YIKES! - Managing a Mis-Leveled Software Engineer (Part 2)

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

all right drive home Wednesday night says an hour and 10 minutes to get home okay so thanks for being here with me I appreciate it because I hate commuting okay earlier this week I did two recordings on Monday and I lost both of them that's because I started recording and apparently my camera was in this mode where uh I don't even know what it's called but apparently it doesn't allow audio which is super cool and I did like a really good Vlog entry and I was super pumped about it and now I'm going to try to do the same one and it's going to be bad I bet just because um just because that's how things work but this is going to be a followup to one of the previous Vlog entries I did where I was chatting through something that was submitted to me

and is there good uh so this is a scenario that was submitted and I went through it and I had said during the conversation I'm like hey like I don't you know there's a lot of assumptions I have to make and the person that submitted the question to me actually uh followed up you know they're thankful they said a couple things right away clicked which is great that's awesome to hear and then they wrote me this super detailed email which I'm not complaining about I think it was awesome because the more detail I have the more that I can actually give my perspective right conversely like the example Vlog enter I did earlier was about some student uh feedback not student feedback sorry my brain uh some student questions they wanted guide uh not feedback they wanted guidance around some things to do like best

programming language but like not that I'm not trying to say this person is bad at asking questions but the questions themselves I can't I can't give good answers to without context so the fact this person wrote in a big email like was just super impressive and because the the conversation is about an engineering manager who's trying to help um an employee trying to help a software engineer um I I just wanted to share that like the fact that this person is going out trying to seek additional perspective spending time to go write me like a a lengthy email with all of the details to like check for perspective and stuff um I just wanted to say that I think that that speaks uh that speaks volume about someone caring to you know try and help one of their employees so I I think that was

really cool so um the context and I'm going to kind of repeat the original context and then add in the extra details and trying to call those out because I I don't want to say they like fundamentally change my perspective on things but I think that there's some interesting insights to go through and I apologize like I said I've already recorded one like this without volume and it was fresh in my mind now it's less fresh but I still want to go through it cuz I think it's a good conversation okay so the context is uh and this part is a little bit new so this engineering manager was uh was one of the hiring managers for this employee and uh when they were hiring this employee they they said yeah like we were impressed by like um you know how this person interviewed and

stuff like they thought the uh good and everything like everything is they were content with the inter view sorry this intersection I don't want to get stuck in the middle of so things are good and well and then like shortly after this employee starts working and they were hired on at like a senior level shortly after with a little bit uh of time they're starting to realize the manager is going like I don't think that this person is actually like performing at the level we expected so immediately that's like a bit of a an no crap moment right if you're an engineering manager you might have experienced this before uh I have experienced this in my career uh where someone it feels like there's Mis leveling that's happened which is is a very difficult situation um so apparently in this situation the uh and again

I don't know all the details of the organization how they operate but they they did end up releveling this individual so this individual went from being like a senior software engineer to uh to a software engineer so technically their level went down and the reason why I think that's an important piece of information is because the the working relationship I want to talk about this because sorry traffic is pretty crappy right here um this engineer is reporting to this manager and they're getting the sense like hey like you're my manager I'm getting feedback from you that things aren't going so great and I get deleveled like how do you how do you think the the working relationship is going to feel right there's going to be some tension there's going to be some friction potentially some resentment right like it's probably not setting things up

on the right foot now is it the right thing for this engineer like I I would like to trust the engineering manager and you know leadership's perspective on being able to like relevel this person it's very unfortunate but like I can understand and would like to trust that they're making a good decision on that right if someone is brought in at a higher level than they're operating at it doesn't do them any good because the expectations on them are going to be higher and they will not be able to meet them which is why they were deleveled so we have this situation going on okay so now the other detail and this was shared originally was that this engineering manager the way their organization works is they can sometimes have like a call it like a floating engineering manager style and I shared in the

previous recording when I tried to get this to go is like I've seen not quite the same thing but at Microsoft uh like I have Engineers that work in China and those engineers don't report to me like I am not their manager and there is a manager in China that they report to sorry switching lanes here um and generally what happens is like because this happened on my previous team too it's not like China the team in China like just has to do what the US says but they they generally look toward towards us in Redmond where is where we're headquartered to to kind of lead some of that so if you know if we end up saying from the redond side like hey like no this we're we had a conversation we're going to prioritize this generally they will they will kind of go

along with it and that doesn't mean that they're like passive about it they don't talk about it absolutely not the case like we're partnered together they absolutely have a say but they do generally look towards us for some of that guidance but that means the employees then right in China they don't report to me directly but they probably see on the US side they're like hey like this is where we're getting more direction from so it's almost like a dotted line report is how we've often phrased it so again I'm not their manager but I end up overseeing like from the project side of things a lot of the work that's being done so they have their own manager for career growth and everything else that's going on now obviously this Dynamic will change from Team to team but it's an interesting type of setup

so um it sounds like in this organization that this individual is talking about this engineering manager is a little bit more extreme than that and so in their scenario with the same engineer that was senior deleveled to uh you know kind of losing the senior part of their title um they're they end up now reporting to um I don't know the exact title that was being used but it sounds like a non-technical team lead project manager of some sort but uh the key Point here is like they are nontechnical that's going to come into the mix here so while this engineer is uh is kind of working with this team lead for a lack of better word right um they still have this floating engineering manager that's responsible for trying to help them with their career growth and this engineering manager who is the one

who emailed in is saying like they're trying to give the feedback like these are the things you need to work on this is what we need to see improve and the challenging part in all of this is that the feedback that they are getting this engineer is getting from their team lead let's call them is that they are doing good work and the reason that it looks like they're doing good work to the team lead is because the number of tickets the number of pieces of work getting done is a high number it's a bit of a trap right because the feedback that's coming from the engineering manager is like hey like the quality of the work the engineering rigor in this work is not where it needs to be but the feedback this engineer is getting from their team lead person let's call them

is like hey keep doing awesome you're doing so good so which one is it I apologize because this part of the highway especially right now is going to be a real pain in the butt so I'm going to keep talking but I might end up just like my mouth might stop because I I see an opening or something um there's two lanes of traffic to my right that are trying to merge into one and that's the lane I need to get into so it's a complete nightmare man I hate this drive um okay now it doesn't stop there things get more interesting while while this engineer is sort of like dealing with this floating engineering manager and has a team lead kind of person again I don't know the exact titles and stuff while that's happening some organizational changes happen and basically automat ially this

engineer gets their senior title back okay so that's a compounded little bit of confusion I got to see if I can get in front of this truck it's probably not going to happen get your signal on buddy can I sneak in can you see me nice okay we're clear um so that's happened all the while this floating engineering manager is trying to help them grow in their career the feedback because I had said to in the the the video that actually had audio originally I said one piece of guidance is like I think this engineering manager needs to like chat more with the uh call them team lead position and he said there have been conversations but essentially what's happening is the team lead is is literally saying well I'm not technical so all the things that you're calling out like you need to address

that with the engineer because like those are things I don't understand or or at least I can't like I can't make claims about like that's that's for you to do so I think that's most of the scenario I realized that took a little bit of time but it's a pretty complex scenario it's pretty it's a little bit messy um okay where I want to start where I just left off and that is kind of to to reemphasize the point uh I think there needs to be better alignment between the engineering manager and this team lead type of person and that's I'm not saying that's any fault of the engineering manager by any any means um I think that could even be argued that like the way the organization is set up might not lend itself well to to be like a positive experience there so

if if you have people in a position where they're not Technical and they're responsible for technical things like that seems like not a good approach uh to me I think that's like a a recipe for having um some challenges which we're seeing in this example um I also want to say that I don't I don't think it's impossible for this like this floating engineering manager style to I don't think it's impossible to work uh but I think that it creates challenges right like and again we're seeing them you end up having someone who feels like they report to two people now that's something that you might have experienced if you're an engineer or if you're an engineering manager you might have seen something like this but sometimes even within a team right I have literally seen many times where we have um an engineering manager

who's overseeing a team and there's a product owner and basically the product owner is non-technical or not Tech technical enough they get pushed around by the engineers right so like hey look Engineers are getting stuff done and then the engineering manager like wait like you know there's a misalignment between what's going on here so I genuinely think that there needs to be some alignment um to improve that now how does like I don't think this engineering manager is necessarily going to change like the organization and how they're structured so I'm not I'm not trying to say that uh but given that's probably not going to happen happen I think the partnership between these two individuals needs to improve um now I think that's honestly just about level setting expectations so if this person who is the team lead type of person again don't know the

role if they're saying hey I'm not technical I don't know how to address those types of things that doesn't mean that we just forget about it right okay well how do we make sure that we can get on the same page for that right that way it's not like the engineering managers just the bad guy right and then the the team lead person is the good person okay you're doing good all the time um there needs to be level set expectations that might not mean that the team lead person can do the most effective job of conveying all the details of that to the engineer but they need to be able to recognize it or else you get this really weird dichotomy where one is it's a good cop bad cop kind of situation we don't want that so needs to be better alignment how

that happens um I think that's some open honest conversations you got to build that relationship not necessarily with the engineer right you got to build that across these two roles so that's part number one uh part number two speaking of alignment uh and I talked about this in the other video and I want to repeat it is some type of rubric and sounds like this engineering manager was saying they are part of a committee that is going to be establishing this and I think that this is excellent uh I don't think that you have to have this kind of thing but I think that it is tremendously beneficial to have some type of rubric or guidelines on expectations that the organization says that Engineers should have at different roles or different levels in their role and the reason I think that's important is because without

it everything is completely subjective how do you balance between engineering managers and their reports and how they're leveling people um can it be done yes uh is it like is either one of these examples going to take a lot of conversations and level setting expectations even across managers yes but when you have something that is written that has been agreed upon in terms of expectations that people can look at and have conversations about refer to suddenly it becomes a lot easier to call out like hey look we say at this level for this role this is an expectation is this person doing that right because otherwise you have someone saying I expect this person at this level for this role should do that and then you might have someone else go oh I didn't expect that like I actually think uh this other thing is

more important so or you know I expect a junior person can do that and someone say well I might expect a principal or staff is doing that so having tools like this to level set is so important across an org to be on the same page for managers but that's not where it stops so I'm very happy that this engineering manager said that they're working on this like they're part of that that team that's not where it stops though because the other way that you use this is with the individual it means there are way fewer surprises so into the next Point documentation I brought this up before um I think the engineering manager who wrote in said um you know it's an opportunity to be doing more of that so that's great um you know having having some written record of like hey we

had a conversation about this we you know I brought up the expectations you agreed to them like being able to reference that I think is very powerful um you can you can make this more powerful when you have the the r that says like this isn't just my opinion I'm not just giving you my opinion and whatever it's like literally an organization expectation so into the next point then so I think you know for that point was essentially using documentation and the the rubric to be able to do the level setting the um man I can see the red and blue lights on this highway already so say I have another 50 minutes to get home you guys are in for a wild ride um it's going to be a long one so the next part to this though I'm talking about rubrics documentation I

got too excited with the the police car when I say excited I mean very very upset because I know how long I'm going to be here um so we use the rubric oh um the I was talking about this scenario where that it feels like this person probably has two two managers right that's like what it feels like going back to one of the first things I said when I said this person was deleveled and that probably created a bit of friction in the working relationship with the manager and this engineer put yourself in this person's shoes for a second okay like the engineer shoes they have someone tell them someone that their your relationship's been a little bit soured right like oh like you're the one who is being really critical and I lost my my senior title like okay and oh every time

we talk it feels like I'm being criticized about something okay and then you have someone else that kind of feels like they're in charge of you know your your destiny the work you're doing and they're going great job you're doing so much work great job keep doing more work like it's so awesome that you can do all this work like what do you think this engineer is going to do right they're going to say that feels good like if I do what I'm doing I'm getting this positive reinforcement so the problem is obviously that like there's a a misalignment right a lot of stuff comes down to like misalignment so I think if this engineering manager is able to Leverage The rubric document the conversations level set on the expectations document them right then they can say like look this is the stuff that's required

for being promoted to this other level like this is the expectation it's literally the organizational pieces it's not just my opinion because this person this engineer is probably starting to feel like hey man like you know what does your opinion actually matter I just like waited it out a little bit I got my senior title back you keep you know you keep criticizing me about these things but I keep getting this positive feedback elsewhere like it's going to start to make it feel like they they're discrediting the engineering manager obviously I don't know the exact details here but that's how I'm kind of thinking through this being a challenge so having the rubric and saying it's not just my opinion can be a huge help now they can also use that rubric and go to the team lead person and say by the way again

it's not just my opinion these are the things that this person needs to focus on to help grow in their career so just so you know I'm working with this person on these things like heads up right we're getting on the same page this is what we're focused on and you know having that person understand that these are expectations for engineers to that level all of that is level set expectations with documentation and it starts to remove this like opinion bias so hopefully that makes sense I I realize there's there's a lot more Nuance to this than I'm than I'm saying so I'm not I don't in I don't intend to make it like sound trivialized that's not my goal but I am intending to call out that I think a lot of this is related to like just not being on the same page

expect ation wise now I'm going to do the thing again where I probably stop talking because I got to get over so many lanes of traffic I hate it here two more Let Me In yeah yeah yeah let me in one more and then we can sit in the fast lane and park almost there cool we did it we're in the fast lane folks going 15 15 miles an hour so that's like super fast um okay what else on this um oh I want to talk more about like interpersonal stuff because I think I was addressing a lot of like logistical things and it's good like this engineering manager wrote in and said a bunch of this stuff they're trying to do more of which is great um at least from my perspective right like who am I to say what's right and wrong I'm

just giving you my perspective so I want to talk more about the the relationship between the engineering manager and the software engineer and I've already kind of hinted at it a whole bunch but like this a probably a pretty soured relationship unfortunately I don't want to like no fault necessarily of the engineering manager right they're doing what they think is right to to Del the person so this person is able to operate at a level they can be successful that was the goal right it's not the goal to say like hey I hate this person I hope they you know I hope they don't succeed in their career that's why I started off this Vlog entry by saying you know at least okay maybe you can't say that you know maybe I can't claim that I know I have a very good feeling this engineering

manager actually cares about this employee or else they wouldn't have bothered to do this it would have been way less work to not say anything to me and it would have been way less work to not follow up and write like a 2,000-word email right they they put in the effort because they're trying to come up they're trying to come up with something that's going to improve what's going on so I genuinely think that this person cares a lot and I think that's really important so you have a situation where the relationship has been soured between the manager and the employee this employee is getting positive feedback from a different source and it probably for the most part feels like this engineer is only getting criticism like anytime I talk to you it's bad news right like you always have something that I need to

improve improve on so this is a it's a difficult spot to be in so when I was thinking about this originally and I was talking through it and I know sorry I shouldn't say originally in the video that that failed like with no sound I was trying to think about just like different ways to try and improve this working relationship and one thing that came to mind it might sound obvious is like and maybe this engineering manager is doing this which is great but I think if a lot of your focus in conversations is like hey these are the things that I'm hoping you can improve on and like calling this stuff out like yes that needs to happen don't get me wrong like it needs to happen that's how you help demonstrate to this person we're trying to track your progression but um I

think it's important that this engineering manager is calling out the wins right so making sure that you can spend some time acknowledging when this person has done good stuff make it known to them that you're paying attention to that stuff too or else it's that kind of situation every time I talk to you it's bad news I don't want to talk to you I don't want to be around you it's always bad so how can you find Opportunities to make this good if that sounds too fluffy to you then I would say that uh maybe spend more time with people and you'll realize that a little bit of that can go a really long way uh I would say most people like people like being recognized in different ways like and it could be very different from Individual to individual but I don't have stats

on it but I would wager most individuals are just like underrecognized in the work they do so and you can like if you're listening to this and you're like you're not a manager try this out and I I'm not kidding you try this out um if you're working remotely even easier right think about someone on your team any any person on your team think about some work they did that they completed and they did it successfully doesn't have to be anything crazy but literally just pick someone on your team that finished up some work and say like hey thanks for doing you did a good job on that like hey thank your code review was like it was uh you know good size poll requests I could I could understand things like just hey good job for doing that thanks I appreciate that you were

considerate um good job rolling that feature out like it was good to see that you checked all these things hey that design dock you put together like that was really good thanks for doing that try it try it because you'll literally transform someone's day and and I know it sounds silly but I would like bet money on it for most of the time it's going to transform someone's day because people don't get feedback like that regular them so that's why I'm recommending in this case if this engineering manager is not taking that opportunity do it more um do that uh something else that is um really kind of just back to to Basics is like when you have this kind of like kind of crappy working relationship and you need to like just get some like human element back in like taking some of the

one-on-one time to just like I know some people don't like the idea of like small talk and stuff but like spend some time just like learning about this person like learn from them right ask them how their weekend was ask like if they might not be willing to go into detail about stuff but like put in some effort to literally listen to what they have to say and just learn about them if they're willing to share with you so it sounds like that's completely not work rated and probably the stuff you're going to talk about is not work rated but I think it's very helpful if people are willing to do that because that way you're getting to spend some time with the person because odds are based on the circumstances it's not a good working relationship how do you make that better like value

the person value what they have to say listen to them take some time to understand them right because if every time you go to talk to them it's like hey we talked about this thing right like are you doing a better job now that's going to be a crappy conversation every time and one of the last things that I can recall that I thought of from before was um kind of on this idea of like uh positive feedback loops this person behind me doesn't have lights on oh you absolute dummy you absolute dummy for those of you watching this video you can probably see how dark it is outside there's a being in a motorized vehicle behind me that said we don't need lights today my God okay so the last last thing that I thought of to include for this was essentially if we

have these scenarios where you're constantly giving this feedback that's like hey do better um what if and this is a little bit like might sound risky but like are there opportunities where you could get this person to help contribute to helping to find some processes or helping put their input into something because if some of the engineering rigor is not where it needs to be I can't remember the exact details but maybe it's like um not testing things properly or effectively or not rolling changes back or whatever like I don't know maybe there's an opportunity on your team to help Define some of these processes policies whatever you want to call them General guidance like if you don't want to talk about like hard rules or anything like what if there was an opportunity to have this person be included in putting that together now

it sounds risky because you're like I don't trust them to do that but hear me out what if they could participate in that with other folks right you get a couple people together to to come up like a random example right like we have on call shifts at Microsoft at least in the the teams that I've been on and what if for your service you needed better on call guidance like that was something that wasn't really formulated like what if this person could participate with a few other people and try to put that together so you essentially take this person who you're like I don't really trust the the work they're doing and you put them in a position where they can they can can actually think about some of these requirements so say this person um had some risky changes right and you're like

okay like if I have them participate on the on call guidance where there might be some risky changes right like you're trying to revert stuff that's broken or you're trying to make sure you can roll out fixes it would probably be a very good learning experience for them to be part of that they can feel like they're having responsibility they can learn from their peers about these important things they can share their perspective as well so they can start to have conversations with other people and hear how other people are thinking through this stuff so um obviously this is a situational thing I can't like guarantee that will work but that's like that's something that you could consider that might help them feel more engaged and actually care care about the stuff that you care about I hope that makes sense um You probably have

to watch it pretty close if you're nervous about that kind of stuff uh like them taking that responsibility on but if you have them paired up with other people um I I think it's a potential for something good right and then then they have that right they have some momentum where they're like hey I got to participate on this um you know they they can see that like this is the expectation of the engineering team is like this like something that they help to find I think there's some cool stuff that can come out of that so it might be an opportunity to try so the The Meta point there is instead of like constantly removing responsibilities from someone until they feel like they're just like you know you work in this box do what I say and you're going to get criticized no matter

what obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit um maybe a lot of bit but the meta Point here is like give them some specific responsibility some ownership and and try to see if they have some guidance around that if they can be successful so that's a thought but anyway I think that's going to wrap up my thoughts for this uh I still got about uh 4 hours left to get home apparently so um yeah I I want to say thanks for the person that wrote in on this topic I hope that like some of the stuff that I said is definitely a repeat but I hope that some of the extra context is like helpful to think through and yeah I would say for for folks if you're listening to this I said it in one of the earlier videos today I don't know who watches

what but um if you have stuff that you want me to talk through uh so far I'm kind of just responding to stuff that's in DMS or in comments whatever you're comfortable with but uh I do have a topmate uh top mate.io page and uh if this channel gets busier and busier and there's more and more topics uh I might start prioritizing stuff off of that uh basically it would be a few bucks to go submit something that you want me to talk about and I will donate every single dollar um is if I understand correctly if I donate through Microsoft Microsoft matches every dollar I put in so um I think that would be super cool I would feel like if this channel started doing better and better and more people wanted to take advantage of that that would feel so cool to be

able to say like hey I can I can do this we can have a conversation everyone can try to you know learn together and then I can go donate it to like I don't know like uh you know helping people get into Tech and stuff I think that would be super cool so but for now um you can still send me DMS and stuff right in the comments I'm just giving you an idea where I'd love to see this go to um the uh it might sound kind of funny but let me explain the the idea behind putting a couple of dollars on it is that it it helps in terms of instead of just people blasting random things which isn't happening right now so that's why it's not like an urgent thing instead of people blasting random things and being like hey talk about

this talk about that um like people will put a little bit of effort into like hey I would like you to talk about this thing uh and you know maybe I can set it up where I can be like when you're submitting something like give me more detail because when it's super generic unless you want generic answers right if you give me specifics I can try that's that um this does say 15 minutes left so not so bad uh so I will probably blab at you a little bit more about uh not that previous topic so um I talked about brand ghost this morning I'm going to talk about brand ghost a little more um so where's a good spot to start we we got our I want to talk about the flow of the product and um I want to talk about like testing

fixes and stuff I think one thing that we're doing really well is when those issues were're responding very fast I think we continue to demonstrate that so we respond to issues extremely fast we respond to uh building out feature sets very fast so I'm I'm very excited about that like that feels good um I feel like when I if I'm ever leading teams of people if I run a company if we ever reach a point where it feels like we can't do the right thing like with agility then um that's going to feel very bad like that's not it's not the world I want to live in if I have the choice so I'm just very thankful for it I think we're I talked about this before but I think we're reaching a point like our our back end is getting more and more tests

on it because uh the data is more and more critical that we have that right uh especially like data migration scenarios we can make sure we have stuff covered we can like we can feel like we can go with a change and users that are that have Legacy data versus new data will be supported so like that's all good um or it's improving at least by having some tests in the back end that's great stuff um I think our front end is is lacking for tests and I think for me that's something I want to see more of and the the reason I say that is like it's no one's fault but I think we've hit a few too many like simple bugs simple in terms of like oh the fix is like it's you know it ends up being very small but not simple

or not um like they're pretty impactful like having having an entire page of the website just be completely unusable because of a simple bug like that's not simple for the end user though right like that's quite impactful uh unless you don't need anything on that page then it's not impacting you at all but um you know that's something that I feel like hey we could easily avoid that uh or I I I would like to think we could easily avoid it so so let's do it and uh yeah I just I feel like there's been a couple too many times where like and I I don't say this to like uh I don't say this to like insult anyone cuz it was the same on the back end it starts to feel like like embarrassment because we know we're better than like having silly issues

so like why do we but that's exactly like I was having personally and I take full responsibility for them cuz I do all of the backend coding I would break stuff in our squl queries like I would literally miss a comma or have an extra comma where I shouldn't and then like I would break authentication and I'm like my God like this is so it's so embarrassing because it's such a small thing that had such a big impact and uh yeah I think our friend's kind of hitting that now so like I really want to see that that improve um because when we go to land more features it keeps happening where I'm like I don't want to be nervous when we land new features in the beginning it wasn't like that at all but the further along we go the more and more nervous

I'm getting so I think that's a really good sign we need more tests um cuz whatever is being covered is not building that confidence at least for me so like to see that um I talked this morning about this funny situation where uh we had a bunch of queries firing off like another situation where like I don't have that covered um in the back end and I think in Azure we want to get some better alert set up for when our database is experiencing some funky stuff like that just like stuff that we have visibility buddy come on if you're going to switch lanes you have to be going faster than me if you're going to go in front of me but that's that I think that's from like a a logistics kind of thing like those are some things man your Signal's still on

no okay um beyond that though I think I want to talk about some of the flow so we have we landed um we landed posting so we have topic streams which are the recurring posts and so the functionality already exists for just posting but we didn't have a user interface for it um so we're getting on a call tonight to discuss like what the future of posting looks like for us because right now there are lots of products that offer posting there are as far as I know there are zero products aside from Brand ghost that offer recurring posts built up from a Content archive that you can leave on autopilot um my person have their high beams on my God so I don't think like and I should be clear our goal is not to like win on crossplatform posting it's not our goal

to win on that why isn't it because companies like buffer have been doing it for over a decade could we win on that I think so I think if we you know put our minds to it we can do it um I just don't think that's I don't think that's how we want to invest our all of our effort and I don't I don't think it's worth um the juice isn't worth the squeeze right like could we sure I think that anyone at any point can come along and you know give an agility given uh how they're listening to customers and stuff like you can win out and take out big incumbents that have been there for a long time so it's all possible I just don't think it's a good Focus for us so we're going to be discussing what the future of posting

on our platform looks like and one of the I think I might have shared this before but like the philosophy that we're trying to adopt is like we know that like our our core I shouldn't say we know the what we've set as our core audience is content creators right so if you're a content creator that is especially if you're at the point where you're starting to monetize your audience then you can afford to have a social media tool like brand ghost right if you're not monetizing your audience and you're paying for a tool to do it starts to feel kind of weird like why am I just paying money to like paying money to post stuff now for me I did this like for for Dev leader I was paying money to get my time back so that I could post more and then

continuing to build brand G so spending even more time so that I can be more effective at posting so I I see it as an investment and I was doing that before I was having any money from content creation so I just don't think that all creators are there and I don't think we can expect that's the case so like if we have this core audience that we envision to be content creators that are starting to at least starting to monetize Their audience what are the other groups and how do people start off before their content creators at that level so like what like what does that look like so we're going to be talking about that tonight um so kind of like a strategy conversation and then that should help Drive uh the next things that we're going to be focused on because we

just landed a bunch of stuff and I think that'll just be good to get some uh to refocus uh I know for sure Tik Tok is top of the priority list to land uh I want to fast follow that with YouTube and then we have a pretty good video story there um because without Tik Tok it's like Tik Tok and YouTube It's kind of crappy um like we can post videos on any other platform but I I think if you're a video creator you're probably trying to post stuff to to Tik Tok and to YouTube shorts so would feel way better to have that stuff in place but otherwise does our onboarding have to change do we have features outside of just social media platforms to add like that we need to go emphasize um so that kind of stuff I'm thinking about I feel

like I'm trying to get some ideas together that aren't necessarily a um how do I put it they're not necessarily like a priority to have in the product but I think that they're interesting things that help us uh from like a marketing perspective and that's a difficult thing to balance too because we only have so much time to focus on the stuff we're building um we made it through um so yeah we got to keep building features but like if we're not investing time and energy into attracting users they don't just magically show up be nice but you don't just post the sign up and all of a sudden people show up um you have to put the signs in the right spot and more often than not it's on a sign you're you're tapping on people's shoulders say hey have you seen this you

want to try it so I want to come up with creative ways to help with that but also acknowledge like I don't want to fall into the the meal coach trap which is the previous SAS I tried to build I don't want to keep avoiding Outreach because I did that with meal coach um so I have been doing Outreach I got to keep doing it and that way we're not getting stale on it so that'll be tonight can't see anything when it's raining and I'm back into my driveway so yeah that's pretty cool um I got to film some YouTube videos tonight I think falling behind on that so that's that folks I hope the first part was helpful thanks for stay to the end and I'll see you next time take care