teams and at companies, and we don't muddy the water. We don't rock the boat. We stay put because this is safe for us. We could hate it. It could make us not want to get up and go to work in the morning, but because it's safe, because it feels secure, we'll continue to do the things that don't serve us for the sake of being comfortable, for the sake of being safe, for the sake of not being risky. Because this is a sure thing. It's the devil you know versus the devil you don't. And beyond that, I feel like that there's a dimension of, especially with Linda and her story, which is super interesting, she immediately started working for this really, really large, really well-known company in the space. And that seems to me, that seems so lucky. That itself- It's a pinnacle for a lot of folks. Yeah, it sounds like lady luck is on her side in this. For sure. And to get kind of into that environment and say, "Oh, this is not for me," or "This is not quite the right fit," it seems antithetical to the whole luck thing. It's kind of like you're rejecting certain types of luck and then you're taking a bet on something else. And that's where the confusion for me comes in, where to go and how to kind of calculate the risk and calculate luck and understand it and quantify it. I like the word you use, calculate. We don't go into any new situation without weighing the pros and cons. Many of us don't sit down and write a matrix or a rubric on how we decide to do things, but we do take a lot of things into account, how we're feeling, where we want to be, our teammates, the work we're doing. (06:49): There's a lot of things in this "Matrix," air quote, that we tend to want to calculate to decide, is this the risk I'm willing to take or am I willing to bet a couple dollars somewhere else? Am I willing to slap down and say, throw it on the table and say, "Let me try something else. (07:08): I'm feeling good about this. Let me try." It is such an individual pursuit to understand that each of us is different. And what might be right for Linda may be terrible for Angela or what might be great for Kim may be, it might be something Johan may or may not be interested in. You know what I mean? It's such a- Hey, more than me. Right? Definitely more than me. It's such a personal thing. So you're fine. You're okay for being risk averse, but you take chances constantly and you don't consider them chances. But we do as humans. We do the checks and balances so much in our lives. We don't even think about the risks we're taking and the bets we're taking. We just kind of do it natively. But because we're talking about it in terms of our careers, which can be make or break, for a lot of us, that seems like a much bigger risk. And for Linda, her employer, again, very well-known company, leaving the security of that job, it was Linda taking a chance that would've made a lot of other people like me hesitate. Yeah. But with her days, she told me that her days were becoming more monotonous and the work that she was doing just wasn't exciting her anymore. And she was feeling very isolated, which I can understand that as well. And with all of that in mind, she was willing to walk out on a limb. When I was planning to make a change, I thought of expanding. I already knew cloud deployment and cloud development, but then my friends then were coding and they had gotten jobs as front-end developers, back-end developers, software engineers, and that association and being around them just made me pick up interest again in coding. And I started doing projects on my own and it was fun. I decided that, "You know what? I'm going to switch from cloud to software engineering." Linda gave herself six months to essentially learn software engineering from scratch, which I think that's impressive. Okay, Linda. Yeah. I would come back home and I would do two hours of studying and have my friends walk me through things that I probably did not understand and built out a couple of projects and built a portfolio for my projects. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. She went for it. Yeah, she really did. Does it sound kind of like a familiar story? Do you- Oh. ... do you feel like other people, like this is how they do it? Is this how they make that change? This is how it's done. I was a part of a community of career changers for a couple of times in my life as a student and as an instructor. And for people to take the time to focus on something wholeheartedly like Linda did, buckle down, do the work, build up the portfolio, the actual portfolio or the portfolio of knowledge that we tend to amass when we're learning something new and then take that out and try to find that next great role. (10:36): I love these stories because I've seen it with my classmates, I've seen it with my students, and it is something to behold when your friend is a bartender and then he becomes a software developer. Or your other friend does a little bit of this and that on the side and she becomes a Q and A engineer and you have another person who was coming into retirement and decided he wanted to do something different. So he decided to become a cybersecurity expert. So I love these stories of purpose, of pivot, of self-assessment and taking chances on yourself. This is what so many people are doing. I love these stories. Yeah. And Linda, for her part, she is thankful for her very first tech job. You would think that making this change, she's just kind of like, "All right, this is the new me." But she also understands that that first position she had was invaluable because it gave her a lot of perspective on what she wanted to do and what she didn't want to do. I think that's really powerful to have that kind of self-awareness. Oh, yes. She understood how important that first kind of foot in the door is, even if she moved on to other things. It was a great first opportunity into tech. Your first job into tech is like for this big enterprise organization, it was nice. But for the kind of career I wanted for myself, I was optimizing for growth. I knew that wasn't the path for me to take because I was optimizing for rapid growth. We are going to come back to Linda because her story of taking big bets isn't quite over yet. But first, after the break, Evgeny returns to talk about the big bet he and his team made when starting a new venture. Stay with us. It's been nine years since Evgeny Predein and his co-founders started Apiumhub. We were just a bunch of guys trying to do the task or trying to program actually in a good way. Apiumhub is focused on optimizing software development processes, bringing in that really powerful DevOps culture, making things more streamlined with better documentation, better development cycle stuff. That's kind of what their focus is. And this makes sense because Evgeny was a developer himself once upon a time, and his co-founders also have similar backgrounds in IT. Because we read a lot, we learn a lot. We try to implement everything that we learned, and we saw that there was a barrier coming from managing roles, trying to get software as soon as possible, not caring about the technical debt and so on and so forth. Same old song, right? Yes, I've heard that one before. So he told me about a big bet that he and his leadership team made when they landed one of their first large clients. There is one particular moment where we gathered a couple of big clients and we thought, "Okay, how can we grow fast?" Right? And it was like second year of our existence. They landed a big account in Vietnam. Remember, Evgeny and his team are in Spain. And we thought, "Okay, now that we have to travel to Vietnam on a regular basis, why not try to open an office there?" I remember being like six people here in Spain, and we had 15 people in Vietnam. The team took a risk. They made a bet and invested money and time into building out that team in Vietnam. So what happened? It was a complete nightmare of managing cultural differences, language barriers, time zones. I think that this made our growth a little bit slower. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. This is also a familiar story that I hear from a lot of different people in the startup space and people who are trying to manage teams that are international, teams that are remote, hybrid, on-site. Yes. You're having to balance different schedules and different styles of management, language barriers and cultural differences. And I feel like there are certain nuances to tech cultures internationally and certain hubs and certain areas, and even in the United States, certain areas where maybe there's a preference for a certain type of programming language or framework or there's a over saturation of a certain skill set and maybe there's a dearth of another skill set that is needed, or there are different types of challenges that are kind of a little bit more grounded in business challenges and grounded in challenges with resources more so than just a simple, "We don't speak the same language," kind of situation. Exactly. Yeah. So let's put this in another perspective. What if Evgeny was deciding, "I want to move somewhere one day," and he closes his eyes and he points at a map and he winds up in Vietnam. That experience of maybe never having visited, not knowing the language, not knowing how to get around, not knowing the customs and the mores of being in Vietnam. We're just translating this into business speak. This is the exact same thing. He was used to doing business a certain way, and then he had a team doing business a certain way. It sounds like they had a lot of growing pains being able to communicate and overcome those barriers. And he said something about fast growth. Yes. They didn't do it iteratively to go from zero to 100, that's huge. Yeah. On the other hand, starting your own venture and then having a client reach out to you from another country, it's got to be really exciting and- Oh, of course. ... maybe this is a case where they took a chance because of the overexcitement or the overstimulation of getting the client. And we all know that getting a customer and keeping a customer are two very different things. Yes, ma'am. Yes. So that's how I look at the situation. But I think you really nailed it there, Angela, where there's so many different aspects of understanding the local culture and just the, kind of the environment and the atmosphere. It's really hard to take a temp check on the changes that you need to make to an organization or the changes that an organization needs to make to its infrastructure when you're thousands of miles away. And of course, this was a learning experience for Evgeny and his young startup. You need somebody who fully aligns and understands your culture, who you can delegate and say, "Okay, so we need to keep growing in the place that we need, we need to open it there." Exactly. I think you just learned the valuable lesson that I think Angela, you were speaking to earlier. Yeah. You had to find it out somehow. Yeah. And he realized that that is a challenge that he's going to have to work to overcome. You can't sweep it aside because these are humans that we're dealing with. And it sounds like he had the growing pains we thought he would have. And I'm interested in seeing what's next. We'll check in with him. Oh, good. At the end of the episode. We'll put a pin in that. We'll put a pin in it. We'll put a pin in it for now. But I do want to note that understanding cultures and complex concepts and what things are like in a certain location can be really powerful, especially when you have something as transformative as tech in the mix. Just ask Linda, who at this part of the story is settling into her new role as a software engineer. One day she was sharing some small talk with her manager. We were having a conversation about serverless, about a project where he wanted to deploy something the serverless way. And that was my first time of hearing serverless and it was the buzzword then. I spent some days or some weeks even trying to just get what serverless was all about. And when I finally did, I published an article about it and it was about how I understood how serverless works through booking an Uber ride. And that article did a lot of numbers. That article got a lot of attention, and not just from Linda's peers. I had editors from technical publications reaching out to me like, "Hey, I saw this. I like the way you write. Would you be interested in writing a couple of pieces for us on this topic or that topic?" Being able to break down the jargon and the buzzwords into an approachable, easy to digest article, that is usually a godsend. That is something that everyone who's looking or Googling or trying to find a solution and stumbling upon something that's eye-opening, we love when that happens. So for her article to get all of that attention, it must have talked to a lot of people and the struggle that a lot of people were having at that time about understanding serverless. She's doing that good work, that's good for her, good for her. I feel like there are so many technical folks out there that have a wealth of knowledge and that kind of really great grasp on concepts, and they're able to disseminate that into easily understood language and easily understood stories and narrative. But they don't write because they're hesitant, they're scared, they don't want to take a risk to sound, maybe they don't want to sound stupid or they don't want to embarrass themselves, or they don't want to open themselves up or put themselves out there as they say. Angela, what are your thoughts on that? There is a lot of imposter syndrome about writing. Yes. What you said, I've said those words out of my mouth. So that's why I was laughing over here to myself because it feels when someone says, "Oh, you have so much to say," or "You explain that very well," or "You should write a blog," and then I immediately look at my calendar and say, "When am I supposed to do said thing?" Right? So it is just one of those things where we feel like it's too big for us. Right. We can't do this. Leave that to the writers. We can't do that. But I've given the advice to people, writing is a way to learn something very well yourself. Yep. It's like if you can explain a topic in a very meaningful and approachable way because this is something that you've learned, someone's going to find value in that. So it seems huge. It seems insurmountable at times, but I think all of us should just take a pause and maybe... [inaudible 00:22:23] said something in one of the last episodes where she said, "I gave it a couple of weeks." Right? "And I worked on it, and I decided if this was something that I was interested in." (22:32): I think we should all take a beat and do what she did and say, "I'm going to give this the time it deserves and see if this is something that we can do." Even if it's just one article, put yourself out there and see what you catch. Maybe nothing, but now you know can do it. Right? That's the first thing, believing in yourself. (22:55): And I think it's awesome that Linda, she believed in herself. She's such a risk-taker, that girl. And people sought her out after that because it was that topic. I remember serverless, make it make sense, right? So I have to find her article. I have to read it and I want to hear more. I love this episode so far. Thank you for doing the big bets episode because I love it when people just take this risk and say, "Let me try something new." Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like if you talk to Linda and also maybe Evgeny, there's a certain calculation and there's a certain type of algebra that goes into how they approach taking those chances. For Linda, this paid off because she was approached by a recruiter for a position as a technical writer, yet another career transition. Because she had seen a couple of articles I have done in several places, and she liked the way I am able to break down things, and she asked if I would be interested in coming in for an interview. And eventually she would make the jump to Developer Advocacy, where she is today, and it was all because of her writing and her curiosity. My manager would tell me that it was that portfolio that actually convinced her to hire me, that she saw that and she was like, "Okay, yeah, I'd like to talk to this person." What does a story Linda's say about tech culture? I feel like it says so many things. It speaks volumes. We live in a culture right now where we almost have to do a lot of things in public. Right? I see this on social media all the time where people are learning and living out loud. They're posting articles from their companies or talking about a new framework they're using or something. (24:57): And I used to tell people, even people that I mentor to this day, "You should probably think about learning in public because you never know who is going to be watching what you're putting out there. So talk about what you're working on, talk about your projects, talk about this new release of a software that you've been using, and highlight some of the new benefits and features and put your new project out there." Yeah. I say this all the time because you don't know who's watching. And for Linda, I don't think she was looking at this as a career change. She put this out here because she knew it would help someone. Right? This was the article she wished she could have found to help her understand. (25:45): So she's giving back and helping others understand. So this is the thing, if you're not doing it, you should be doing it. Because we're in such a volatile time right now, we should always be marketing ourselves and our skills and our understanding of things. And it's not like you want to make it a second job, but just think about how often you post. I would even expand that to the episode that we did on conferences, doing talks and kind of sharing the lessons you've learned, your failures, your successes. There's also a lot of relevance for people who are going to tech conferences and networking and also doing a talk eventually. It's all kind of related to that kind of knowledge share. It really is. Yeah. Let's close things out. First with Evgeny, because I asked him about placing bets when you don't have all the info. I think that it's part of the job to make the decisions with the information that you have. So we can create a hypothesis and if we close it within this range, we can go on this path. Also, when there is uncertainty, it's obviously more complicated, so maybe you try not to create a super rigid strategy, but to create something that would be able to adapt. So again with that adaptability and that hypothesis or a calculation. Right? It's the same for Linda. Risks are not just taken, they're also well planned out. That takes the edge off the fear in taking the plunge. Big moves don't always need to be a zero-sum game. For me, it's always patience, playing the long-term game, not rushing it, and still holding onto the safety net of my current job while I make that decision. But what is a fast way to start preparing for a big leap? Linda says, if you want to make the change, you have to dress the part first. Somebody who has now become a mentor to me told me a while ago, if you want to get a job, start doing the job. And so that has, in terms of career transitioning, that has been my North Star or something that I've always abided by. I start performing in the capacity of whatever title I'm looking out for before I start interviewing for the role. It's cosplay. Okay. It's like, "Oh, well, today and during my day job, I am a software engineer," in Linda's case. And she puts on her outfit, she dresses up and she's like, "Okay, now I'm a developer advocate. I am writing about the things that I'm learning and I'm passionate about and I'm sharing," and that is such sage advice. Why don't you play the part now? Get used to it. Get comfortable. Walk around in the shoes a little bit. I wish more people had gotten that advice because it might make their transition just a little bit easier. Yeah. And definitely address issues with imposter syndrome. Yes. And not feeling a sense of belonging or a sense of community. If you're putting yourself in that role, even when you don't really have the title yet, it can be very powerful. I think that it can inspire not even just a career change, but it can also make the perception you have of the job that you do have, it can change that slightly- Oh, I'm sure. ... where you sure understand concepts a little bit differently than you did before. Exciting. Yeah. There's a lot of things I want to touch on before we depart. Okay. First off, I feel like Linda and Evgeny, if they have one thing in common, one common thread I found in their stories was the sense of community. I feel like community is like a launch pad in a lot of ways. It is. For that type of change and for taking chances without it being so scary. You're right. That common thread between these two very different stories stuck out to me as well. How important community was in Evgeny getting his startup off the ground. How important community was for Linda to pivot into a role that she hadn't considered until she considered it. Right? Right. Community is everything. I wouldn't be sitting in this seat right now if it weren't for community. So I want our listeners to understand just how important community is in almost everything we do. Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that they had in common was the calculation or what I call the algebra of luck and risk. Where the math is math-ing. Yes. Yeah. At the top of the episode, Evgeny said what he said about luck and risk, and when he's talking and when Linda's sharing her story, and then also Angela, with your input about how we take bets and we take chances every day, I'm kind of changing the way that I'm thinking about risk. And I'm looking at it as a calculation and taking a chance or going out on a limb for something that could be truly rewarding or life-changing. (31:07): It doesn't have to be a big scary thing. It can also be something that could be planned for. It can be something that can be approached with caution and even approached with excitement, kind of like Linda, when she was learning software engineering. It doesn't have to be scary. It can be something that is really worthwhile, really rewarding and honestly kind of exciting. So that's what I'm taking away from these stories. Great takeaways. Yeah. So I'd love to hear what you are thinking about this episode. What spoke to you? Did you find other common threads in their two stories? Hit us up on our social media at Red Hat, always using the hashtag Compiler Podcast. We'd love to hear your story. We'd love to hear about some of the big bets you've taken in your life. Come on, share it out. We'd love to hear it. And that does it for this episode of Compiler. Thank you so much to our guests, Evgeny Predein and Linda Ikechukwu. Today's episode was produced by Kim Huang, Johan Philippine and Caroline Creaghead. Victoria Lawton always leads by leaping. Our audio engineer is Elizabeth Hart. Special thanks to Shawn Cole. Our theme song was composed by Mary Ancheta. Our audio team includes Brent Simoneaux, Leigh Day, Stephanie Wonderlick, Mike Esser, Nick Burns, Aaron Williamson, Karen King, Jared Oats, Rachel Ertel, Devin Pope, Mike Compton, Ocean Matthews, Paige Johnson, Alex Trabulsi, and the mighty Mira Cyril. If you like today's episode, please follow the show, write the show, leave us a review, and then share it with someone you know. It really helps the show and we appreciate it. All right, everybody. Until next time, take care. See you.

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Compiler

Do you want to stay on top of tech, but find you’re short on time? Compiler presents perspectives, topics, and insights from the industry—free from jargon and judgment. We want to discover where technology is headed beyond the headlines, and create a place for new IT professionals to learn, grow, and thrive. If you are enjoying the show, let us know, and use #CompilerPodcast to share our episodes.