- Bryan
And I'm glad that you called out that there is a difference between being a boss and a leader. All bosses should be leaders, but not all leaders are boss. The bosses are the people who are in charge. Just because you're a leader does not mean that you are in charge. What it actually means is that you are one of the people who are responsible for the future and actually current success of whatever you're working on. So it doesn't have to be leader as in a director level title like an L8. at Amazon, it can be a leader of your group. You are leading new coding methodologies. You are leading new thought leadership. You are leading people from where they are to somewhere better. And so I think there's space for leaders everywhere, all up and down the stack. You don't have to have it in your title.
- Romain
Welcome to the Paid Forward Society, where we believe that leadership is a continuous learning journey, and where knowledge is passed on to the next generation of leaders. I'm Romain Jordan, and today my guest is Bryan Liles. Bryan is a Senior Principal Engineer at Amazon. I wanted to discuss with an individual contributor who is demonstrating great leadership, and this conversation was even better than I imagined, thanks to Bryan's personality and experience. He's an engineer, so you will hear a lot of technical jargon, but he shared much more. From Simon Sinek's Start with Why to quotes from Jay-Z and tips to influence others, I had a lot of fun and learning during this episode. Most importantly, I was inspired by his mission to make people better around him. So I trust you will as well. I'm super excited to bring you Bryan. Hey Bryan, how are you?
- Bryan
Oh, I'm doing well today. How are you?
- Romain
I'm good. Thank you. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the show.
- Bryan
Oh, thank you for having me.
- Romain
Perfect. So there has been a topic that I have been discussing with many, many leaders on the podcast. where you don't need to lead people. You don't need to manage people to become a leader, to be a leader and acting as a leader. And I'm so glad that I have you on the show today to discuss that very topic because you are a senior principal engineer at Amazon, which is a director-level type of role at Amazon, L8, as we call them, and you were before a VP at VMware. So I think... You have a unique perspective to share with us today, and I'm really looking forward to that conversation.
- Bryan
Oh, yes. I am really looking forward to sharing with the world how hard my job is. And I don't want to scare anyone, but fancy titles are great, but the fancy titles are a double-edged sword. I work for a living. I will definitely say that I work for a living. There's nothing easy about my job or my role. But I wouldn't give it up. I really do like it.
- Romain
Excellent. Perfect. So before we go into the details of what you have done and how you did it, would you introduce yourself or give something unique about yourself?
- Bryan
Okay. Yeah. I'll give you a couple of things. I am Bryan Lyles. First of my name. Only of my name. Last of my name, likely, because I only have daughters. I have been working in. the tech industry since 1995, which means that this is my, oh my gosh, this is only my 29th year of working in tech. I don't feel old. I don't look old, but I have been doing this for a long time. And I've had the pleasure of working in everything that led up to... and became the cloud. And what do I mean by that? My first job was in an ISP. I learned the internet at 18. I learned to run the internet at 18. I was actually doing it before when I was in high school. I worked for the largest web hosting company in the world at the time in 96. I worked on the team that created the term. you know, we may have heard of this FAS, you know, software as a service. We were one of the two teams. You can go look it up on Wikipedia, go see US Internetworking. I worked there. I worked for a company that did something and they were called TechnoServe. And they said, you know what, we're doing so good at what we're doing, we should change our name. And they became advertising.com. And we had one competitor. and it was called DoubleClick. And DoubleClick was bought by Google and became Google Ads. So I've worked in this. in this space. And I was one of the first engineers at a cloud company called DigitalOcean. And I was very early in the Kubernetes space. As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine, Joe Bita, was one of the three creators of Kubernetes. And I work with him. And that's actually how I got to VMware. and now I have the honor of saying that I am one of the most senior engineers on the internet. I work on Amazon S3, which is crazy. Anything that you think about is large. Yes, it's larger than that. and also, you know, just one more thing is that I am one of five black senior principal engineers at all of Amazon, and I'm very proud of that. So you can probably hear that I've had a crazy career. I haven't told you like any of the really crazy stories, but I've had a great career, and I'm very proud, and I want to be able to give others that feeling of being, you know, somewhat successful. Not ultimately successful, somewhat successful.
- Romain
That's perfect. That's the name of the show, the paid for what society. So you are at the right place to tell your story.
- Bryan
Yeah.
- Romain
All right. So let's dive into your exciting story and experience. So I think people usually conflate being a people manager, like a boss and a leader. And I think... The first question I have for you is, what is leadership? What does it mean for you? What does it entail? What does it represent for you?
- Bryan
Okay, well, the easiest way to say it is that leadership is, it is what, it's in the name. Leadership is the act of being a leader. Now, what's being a leader? There's two ways, in my opinion, that you can lead. You can lead by... by being out front and bringing people to a new place, you could be right up front and they follow you, or you can be a leader and you're behind the people pushing them to success. And this is just in work, not in general. And I'm glad that you called out that there is a difference between being a boss and a leader. All bosses should be leaders, but not all leaders are boss. The bosses are the people who are in charge. Just because you're a leader does not mean that you are in charge. What it actually means is that... you are one of the people who are responsible for the future and actually current success of whatever you're working on. So it doesn't have to be leader as in a director level title, like an L8 at Amazon. It can be a leader of your group. You are leading new coding methodologies. You are leading new thought leadership. You are leading people from where they are to somewhere better. and so I think there's space for leaders everywhere, all up and down the stack. You don't have to have it in your title.
- Romain
Yeah, I love that. I fully agree with this. So more specifically, how do you realize your inner leadership capabilities? I mean, I'd like to understand what changed in your mind at that moment when you had this pivotal experience or if you had one where you realized, whoa, that's me being a leader.
- Bryan
Oh, wow. It was early. When I was growing up, my father was in the army in the United States, and he was a drill sergeant when I was born in my first few years. So my dad was in charge of bringing new recruits into the army and then making them army ready. And people don't realize it's about the army. One of the things they do when they bring you in is they get rid of that idea of individualism, because you either fail as a group, or you succeed as a group. In the army, you do not succeed as a single person. And maybe there's a lesson that we can learn with our coworkers is that we all fail and succeed together. So I had that drilled into me early on. Now, you might not be able to tell from the way that I'm talking here, but I am not one of those type A personalities in your face. Matter of fact, I don't go to parties. I like sitting in my office, in my house, or watching TV. I don't like going out. I don't like any of that. but I do believe that there's no greater feeling than winning through someone else. And like, even at my level, this is actually how I win all the time. I can no longer do anything great individually. I can only do great things through other people. So, and I realized this back in the nineties. So what my whole goal and my whole game plan for the past almost 30 years is making everyone around me better. and whenever they get their wins, I get a huge win. I had someone who worked for me back in the... I don't even remember. Oh, it was like 2005, 2004. Then he went and worked at a big fruit company that created this really interesting phone that everyone likes to talk about. I still wear that success to this day because he came back to me later and said, the way that you taught me how to think about solving hard problems got me through so many days. So me being the leader, It's just me wanting to see other people be the best versions of themselves. And I can say that sincerely. I'm not a jealous person. I only compete with myself. But I feel that when I can make people better from just me being there or being in their life, that's great. So leadership is just me doing that at work. So maybe it's innate to me. I really just have a big thing about seeing other people win. I actually don't even care about my win because I know that if you can make enough people around you win. you know, everyone's tide will rise, so yours will rise with them.
- Romain
Yeah, I love that. Thank you. So, but was there a pivotal moment in your experience that shaped your style, or was it just now you continue with your inner, you know, need to make everyone better around you?
- Bryan
Oh, so there was... I don't think there was any one pivotal moment. I can think of multiple moments where I stepped up, it did things, and we were able to move forward. So at this one company, U.S. Internetworking, when I was working there, one thing that I can remember a time where, well, Excel's at the stage. I have all sorts of quirks and actually having a daughter who has the same quirks as me. I can see how weird I was as a child. I love her, but my gosh, we are weird. One thing I do not like is whenever you're talking and there's a bunch of people talking and then everyone stops and it's just silence. That is one of the weirdest things. So I'll just start talking. And what I noticed is we were having that situation at the job where we were building this huge PAAS type thing or platform as a service type thing. and no one was doing anything. And we were in a meeting and it was super quiet. It drove me nuts. and I would just say it was more for my sanity than anybody else that I just had to start talking. No, you should do this. Maybe we should start thinking about how we should move forward, and I found that I was mostly good at it. People don't realize this about me. I had a huge stutter when I was younger and all sorts of self-confidence things that come from that, so I don't talk a lot. I'm talking on this podcast, which is I had a little bit of time to prep for. so I can do it. But I'm not that person. I'm not the person who talks all the time. I call my parents and we talk for one minute. And that's about all I can handle. I just can't handle. I talk to my wife because she lives here and I have to talk to her. Me and my daughter talk once a day. And my youngest daughter, we talk once a day. And that's great for our relationship. So I realized that... I had the ability to influence others to be, to do the right thing. And I, and I didn't, at that time I was a little bit less mature. And sometimes, you know, it was a little bit of nitpicking, like, well, maybe you should do it like this and maybe you should do it like that. But over time, I realized that you have to kind of create space for people to grow too. And, and then allow them to expand to it and create more space. And so from the job at US Center Networking, to, let's say, the job at DigitalOcean, and definitely the job where I was working with the Kubernetes founder at Heptio. I really, that was my whole MO. You know, I was really just making space for people to become better. And I have a knack for this computing thing too, so I guess that helps.
- Romain
Okay, that's great. So I think that there's a very important thing that you said, which is I stepped up. And I felt that that's the moment where you say, okay, I need to take action. I think I went through this as well. I was a successful IC, but at some point I felt compelled to do something and to step up. And now that I'm leading people, I wonder how to create the environment, the conditions for... helping people to step up. So do you have any thoughts about that?
- Bryan
Oh, I think about this a lot. And I think the first thing is safety. We talk about the term psychological safety. Sometimes I think we just give it more lip service than actually think about what that means. People will give you the best of them. when they feel safe around you. And you can take that with your professional and your personal relationships. So at the job, when I'm working, because I do have a big title and I often work with people who are literally scared to talk to me in some cases, which is weird because I am so easy to talk to. But one thing I do, yeah, once a day, yeah. And actually I did do that today when I was in the office. I talked to one group of people for one minute and then I left, no more talking. but what I like to do is make people feel safe when they're around me. And what does that mean to make people feel safe? Well, one thing that I don't like, and I still see it, is there's one thing like a code review or a design review. And generally, what we're trying to do in a code review or design review is make that code better or that design better. but sometimes we regress and we think we turn into criticism. Oh, I'm criticizing the ideas in this doc, or I'm criticizing the ideas in this design. And I'm saying, you know what? Most people are not emotionally mature. Most people are not emotionally mature enough to detach themselves from the things they create. So if you're criticizing anything around them, and they know you're criticizing it, they will not feel safe. So what do you do that actually has a better outcome? It's you just change the words. You say, you know, first of all, you acknowledge that, hey, we are both people and you try to show human aspects. And that's different for everyone. For me, you know, if I see you in person, I'm using your name. I'm not asking about your weekend because I really, I mean, who cares? You don't care what I did this weekend. I don't really care, but I want to show you that I'm interested in you as a person who works with me. And then also, and I'm very assertive about this and say that as a senior person, don't bring designs to me at a review step. If the first time I see them is at the review, it's too late. When you had the idea and you scribbled on the whiteboard, call me in the office. Well, if you're in another office for me, you know, let's have a call. I can make time at any time to talk to someone about something technical. It's in my title, senior principal engineer. I can do that. and the reason I want to do that is because I want to ask you questions. I want you to not only try to please me, but I want to put you in the place where you are understanding that you are making the right decision. I want to help you understand why. and we could talk more about why the importance of why later, but here, what I'm doing, I'm actually working on the person rather than focusing on the output of that person, because all of us have the ability to do great things. Sometimes we don't have the confidence to do them, or maybe we're rushed or there's something else. So what I do is I make it very human in saying, here, you know what, we're going on this journey together. The fact that I read this document, it's now our document. So from my point of view, I ask questions. I never make assertions. Even if I'm trying to make an assertion, I think about it as a question and not even a passive aggressive question. More of a, hey, you said that you are going to load balance in this way. what happens if you get too much traffic to one node? And then make them walk through. Or what if you just get too much traffic in general? You know, life lesson. If you have a service and you're accepting traffic, rate limit, rate limit, rate limit. Why? Because you never know if you're going to get too much traffic and your service is going to fall over. I'd rather have an HTC, like a web service, return to 429 than just gave me 502s. Everyone would rather have that. I'm just too busy. rather than, I don't know, I'm not here. So everything is very personal. And you're going to say to yourself, that sounds like it takes a lot of time. Yes, yes, it does take time. But here's the thing. You only have to pay that. you know, you have to pay it down one time at the beginning, and then you have to make small payments to keep that relationship going. If I instill fear in you, I'll get something good out of you a few times, but you're going to hate me. And you're only, and then you're going to spite me the first chance you get. I'd rather, you know, pay some goodwill out to you so that you know that we are coworkers. Yes, I'm at a different level than you, and I have different goals than you, but I am generally and genuinely competitive. focused on your success. Like I said before, I win when you win. And that's how I had almost every win in my entire life because I made someone else win.
- Romain
Perfect. So I think another challenge that I see for individuals who want to move up the ladder with the Remain as an IC, I think they over-index on... technical proficiency, I would say. I think, okay, I am very good at what I do, which I think is required, but there's much more that is also required. The fact that, I mean, what you just described, this empathy that you have just described, the fact that you are taking the time to ask questions and try to get people. and influence people. I like to go back to the influence afterwards. But I think people who are really good and who are passionate about tech, they really want to be mastering the technical proficiency side, but they don't realize it's not enough.
- Bryan
No, no. It starts off, I mean, I think that everyone should desire to be a great practitioner. And I think that gets you through, that gets you into your first job. and then gets you a few years into your career. So those first one, two levels of your career. So at Amazon, that's the L4 and the L5, and whatever the equivalent is, your introductory job, and then that first promotion, those two jobs, learn how to be a great practitioner. But to move up from there, there's more because at a certain point, unless you are a one in a, you know, few thousand or a few hundred thousand special case, you aren't as smart as you think you are. You have, you have gaps and that's fine because none of us is our smartest. We think we are. you know, we have blinders and we have gaps and we just need to learn how to acknowledge that. So what you need to do is realize that you're not just working with yourself, you're working with the group. And it no longer becomes about your success, it becomes about your group success. And it starts small, maybe your group is, maybe your group is four to seven people. and now you're working on their success. And then maybe it goes bigger where you span across multiple groups where maybe what you work on makes two teams or three teams successful. And then what you're really working on is the specific set of skills that allows you for my group is very, very large. It's large. It's all of S3. So how do I work across S3? And I'm not a storage expert, but I am learning and I'm very competitive. How do I actually make all the groups across S3, in some cases AWS, successful just for me being there? Now, there's multiple ways that I can contribute. And there's multiple ways you can contribute. You could be like a sponsor where you are actually... holding an idea and taking it from the start to the end. You could be someone who is, well, you know, like a consultant and you can say, all right, well, based on my past experiences, when I had situation A, we take tactic B, but we need to make sure that we have to worry about caveat C. And then there's also another way to do it. Or maybe you're just a contributor. So because sometimes you can lead from the back, like I was saying earlier, where you're just on a team putting in the work. you don't have to be upfront saying, do this, do that, do this, do that. No, you show everybody and you're helping through code reviews, design reviews, actually throwing down code, building infrastructure, you know, whatever you do. So. that was a very long way of saying that depending on where you are at your career and what kind of company and what kind of role, there's always space to be a leader. And you need to figure out, well, first of all, do I feel safe? If not, you need to work on that. Can't help anyone else. Put your mask on before you put anyone else's mask on. And then what you need to do is you need to look left, look right. these are the people that I need to be successful, that need to be successful. And until they are somewhat successful or at least have the space to be successful, I can't be. And why do I say it that way? It's because it forces you to always think, like you said, empathy earlier. I'm really big on empathy. And it also forces you to not compete against anyone else. If you can only win through other people, you stop being so competitive because you can't make other people do things. And I think one of the traps that we fall into is that people will try to compete against me. Oh, you can't compete against me. You don't know what I went through to get here. You don't know that I was the 1994 Maryland State Champ for Future Business Leaders of America Computer Concepts, and that set me on a path that got me to here, January 20, I know we're on the 30th, 2024, talking on a podcast. You don't know everything that's happened to me. You don't want some of those things to happen to you. So stop competing against other people. I have a friend. who used to work at Google is now retired, Kelsey Hightower. Everyone wants to be like him. Everyone wants to be like Kelsey. And I'm like, you don't want to be like Kelsey. I know some of the things that he had to deal with coming up. You don't want to do any of those things. You don't want half of those things to happen to you. But he was smart and he made the whole community smarter for him being there. And that's something that him as a leader and as an individual type contributor in the Kubernetes ecosystem and at Google. you know, he did that. And he was a great example of how you can do that. And that was extreme. Kelsey is a very big success story. But there's, you can do these kinds of things too, just smaller in your space. Pay attention, make other people's lives easier. He wrote Kubernetes the hard way, not because he wanted you to do it. He wanted you to understand it. So he broke it down for you. And that's the kind of thing you can do, people around you. And that will make you more excellent.
- Romain
I love that. I love also Kelsey. Great leader indeed. You took a note on explaining why, the why of the why.
- Bryan
Yes, this is a big one. So as people who make things, we call them builders at Amazon. You might have developers or engineers or whatever you call the people who actually... build things at your job. It's very easy to fall into the trap of only thinking about what you're building or how you're building it. We're going to build this distributed system and it's going to have these types of data stores in it. And we're going to use Rust and we're going to use Zig and we're going to use PHP because why not? And you get really focused on doing that. And then you... But one interesting thing that we need to focus on is why. And when I was at VMware, I know these engineers got tired of me doing this. They would come ask me questions, and I'm like, why are you doing this? and they're like, I don't know. All right, we'll stop. Go do something else. Well, no, here's why we need to do because of this. And what you need to learn how to do is constantly ask yourself why you are doing something or why you think the way that you are doing. There's this classic five whys whenever you're trying to figure out during a retrospective of how things went. You got to constantly do it to yourself. I ask myself why all the time. And the reason why I want to know. is because that will help me focus on what success looks like. Because our jobs are so complex. You might start at component A and then find yourself at component Q. And now you're lost. You're like, oh, I don't know. Oh, yeah, component Q work. But you don't even remember how you got there, what you were actually trying to solve. So you always got to focus on why. and I have like all sorts of mental models for how I get people into this mind space. And I'll give you like the real short version of this. How do we solve any problem? Well, it's very simple. We start with the vision. It can be a big vision. It could be a small vision. What's a vision? A vision is a description of a feeling of what success looks like. So I'm going to drink this cup of water or this bottle of water. and I know that I want to drink lots of water because I sleep better and I feel better whenever I'm fully hydrated. And so that's the first level, vision. The second level is goals. And goals are, all they are is something you can measure to make sure that you are making progress or not progress to that vision. And they have to be measurable. So what I'm going to say is that I need to drink 100 ounces of water a day. That's what I'm going to do. And I can measure that. That's pretty simple. And then all you need, next thing you need is strategies. And what strategies are, well, I'm going to drink water when I first wake up, and then I'm going to drink some when I get to work. And then I'm going to drink water with lunch. And then in the afternoon, I'm going to drive home, and then at dinner, and then some at night. and then finally you have tactics, doing the things that are in the strategy. And what I might find is that drinking water when I go to sleep at night, I'm getting older, can't sleep all night if I drink 32 ounces of water before I go to bed, so I gotta stop doing that. And then that's the play. But you notice that now that for solving any problem, vision, goals, strategy, tactics, I can continue doing that forever. And the neat thing is that it scales up huge. Hey, you know what? I want to have, you know, $500 million in cash. But, you know, but listen to this. I want to have $500 million in cash. why? There's no vision behind that. And that's why people don't, that's why it's so hard for people to make money. But it would be easier to say that I would like the ability to make sure that people who can't afford after-school tutoring for their kids. I want to think about flipping a mirror. If kids were able to have better after school tutoring, they would do well, they would do better in class and they would feel more confident and get better grades. And now I would actually go through my goal and then think about strategies and tactics. And if it's something about career, if I have enough in my nest egg or if I potentially will have enough in my nest egg over time, I could stop focusing so much on the promotions and the raises and actually just enjoy the concept of being able to create software every day. and everything else will come. And that's actually what I do. I don't focus on numbers or anything like that. And the reason why is because you have literally no control over it, unless you rob a bank. Even if you create your own company, you have no control over it. So the only way that you can get money and with no effort is to steal it from someone else. and that's a moral thing, and my morals say that I'm not going to do that. So here it's going on in my head, but this is what keeps me going, and I don't ever get burned out on these things because I have a great balance between work and home life and personal life and all these things, and every day it's just looking at my goals, making sure I'm hitting the vision, readjusting my strategies, and only doing the tactics whenever it's time to work. good have you read good strategies bad strategies oh i have read that yes not my favorite not my favorite simon sinek he has a book on why yeah i like that one and then the guy who wrote the Phoenix Project, Gene Kim, has got another book about business, and even if you're not running a leader or running a business, you got to read this book, and I'm sure Romain can actually go figure out, tell you what the title of it is, because I'm on the spot. it is no accelerate was the book he wrote with miss fosgren over at microsoft now this is a new one it just came out in the last couple of days or in a couple months i'm gonna turn around real quick because i know it's on my shelf but i would i will get you i will get you that so you can i think everyone should read this book because it is a great meta-analysis of how to become a better leader and think through hard problems and i i just you I focus on that all the time. That's what I focus on, being better at leadership. And then everything else kind of falls into place.
- Romain
Yeah, I love that. I really enjoy the Unicorn project, the Phoenix project, and Accelerate as well. So I will check on this one. Perfect. Now, I meant to ask you for good strategies, bad strategies, because they propose the same. framework as you described you do the analysis and then you define your your goals and what they call instead of strategies they call it an action plan so that you can execute on them i've been doing this for
- Bryan
most of my career like this is just how i think and I like reading those kinds of books because I think that you don't have to believe in all those self-help books and those psychological or business books but I think there's lots of good lessons in there and at the minimum you can at least know what not to do what doesn't work I'm constantly reading something I'm reading a book on deep learning right now and a book on statistics two books on my desk right now okay
- Romain
So going back to influence and impact, obviously you have great influence through others by helping and asking a lot of questions. But there are other times where you need to exert influence in a different way to other leaders across the company. That's the case at Amazon, but I believe it was also the case in previous jobs. So I wonder if you have any... recommendations about how to approach this when you are an ic and and and basically i think uh perhaps a question would be how do you get a seat at the table oh god all right i'll ask the i'll answer the second part first
- Bryan
because that is that's more contentious how do you get a seat at the table there is no guaranteed way to get a seat at the table i've been working for like i said a long time to have this level of success. And a lot of people that I started working with are not there. And I say this as a person of color in the United States. it was hard enough for me to be in the right places, meeting the right people at the right time. I can imagine if my, if, if, if my was not presenting as a man or I had something else where, you know, society frowns upon it, even though there's no wrong with it because of maybe I chose, I was not born with the gender that I am now, or I choose to, I choose my partners as the same gender that I am. Those, those. those biases affect all of us. And sometimes it is very difficult to get a seat at the table. But I'll tell you one thing that I am good at is I'm not a type A, but I am motivated. There is a quote from Jay-Z on one of his earlier albums where he says, I'm focused, man. And I think I say that to myself a lot. If I want something, I will do whatever it takes to get it, or I'll just decide it's not worth it. but I never halfway commit and more rap lyrics. You there's no such thing as a halfway crook by mob deep. I don't halfway to commit to anything. Either I do it or I don't. And so, and that's easy. You can, you can, anyone can start this right now. Either you're going to commit or you're not going to commit. I'm going to have a better career or I'm going to show more leadership at work. I'm going to work on ways, learning how to influence people. or it can't be, well, I think I would be better off if I learned how to influence people. Well, you're not going to, you've already failed. I'm going to figure out how to do this. And influences, you know, influence, like we were talking about earlier, is an interesting thing. You can influence people by being a good effect around them. Like everyone has a favorite smell, and you always feel better when you smell that smell. and you can be that. You can be an equivalent for people. Whenever you come around, they always get a great feeling because you bring whatever that sentiment is. It doesn't have to be all lovey-dovey and touchy-feely. It could just be, hey, when Bryan's here, we always feel like we solve problems quicker and there's less disagreement. But some people like disagreement. Or now when Bryan's here, we will... we will fight through the decisions, even though we get through some uncomfortable parts where people are in their feelings about what was said. And that's another lesson. If you want to get to the highest levels, I'm not telling you to get rid of your feelings, but you need to learn how to evaluate your feelings at a later time. And it's weird, like, what are you saying, Bryan? What you need to learn how to do is is acknowledge I'm feeling bad right now, but I'm going to process this in about an hour. I'm going to process this when I get home and then process it then. And why do I tell you to do that? Because I don't want you to have feelings. No, is one is we're humans and we're irrational. Sometimes we give an outside response when we feel intimidated or attacked. Two, sometimes even though you may have been intimidated or attacked, your response might not get you the out, might not get you the result in that context because everybody's hot and heated. So you need to wait for things to calm down. And three, you know what? We're not going to let our hater see us cry. she's just not going to let us, we're just not going to do that. So, you know, don't, don't give them that. Like I tell my wife all the time, I only tell you these things because you married me and now you have to hear it. And if you didn't hear it, someone else would, and that wouldn't be good for either of us. And she does the same thing, tells me things. And that's why we have, she's my confidant and I'm her confidant. So, you know, but I'm not telling anyone to eat their feelings. I'm just telling them to own your feelings. So, you know, you never know what you're going to get whenever you hear me talk. But this is the realness. This is what gets you to these places. And just to be very honest, I said this at the beginning, my job is hard. I work in one of the largest services on the internet at a very profitable company. It's hard. Like, you know, people are talking about, I'm going to rest and vest. There's no rest and vest in where I am. There's literally no rest and vest. And I don't work like a whole bunch of hours, but... when I'm working, I'm working. And we're solving problems that you've never seen before. I can truthfully say, I've solved problems in the past, or I've seen problems in the past 24 hours that you could not imagine. And we have to solve them. You can't go look at any books and we have to figure out how to solve it. So my job is hard and I can't pass the buck to anyone else. I have to basically say, all right, guess we'll figure it out. so ownership clearly yes ownership is uh is is a it's hard but i i do work on it and and it's something that i work on is is being an owner and you know i know that amazon has leadership principles but disagree and commit ownership. Actually, those are really big. Simplify and event and reinvent. These are reinvent and simplify. These are things that sound like just corporate words, but if you think about them in situations, they actually are a good idea. And some of them I already had in my arsenal before I came to Amazon. So I'm just liking that we can, as a group, at least agree to think about the world in this way. Good.
- Romain
so so basically i i want to uh to summarize what you said i mean show your motivation to yourself as well you are a focused man like jay-z said and you want to be all in you you are committed or you are not committed it's not it's like yoda saying there's
- Bryan
no try basically it's do or do not no no no that's exactly it we're gonna go star wars on here we're gonna go right to yoda yes yeah we're going to do it or we're not so we're not going to we're not going to there is no track so on the learning on on to influence so so you said a very important things that i
- Romain
i've learned to to you to master or at least to to control like evaluate your feelings and process it and don't give it away i think it's a very important advice to show that because anyway in difficult situations you want to rely on the people who you believe are going to handle the situation and you need to show good nerves and good good way of owning stuff you So, you know, working on ownership, it's a big thing for this kind of stuff. But I'm also interested to go a bit deeper into how you influence. So is there any specific strategies or set of strategies that you recommend when you want to advocate for an idea or project?
- Bryan
Okay, so I'm going to give you one because... I think when we get into the point of learning how to influence people, we get into the, anything I would say would sound evil and it's not evil. So I'm not going to talk about it. You know, we all try to make people think the way that we do, but there is one thing that I do is giving your best ideas away. So people think I got this idea. I'm going to hold onto it, but you work for a company and you're like, I'm going to hold onto this. It's going to be my idea and I'm going to get the credit. Nope. Write that idea down. give it to someone else. This is now your ideal. You hold it. And why do I do that? Is, well, if the person isn't a sociopath, what they're going to realize is that you made them better and they're going to come to you again. And because they think that you might have good ideas, they're probably going to advocate for you and try to keep you close, keep you around. guess what I have now? I have someone that I can actually influence because they think my ideas are good. So I can give them ideas that basically, I just want to tell you what I want you to do and then give you how to do it. And you're thinking that you're getting it for yourself. And really, that's what I want you to do in the first place. So I have no problem giving away ideas or telling people like, this is how I would have done this, or this is how I got here. This is how I got earned. I don't keep secrets in those cases. Because why? you know, it's not like a competition, but it might be a competition to some people. And at my level, you know, there are only certain number of, of engineers at Amazon, my title and fewer who have the one title or the one title above mine. So maybe, maybe people do see that it's competitive, but I don't see it that way. if I can make everybody win, they'll promote me because of that, because I can make everybody win. So that's how I influence people. And then also do what I'm doing here right now. Notice I've just been telling you all things. And the reason why is because I want you to be a better version of yourself. And I don't know you, or maybe I do know some of the people who are listening to this, but I don't know probably most of the people. But I would be in a much better place if you pinged me in a year or so. And this has happened. And you said, oh, I heard you on this podcast. And I'm like, which one? And then they'll tell me and I'm like, I don't remember doing that. And then they'll be like, oh, no, this one. And they send me, oh, I did do that. That's my voice. And they'll say, oh, I got this from that. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's amazing. That's why I did it.
- Romain
Perfect. Sounds good to me. Thank you. So I think. What you said is super valid for people around you. But if there are other leaders, let's take an example of a VP or SVP that you need to influence. Based on what you said... And let me know whether that would work. But basically, you try to create a relationship with them and understand their challenges. And then you give away your ideas as well.
- Bryan
Oh, no, actually, for leaders. Now, influencing up is different. Influencing sideways, influencing down. That's what I said before. Influencing up. How do you do it? It's very simple. Realize that they have less free time than you do. And they're thinking about more things than you are. So if you're trying to influence someone. who's up, like in my case, a VP or an SVP, what I'm going to do is I'm going to write things for them. And even though Amazon's a writing company, and we say that all the time, even if you don't work at Amazon, write down, really what you're writing down is what you want them to think. Here's why you want them to think it. Here is two or three succinct reasons of why they should think that. Here is one or two sentences of what else they could have done. and that's it. Because you really, when you're influencing up, you're basically giving, you're telling them what to think. Why? Well, because a lot of times if you are, you know, I'm technically an executive at Amazon, but people who are my superiors, they have so many things going on in so many places. I mean, I work with a group where, I mean, I work with a lot of people and I don't remember half their names. I have to go look it up and they'll be like, oh, right. I'm like, I have no idea who you are, but let's work together. They have the same thing with me. I mean, I have an out because I'm like. there's only two Black senior principals in all of AWS. So it's either me or Harvo, and they'll remember. It's not that hard. But for everyone else, it might be difficult. So really, if you want to influence up, succinct, succinct, succinct, and to the point. And then don't make them think. And there's another book there. There was a crude book called Don't Make Me Think. and really that's how you influence up. Don't make them think. Give them, you know, be very succinct in what you're trying to tell them. Here's what you need them to think. Here's why. Here's other reasons to the contrary, and that's it. That's how I influence up, and you're not going to have 100% batting average because, you know, people at these levels have big personalities in a lot of cases, and maybe they have their own opinions, and sometimes they'll be like, you're wrong, and you'll be like, okay, why? and then just take it don't debate it because at that point it becomes not a conversation it becomes more of an argument even if it's like a subtle argument like okay i'll take that into consideration for next time and that's it but respect their time because they don't have a lot of it that's how i influence up and there might be better ways but that's how i influence up perfect one follow-up question why would you not make them think seems so oh why don't i make them think because here's the problem if you make someone who is very busy think now you basically ask them to drop whatever thoughts of whatever else is bothering them or they have to think about you've either you've increased their load or make them not think about something else that's why i don't make them think it really comes down to an optimization you I don't understand. I know their world is bigger than mine. I don't need to understand theirs. And then, you know what? I really don't want them to understand mine. I want them to understand that what I'm focused on, what they're looking at me for is under control. I don't want them to poke into my business. And the reason why is because, well, now they're poking into your business. They're not doing something else. And so they're a nuisance to you and they're not working on something else. so it's very important whenever you're reporting up and there's little things you can do like some companies and i know the military in the united states does this they do a a memorandum of understanding an mou you're in a meeting, an exec says something, you take that down and you send it back to them and say, this is what I think I heard you say. And I'm going to summarize it like this. Do you agree? Why do you do that? Because sometimes people say things in meetings because we're all irrational and they might not remember it. Now you're holding into it. They could say, oh, I just said that, but it's not important. Or no, you actually didn't understand. Or yes. And then whenever you have your solution. don't give them a whole bunch of data. Don't make them go click and log into a link to see data. Just send it to them. And if it's something they should have periodically, send it to them with as little amount of fuss as possible. And that's how you influence upwards because they'll know that they can trust you, that you respect their time. And if you're giving them good data, they'll come back, which is all you need. And that's how you influence up.
- Romain
Love that. All right. so i wanted you to talk about mentorship but i think we have discussed that already so uh the fact that you are asking questions and you are you know always there to to mentor them I was wondering whether you are participating to tenant reviews or is that expected of you? So whenever there's a performance review cycle?
- Bryan
Yes, I do. I am in on that. Yes. It's very important. but it is not the most favorite part of the day. And the reason why is because I chose to be an IC because I choose to issue a lot of the human aspects of what it takes to run a business. Why? Well, that doesn't give me joy. it's important, just doesn't give me joy. But with that said, I am on promotion committees, I am on talent reviews, and I contribute as best as I can. I take it very serious, but it is not the most favorite part of my day. It gives me anxiety because, you know, I want everybody to win. And when everybody doesn't win, I'm like, I'm sad. And yeah. but I understand how important it is. Being able to give people great feedback on their performance will make them better. We just need to make sure that whenever we're giving them that feedback, that we're doing it in an empathetic way and it can be better. But I'm glad I'm not doing that because no. Yeah.
- Romain
But why is that important for you as a leader to be part of those discussions?
- Bryan
Because only so. If we're going to evaluate very technical people, you would probably want your very most technical people, at least a level above them, in on that conversation to make sure that they're not just getting that high level feedback, but giving maybe more actionable and more detailed feedback on a person who actually is in the same path as them. Because every time you talk to someone, oh, I used to be an engineer. yeah, like 15 years ago, don't compare yourself to me. You didn't get this far in engineering. I'm having peers now, but you're not the engineer that I am. You want to sit down and write code with me? No, you don't. Oh, because you'd be busy. No, because you're not an engineer anymore. You're a manager. And that's not a problem. It's just a different role. And so we do. I mean, I don't think every group across, you know, every group in every company does this, but in a lot of cases, having, having your senior leadership there. actually has better outcomes, where we can actually say, where someone could say, oh, this person didn't do this many code commits, and then you can maybe feed in, you could feed, well, they didn't because they were solving this very hard problem that took this much time, and this is what would probably go in there, which would probably lead to them writing less code. But you could also do the opposite, where this person, oh, they're our hardest worker, they have a lot of code commits. Well, let me tell you what's in those code commits. You know, they're committing, you know, three lines at a time and it looks like a lot, but actually it's not moving. It's not moving the level at all. so that's why you need people who understand the space to be in the reviews as well you need you need practitioners you mean we're going to be evaluated by management but at a certain level you should also be evaluated by practitioners as well because they understand exactly the the craft that it that it is you know the craft the science so creating software is a craft it's a science it's an art and it's a trade and we can understand those things.
- Romain
Right. I agree with you. Perfect. Is there any significant challenge or failure that you faced in your career and what you learned from it? From a leadership point of view, not necessarily from a technical point of view. I'm sure there are plenty of examples where you learned on the technical side that are more... you know as the way for example when you build your mental models for being a leader is there anything that you could yes yes i'm still working on this so just understand that you can get to this level and still have to work on this i
- Bryan
am not great at advocating for myself and sometimes you need to advocate for yourself where in a meeting where you said something and someone said, no, I disagree. And then they move on. I mean, you don't say anything. I'm getting better at responding to and handling that. Let me see other things. Everything else would just be normal, you know, person with ADHD type things, but advocating for myself is something that that I still struggle with, but I'm getting better at it.
- Romain
So why the struggle? Is that because you are caught in the moment and you don't know how to answer? Or do you feel that you are looking for the best way to answer?
- Bryan
Yeah, actually, it is the second one. It's trying to find the best answer. It's trying to find the best answer for the situation. Because, you know, we're technical. And someone asks you a question, and the answer could always be, well, it depends. And, you know, some of these nerds will answer like that. I'm like, come on, seriously, you can't say it depends. It depends on what. And, but sometimes, you know, you're in a conversation and, and you're trying to navigate through a hard or difficult problem. and you have an opinion, and then someone else has an opinion. And then part of the room agrees with them. So you're automatically wrong at that point. Like, well, no, no, no. And I've had to do this recently. Like, no, this person said this part, but I don't agree with their focus. And I think that we should also take these other things into consideration as well. It's extra hard for me, because like I said, I haven't stuttered. at all during this conversation because I've really been focused on it. But sometimes in the heat of things, I'll stop speaking because I'll feel myself start to stutter. So I just won't say anything. And now someone said, oh, you're wrong. And that was the last thing said. So when you walk away from that situation, I'm wrong. When I'm like, well, I wasn't wrong. And you know what? That's just that. I'm sorry. There's some things about tech that are hard and you'll never get away from that. You know, people are like, oh, I want to work in a place where we don't. No, I don't. Even though I don't enjoy it. If we can't have healthy debates about hard topics, we will get weird, unsustainable solutions. So we need to, we need to do this. And it's something I need to get better at and I'll get it eventually. I don't beat myself up over it too much, but I am very conscious of it.
- Romain
Sounds good. all right thank you i think um we covered a lot of grounds so thank you a lot for this is there anything else you want to add for this particular topic before we move yeah yeah one more thing at the end of the day and
- Bryan
i and i keep on going back to this end of the day if you can make you know someone else's life better than you and no bonus point if they are a protected gender or class you've done good And that's it. That's all you have to do. If someone, if the career is stairs and you can help someone behind you, you know, pull them up a couple of steps. If everyone did that, you know, well, we'd have to, we'd have to increase the scope of the senior leaders, of course. But we would have people who wouldn't feel so stuck. And sometimes we're all going up the stairs and some people don't ever get that hand to help them out or don't get a push to help them get to the next place. So whenever you have a chance, just do it. you don't have to do it every day. Just do it, you know. Just do it more times than you don't. Perfect. And that's it for me.
- Romain
All right. So going to our closing questions. So how do you keep learning and growing as a leader? You told us that you read a lot and you think a lot. So what other strategies are you taking to grow?
- Bryan
Like I said before, I do read. and I think about these things. But also at the same time, I listen to what others do. Because I don't want to just hear about myself. I want to hear how others process things, and I can either discount it or take the best parts of it and incorporate it into what I'm doing. and so that's that's a really big piece is you know taking that idea that you should be listening at least as much as you were talking i mean this is my podcast and i'm on here so i did a lot of talking but normally in a conversation i would not talk this much yeah and i wouldn't wait to the end to speak either because i think that's weird i'm just gonna wait to the end to speak no that's a power move what you should do is listen listen listen listen count to one two three four five and then say something and make it short and don't make it about yourself. And that's a big thing. So how else do I get better? A lot of reading, a lot of studying, a lot of inflection and then talking with others. And then also just thinking that I am like a forever student. So I'm always learning. So that's how I continue to get better.
- Romain
Growth mindsets. Okay. Thank you. are there two or three pieces of content that you would recommend to the audience? Something that you found so good? I mean, you mentioned a couple of books already. Start with Why from Simon Sinek. You talk about which other book you mentioned.
- Bryan
So the book that I was talking about from Gene Kim earlier was Wiring the Winning Organization. Really enjoy that book. So that is... that is a good one for me. And then let's see, what else do I. that would be a good one. Don't always read tech books though. Read other books. Like I don't read any fiction. I don't read any fiction. I actually literally, I don't, if I want to be, I want to be entertained. I'll just watch TV. I only read nonfiction. So other books like the, the Randall Monroe who does XKCD, he has the what if books. because they're just so preposterous. But then you realize this guy did all the math. And then you just can be, you could be amazed that the guy, this guy did all this math for all these crazy situations. I really enjoy those. But I like books that talk about how people think. like getting, it's not just, oh, you should do these things, but more of here, this is how we dissected how this person might've approached this problem. So I really enjoy those. So there, there's this book by this American general and it was about how he, how they changed the way the military leadership worked during the Iraq wars to handle insurgents. I really enjoyed that book. I can't think of the name of it right now. And I don't have my Kindle in front of me.
- Romain
No worries.
- Bryan
so those are kind of books that i am a huge fan of and and then i will say yes accelerate by nicole forsgren you should read it if you work in delivering software anyways it's a pretty short read it's easy read she's a friend of mine so and
- Romain
i just always want to publish the work of the doctor perfect what is your favorite interview question you ask candidates my favorite one
- Bryan
Oh, my favorite interview question is to have them explain something difficult that I probably know nothing about. So it's not an Amazon style question, but I still like it because, first of all, it shows something about you. If you are really, you know, if you really think you're into your tech, you're going to go try to go super deep in tech. And I'm going to surprise you. I can go fairly deep with you. But the answers I like are people who just come out of left field. Do you know why your zippers have YKK on them? I actually didn't know the answer to that, but I like those answers. Because it shows you as a person, a more rounded person, and a lot of the solutions that we see, a lot of the best technologists that we have aren't computer scientists. So I like to see people who can take... the world, whether it be the physical world, think of it as the physics, or maybe the metaphysical world, thinking as a someone who does just random thinking, or someone who's an artist, and just the way they approach it. I really appreciate that. Some of the best developers I've known were not classical computer people. Okay. They were just smart. They could just really think. Yeah.
- Romain
Totally. how can the audience find you and can be, and how can they, can they be useful to you?
- Bryan
Oh, okay. Well, I mean, if you really want to find me, I am B-R-Y-A-N-L on, on X. It's not Twitter anymore. I am nowhere near as active as I used to be. Mostly because a lot of the conversations are just dumb now, but if you ping me on there, I will respond back. Of course. if you have any problems with anything I'm saying, you can meet me at 3 p.m. at the flagpole and we can talk about it with our hands. Or if you can figure out what my email is, it's on Gmail. I mean, you probably can figure it out. You can send me an email and I'll never read it. But yeah, Twitter slash X is probably the best way. Don't send me a message on LinkedIn. Don't do that. My LinkedIn is a very contentious place where I have one. but only because I have to.
- Romain
All right. And last question, what other leaders should I interview next? Who would you recommend?
- Bryan
Okay, what leader should you... I have a friend that works at Spotify. Her name is Taylor Poindexter, and she has a skip-level manager, director, Nivea. you should interview those two. Why? Because not enough black women in these types of podcasts and they have great, they have great views on the world. And I really just appreciate them. Other people that we should interview, you know, I think you should interview people who, who aren't like internet famous. And the reason why is because a lot of, I mean, I might be one of these people too. A lot of them are vapid and not, and then they just say words and you're not going to get real feelings out of this. So other people that you should interview, oh, another person, if you could get ahold of her, just because I think she's super interesting. Her name is Jess Prezel. She's a CEO of a company called KittyCad. And I've just known her from years ago. I just think she's... super smart, super smart, but she's working on a CAD company and you, and you actually write code to generate computer aided drawings. It seems very neat. And if you get her, I think that would be, it would be very good for your listeners.
- Romain
All right. Can you introduce me to her?
- Bryan
I could try. I haven't talked to her in a long time.
- Romain
Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for your insights, Bryan. I really enjoyed the discussion and lots of good lessons there. Definitely some stuff that I will bring to my team also to help them step up. And yeah, thanks for inspiring people and looking forward to get feedback from the episode.
- Bryan
Great. Sounds good. Thanks for having me.
- Romain
Thank you. Thank you, Bryan. You stayed until the end. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Paid Forward Society. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and share it with at least two people who would benefit from this discussion. Your support helps me reach more people and make a greater impact. You can also help me get discovered by leaving a five-star rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform. I appreciate your support and look forward to continuing this journey with you. Bye.
