Office Visitors And I'm Low On Gas

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all right on the way to work there's the TT it's going for an oil change on Friday so soon we're back in the AMG for today my wife's got her SUV back so that's good news but not good news that there's no AC in it for a while but that's okay probably don't have a too many hot days left this year it's a there's a big pickup truck that parks on that part of the road you can't see where I just turned from and it completely obstructs all of the view what people are pulling out so this guy who's pulling up beside me was speeding like crazy and uh I still had enough time but this is why we like f F cars because if we need to go fast we can go fast doesn't mean you should always drive fast that's not safe but

it's like I pulled out and then was looking and I'm like yeah that guy is moving pretty quick so I got to do the same thing anyway this week's going to be super cool um and I'm going to be I guess able to put out a few more of these than usual um that's because there's a bunch of office travel this week so people are I don't know exactly where people are flying in from uh I do know that uh one of my PMS uh that I work very closely with is coming in uh like I think he's he'll be in this morning but I think into the office kind of like by noon um and then he'll be here for a few days so super pumped to work with him uh cuz we work very closely together regularly but we haven't met yet so

that'll be nice um and then yeah like I I think Thursday he's they have an offsite but uh otherwise hopefully be spending some time with him this week but I don't know all the other people that are coming in so it's kind of nice just to be in the office um and I I kind of wanted to to take this drive into work today to talk about some of the benefits of that um because the last time it was basically last year where they had a at least from my experience where there's a big not a group event but like a big opportunity where there was a lot of uh travel that they scheduled at the same time so um just to give you an example of just like I want to talk about the value of like meeting your teammates and stuff but just

this like Co like The Coincidence of being in the office is kind of nice because the team that I'm on right now there's a principal engineer uh who also works as uh an incident manager so the previous team that I was on uh was a deployment team and you know we're always trying to help make sure that we can get things done for other teams even when they're experiencing incidents like if they need changes deployed we have to work closely with them so um this principal engineer on my team now uh I didn't realize that he was not local to uh to the Redmond Area so I actually had the first time that I met him was at the office but I didn't realize it was coincidentally during this period where they had a whole bunch of people flying in so I sort of just

got lucky that I was able to to meet with him in person and talk through some stuff which is really helpful um you know it's it can be challenging when you have I mean between any teams but I feel like with platform teams we often feel like people only want to talk with us when there's a problem and when things are good people are quiet it's like you know things are working why do we have to reach out to you right no one's like no one's dropping you thank you cards and stuff like that uh and obviously we don't expect that but it kind of sucks because people talk to you when there's problems so as a result of that you can often feel like you have a lot of friction with any interaction just because it's almost guaranteed it's because something's going wrong so

um it was really cool to be able to meet with this guy in person for our first interaction and like I said I didn't even realize he wasn't local and then when I ended up joining this team I I discovered after I joined the team because I was like oh like you know does he come into the office and it's like he doesn't even live here uh so the The Coincidence of being in the same place at the same time is great uh and there's other people too so there's a couple of um sort of like call them gems and Gem is just a group engineering manager so I'm an em and Gem is sort of like manager of managers and there's a couple of gems that I didn't realize uh were not local either like I had figured with their tenure and stuff just

like not a not a good thing to assume anymore but I just made the assumption that they were local so um and there are two in particular that are just not local at all um different states entire so uh I had kind of a similar thing where happen to be at the office during that week and got to meet them in person which is super nice uh cuz you know I collaborate with people on their teams and uh yeah it's like this I don't know like people might depending on your work experience now you might not even have this type of situation coming up but for me right when I started at Microsoft it was like during uh during the first sets of lockdowns right so I relocated across the continent from Canada and started working in the US and still was remote like I

was basically fully remote for the first three almost three and a half years uh that I was at Microsoft so physically relocated and was still remote uh and the side effect of that well two things right is like one even the people that were local on my team they just weren't coming into the office which is fine right like they're working remote and things were shut down so of course so people started to get used to working remotely just fine you know I'm not I'm not not commenting on that part uh because I work remotely too so people working remotely even if they were local and I have employees that are in different countries just got to get on the highway so what that meant for me was that oh man I just realized my wife took the car and didn't put gas in it

I got yeah I got enough gas to get to work but like the gas light's on come on that's not H there's a a comment about some type of etiquette that all just leave it that so back to what I was saying uh I don't know if other people have had this experience now uh whether they switch companies or teams or something and like you basically have been working with people that you've never met it's not unique to like having gone through a lockdown and and a lot of companies going more remote first because this type of thing did exist before it just wasn't as common right I know uh one of the places that uh I don't know if I talked about this one publicly I applied for a job at Circle CI and circle CI if you don't know um who they are

they make uh continuous integration software right so like GitHub actions kind of thing right so they have a CI like a CI platform and uh you know I'm I'm interested in being able to help Engineers do work more effectively so seemed like an interesting opportunity uh one of my one of my closest friends and former colleague and uh at the time he was working there was he yeah at the time he was working there he must have been um so and he was an em there so someone that I used to manage on my team uh and I don't say that as in like I don't he like he was in industry for a long time he was a tester and moved into he became a an engineering manager I think he's a I don't think his is his title VP now he's at a

startup now um and he's doing awesome so that's great but at the time he was at Circle C and I had applied there like Circle CI is a remote I this is my understanding from the outside right they were remote first companies so uh they have people located across different parts of the world and I can remember when I applied there this was a big focus of theirs and it's uh from the feedback I got the number one reason why they didn't want to give me the role which was I had no experience at that point in time managing teams that were across the world now it's interesting there's a lot of challenges that come with having distributed teams and like employees that are remote and things like that but like I thought it was kind of interesting that I I wasn't able to demonstrate

that I could manage teams and and kind of figure that out I guess they don't want to take a chance on it so not for me to say like they're hiring not me um but yeah like that's an example of a you know one company that's like remote first had nothing to do with with uh lockdown or anything like that so I'm trying to use the word lockdown instead of the other the other c word because I have no idea if there's like depending where where this video eventually goes up I know YouTube for sure I don't know if they like have anything that like I don't know doesn't uh promote videos or something if you if you say the the c word that we're not supposed to say anyway the the whole point of that tangent was that last year at this time we

had this same type of opportunity when people were flying in and this year it looks different where I don't have my my employees from Mexico flying in unfortunately but last year I did and it was such a good opportunity um there's I think there's still a couple of people there's at least one person on my previous team I never met two two at least that I never met which is super unfortunate um I should actually I should check to see if they're flying in because uh they are in the US and I think I think they're limiting the the group travel to like to us employees that were out of state whereas last year they had like a big uh Latin America uh travel uh kind of thing going on so um yeah I don't I don't know the budget I don't know how it's

all done I just know that they they announce like what they're doing and then let us know that we should try to to get people involved as much as possible so uh I think before my days at Microsoft I was told that there was a lot more travel when I was hired on right my first manager at Microsoft was saying that uh so I have like a it's not the same I guess across all the micr but at least for a bunch of our teams in Office 365 part uh we have like a like a suia China counter part to our teams and uh I'll probably Reserve I I'll go into detail about that probably in another talk but like uh so we have this entire other team that uh is our counterpart in China and my previous boss was saying like I should expect

to fly out once the lockdown and stuff was done he's like you could expect like at least once a year you'll fly out there um based on his experience but I guess since lockdown and all that kind of stuff like things just haven't been the same in terms of travel budgets and all of that so obviously things evolve and all that but uh I think I think that would be super cool uh I'm not huge on on traveling like for work but it would be very interesting to be able to have that experience I think so kind of a bummer but the whole benefit of it is like you get these interactions in person so I think it's I think it's interesting to talk about because it really depends on your experience and your career right so if you're if you're listening to this and

you're like you're brand new in your career like kind of don't even know what to expect um and you're like okay I've been hearing people talk about in office versus remote versus hybrid there's pros and cons to literally everything we do in life right so um like I when I talk about software engineering stuff I might have my own personal opinions about things I like but I need to also acknowledge that like just because I like something and prefer it most of the time or something doesn't mean that it's like it's just the best or if I don't like using something that it's the worst there's always uh pros and cons right there's going to be situations where these things don't uh line up the same way so it's the same thing with remote versus in person and I had the majority of my career

was in person and that was great um I really liked being around my team I like being able to work on difficult problems just turn to each other at our our desks and like you know kind of uh brainstorm stuff together get a whiteboard out troubleshoot um love that I like you know team meetings in person uh kind of read the room a little bit better body language one-on ones like that like there's so many awesome benefits to being in person um but that's not to say that it's like that it is the only way and it's not to say that it's the best way all the time so the flexibility of being remote is huge right so right now I'm driving into the office it's 9:30 so I didn't get to work at 9: um so that's okay like so this is a bit

of a hybrid situation right I'm going to be getting to work a little bit later I might leave a little bit earlier but I am also making up that time with like after hours meetings with China so I I try to lead by example and not like basically make sure that I'm not just like living at work or trying to like work tons of extra hours uh I will absolutely step in if I'm needed on the weekends and stuff to help with things uh I've told people when I'm on vacation I let them know if I'm bu a computer right like if I go on vacation and it's really just me taking time off to be at home or something uh I'll tell people like hey I'm I'm going to be sitting right here it's a a long weekend right I'm going to be sitting

right at my desk just let me know if you need something but oh police officer um but that's it's not my expectation of of employees right so I just try to make sure that I'm flexible that way um but but this is why I'm saying like I also make sure that I'm that I am being flexible like for myself right driving into work like this that kind of thing um I've told employees right like hey like thanks for working on something later or whatever and it's like you know make sure like tell them explicitly make sure you like adjust your day accordingly tomorrow or sometime this week right like leave earlier on Friday whatever it happens to be because I think that's important if someone is doing something to kind of stretch and make sure that they get something done kind of going outside of

the norm I want to make sure people are treated fairly that way same thing with after hours meetings right it's great that people can coordinate like China's the opposite side of the world and we try to make sure that at least once a week we can have a meeting with our our team in China but that means that they're waking up early and it means that we're staying a little bit later at work and genuinely like I want people to know that the expectation is not like every day you have to go work late and if you're staying later for a meeting with China like please do take a longer lunch please do start later the next day whatever it happens to be but this is like one of the you know the drawbacks of like remote first work and this kind of thing is

like cross Geo stuff where you might find that you're working at different times um so that's one thing the other thing is like as a manager I have I literally need to make sure I'm reminding people to uh uh to kind of be fair to themselves because I don't want people to feel guilty about like oh well you know I went to this meeting and I don't want to like start late cuz that's going to look bad like I need to let them know like I'm doing that too so you should too anyway I want to bring it back to the in office stuff because that's what's going to be top of mine this week it's easy to go on rants when you're basically talking to yourself in a car but um yeah so I don't we don't have too much planned there's a couple

of conversations we want to make sure we're spending time on but like we didn't come up with like a huge agenda for the week and honestly I feel like last year we tried doing that a little bit and it felt like sometimes it felt rushed because what was happening was this uh sort of interesting situation where we like okay we're going to make sure we get these meetings done and we're going to talk about these things but then because a lot of us hadn't worked together in person we started having all of these like very natural like oh like I wonder about this or we should talk about that all of these ad hoc things started coming up and they were really good conversations and it was like almost like they're having more value than the things that we scheduled uh or perceived more value

than things we scheduled so uh I'm kind of glad we didn't go overboard like having a a strict plan for anything so I will be looking forward to just like whatever conversations we happen to have and then we're just about to get to the fun part of the highway that I hate every morning or every morning I'm driving in which is from the fast lane I have to get over every single Lane to the right to exit and I have one mile to do it and there's already people hitting the brakes up ahead I can see in both the fast lane and the normal part which means merging is going to be a bit of a pain in the butt so hopefully we can find a truck but let's uh let's give it a shot here think I can sneak in right here not bad

okay we got two more Lanes to go you get the play byplay of my uh my Lane changes it's funny this this like doesn't get easier not that it's hard I guess but it's like it's just a pain in the butt just got to find people that are giving you enough space I guess there's a big truck behind me which is always funny cuz like I don't know depending I I I must factor in that people watching this might not actually even drive cars like because people from different parts of the world are watching um and I've come to learn that even people that live in cities and stuff like sometimes they don't even have their driver's license because they've never needed it um but a big thing and I'm just going to say this I'm sure some people know this but big trucks leave

a lot of space look at this truck coming up beside me okay so you're going to see it in one sec but look how big this truck is okay it's big it's actually really short but it's a big truck now they leave a lot of space in front of them for a good reason because they don't stop as fast as you do and what happens is that people like say in a small car like this one they're like oh look there's lots of space and then they go in front of this truck they don't realize the person the truck can't even see them now like they're not in a good spot and people do this all the time and it's like it's why I I noticed I could get in front of that truck and I'm like yeah that should be enough space like he

should still see me but there it is okay we got one more little uh ramp to go on I have a feeling this one's going to suck um it's hard to explain this ramp but you basically have a blind spot as you're merging onto the highway which is usually fine if no one's in front of me cuz I can just put my foot down but I got a bunch of people in front of me and if one person is being a dummy and they're going slow like you basically need to be at highway speed in like I don't know like 10 seconds from now kind of thing because if there's a car coming like they have to slap on the brakes or you better be moving fast so we'll see but this guy in front of me is already going pretty slow fortunately no one

there cool okay and we didn't use all the gas which is good news which means I have to find a gas station before I leave uh okay so yeah the office stuff um I probably need to go double check who else is going to be in the office this week cuz I think that'll be good uh I do know so I don't know when she's flying in but uh Jade Wilson so if you're watching my stuff on YouTube you might or probably know who Jade Wilson is if you you follow me on LinkedIn and stuff you you'll know who Wilson is um she's got a huge uh LinkedIn following and she's growing her YouTube channel so Jade's also a Microsoft employee but she's from the UK so she's going to be flying in but I don't I don't know if she's flying in this week

which would make sense but I don't think she is because we're going to meet up on Sunday but she we're going to schedule like a a call on Friday and she was saying like we were trying to coordinate the time and she was saying that she said something about her time cuz obviously we're in very different time zones so I'm assuming that she's actually coming next week then which is interesting I don't know why they would have scheduled travel like that um but anyway that'll be cool so I'm going to meet up with Jade um she has some ideas planned for Sunday we're going to try to get some content put together but uh I guess on Friday when I talk with her I'll find out more for what she's what she's thinking she's far more creative for Content than I am she's uh she's

awesome on on social media so I'm happy to kind of follow her lead for whatever she's thinking of doing but I I don't know if there's anyone else um that's traveling in I know Maho uh I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right Maho Pacho uh I believe is how you pronounce it he's he is local um and a Microsoft employee I should probably try to just use this opportunity to be like hey man I'm in the office for like most days this week so uh should try to coordinate something it'd be cool yeah I was just just trying to think if there's anyone else from Microsoft that would be flying in or something I should try to coordinate with um but yeah maybe uh I don't know where Jade wants to meet because I'm I'm assuming she'll be staying around campus and I'm

not I don't live near campus like you just saw me drive into work I'm like 2 minutes away right now um but maybe we can go to the tree houses or something but I don't know what she has planned tree houses are pretty iconic that's uh they're at the building I'm going to so but now we're off the highway got a couple more turns and we're there wasn't too bad this morning what how long is this video it's it's upside down so I can't see I'm trying to find where it is on the on the screen 27 minutes okay so like a 30 minute drive that's really not bad I can live with that it's like it's better than when I get in the car it's always saying almost an hour long so like on the way home it'll say like 55 to 60 Minutes

guaranteed but if you get into the fast lane you can trim off like 20 something minutes usually yeah this will be good um what else uh Ryan Murphy and I are almost done our course super excited for that um's a cyber truck you're ready you'll see it should have been able to see it I was trying to watch the camera to see if it was in it um but yeah we're we're about we're getting pretty close we got a we still got a section left that's going to be us together recording so that'll be cool I was telling my wife I'm really excited for that part because when Ryan and I first started recording we did a couple of the sections that we need to do together like intro and outro but most of the sections we kind of take turns doing and we do

have this final section that we're recording that is uh that is going to be together so it'll be fun to like kind of come back and uh see see what our Dynamics are like recording together after having done this for a little bit I I'm excited for I think it's going to be cool um it's it's weird because we're going to have to I I don't know if I want to explain the details like we're going to have to be obviously talking with each other it needs to be professional obviously because it's for a course but even if you watched our trailer like you've probably experienced something like this in your life where you're trying to like be serious with your friends and it's like it's very hard when you're trying to be serious it's almost like everything is funny uh even things that aren't

funny become funny because you know you need to be serious and I have a feeling it's going to be uh it's going to be like that with Ryan and I when we get back on but I'm hoping I'm hoping with all of our you know training through making uh videos that uh we'll be able to kind of turn on serious mode as needed but it's funny um because it's behavioral interviews and stuff um the different scenarios and stuff we'll talk through I'm I'm I'm just really curious to see if we'll be able to to keep it all together so that'll be cool so that's over the next couple weeks we'll schedule some time for that then we're basically done so very excited to launch that we got more things planned so we'll uh we'll get moving on that but I just I think I told

no I told them already I I don't know if I've said this on camera but like I don't have a lot of hair my hair is going away and I think this is the last haircut that I just got this weekend I think it's the last one I'm getting before I have a bald head like I'm going to take it down all the way so we got to get this course done so I can have hair on my head for it and then all the course is going forward I'm going to be a bald dude be a new Nick so we'll see how that goes I'm also just realizing right now I have no idea if there's going to be any parking at the office H with people traveling in but we'll find out very shortly okay it says there's however accurate it is it

says there's 62 spots available I like to believe it nice there's definitely spots we'll go to the far wall I'll get parked up here and then we're good to go yeah it's going to be exciting week I'm looking forward to it and then Friday oh I just realized it's going to be a bit of a mess oh my schedule is crappy um I can't go to the gym Friday cuz I have to bring in the TT for an oil change they're going to give me a rental car but maybe maybe next week then I can bring my TT in to work and then record one of these from there that'll be fun so that's it folks um yeah I'll have another one up hopefully on the way home bye-bye