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At Plato Elevate — Oded Shekel, HackerRank’s SVP of Product, moderated a talk composed of eng leaders from Netflix, Optimizely, and VMware about employee growth and career development.

Employee Growth and Career Development

This article sums up one of the panels we had at Plato Elevate, our recurring conference about Engineering and Product Leadership.

**Tyler Muse**, CEO of Lingo Live, a company coaching employees to communicate more effectively, believes strongly in empowering human beings to contribute their unique potential in the workplace. He welcomed four high-level guests on stage to talk about **how effective communication drives team performance**.

The panel was composed of:

- **Jen You**, VP of Technology at WeWork
- **Michael Spiegelman**, VP of Global Product Innovation at Netflix
- **Sue Nallapeta**, VP of Engineering at Apartment List
- **Pat Poels**, SVP of Platform at Eventbrite

Before greeting his guests, Tyler warned the audience that **communication is an abstract topic**. It was important to him to sum up the core components of communication: how it is managed, and how it should be managed.

One of the biggest **mistakes companies make is driving performance through communication with (only) operational alignment**.

Companies usually believe it’s enough to ensure people are operationally aligned. They design their strategy through mission, vision, OKRs, etc. They also assign accountabilities to team members through RASCI (a matrix of roles and responsibilities in a project) and project management software. They also track performance through KPIs, BI tools, etc. And that’s it.

If you stop here, you’ll have the assumption that this is how things are done and how a team should function. But **this operational layer is only the tip of the iceberg**.

To Tyler, effective communication that drives team performance looks more like this:

![The pyramide of effective communication](https://assets-global.website-files.com/5ba170a39dd35e64ce65494a/5d8502461ca456625599a5ff_1*GOcxJVFzSQRXaBfOqn0daA.jpeg)

Building **trust**, sharing **perspectives**, demanding **debate**, making clear **commitments**, and designing **strategy** are thus key components of team performance, but each part of the process can bring in trouble if done wrong.

The leaders Tyler invited have figured out some ways to overcome these issues, which we summed up below.

## Building trust

Jen You, VP of Technology at WeWork, makes sure **principles feel like they were originating from the team**. To do so, she makes sure people attend off-sites and get to speak to each other in more intimate environments. In such set-ups, they are more inclined to be honest with each other and develop expectations around how to communicate, something they are accountable for.

Jen also believes in **giving folks a forum, a channel to be more revealing and “vulnerable” about who they are**, how they operate and communicate. At WeWork, she created user manuals, slightly inspired from baseball cards. These are places where employees can write a brief summary about themselves, how they communicate, common misperceptions about them, things they believe are valuable, what makes them happy in their worlds. Having these interests, blind spots and nuances written on paper helps create better interactions.

Sue Nallapeta joined Apartment List as the VP of Engineering at an uncertain time. The long-term CTO had stepped down a few months before, a VP of Engineering joined and left quickly, and the team was without a VP for a few months.

There was a lot of uncertainty and a lack of trust so she decided to build it back from scratch in 3 steps:

- Step one was about **working the team**, and then the problem. Before even talking, she had to **listen actively, understand the context**, the history and how and why decisions were made. Sue then started **building team camaraderie**, so that employees actually felt like being in a team instead of being stuck in a silo. **Bringing people together** helped teams create their own variation of the company culture: some teams have drinks each week, some meet for tea time, some others wear animal t-shirts (yes!) every Wednesday.
- Step two was moving towards **resolving relationship conflicts** around ego and emotional frictions, as opposed to task conflicts.
- Finally, **building a career ladder** for the team itself, focusing on ownership, leadership, and the impact people can make.

Michael Spiegelman, VP of Global Product Innovation at Netflix, agreed with Sue and Jen, and added that whereas communication is usually described as a “soft” skill, **it actually takes a lot to admit that you messed up**, that you’re bad at something, that you were wrong, etc.

[Elevate Conference — "Driving team performance with effective communication"](https://youtu.be/Se1gm3ZTTFs)

## Sharing perspectives

Pat Poels, SVP of Platform at Eventbrite, thinks that communication in startups is hard because **product and engineering are working on pretty abstract things**. He advises people to **be aware of their communication**. _What’s the objective of the communication? Why did you decide to say what you’re going to say? Who is the audience?_ If you talk to the CEO or to a technical team, it’s important to phrase things differently and to have a different perspective too. Taking that time upfront to understand, identify the audience, and think about your objectives creates alignment and trust too.

On sharing perspectives, Michael showed the audience what the culture looks like at Netflix. The team talks about conceptually difficult, challenging products, and experienced how tech specs, requirements, and long documents were overrated. Instead of sharing with teams every detail about a project, he stresses on the importance of **investing in everybody to have a shared context**: same hypotheses, vision, what success looks like, what you need to achieve, etc. If trust is already built, he can believe in his teammates to work in **autonomy** and make decisions that will help the organization moving towards that **shared goal**. You trust people, so you can rely on them to get a positive outcome.

## Demanding debate

Tyler asked Michael what happens at Netflix when there is a big disagreement. Michael explained that a big part of the culture at Netflix is about **candid feedback**. When there is a layer of trust, feedback tends to be taken less personally: **if I believe you are trying to help me be better at my job, I am more prone to listen to your feedback**. These honest conversations can unblock situations. It’s just essential in such cases not to attribute thoughts to the other person and just show your own perception of what happened or why something happened.

When a project isn’t as successful as expected, Jen believes it’s crucial to have these feedback conversations. **First remember what the hypothesis was and identify where the problem lies: process, people, or planning?** Then, thinking about how to avoid it depending on capabilities.  

Sue thinks **feedback should be provided immediately**, **and in detail**. This gives the person a **chance to reflect**. When receiving feedback, ask clarifying questions taking time to think through that conversation.

**Giving feedback can also be sca**ry, and Sue has a radical method to become better at it: she **records herself** giving feedback to see how she comes across when she does, and how to improve. But not too much though, because it’s always somewhat unpleasant to watch a recording of yourself, especially when you need to get better. The co-founder of Box said that perception is everything, and that it doesn’t matter what you mean, what matters is how it’s perceived.

Pat Poels thinks **feedback** also helps **build stronger ties and trust**, but it has to be **timely**. So during when you start working with someone, it’s important that you are **open up to receiving feedback**, and ask for it! That way, the day you will have to give feedback, people will listen as you did with them. Jen gave some precisions on what makes feedback successful: **besides timeliness, being specific is key.**

![Elevate by Plato](https://assets-global.website-files.com/5ba170a39dd35e64ce65494a/5d895622ecc1188a13320223_Elevate%202019%20by%20Plato%20-%20233.jpg)

## Making clear commitments

Tyler summed it up: you have built trust, shared perspectives, and had constructive debates. Now it's time to commit, but how?

According to Sue, it’s very important to **get people aligned towards a common goal**: having a forum where people **come up with OKRs**, offsites, making teams part of the process, making decisions their ideas. But trying to make decisions very consensus-based is hard. It **never happens that everyone agrees**. In the end **someone has to make the call** and explain it.

For Jen, sometimes people are spinning about stuff that isn’t that important. So before even debating a decision, **its importance should be discussed** and assessed by team members.

Michael shared his experience at Netflix, and how the company has **Informed Captains** to smooth out the process. Going from brainstorming to decision making, **there can’t be a total consensus**. Some people thus have the responsibility of **determining what are team goals and make decisions**. Informed captains are here to **solicit opinions, get feedback** and, in the end, **make decisions**.

If it’s the product leader, their realm of responsibilities is: strategy, hypotheses and the ultimate customer problem the company is trying to solve. When the Captain is an engineer, it will be more about tech decisions, architecture, etc. Once the decision is made, it’s everyone’s job to move forward according to it. And if it’s not clearly defined who the informed captain is, it’s the role of the management to decide.

Michael strongly believes that **the worst decision is no decision**. So as long as you choose and act, even if it’s not the right decision, you’ll be able to figure it out and fix it. Most decisions aren’t a commitment ahead of time anyway. Team members just have to understand who makes the call, who’s going to own it, and everyone is going to respect the decision.

Pat talked about his previous experience as a professional poker player. He played Poker during five years for a living, **making hundreds to thousands of decisions each day**. What he figured out is that **whatever happens, it’s impossible to make them all correctly**. Just keep on **improving** at making decisions, and do not be afraid. If you fail, just look back, learn, remember the outcome and fine tune.

Jen added that **mistakes should be framed as bets**: sometimes when the outcome is disappointing, it doesn’t mean the process is bad. At the end of the day, odds can be against you, even if you did everything right.

## Q&A

The audience could ask questions on Slido, and Tyler chose this one: **_what do you do when you empower someone to make a choice and you massively disagree with the choice they made?_**

Sue believe it’s part of the process. **You have to trust people to fail and learn from their failures**. It’s very intuitive for leaders to step in and solve the problem, but this would not help people thrive. Pat somewhat agreed, and somewhat disagreed too. According to him, **it’s important to think about your own perception of the outcome of a decision you disagree with** and act accordingly. If you equate it to walking with someone and seeing they’re going to trip and maybe skin their knee, you may not have to jump in and do anything about it, because the person can recover easily or even prevent tripping. But if that same person walks in front of a bus and you know it, you owe it to them to act. So, according to Pat, **it really depends on the outcome for the business.**

Jen acknowledged that there are two types of decisions: two way door decisions and one-way door decisions. **If you can’t reverse the decision, it might be better to jump in and do something.** Mike agreed, adding that managers should indeed be selective about their fights depending on the gravity of the decision that is about to be made.

_Thanks a lot to Tyler, Jen, Sue, Michael and Pat for taking the time to share their insights on driving team performance with effective communication!_

Tyler Muse, CEO of Lingo Live, talks to Jen You from WeWork, Michael Spiegelman from Netflix, Sue Nallapeta from Apartment List, and Pat Poels from Eventbrite about how to increase team performance by communicating better.

Driving Team Performance With Effective Communication - Elevate 2019

HackerRank enables more than 5 million developers to grow and develop their careers through coding practice, interview preparation, and job boards.

At Plato Elevate, Oded Shekel, HackerRank’s SVP of Product, moderated a talk composed of eng leaders from Netflix, Optimizely, and VMware about **employee growth and career development**:

- **Prafulla Arvind**, Engineering Manager at VMware  
- **Chris Saint-Amant**, Director of front-end Engineering at Netflix  
- **Sonesh Surana**, Optimizely’s VP of Engineering

Before asking questions to the panel, Oded shared some insights from a survey on career development his team conducted at HackerRank. The sample was made of more than 10k students and provided him with interesting data.

To the question “_How did you learn to code?_”, 31.9% of students answered “at School”, 27% were self-taught, and 37.7% learned both at school and by themselves. What’s interesting about this data is that **about two-thirds of the respondents learned by themselves in some way**, with sites like Stack Overflow or YouTube videos. This means that people invest in their knowledge to grow and advance their careers.

Another insight was about what student developers wanted most in a job:

![Student developers graph](https://assets-global.website-files.com/5ba170a39dd35e64ce65494a/5d93aa38cd13707084127f71_1*YfqKKQO9QQwEfTxDXmcH2Q.jpeg)

Looking at these results, Oded stressed on the fact **growth opportunities are 5x more attractive than perks for student developers**. In the US, the answers were similar, except for the fact **work-life balance** came first (53%). This shows that **people’s aspirations in a tech company** are different from what managers usually expect: **employee growth and career development** should be considered seriously!

This led Oded to ask the first question. 20 years ago, there were software developers. Now new skills are ranging from AI, Data, front-end or back-end to algorithms. Tech evolves too. _So, what’s the role of a manager when it comes to developing those skills?_

Prafulla Arvind believes it’s essential to **recognize tech is everchanging** and that products need to evolve and adjust accordingly. She thinks teams need to be dynamic, and managers should **encourage their direct reports to read** and be up-to-date on the current, latest techs. To do so, VMware does a lot of **POCs** and Prafulla encourages her team to constantly work on them: brainstorm, have open conversations and do things they’re not comfortable with. Also, while she acknowledges Scrum meetings should stick to their purpose, it happens that she has a quick chat with developers about what to read, which blog articles are interesting, etc.

When Oded asked her if she needed to bring some structure to that evolution, or if it was more informal, she answered that it’s more of a **habit to inculcate her team**. It has to be part of a daily routine. You come in the office knowing what to work on, but you have to know what’s going on around and what to keep an eye on too.

Chris Saint-Amant has another way to look at this at Netflix. What he usually does is **giving special, challenging problems to solve**. The team would then come back to him telling him about the **tech gaps** they might have, what they need to solve, etc. For Chris, this might mean having to **hire someone with a skill set that will help people grow in a specific domain or bringing in training**. Starting from a real-life problem, people thus evolve and grow their skillset.

Sonesh Surana advises people to **develop specialized skillsets**. He believes that there are eras in tech: about every five years, there’s going to be something very new and exciting, a major driver of business value. He thinks techs should invest in these, spending a couple of years developing specific skills. He warns people to **develop that domain expertise**, **without being trapped** and keeping their minds open. That way, developers will see intersections, overlaps, and skills that could be translated to any tech.

Oded then asked the panel about soft skills. Soft skills are sometimes considered as black magic because it’s hard to assess and measure their importance and impact on a company. _So, how do you grow and assess the soft skills of the team? What’s the role of a manager in that context?_

Chris spends most of his time and energy on soft skills. He recently started to rename them as “**core skills**”, as they are critical for a company’s success, no matter what is the technology you’re working in. It’s often the area where people need most coaching and development, and it even goes back to the interview process at Netflix, where **50% of their interview process is structured around assessing those skills and not just the technical ability of interviewees**. When he thinks back about the amazing people he worked with, he wonders why: is it because of their amazing tech depth, or the way they communicate, collaborate and advocate for ideas? In his experience, it’s almost always the latter. It doesn’t matter if people have mediocre tech skills if they work incredibly well together, vs. 10 amazing engineers that cannot collaborate or communicate.

When the execs have discussions around promotions for specific an engineer, it’s never whether she codes well or not, but whether she has team or soft skills.

The whole panel thus believes soft skills are of critical importance, but it raises the question of who helps these people thrive. Oded Shekel asked: “_what’s the role of a manager in employee growth? Who’s responsible, accountable for career development?_”

Sonesh from Optimizely shifts his thinking **based on the company situation and the individuals involved.** He believes that **growth is driven by the individual**, the engineer. **They should own their development** and stay committed to it.

**Managers act as supporters** and shepherd that process. People decide, managers help them stay on track. Not all engineers feel comfortable owning that growth though. They don’t always feel it’s fine to push for it. A manager’s role would be to tell them it’s ok to advocate, and if they forget or don’t get confident, to remind them and ask them for their thoughts.

That supporting role is about **having conversations and develop a picture of what one’s career looks like**. Support depends on the company’s situation. Any team will go through different phases, from frantic chaos to relative stability. To Sonesh, **every situation is an opportunity for employee growth.** Chaos is a chance to try something new, while stability is an opportunity to deepen one’s knowledge or master a particular skill.

Through his experience, Sonesh noticed that **people tend to fall in roughly 3 different buckets**:

- **Engineers who know their values and make their decisions accordingly.** Those are usually happy and fulfilled and do not need much help
- **People who don’t know their values**, don’t have a specific anchor but second-guess their decisions to know what’s good for them. They are in situations where they try and discover, and managers should be here to help them retrospectively.
- **People who know their values but aren’t aligned with them.** These people struggle and are mostly unhappy. It’s important as a manager to be inquisitive about what state people are in, so that they can identify such struggles and provide growth advice.

Chris also thinks **growth is highly personalized and has to be tailored and specific.** Engineering Managers **have to match things teams need with things people need to thrive**. To do so, they need to dig in, spend time with people, ask them. Do they want more influence over tech? More impact over product direction? Go deeper in a specific tech? Grow into management? Increase their compensation? Knowing the specifics people are pursuing helps managers line up opportunities, as long as it is still in line with what the team and the business need.

Prafulla thinks asking people is a good way too. **Sometimes, there is no opportunity for a specific employee growth need, and it’s the role of the manager to create it.** To do so, they need to stay plugged in to what’s happening and identify paths for growth, even if it’s another unit. Sonesh gave a big +1 to Prafulla’s answer, reminding the audience one of the founding statements of Plato: “_People leave managers, not companies_”. In such a competitive market, **it’s crucial to think about ways to keep employees in a company, even if they don’t stay on your team**.

Talking of employee retention, Oded asked the panel how companies can adjust to the specific needs of developers, and how they could for instance tackle the needs of different generations. Prafulla thinks that as awareness grows, it’s important for employees to make a point to know where they are, where they want to be, which aspirations and expectations they have, knowing beforehand why they chose a company. Sonesh thinks younger engineers often come in with an open perspective, and they can bring a lot to a company. They come in with a view that it’s fundamental for companies to invest in diversity and inclusion, for instance. So, he believes new generations help companies grow.

Finally, Oded Shekel asked panelists the recurring question we ask at Plato Elevate: _could you share a life-changing piece of advice someone gave you through your career?_

- **Sonesh**: Your success is proportional to the success you enable for others, so take your actions based on that.
- **Chris**: when he started as a consultant earlier in his career, he worked crazy hours and ended up stressed. His boss and mentor told him after some time that he should think in terms of impact. How important is it if you don’t hit your deadline? The client may be upset, and the company may do slightly less money. But how important is it to the grand scheme of things? Most important is health and happiness.
- **Prafulla** has similar advice. Her manager told her career isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. You have to pace yourself and be aware it’s a long journey. You need to plan accordingly to avoid being burnt out too soon and figure out what you want. Another piece of advice that changed her life is to stay fit. You should give time for your mind and your body. Work out, do things +that take you out of your “tech zone” or office tasks. It helps think clearly. Prafulla always goes for a run when she has a hard problem to solve. Running won’t solve the problem, but it helps clear your mind and think better.
- **Oded** talked with his mentor many years ago when he worked at Microsoft. He asked him candidly if he should leverage his strength or improve his weaknesses. His mentor’s answer was: do not try to balance. Leverage your strength as much as you can. Sometimes, weaknesses will block you from further progress, and when you get to this point, you will have to invest in these areas of improvement. But mostly: leverage in your strengths!

_Thanks to this amazing panel for their presence and insights!_

At Plato Elevate, Oded Shekel, HackerRank’s SVP of Product, moderated a talk composed of eng leaders from Netflix, Optimizely, and VMware about employee growth and career development.

Employee Growth and Career Development - Elevate 2019

Driving Team Performance With Effective Communication

Elevate Conference — "Driving team performance with effective communication"

Elevate Conference — "Employee growth & career development"

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I’ve been in software engineering for 18 years now at a variety of bay area startups large and small including EchoSign/Adobe, Netflix, Reputation.com, Logikcull, and now Dropbox with about 10 of those as a people manager.  I’ve built and managed backend systems, frontend teams, QA automation, and devops. 

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