Host - Pat Sweet: Just quickly before we get started. I wanted to let you know about a free e-book. I wrote a little while back called engineering leadership, 1 0 1 practical insights for becoming a leader at any stage. It shows you how to grow as a leader, no matter where you are in your career. The important differences between management and leadership and it dispels some of the common myths engineers have about leadership. And like I said, it's free. So if you're interested, you can go ahead and download your copy@engineeringandleadership.com slash leadership. 1 0 1 that's engineering and leadership.com/leadership. The number 1 0 1. This is the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet episode 36. [inaudible] Come to the engineering and leadership podcast. The show dedicated to helping engineers thrive today. I speak with mark Consella VP of engineering at open door about how to drive excellence through incredible the team culture.

Host - Pat Sweet: Hi everyone. And welcome back to the show. I of course, in pat sweet and I'm super excited to be back here with you after a short break. I miss last week's regularly scheduled episode because I was out camping with my family and we had a delightful time and some great weather for a change. So that was super, super welcome, but great to be back. Great to be here in my makeshift sound studio to talk to you a little bit about the engineering culture, so that that's going to be a lot of fun. And with that let's jump right into the main content for today is the glue that holds an organization together. It's the set of unwritten, Ethereum rules of engagement. It really summarizes how things work around here. Some elements of culture are immediately obvious when you join an organization. Well, others take a little bit of time to surface, but whether you drive it intentionally or not, culture exists in every organization and that culture drives performance, both good and bad.

Host - Pat Sweet: My guest today believes that developing culture within an engineering organization is one of the most important things a leader can focus on in order to improve performance and establish that organization. As an employer of choice. Mark Kinsella currently serves as open doors, vice president of engineering, where he oversees the engineering organization, helping to scale the company's platforms and teams before joining Opendoor in June, 2020, mark worked at Lyft where he led driver engineering and his time at Lyft, he built and led numerous teams and help the company through its initial public offering it. His career mark has taken on leadership roles, both at small startups and large companies, and has also worked across the spectrum of technologies from embedded systems to mobile apps. Here's my chat with mark, Mr. Mark Consella. Thank you so very much for joining me at the engineering leadership podcast. How are you doing this evening?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Host - Pat Sweet: I'm very, very excited about this. Excited to dig into a topic. I think that a lot of, a lot of engineering leaders get squirmy about is this idea of culture and the importance of culture. But before we dig into that, I'd love to know a little bit more about open door and your role within the organization.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, so I'm the VP of engineering here at open door at open door. Our goal is to rebuild the entire real estate transaction from the ground up for the vast majority of the 5 million people who move and buy and sell a home every year. The process is far too complex and time consuming. And our goal is to make it as easy as possible at the tap of a button. And so I lead our insuring order of about 150 people right now, striving towards solving that problem.

Host - Pat Sweet: That's quite quite an ambitious project. This is like, like you said, just that the volume of transaction is, is incredible. And this is for most of us, the single biggest thing we'll will ever buy and sell in our lives. This, this is a big deal.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yes, definitely. And that was one of the key things that attracted me to open door. It's a massive market, a huge decision that only occurs a few times in your life and it's also incredibly stressful and complicated. And so we're trying to make it as easy as possible. So

Host - Pat Sweet: One of the things that I've been looking forward to asking you about, because I, I know what the real estate market has been like in in my neck of the woods. I live in Eastern Canada and we've actually done a fairly good job, all things considered in, in weathering the pandemic. And we've seen a massive influx of people from across Canada, from across the world, frankly, looking to move to the Maritimes. What kind of, what kind of years it been for open door? I could see it in other parts of the world, either really slowing things down or really speeding things up from a real estate perspective. I'm sure it was a pivotal year, one way or the other.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah. The, you know, people need to move regardless of what's happening. People move for personal reasons or for jobs. And so even over the past year during the pandemic people have needed to continue to move and buy and sell homes. And so it's definitely been an interesting time. And also when, especially as we're in Taiwan culture, it's been really important that especially within engineering, we're focused on a customer first mentality and solving the problem for our customers out there right now. So let, let's

Host - Pat Sweet: Get into that a little bit. You you've already used the word culture and that's what we're here to discuss today before going too much further. I'd be curious to know what you, what you mean when you say culture, what does that mean to you? What does that mean? That open door?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: It's definitely one of those words that means a lot of different things to different people. And so I like to define culture as two tightly coupled aspects, the first one being the internal values and branding of the engineering team, the second one being the day-to-day processes that define guide and reinforce those values throughout the engineering work. Right? So the first one is around kind of what it feels like to work within the engineering work and the second one being how you actually permeate that throughout the org and the day-to-day for each person in the engineering work.

Host - Pat Sweet: So it sounds like half of it that first half would be maybe be a little bit more if theorial aware the second half is something you could actually, you could actually capture it and document it and point to I'm going to pick up on a word you used here is that the branding of the engineering organization. That that's an interesting way to put it. What, what do you mean by that?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah. what I mean specifically by that is your internal values is also reflected externally and vice versa, right? A very strong engineering culture is typically known outside of your company. For example, at Opendoor, I think, you know, one of our key things that we focus on, I mentioned earlier customer first and having a very strong sense of our business. And that's something that a lot of engineers, when we talk to folks externally while they're interviewing already aware of.

Host - Pat Sweet: So it's, it's interesting to me that that you've got this, this idea of culture within an engineering organization, because I think a lot of, a lot of companies, particularly tech companies the discussion is about culture of the organization as a whole, and that the whole organization would be aligned to the, the mission, vision values, how it feels, but you you've really emphasized the engineering organization within open door. Why is it so important to you to define and manage culture at, at that level? And, and is there a risk at all of, of, of culture mismatch between the, the engineering team and the company as a whole? How do you, do you navigate that?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, it's definitely one of those things where the engineering or culture is a subset of the company-wide culture, right. Each informs each other. And I think it's really important to hone in on the engineering or culture because engineers working with cross-functional folks like this org is the innovation hub of the business and of the company. And it's really important to ensure that every engineer is fully aligned around what are we doing? How are we doing it and how should I be making decisions kind of on the ground every day.

Host - Pat Sweet: So the, this, all, this all makes sense. And I like this idea of of it being the innovation hub. It's, it's the, the furnace, the organization actually creating and managing that, the product that you produce. I'd like to step back a little bit and ask about your interest in culture in general. I think, I think a lot of technical folks yourself included on your city, you've got a background in computer science really focused more on the operations, the nuts and bolts, the, the metrics, the process, and maybe miss miss the forest for the trees a little bit in terms of establishing a good working culture. W w w is there a particular lesson learned in your past that, that really emphasized this for you? Where does this come from?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, I see this as, especially now, and especially aware, you know, more and more people are working remotely great engineers and great talent can work on big problems at many different companies, but in some ways the X factor of w is of what keeps engineers moving quickly and can attract high quality talent is the cultural piece. And so nailing that I think will continue to build an even stronger engineering work.

Host - Pat Sweet: So it was open door, always been welcoming and accepting of remote work. Is that, is, is, is this a company that has always had that, or is this something new driven by the pandemic?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: We have been historically split between three different locations in the U S and then in the past 12 to 18 months, or so we've embraced engineers working throughout the U S

Host - Pat Sweet: And how do you think that that's affected culture over that time?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: It's definitely something that, you know, I keep telling engineers and engineering leaders, we almost need to, over-focus on cultural and now continuing to maintain personal relationships and build new ones as we hire new engineers is even more important now because you're missing out on those quote unquote hallway conversations when you're all in the office or altogether.

Host - Pat Sweet: So this is a challenge that I personally have had in, in hiring new staff and onboarding new staff from, from all over the country. And it's particularly difficult for on, on the extreme end for interns and co-op students who many of them really don't have an appreciation for the working world at all, and are being thrown into complex work with tight deadlines. And, and don't even really get a chance to set foot in an office and get a feel for the place and how things work. So for, for folks in situations like this, what, what kind of concrete things might you recommend to help onboard people and help them digest and understand and participate in a particular culture?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, that's very relevant right now, especially since there's a lot of summer interns and we're starting to look toward new grads joining us relatively soon. So two key things that I highly recommend, one of them being, have a dedicated quote-unquote buddy internally, where this is both the person that you work with on projects and go to for questions, but also kind of that cultural buddy of, oh, is this how we always have all hands? Or what is this acronym mean? Right. And so really providing that historical knowledge of the business helps an intern, or helps somebody really get up to speed. The second one being specifically for interns and apprentices we here at open door have interns this summer, and we're doing a internship showcase at the end of the summer where each intern is going to present virtually the project or projects they worked on and be able to answer questions about it. And so I hope that'll be a great way for us to talk about and build connections with each of the interns about the projects they worked on throughout the summer. We're actually doing one at the end. And then also one of the men at the halfway point of an internship,

Host - Pat Sweet: It's very exciting. It's very exciting and, and a good way to celebrate the work that was done over the course of the term where, you know, it's impossible to just pop over to someone's desk and, and take a look over the shoulder and see what's going on that you may have noticed me smile a little bit when you mentioned the buddy system, that this is something that, that I do within my team as well. And I've had an awful lot of success with it. So I, I appreciate bringing that up. That's great.

Speaker 4: If we

Host - Pat Sweet: Turn our attention a little bit to, to culture, again, as a, as a, as a concept, what does in your mind, what does a great culture look like if you strip away, if you strip away the specifics. Right? Many, many companies, many organizations would have similar values. So things like focus on the customer is, is something that almost any organization should have as a, as a core value. But when you step away from the, the particulars, what, what makes for good culture generally, what does a good culture look like?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah. So at a very high level, people want to work together with smart people on big problems. And so taking that one step lower, I think about a strong engineering culture, having four key elements, strong execution, high impact, teamwork, and quality output, right? So ensuring each of those four pillars is successful is then what builds, especially with an engineering or strong culture.

Host - Pat Sweet: Now, is there one in your experience that, that has maybe trickier than the others to, to really establish

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Definitely quality, especially at startups or high growth companies? I think quality is one of the ones that's hardest for people to think about and realize is critical both now and the longterm.

Host - Pat Sweet: So what do you, what do you do about it? How do you, how do you reinforce that with your team? That the, the importance of quality, because this is the answer I guessed you would have given. And my hunch is that part of the problem with quality is that it's, it's, it's a word that's used so much. It's almost lost. Meaning when, when it practice it, it does mean something very specific and it's very important. So what do you, what do you do about that problem

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Do less work. And what I specifically mean by that is no, a lot of the times you want to have folks be working on as many projects as quickly as possible to get them out the door, and that's important, right? You need to work together, you need to drive high impact. You need to have high execution. But in fact, what that means is you're going to spend a lot of time then reactively fixing bugs, or fixing low quality work, because you've over optimized for speed and execution. And so what I specifically mean by do less work, what I mean is, you know, focus on your top priority projects and then build those to a high degree of quality. So then you can move on to the next one, even faster.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. I've heard that called the, the, the snowball effect. Is it, you, once you get something done really, truly done done, you give yourself mental permission to move on to the next thing. And probably over the course of several projects, several tasks you end up completing the lot of them faster than if you tried to work them all in parallel and, and, and, and just knock them out. So I really appreciate that advice. That's great.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: I think a lot about quality driving speed, right. And I, and I think a lot of folks in some ways think about almost the opposite of true, but if you're delivering high quality projects, then just like you mentioned, you can be driving more output and higher quality output in the medium to long-term.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yes. The age old issue, right. Is, is no one feels like they have enough time to do it right the first time, but there always seems to be time to fix it once it's broken. So why not? Why not take that time upfront? If you look at your own culture, if you look at open door I think it's, I think it's safe to say that that culture and, and developing and reinforcing culture is you're never, you never get to a point where you're, you're done, it's a work in progress. It's something that, that you are continuously looking to improve and build upon. So if you look to the future of open door as an organization, what's, what's next, what's the next milestone. What's the next level of maturity in terms of evolving your own organization's culture?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: So as our business continues to grow and scale, we need to scale out the engineering org also. And so going from a hundred people to 200, to 300 to 500 people, that's a very different set of areas that we should be focused on to ensure everyone is efficient working together, collaborating, commuting to communicating well. So one of the key things that we really start thinking about and focusing on is how we communicate across a much larger engineering org. So

Host - Pat Sweet: What do you w what do you expect to change or become obsolete, or have to, or have to navigate and do differently as, as you, you, you do hit those growth milestones. What, what do you think, what do you think works now that, that probably won't in the future?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah. You know, I've seen this playbook play out in many other high-growth companies. And one of the key things that you need to start embracing is asynchronous communication, specifically written documentation written architecture reviews. So then instead of having to have synchronous meetings with more and more people you spend kind of more time at the beginning writing things down, but then the medium to longterm, you save a lot of time by sharing things, asynchronously and receiving feedback. They sync just like our earlier conversation of quality drives, speed written documentation written communication is a key way to scale as the engineering work grows. So this

Host - Pat Sweet: Is an interesting problem, isn't it? Because but between you and I I know written communication is not something I would list as among common strengths with technical folk. Beyond that, I think with remote work becoming more and more and more common the, the need to connect or the desire to connect with people through if, if, if not in person contact than, than video chats or, or, or at least the phone, I think there'll be a temptation to drift more and more and more towards synchronous communication. What, what do we, what do we do about that? How do we support people who are probably more comfortable speaking than writing, who frankly have a, a greater need to connect than ever before and, and still, and still achieve what you need to as an organization that's growing? What do you think? Yes. What do you think you're going to do?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And it's a balancing act for sure. Right. you obviously, can't, over-rotate too much into very, very heavy meeting culture, and then you can overload to overwrote. Over-Rotate too much into no meetings at all. Everything's written down. So I think the balancing act really comes out in terms of there should definitely be those personal one-on-one meetings like you were talking about. And those meetings should be very focused on building personal connections, feedback, et cetera. Right. While a lot of the projects, project management, architecture designs engineering, design docs, those can, and should be moved to written asynchronous communication.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. I think it's the only, it's the only practical solution isn't it, right. Is, is to, to give one person access to everyone downstream who may need to know what that one person knows at the time. They need to know it, it's, it, it really, to descale synchronously just, just doesn't make sense.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: And it, it, it accommodates people in different time zones too. And that's very important as we continue to move to more of a remote friendly atmosphere within tech.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. We were talking about this because this is all couched in this conversation about culture, but I think this is a really good example of, of something that can exist in an organization is a culture of synchronous communication or culture of written communication. This is just how things work here. And you can, you can establish an edict. You could say, okay, from now on only synchronous meetings are going to happen. Everything else will be written, but, but it doesn't just an organization can't term turn on a dime like that. That's not how it works. People are comfortable operating a certain way. There are unintended or unanticipated consequences that, that may make things worse in some areas. W w what do you do? What do you do to instigate a significant cultural change like that? How do you, how do you approach something like that, such that there's reasonable success, a reasonable expectation of success without it taking forever?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Just like I mentioned earlier of a balancing act, it's a balancing act of somewhat of a quote-unquote tops down push, but then also bottoms up. And what I mean by that specific around documentation is now myself as the VP of engineering, I know that we need to move more to a asynchronous written the communication mode, but I think it would be a failure mode. If then I come out and say, this is how we're doing it. This is the tool we're using. And now everyone started immediately doing it right. Instead, we've put together a group of engineers and engineering managers to start thinking about how does everybody as a group, want to move toward asynchronous communication. I get that kind of bottoms up a suggestion and recommendation, and then start permitting that throughout the engineering work, right.

Host - Pat Sweet: And then, and then there's engagement. People, people are being heard, their ideas are being implemented. And then beyond that, you, your team is filled with brilliant people. So that's the why, why wouldn't you engage them in conversations like this? One of the things that that has occurred to me mark throughout this conversation is it's clear to me that the development of culture at Opendoor is something that you've done intentionally. It's very easy for you to frame how you think about culture and what makes good culture. I think that for, for many engineering leaders thinking about their team's culture in that kind of way is, is probably, is probably new. And in many cases, they've probably not thought much about culture and, you know, are, are occupied and mired in the day to day, time sheets and vacation requests and, and, and raise requests and discipline and all the rest. It, if someone is trying to think their way through what their organization's culture is as a first step toward designing something better, what do you recommend people do to, to, to first approach this and, and really kind of look at themselves in the Petri dish, how much you approach that?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Well, you hinted at this earlier, but the very first thing is it takes time and mental space to sit down and think about this, right? This is not a 15 minute thought process. So the first one being sit down, think about it deeply. The second key piece being engage with engineers and engineering managers of every level of every tenure across the engineering org. And one of the key things when I was thinking about engineering or culture at Opendoor is I asked every engineer, what do you love about Opendoor? Hm. And a lot of the answers pointed to the feeling of working here. And so a lot of that is what then has been part of the open door engineering, engineering culture. The last thing I would say is it's important to then broadcast that throughout the engineering org multiple times, right. Come up with what you think it should be work on that with others, and then share it broadly and share frequently.

Host - Pat Sweet: So that's really interesting. Do you think you would have come to that same conclusion on your own? Just that the, the importance of the feeling of working there? Had you not had you not asked around?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: No. Interesting. It's, it's definitely important to engage with everybody, especially me who know when I joined a year ago, one of the very first things I did was ask people this exact question and folks have been at open door for much longer than me. They understand what it's, what it feels like to work at open door. And they also had great ideas of how we can even improve more. And so it's important to engage everybody here and build that culture as an org.

Host - Pat Sweet: If, if you were to give advice to engineering leaders in, in other organizations who are maybe looking at their, at their culture and, and looking for concrete ideas on how to approach building a great culture, where can they go once they've established the you know, the, the here and now through doing things like, like you said, engaging with the team, engaging at all levels, where do you go from there? How do you take that and start taking active steps toward improving or going closer and closer to a better future state?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah. The first one is what I mentioned earlier, but identify it and share it broadly and share it frequently to make sure everyone's on the same page. The second one is shape your hiring and recruiting process to ensure that you're building teams with an eye toward that culture that you want to build. And the third one being align, internal incentives, that level up to this culture. And what I mean by that is ensure your career ladders and performance reviews are each connected back to those key pieces of culture that you want to drive throughout the engineering work.

Host - Pat Sweet: I think that, I think that makes brilliant sense, right? If it, particularly that, that the second thing you mentioned, hiring people who will fit into the culture or, or even pull the culture forward toward where you'd like to be. Is this the kind of thing you would literally put in a job ad, or is it the kind of thing you are observing a little more quietly during an interview or, or an internship? What how do you, how do you approach that?

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Yeah, I think the first thing that I reiterate with that our hiring recruiting process is we want a value fit culture add when it comes to hiring new people, just like we've talked about culture is ever changing, ever evolving. And so every new engineer we hire, I want them to be able to continue to add, to, and improve all culture, our, our culture you specifically ask about kind of how we identify that for every engineering offsite. We have one interview that's called past project where we ask them to go over a lengthy project that they worked on or led. And the goal there is to really dig into what did they do when things went wrong. Hmm. I think that's a key way to see how engineers and see how people react to when things are not going well, what values and what culture did they fall back on to solve that problem?

Host - Pat Sweet: Right. It's a, it's a stress test at an individual level. Yeah. Mark, this has been really, really fascinating stuff. And I really appreciate the insight, the advice, the, the, the, the clarity I think has been really quite enlightening. If, if someone wants to learn a little bit more about open door or about you w where's the best place for them to go.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: You have a great engineering blog on medium, and we post a lot of things specifically around open door tech, but even more broadly, some of these engineering process and cultural pieces we're going to continue to post there. So that's definitely the best place.

Host - Pat Sweet: Yeah. And I'll, I'll be putting a link to the to that in the show notes. That's fantastic. Listen, mark, this has been an absolute blast. I really appreciate you taking the time tonight. Thank you so much.

Guest - Mark Kinsella: Thanks pat. That was great. Thank

Host - Pat Sweet: You very much, mark, for that conversation. That was a lot fun. It was really, really interesting to speak with with someone who had such a clear idea of what culture meant to him for this, this, this big kind of nebulous concept. For many, it was really concrete from our, so it was, it was really, really interesting to dig into that a few things that jumped out to me throughout the chat first and foremost, was this idea that engineering culture can express itself externally as a brand. And I, I really, honestly, I'd never heard that, that way of framing things before, but this idea that it'd be something that people understand about the way an engineering organization works without even existing within that organization. It's a way to, to promote and establish what that organization is all about. And to me, if you're able to do that, if you're able to brand yourself through culture, if people just get what it's like to work there and want to work there as a result, that that's incredibly powerful, but both, both as a recruitment tool, obviously, but also to retain excellent employees and really drive strong performance.

Host - Pat Sweet: The next thing that mark mentioned that I thought was important was that culture becomes incredibly important in an era where engineers can work anywhere. We as society have been moving towards remote work and, and really flexibility of place with respect to knowledge work. But the pandemic has really driven that to the next level and where everyone has access to really interesting organizations and interesting problems and fascinating technology culture really becomes that X factor. What kind of a place do you want to work at is a question that people are starting to ask themselves more and more so as engineering leaders, you need to establish what kind of place is my engineering organization. So this is becoming more and more and more important. This, this X factor I think, is what, what mark called it. The next thing that mark mentioned that I think is incredibly important for large teams for scaling teams is the importance of asynchronous communications.

Host - Pat Sweet: And maybe this is really standing out to me because I I'm, I'm feeling the pain of, of being stuck in an, a culture of synchronous organization right now, professionally. But it's true. It's, it's, it's simple. The way he puts it is that at a certain point in an organization is too big in order for all comms or the majority of comms to be done synchronously. And that's a cultural thing, right? And, and it's easy to think of it as more of a logistics or operations thing, but, but truly it's cultural because it's, it's in my mind culture best expresses itself through the questions we do not ask. And what I mean by that is if you need to talk someone, if the first thing that comes to mind, oh, well, I'll schedule a meeting. That's, that's part of that. Team's culture. That's part of the culture of your organization.

Host - Pat Sweet: That's just the way things work around here. If I need to talk to someone else, schedule a meeting. So when mark talks about needing to move over to asynchronous communication, yes, there's a logistics problem there. And yes, you do have to figure out the mechanics of who's going to write what down and where will it be accessed. Sure. But that those are not difficult problems. The difficult problem is for the organization to adopt it culturally, for it to become part of that set of unwritten rules. This is how we do things, because this is what makes sense. Finally, the last thing that I thought was really important from what mark said was, was this idea of value, fit culture, add for new hires and really thinking about as you grow a team, as people come into your organization, that that person brings more than just a skillset.

Host - Pat Sweet: They also bring a mindset. They also bring a certain set of beliefs about the world and how work should work and, and to really pay attention to that. As you bring people on such that they will add to your culture and help you establish the culture that you were trying to establish and grow it and improve it, this is a really clever idea. I think on Mark's part is, is to really try to grow a culture as you grow the team by growing people who, who bring that right, that right mindset, and who can really establish the kind of culture that you are looking to establish. Yes, this is slow. Yes, this is hard. It's, it's very difficult to make sense of how a given person through an interview for example, is going to contribute to team culture, but you've got to try. And I thought, I thought that was a really, really clever idea on his part.

Host - Pat Sweet: So thank you once again, mark, that was a really a fascinating conversation. And I think an important one right now, if you'd like to check out any of the links or resources we mentioned, you can find those in the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 36, next up, we've got the engineering and leadership mailbag, you know how this works. This is the part of the show where I read your messages and answer your questions. I promise to read everything you send me. And I promise to read my favorites right here on the podcast Daniels, Andy and I have been trading messages back and forth over the last little while he reached out initially to thank me for my work and to just touch base and connect. So you are most welcome Daniel, super excited to learn more about you and your career. Jean Shue shared an article on LinkedIn related to hybrid workplaces.

Host - Pat Sweet: You may remember my mentioning Gene's name here a little while ago. She is VP of engineering at range which is a really cool tool for, for sinking up asynchronously, which I suppose as a contradiction of terms. But I think, I think you understand what I'm trying to say for, for, for asynchronous collaboration, which is really interesting because mark did mention how important that was, especially for growing teams. Anyway, Jean left this comment sharing an article on Ranger's website, talking about hybrid workplaces, which is a conversation I had with Robin Rosenberg here, a few episodes back. So I'll be sharing that article in the show notes. Thank you very much. Jean look forward to having you on the show sometime soon. And finally, Jessica Fazio mentioned how interesting she found episode 30, and that was all episode 30 was all about leading yourself which is a topic near and dear to my heart.

Host - Pat Sweet: And she said, she'll be working to implement what she learned there. So thank you very much for reaching out Jessica, really glad to to hear you enjoyed it and glad to hear that and inspired you to some sort of some sort of action that that's hugely gratifying for me. So thank you once again, thanks to all of you who reached out over the last couple of weeks. If you'd like to chat with me or leave a comment, please do so on LinkedIn, is it to find me there or leave a comment on the episode, show them that's all the time we have for the show today. I'll be back next week with our next episode. If you enjoyed the show, please hit the subscribe button and please leave an honest review. Let me know what you thought was most interesting for today's show reviews helped me make the show better and help others find the show as well. For more information and links to the resources mentioned today, just go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 36 until next time, this is pat sweet reminding you that if you're going to be anything, be excellent. [inaudible]

Host - Pat Sweet: You've been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet. If you'd like to learn more, go to engineering and leadership.com where you'll find more free articles, podcasts, and downloads to help engineers thrive. That's engineering and leadership.com.