Communication
Stating the Obvious
Summarized using AI
Stating the Obvious
by Ernie MillerIn his talk "Stating the Obvious" at RailsConf 2018, Ernie Miller explores the concept of what we consider "obvious" and how our perception can limit our curiosity and understanding. The central theme revolves around the importance of questioning the obvious, encouraging attendees to embrace curiosity, empathy, and self-awareness in their personal and professional lives.
Key Points Discussed:
- Curiosity Vs. Acceptance: Miller discusses how people, especially as they grow up, often stop asking 'why' and start accepting things as they are.
- Worldviews and Reactions: Different backgrounds lead to differing worldviews, influencing how statements perceived as obvious may elicit agreement or dismissal.
- Practice Questions: He encourages the audience to practice three key questions to challenge their instincts when confronted with obvious statements:
- What is my initial instinct?
- Why do I hold my opinion?
- So what if this is obvious to me, then what?
- Personal Stories: Through several anecdotes, Miller illustrates his journey, including his first job selling appliances where he prioritized customer well-being over profit, thus discovering his capability and sense of purpose.
- Value of Distributed Work: He shares experiences from his time at Splice, highlighting how a distributed team can foster personal connections and flexibility in work-life balance, allowing him to be present for his family during critical times.
- Authenticity and Love: The talk concludes with a powerful message about the significance of authenticity and love; he expresses that everyone is worthy of love, and living authentically can lead to deeper connections.
Conclusions and Takeaways:
- Staying curious allows for personal and professional growth.
- Understanding different perspectives can enhance empathy and learning.
- Embracing authenticity leads to genuine relationships and a fulfilling life.
- Recognizing one's worth and value in the workplace promotes better environments and experiences.
Overall, attendees leave encouraged to apply these lessons in their interactions and engagements, thus making a positive impact in both their lives and the community around them.
00:00:11
Hello! Oh hello! So very quickly, I'm gonna...
00:00:13
say this now: I'm actually live here. If you're in the edges or the back of the room, unless you just don't like people—which is totally cool, that's alright—I would love to see if you could kind of come in a little bit. I can actually look at you all instead of just doing one of these. So, hi! I'm Ernie and I missed you, right?
00:00:35
Wow, these are like the friendliest hecklers ever!
00:00:41
So, I took last year off from submitting to and attending conferences to do some self-care, just step back and think about what I really wanted to talk to you all about. If I could share only one thing, this talk is that thing. So, I'm really happy that you came to see it. But I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous too. Seeing all of your faces right now, I'm hoping this public speaking thing is kind of like riding a bike.
00:00:58
I'm an engineering manager at a company called Splice. Unlike what seems to be every other company here, we actually don't use Ruby; we use Go. I'm not actually even hiring at this moment, so this isn't a pitch to come work with me or anything like that. I'm just really happy Splice let me come spend time with you all and I wanted to thank them.
00:01:11
I'm really excited to be in Pittsburgh too. This is one of those places that feels like home for me because I actually grew up about an hour south of here. So, it feels like coming back home. How many of you drove to the conference? Me too! I actually drove from Louisville, Kentucky. Now, I have always considered Louisville to be the South—we say 'y'all' after all—but people have told me that Louisville is in the Midwest. And weirder yet, when I've told them, 'Well, I'm originally from the Pittsburgh area,' they told me that is the Midwest.
00:01:43
Now, have you ever stopped to think about the term 'Midwest'? I'm no geography buff, I'll admit, but it seemed to me obvious that 'Midwest' should probably be center, a little bit west of the middle, you know? Not like far west—just 'Midwest.' But as you probably already know, this isn't the case.
00:01:59
And I say probably not because sometimes I think that the tech community at large, especially those of us who work in some of the usual places, we have a different take on geography altogether. In the tech community, you've got the East Coast, and there are some things that happen there. Then you've got the Pacific Northwest, and there are some things that happen up there as well. And then, you know, there's the West Coast where there's always one more thing happening. And then there's this tiny little area right here where, you know, obviously, we're changing the course of humanity—the rest of this, the Midwest.
00:02:40
Anyway, I'm a curious guy and I wondered why we called something mostly east of the West Coast the Midwest. So, I did some research. Now, because the Northwest Territory was between the East Coast and the Far West at the time, the states carved out of it were called the Northwest. Makes sense, okay. Now, by the early 19th century, anything west of the Mississippi was considered the West.
00:03:06
By the late 1880s, we'd settled further west and most of the states highlighted here had been considered Midwest. By the time we'd settled the Western Prairie, this westernmost highlighted row of states—from North Dakota to Kansas—became part of the Midwest. And this is in fact the current definition that is used by the US Census Bureau today.
00:03:48
Now I want you to notice two things here. First, neither Louisville nor Pittsburgh is in the North in the Midwest—which I mean, they're close, but they're not there. So, you know, we were right. The Midwest is, though, in fact centered a bit west of middle; it's just that the definition of middle changed.
00:04:03
So, the middle was the Mississippi. And this is completely natural to people at the time, even though it takes a little bit of curiosity and research for us to come to know. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. I thought it was worth sharing, but this does conclude the history portion of our talk.
00:04:19
From here on out, we're gonna turn back to something that's from your own educational history. Do you remember story time? Right? Whatever happened to story time? I mean, when did we decide that it was only for kids? When did we stop getting something this awesome?
00:04:36
Do you remember your favorite question when you were a kid? I'll bet it was a single word, a question that you asked over and over until it frustrated the grown-ups. You know the question I'm talking about, don't you? Questions: 'Why?' When we were kids, we were constantly trying to make sense of the world around us, to try to figure out how the world works, and 'why' is the tool that we actually used to do that. We know there has got to be some reason for things, and we're pretty sure—if not completely sure—that that reason is worth knowing.
00:05:06
So especially whenever it comes to rules, right? For instance, like, why do I have to go to bed at 8:00 p.m. or, like, chocolate chip cookies have eggs in them, and eggs are a breakfast food, so why can't I have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast? Or maybe, why shouldn't I drive my little sister and myself off the go-kart track after a heavy rain? That last one might just be me, but you get the idea.
00:06:05
So we would pepper the grown-ups with 'why' after 'why' until they would eventually get frustrated and they would give us a predictable answer: 'Because I said so.' And that's a really unsatisfying answer as a kid, especially because we all kind of knew that what that really meant was: 'I don't know.' But 'I don't know' isn't an answer that adults want to say. They're not comfortable with that. It's a lot easier to tell people that this is just how it is.
00:06:46
And I think this is where a real tragedy occurs. Because at some point along the way, we learned that it doesn't pay to be too curious. We stopped asking 'why' and then we start to take certain things for granted. Now, I call this a tragedy because whenever we stop asking 'why,' whenever we stop being curious about—and just—we start accepting some answer as the way it is, as good enough, we lay another brick in the foundation that affects how we interpret what's happening all around us.
00:07:19
We build up our worldview. But now you're probably wondering where this is going, and that's fair. So as I've been doing this conference speaking thing for a while now, no matter how often I do it, I can't get past the idea that all I'm really doing is stating the obvious. And yet I can't help but notice that no matter how many times I think these things are obvious, we don't always act like it—even myself included. If they're so obvious, then why don't we live like they are?
00:07:53
So in this talk, like other talks I've given and other talks that you're going to hear throughout this conference, I'm gonna stand up here and I'm going to tell you some things that have become obvious to me. And there's a good chance your instinct is going to be to react in one of two ways: either you're gonna nod your head in agreement, or you're gonna dismiss what I'm saying as naive or just plain wrong.
00:08:46
And I'd like to suggest that either of these reactions is problematic because your initial reaction to what I say has a lot less to do with what I say and more to do with how what I say and how I say it squares with your view of how the world is—or, and this part's even more important, I think, how your view of the world should be. So since no two people have a worldview that's exactly the same, we're gonna have differences, right? And what we find obvious.
00:09:37
I wonder if that’s part of what makes statements that start with 'obviously' so irritating, because someone making an incorrect presumption that their worldview is shared by you can feel really uncomfortable. But there's real opportunity to learn about each other and ourselves in the space between reacting and hearing. If we can just take a breath and kind of sit through the discomfort for a moment and remain curious, asking questions before snapping to judgment.
00:10:20
So through the rest of this talk, you're going to have an opportunity to practice this. You're gonna see a bunch of slides like this—'obviously' in the top left corner and a statement that might prompt a reaction—positive, negative, or otherwise—from you. And I'm going to invite you to resist reacting and instead just stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself three questions each time you see an 'obviously' slide.
00:11:03
So try to commit these to memory now because I'm gonna give you time to use them later. The first one is: What's my initial instinct? Is this obvious to me or is it obviously wrong? The second: Why? Why do I hold my opinion? Why might this other person hold theirs? And third: So, so what? If this is obvious to me, then what would living from this truth look like?
00:11:27
How might it change the way I think, the way I act, if I really believed it? Before we get started with story time, I feel like I need to get something out of the way. For the longest time, when I would go out to speak at conferences, people would come up to me and they would act like they knew me, and I found it really weird. And then I got to thinking, and I realized that they weren't really wrong.
00:12:10
I think that's because, for the most part, the things that I do and say in private aren't really much different than the things I do and say in public. And I tend also to be really open and vulnerable with strangers. I'm not necessarily sure that I recommend that; that's not necessarily always the safest thing, but I don't actually know how to be any other way.
00:12:48
For example, I'm just gonna guess here, but I'm thinking probably most people aren't comfortable getting on stage and intimating the precise number of testicles they currently have—provided that number is non-standard. But whether—or not—I'm glad somebody enjoyed that. But I've always been very open about my experience with testicular cancer. And it's not just the big things; it's maybe cancer sometimes, but maybe other times it's my emotional state or anything else really. I've always just sort of defaulted to being open and vulnerable, and that's unlikely to change.
00:13:26
It's definitely not gonna change before the end of this talk, so let's just deal with that. I'd like to tell you three stories for today's story time, and the first one is going to be called 'Doogie.' When I was growing up, my first job from the age of 13 was having a paper route. But from the time I could drive, I started to look for something like a real job.
00:13:49
Now, as you probably know, for a 16-year-old, your career options are somewhat limited. But I had decided at the outset that I didn't want to work in fast food, because it seemed like a really stressful job for the money. Everyone's always in a hurry; they're timing you; and you've got that one idiot in line that thinks he's the first one to crack the joke: 'I thought this was supposed to be fast food' while he waits. It just seemed like way too much stress for the money for me.
00:14:17
They really do have a stock photo of everything, by the way, if you were wondering. So I didn't want stress. As a kid, I actually struggled with undiagnosed IBS, so if I was stressed, I was likely to have some serious stomach issues. Now, I had missed a lot of school due to that, but my parents mostly thought that I was faking it at the time. They also told me that I needed to be realistic—that everybody has to start somewhere.
00:14:51
But they had raised me to never stop asking 'why,' and I really wasn't too keen on accepting their 'that's just the way it is' answer. And so, it was after working my network—which mostly consisted of teachers at the time—that I found myself working my first real job as a commissioned appliance salesperson.
00:15:12
And this was at like 16, and I'm being trained to be an appliance sales person. That was kind of cool—definitely not fast food. My coworkers were all in their 30s, 40s, or older, and so they had taken to calling me Doogie after the title character of the TV show about the youngest doctor. That show had just completed its run around then.
00:15:44
Now, to be fair, I can see why; we both had very poofy hair. But I mean, look at that face! You'd buy a refrigerator from me, right? So, the first cool thing about working in retail for me was that I found out that I was actually okay at dealing with people. And this was a huge revelation because I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I was not a popular kid in school, and so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to find myself in social situations.
00:16:10
The second cool thing I found in my new job was—it takes a little more explanation. So, I lived in what was then and still is one of the poorest counties in Pennsylvania, and my family was not an exception to those demographics. What wealth did exist there was largely the result of coke and coal mining about a century before, feeding into the steel mills here in Pittsburgh, and that wealth had long since dried up or moved away.
00:16:53
Now, as a result, for many of the people that were walking through those doors, the appliance they were about to buy represented a very significant investment. So I learned everything I could about every appliance; I could rattle off size and brand and everything else from just a model number. And I paid special attention to the things that would actually come back through the doors needing repairs—that just were regularly breaking down.
00:17:19
So when a family would come through the door, you know, I would listen carefully to what they were looking for, what their budget was, and then I would help them find the most reliable appliance for their budget—the one with the best warranty—because I knew there was a good chance they couldn't repair or replace this thing if it failed.
00:17:51
That was the second cool thing about working in retail: I was able to really help people and their families in a tangible way. It was a really good feeling for a teenager, especially when someone would come through the door and ask for me by name because they'd had a good experience. Now, in the sales business, especially in appliance sales, there’s a term you grow very familiar with called 'spiffs.' Is there anyone out there that already knows what I'm talking about when I say 'spiffs'?
00:18:22
Alright, so a few! For the rest of you, I'm going to explain: spiffs are an incentive program that manufacturers pay a salesperson directly for selling specific products. So spiffs oftentimes are worth way more than whatever you might make on a commission. For instance, in my job, I could sell a $1200 refrigerator, and I would get three-quarters of 1% as a commission, so I'd make nine bucks off that sale. But a spiff on that same refrigerator might be twenty-five or fifty dollars.
00:18:59
Now, the cool thing was that some really reputable companies that made quality products offered spiffs, so it was kind of like free money, really! In that case, you were gonna sell these things anyway. Except it wasn't for us, because when we would sell a product that the manufacturer had a spiff on, my boss would actually forge our signatures on the spiff forms, collect the pay that we were due, and then repurpose it toward lower quality or older products.
00:19:37
And to give you an idea of what we're talking about here, in our warehouse, we had things that still came in harvest gold and avocado—if you're familiar with those colors. There's probably gonna be very few people that know what I'm talking about here! So he had made his own spiff forms, then designed those oh-so-beautifully in Sharpie, and then he would have us fill those out instead.
00:20:17
Now, I found out this was going on; I didn't really care—I mean I was a kid; I didn’t need the extra money—so I just kind of kept on selling what I thought was going to help the customer. And you know, I missed out on some money, but I was okay with that. Eventually, I got called back to the boss's office. I'm gonna do my best boss impression here: 'Ernie, come on back here!'
00:20:51
That’s actually how he talked. He also did call everybody 'buddy,' and it was just up to you to figure out who he meant whenever he would say that. 'Hey buddy, I noticed you hadn't been selling my spiffs. Don't you like money?' Well, the rest of our conversation consisted of me explaining my very principled stance on selling what's right for the customer, building loyalty, and you know, my values as a person who cared about doing right by people.
00:21:24
But he was having none of that nonsense. None of it at all. So that's how I lost the most lucrative job my teenage self could have hoped for. And yet, it wasn’t all loss; some new things became obvious to me based on this experience, and that’s going to give us a chance to practice what we learn.
00:22:03
So get ready to stop, take a deep breath, and ask the questions: 'Is it? Why? And so what?' First, it became obvious to me that other people, even people who mean well, don't know what you're capable of.
00:22:20
Even though my parents had told me that I was gonna have to settle for a fast food job, I held out for something that felt better to me. And it could have gone a different way, but it didn't. I found out that I ended up being perfectly capable of doing a job that surprised them, and if I'm being honest, it surprised me too. I didn't expect to like dealing with people, and I didn't think I was gonna be very good at it, but I learned that even I don't know what I'm capable of until I try.
00:23:00
Now, even though that job might have just been selling appliances, I had found a way to accomplish something greater while I was there. I found a way to help people—and having that purpose helped me put up with some very, let’s just call it suboptimal working conditions.
00:23:42
I've come to believe that you can do any job with a greater purpose than the one that’s been set out for you, and this has really been a key to finding happiness in my work for the years that I've been in this industry. I left that job with a sense of self-worth and self-respect that I hadn't had up until that point.
00:24:19
I learned that I could take an active role in defining what I was capable of, and what I would choose to do, what I would put up with, and that made me a happier person as a result. My boss might have thought I was a loser, but he needed my consent to define me as such. The truth was, I had stood up for my values, and that made me anything but a loser.
00:25:01
Our next story is one we're going to call '50 cents.' Now, my first technical job was working as technical support for an ISP. The more observant among you are going to notice this is not a photo of me, but this is in fact the most menacing technical support representative I have ever seen in my life—just look at that expression! You've seen that expression before!
00:25:29
Okay, so you're gonna have to forgive me for using stock photography here, but the only photo that I could find of me from this era of my life was this blurry, poorly framed photo of my neo costume from the company Halloween party. Anyway, I had started working there when the office was a short drive away for me, but when we acquired another office—we purchased another ISP—I decided to stay on.
00:26:06
With the aim of working my way into a systems administration role. Now, I had become a lead technical support rep at that point. I had been training all the people that were starting at the new location, so I thought that bode pretty well for my prospects. So I put up with now an hour-long commute each way to get to this office.
00:26:48
I was being paid hourly as well—six dollars an hour to be exact. I had to clock in, so I left home early every morning because I wanted to be sure that even if I hit unexpected traffic, I wasn't gonna be late. Still, one day after I'd clocked in and logged into my headset, I was told I was late! I was surprised because I had clocked in on time.
00:27:26
And being the insolent youth that I was, I told my boss to check my timecard. She told me it didn't matter what the timecard said; I had to be in and at my desk by my start time. So, to be clear now, we're talking about a difference of maybe three minutes here—not too much. I told her if that was the expectation, she should schedule me five minutes earlier.
00:28:08
I got written up for having an attitude problem. She wasn't wrong—maybe I picked the right stock photo after all!
00:28:43
After that, I suspected my prospects there maybe weren't as hot as I had thought. So I suppose it was a bit lucky then that I got hired into the systems administration role that I was hoping for under a new manager before she had a chance to fire me. I got a $0.50 per hour raise and I was promised another $0.50 per hour if I was doing well in that role within six months.
00:29:17
This meant I was now making six dollars and fifty cents an hour as a full-time Systems Administrator. Yeah, see, I see some of you know how much work that was! So anyway, I stayed on in the sysadmin role for just under a year, and I had set up monitoring and automation scripts there. Eventually, I was offered a job at another ISP for $7.50 an hour. That was going to be the sole technical employee.
00:29:54
This was going to mean I was gonna take network administration, systems administration, server builds, tech support—everything—for that low, low price of $7.50 an hour. Now, it was a massive increase in responsibility for a very tiny increase in pay, but I felt like I had hit a dead end where I was. My company still hadn't even come through on that additional $0.50 an hour I was promised. Those two quarters were two of the things that I brought up when I gave notice that I was leaving to the vice president.
00:30:40
He was furious, by the way. After all I've done for you, he bellowed. I was just a kid after all, and he thought he was going to be able to bully me. I'm still kind of surprised that I had the presence of mind to remain calm and remind him that while I appreciated being given the position, he had to acknowledge I did a good job for the money that he had paid me.
00:31:19
I felt a little weird explaining to a VP the basics of an employment relationship, though. He agreed I had done a good job, and he had me escorted out that day. But after I was gone, the questions kept coming back: 'Who handled this?' That was Ernie!
00:32:02
I was rehired a year later for more than twice what I was making. The VP who had yelled at me no longer worked there; I probably wouldn’t have gone back if he had. And I found myself having learned some more obvious things from the whole experience. Now, this is your cue to remember to breathe and ask the questions. And some of these are gonna be a little more, probably uncomfortable than the last batch. So, be warned.
00:32:47
First, you set your own asking price. When I first took this job, I felt thankful to just get a job, period. And I never even asked what they paid. I never thought about asking for a specific salary. My answer had been yes before I’d even been told a number. But I would have had to justify my asking price.
00:33:31
And when I started, I would have had a hard time justifying any price because I didn’t know my value. So, you need to know your value. Did I become twice as valuable in the year that I was gone? Was I capable of twice as much work? Of course not! It was just that my absence for the year made it clear to my company that they weren't quite paying me what my value was.
00:34:16
Now, I should have been making that value clear while I was at the job, and honestly, before I ever took it. But to know your value with any degree of certainty, it isn't enough to rely on other people to tell you; you have to know what you value in order to know that what you're getting from the job and giving up for the job is a fair trade.
00:35:07
Now, at the time I left, I was leaving money on the table because I overvalued the experience they were giving me by dumping lots of work in my lap. And truly, that did have value. It was getting me a chance to do some work. But there were other things that I drastically undervalued at that time, and one of them especially when I was young was really easy to undervalue my time.
00:35:47
After all, it seemed like I had so much of it to spend, and we've all heard the phrase 'time is money' for so long that we can be forgiven for being so willing to trade time for money. If we're not careful, we're gonna make that trade for a long while before we truly understand the opportunity cost of the trade that we made.
00:36:34
I spent all of my 20s freely trading time for money with no concern for what I was giving up in order to do so. I traded my time freely in exchange for money to buy things to own that in turn owned me. And I can't point to a single one of those things today.
00:37:16
A while back, I decided to have this license plate made to remind me of what the car I drive and the toys I collect amount to in the long run: nil. Time, as we know, is the most non-renewable resource that's ours to give. It's something that we’re all running out of, and while it's true that we can exchange time for money, that exchange rate is highly variable.
00:38:01
And our supply is subject to all sorts of things that are outside of our direct control. For most of us, we don't know time's value until we spend a good deal of it already. I don't have any special claim to this particular truth, by the way; this is something we've been aware of for thousands of years.
00:38:51
And yet, if it's so obvious, why don't we find ourselves acting like it? For the longest time, I didn't know my value because I didn't know what I valued. So ask yourself: What do you value? If you're having trouble answering that question, I'd suggest an easier one: where do you invest your time? If you can answer that, you'll begin to understand what an employer is truly asking from you in exchange for that paycheck.
00:39:40
And depending on your answer, you might start to get pretty frustrated with the choices you've been making. I know I was. It's obvious to me now that commuting is unpaid labor. I was spending two hours a day going to and from my job back then. I could do almost anything we needed from home, and if you're a software developer today, there’s absolutely nothing that says you can only be productive whenever you're sitting in a very specific chair in a very specific office in a very specific city.
00:40:31
The high-speed internet connections many of us have in our homes today are far faster than the DS3 lines I had at the office back then, and we have fantastic communication tools that use all that bandwidth. If you're spending time in a commute every day, is that time that you actually want to invest? Are you getting something out of it?
00:41:25
Realize, too, that if you're a thought worker, you're working whenever you're thinking. And if that's really true, then pretending that work happens at a specific hour or in specific locations is just plain silly. What do you actually need to do your job? Maybe you say, 'I need a computer' or 'I need a text editor,' and sure, that's part of it, but a huge part of what you're being paid for is just thinking! Now I've had some of my best ideas in the shower, and I’m pretty sure my company doesn't consider my shower to be part of their office.
00:42:25
If your company doesn't support a distributed team, then it's only disadvantaging itself. It's ludicrous to me that companies say they're looking to hire the most talented people, but often mean the most talented people who are currently located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco. Yes, I don't mean to pick on San Francisco; it's a lovely city. But it's an easy one in this particular case.
00:43:05
Do you think that it might be possible that some of the most talented people in the world don't fit those criteria? Now, I'm not gonna lie to you; running a distributed team takes more work. For starters, developing strong written and verbal communication skills are a must on a distributed team, but strong written and verbal communication skills are important anyway. Programming is written communication, and there's a whole lot of communication that goes on before you ever start coding.
00:43:42
All other things being equal, I do believe that a team full of strong communicators will be the team without them every time. So if your company intentionally limits its candidate pool to a tiny subset of the world's most talented people by insisting they live in a specific location, then it can build a team that requires less intentionality and discipline in communication. I think it's reasonable to say that they're fighting with at least one arm tied behind their backs.
00:44:30
If a company claims it's distributed and then wants to adjust your salary for a market rate, please do me and yourself a favor and ask them why. If the company is actually running a distributed team, the value they get from you is not dependent on the location you work from. Plus, stop and think how ridiculous this is for a second: if you choose to move somewhere else of your own accord, does your company change your salary? What if you had a sick relative that you had to take care of? Should they change it then? Does it matter?
00:45:22
Since when is it up to a company to determine what your standard of living should be as opposed to paying you based on how much they value the work you do? You might say, 'Well, what about those of us who want to live somewhere with a high cost of living?' That's absolutely a choice you’re free to make; it still doesn't affect how much value you deliver to a company, though.
00:46:01
And I think that making your salary depend on where you live really kind of dilutes the impact of that choice. That's a choice that you have a lot of power with. So we're back to discussing how we determine our work again—that never gets old! So there's nothing like a cancer diagnosis to get you thinking about what you really want to have to show for your time.
00:46:53
And you know now, if you didn't before, that I'm a cancer survivor. What you might not have known is that my mom was also a cancer survivor. She was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer in 2012. Well, last year we found out that her cancer was back and had metastasized to her liver and to her bone. She was undergoing chemotherapy, and I really wanted to be with her.
00:47:47
Additionally, my daughter was going back to college now. We have the same birthday, and she was turning twenty-one on the same day that I was turning forty, so I really wanted to celebrate with her. We were gonna be driving her back to college anyway, and because I worked at Splice Engineering—and we are a distributed team—I didn't have to make a choice. I got to drive with her and my wife back to her last year of college and help her move in.
00:48:50
I got to be a bad influence on her; we got to go out and celebrate our double birthday, which was a big milestone for both of us. I also got to celebrate other important milestones, like her first drink. And then, I got to drive home to Fayette County and visit my mom and the rest of my family for a week and a half. I got to toast lollipops with my youngest nephew at his second birthday party.
00:49:32
I got to spend all of this time with the people that I love most without neglecting the people on my team whom I also love. I didn't have to take any vacation time, and my time spent traveling had exactly zero impact on my team at Splice. When I wasn't working from a hotel room or my parents' house, I was working from this really sweet office that looks like it's straight out of the set of Mad Men, with my best friend of thirty-five years.
00:50:14
On my drive home, I discovered that I could tweet and dictate notes via CarPlay, so I was even able to write part of the outline for this very talk while I was driving home. And tweet a lot! Now, we are blessed to work in an amazing industry that affords us this kind of freedom. What if I had been sacrificing these experiences to work somewhere that required me to put my butt in a very specific chair in a very specific office, in a very specific city to do a job I could do anywhere?
00:50:59
Look, I don't say this to make anyone jealous if this isn't your situation right now, but to explain why I feel so strongly about the value of distributed teams: a company that lets its team members work distributed creates space for the kinds of experiences that last—space where there otherwise may not be any. A company that lets people spend time with the people they love, no matter where those people are, that's a company that values people.
00:51:44
And I believe that if you care about people, you're going to attract people that care about people. If you care about people, you're going to treat those people with respect and dignity and not like cogs in a machine. If you care about people, the people who work with you will find putting people first as natural as breathing, and your company and products will be better for it.
00:52:53
Now, you may be thinking to yourself, 'Well, that’s all well and good, but it takes sacrifice to put a dent in the universe, and I wanna work with people that are willing to make that sacrifice.' But here's the thing: people are an important part of the universe. Scratch that: people are the important part of the universe. When you talk about making a dent in the universe, what do you really mean?
00:53:39
If you don't impact people in some meaningful way, who's gonna care? Who's gonna remember you when you're gone? Isn't that what we really want—to have touched people's lives? I'm so happy to be part of a team that gets that. As my mom's condition worsened, I went home more often, driving every other week. One Saturday, not long after I left to head back to Louisville, my dad sent me these texts on the right.
00:54:20
They're about a package he had received. I listened to him; he reread the text, but I couldn't understand what he was talking about. So I called him, and he explained that my company had sent twenty handwritten cards and chocolates from different members of the team, and they were addressed to my mom.
00:55:12
He read the first one to me from my VP, Juan Pablo, and as he did, we cried together. It explained the purpose of the cards. I had expected them to be sympathy cards, but these weren’t that. The team had written twenty letters about me to a woman they didn’t know, expressing how, through me, she had touched their lives.
00:56:00
Last month, I lost my mom. If I hadn't been part of a functional, distributed team that put people first, I wouldn't have been able to visit my family every other week for months. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to spend as much time as I did with her. It's likely I wouldn't have been with her when she died, and I would have missed out on making memories that I'm gonna cherish forever.
00:56:44
So if you ever find yourself questioning the value of building a functional, distributed team, the value is people. I hope you'll remember this story. Last story's a quick one: so hayrides were kind of a big thing when I was growing up. Anyone else? A big thing? Hayrides? Yeah? So, yeah, there was this hayride that I went to in junior high, and it was at a church.
00:57:40
Afterward, they had a bonfire with hot chocolate and s'mores and stuff, but unless you get confused, I'm not pictured here. I'm pictured here now. By now, you've detected a theme: no matter when a picture is taken of me, I will look like a dork. As we've established, I wasn't a popular kid. Just like every school dance I'd ever attended, I was a wallflower.
00:58:34
So I was leaning up against the wall, being a perfectly acceptable wallflower. And I wanted you to take a moment to appreciate how much effort that takes in an era when there aren't smartphones—you can't look like you're busy; you just have to lean there and pretend you're disinterested! Then suddenly, two cute girls appeared, and they were talking to me.
00:59:21
And I was skeptical because I was like, 'Well, it's a church thing, they probably have to talk to the dork standing over there all alone.' But still, I had to do something, and so this was my inner monologue around that point. And yes, I really was trying to think of what a cool person would do.
00:59:59
So if I had had a phone that had internet access, I might have been able to figure this out, but I didn't have that, and I was left to my own devices. So I thought of the coolest person I knew: Arthur Fonzarelli from Happy Days! After all, who’s cooler than the Fonz? The answer is no one—no one is the answer you’re looking for! So I tried to strike this particular pose, propping my foot up against the wall that I was leaning on—only there was a window there.
01:00:39
So I put my foot through the window, sending glass kind of shattering down on top of these kind grandmotherly types. That was, yeah, I mean, an impact alright; it was not the impact that I had planned to make, and it wasn't the last time that I would do something that wasn't really true to who I really was in order to try to fit in with what I thought people wanted from me.
01:01:29
But we don't have time for all of those. So through this and other experiences like it, I came away with what might be one of the most important lessons I've ever learned. Look, life is hard; it’s also pretty awesome lots of the time, and it's most definitely worth it. But yeah, life is hard. So maybe authenticity is the thing.
01:02:21
We throw the term authenticity around a lot to the point where it's lost almost all meaning; even corporations and brands try to be authentic—just seeing or hearing the word can bring on a kind of a strong impulse to react. So if you’re feeling that impulse, just breathe with me for a second. We’re almost through this!
01:03:05
You're not a corporation, and contrary to what some might say, you're also not a brand. You're a human being. So what does it mean to be an authentic human being? To me, the easiest way to describe it is living one life. Being my authentic self means that if I check out tomorrow, the people I know could just still have a discussion with me in their heads. They’d know what I would say and what I would do because they got to know me, not the meaning I thought they wanted.
01:04:02
Living an authentic life is leaving something behind of the real me to remember, and thankfully, it's also a great way to have real and genuine relationships with the people around you today. But what does your authentic self look like? We're all still figuring that out—it’s okay! People change; people grow. Maybe you’re still trying some things on for size, and that’s totally fine.
01:05:00
But when you do find something that fits, I hope you’ll actually take note of it. Why? It’s not just a question for others; it’s a question we ask ourselves. You may remember I said when we stop asking why, we accept an answer as good enough. We lay another brick in the foundation that affects how we interpret what's going on all around us.
01:05:46
We start to build up our worldview that affects what seems obvious to us—how things are or how things should be. Living by what's truly obvious to us is as natural as breathing. Maybe if we remain curious, we'll keep asking ourselves, we'll find values we didn’t know we had—truths about ourselves we didn’t know—and we'll start living like we mean it!
01:06:38
Look, striving to live an authentic life is vulnerable and scary and hard, but it's also really living, loving, and connecting, and it’s so worth it. Maybe one day we'll find ourselves surprised when people we've never met think they know us and we'll be even more amazed when we realize they're not wrong.
01:07:20
So with all that said, doesn't it seem fitting to end our time together without sharing my own 'why'? When I say 'my why,' I mean some fundamental truth about what I find most valuable. It's an answer I end up with for many of the things that I do, if I just keep asking why.
01:08:00
'Why am I doing any of this? Why am I here right now?' You might not know yet, but you've got the tool to figure it out if you're curious. For instance, earlier, I told you I think people are the important part of the universe. And we talked earlier about how a great place to start figuring out what we value is to look at where we spend our time.
01:08:53
So I'll ask again, what's my why? I hope the answer is obvious right now: my why is people—more specifically, since you are part of the group, my why is you. And I'm gonna go one step further and say something that you might not expect to hear from the stage of a programming conference, but that's okay because you know now, if you didn’t before, that I have no filter. I love you!
01:09:47
Not the collective you—I told you I’m from the South; if I meant 'y'all', I’d say 'y'all'! Or I used to be. I used to be from Pittsburgh, so maybe 'Yin's!' But I mean that I love you. I don’t blame you if you’re skeptical, especially if I don’t even know you yet—especially since we use the term love for everything from family to French fries these days! I’ll forgive you for being jaded, thinking I can’t possibly mean it.
01:10:37
But see, the thing is, I don’t have to know you personally to know that you are worthy of love. So I’m willing to go out on a limb here: you are loved and worthy of love. And stay here with me for a moment and breathe. Remember the exercise? You try it one last time with me: 'Is it? Is this obvious to me or obviously wrong, why do I hold my opinion?'
01:11:27
And so what? What would living like I'm loved and worthy of love look like? How might it change the way I think and act if I really believed it? It’s harder, like actually looking at y’all doing this, by the way.
01:12:15
So I’m willing to bet there are some people in the audience right now who don’t feel that way. And if even one of you comes away from this talk recognizing how very much they’re worth, then I'll consider my time well spent. Anyway, thanks for letting me share some stories with you. I hope you’ll share some of yours, and I hope that you'll know that by doing so, you’ll have made a dent in the universe!
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