Episode 84: Tech recruiting from both sides of the table, with Sidney Miller

Whitney Lee: So, Coté, I'm relatively new to tech, and I'm also new to, like, the corporate world altogether. So, how valuable is, well, in your experience, how valuable are tech recruiters? Are they, are they doing good in the world, or are they just existing to annoy, annoy me on LinkedIn?
Coté: Well, it sounds like you might have a LinkedIn problem.
Maybe, maybe LinkedIn is an enabler for, uh, recruiter annoyance. I think, you know, I, uh, thinking through the recruiters I've talked with in, in my, uh, days, two of them popped to mind on opposite ends of the spectrum. I think, I think one of them didn't make it clear that I was about to get a really shitty job.
Uh, and so, so the result there was not optimal. Uh, as they say, but then the other one that I talk with, they got me the, uh, the, the job at Pivotal and VMware and Broadcom and blah, blah, blah, where you and I worked, uh, that person was great. They were basically just like, Hey, what do you need? I mean, that's a very quick summary.
And, uh, you know, they were, they were there to, uh, pretty much help me figure out like what was going on and the person, um, my boss, the person that was hiring me wasn't exactly a, uh, font. Of helpful corporate bureaucracy. And so it was, it was good for him to have someone help him, uh, with that sort of.
Whitney Lee: So you, you interacted with the recruiter after you applied for the job.
Coté: That's right. Except, except for that first one that I mentioned, well, that was when I was like laid off from a job. And so they, they came in as the, um. I don't know, a moral janitor to help clean up the mess management had made.
Whitney Lee: So it seems to me from my outside perspective, we have recruiters reaching out on LinkedIn.
We have recruiters. If you know, you want a job, maybe you can find a recruiter on purpose. I'm not sure about this. And I'd like to ask. And then there's recruiters that you get who represent the company, who you get put in contact with once you apply to a company, right? Is that, so behind the scenes here, the person, well, Koti and I feel our way through the dark in terms of what recruiters are and what they do.
We have a real bona fide tech recruiter with us. Uh, Sydney, will you please say hello and, uh, introduce yourself and tell us about tech recruiters and how we as tech employees, um, should, should understand them. How do they fit into the ecosystem?
Sidney Miller: Oh gosh, that's so hi everyone. My name is Sydney Miller and um, I have been on the backend systems infrastructure tech side of things for about 23, 24 years.
If you can believe it, my first client was Sun Microsystems back in the day, you know, Yeah, I was right. It was, it was a thing. Um, so I live in Phoenix and I've been, um, I've, I do a lot of different things. However, I'm mostly a, what I like to call an inclusionist, where I find opportunities for marginalized populations in tech.
And so I, that's a focal point of mine. I mean, obviously everyone's invited, but, um, you know, I, I kind of swim in the pools of, um, inclusion. And try and bring those voices to the interview process. Um, which I think we can get into in a minute. Um, I've worked at all the big, all the big ones. Um, you know, I've, I've got some.
I've got experience in startups. I'm at a startup now, um, which is more in, um, you know, it's a veterinary pharma company, which is a little bit different than tech, but they have, um, you know, some GitHub alumni, which is how I ended up, uh, at the organization. Um, and they're building out their tech stack right now to support this amazing Anyways, long story short, um, I'm, I'm kind of specialized in startups and I think that your question is really kind of, there's so many, Ways to get in touch with a recruiter.
Although you're probably hearing from a million of them on LinkedIn, which I think is hilarious because, you know, LinkedIn is a, is a tool. It shouldn't be a main source of communication to be quite honest, because there's a lot of spamming, right. And a lot of people who are like, like yesterday I got one.
It's like, Sydney, you would be a great SRE at this XYZ company. I'm like, did you even think about that? Did you even read what, what I do? I mean, yes, I've hired the site reliability engineering org at GitHub and I, you know, grew it at packet and I did all these wonderful things, but I'm not an SRE. Nobody wants me coding or touching any infrastructure whatsoever.
I mean, I get it, you know, because I'm a student of the, of the environments that I'm in and I can put, you know, the Lego pieces together, so to speak, but you know, recruiting is a different animal. It really is. And I. I'm a, I'm totally different than your standard recruiter, right? Um, so, um, I don't know if that answers your question, but I can kind of,
Whitney Lee: yeah.
It sounds like there's recruiters who represent companies such as yourself who are building teams. And then are there recruiters who are meant to represent individuals who are not spammers? Recruiters who are not spammers, yeah, who represent individuals.
Sidney Miller: Right. So like in my travels, I have, um, I have represented several people that I've known just in my network.
Right. So I've got a pretty vast network. I, you know, talk a lot of, talk a lot on Twitter and whatnot. So I know people. And so when I have opportunities and when I have like a match, that's where it's kind of like a matchmaker, right? I keep my network really, really crisp and really, really, um, you know, connected because I never know if I'm going to have an opportunity or know of an opportunity through my network that needs someone like a Whitney Lee, right?
So, you know, if I were to be like, Oh, somebody pings me and said, do you know anybody that would be great at, you know, um, developer relationship or developer relations or site reliability, or, you know, as a great backend stack and engineer, not a full stack, but backend, you know, I would be like, Hmm, Mental Rolodex.
Yep. I've got this and this and this person. I can recommend you and, and connect. So that's one way that we do this. But then there's also people who are just sitting at their desk waiting for inbound people to to apply, and then the buckets grow, and then they're only taking the top 10 off the, you know, top of the stack, which is not a thorough, thorough job, right?
Yeah. So you're sitting in limbo for a while, you have applied to this role, and then, you know, all of a sudden you get a rejection letter. It happens, right? Like sometimes, you know, especially in these times when even jobs are really You know, slim and not, there's not a lot of opportunity as, as it was in COVID.
Right. Um, you know, like I posted a job and within a week I got 600 applicants.
Whitney Lee: Do you look at all 600 of those applications? Yes. Do, do all recruiters look at all 600? No, it's,
Sidney Miller: it's, um, it's a challenge. And I think as one individual with 600 profiles for one job is a lot, it's a lot to come across, but then again, you know, to be fair and equitable, you have to.
Right. So a lot of times people will go through like, you know, you know, At one point in time, there's 150 resumes and they'll go through that 150 resumes and then pick out the top 10 that, that meant that make the, that makes sense for the role and then interview them. Right. And that's the hard part is, is that people have just varied backgrounds and can do the job, but is it specific enough to the role to actually hire this individual into it?
Right. Is there a specific type of, are they, Are they familiar with Go or do they only work with C or, you know, like somebody who needs to have Go going to be, you know, the person that probably gets the conversation because versus somebody that has C only, right? Because it's just a different language and it's more fluid and, you know, all of the, all of those things, right?
So they've got to, they've got to match the criteria. Um, How do you weed
Whitney Lee: out the people who are, are lying or the people who are fluffing things up? And also relatedly, probably, how do you, um, make sure you're getting, you're doing your diversity and inclusion that you, that you advocate for?
Sidney Miller: Yeah. So, so that's where sourcing comes in, where you go out, like what I do is I take the incoming, right?
But then I also go out and say, Okay, here's a Boolean search string, which is different than just going on LinkedIn and sending 250 emails. Very different. So just FYI, listeners and viewers, if you see something that says in mail and it doesn't make any sense, that's somebody just saying, you know, doing a slightly Complex Boolean search string in LinkedIn recruiter that populates your profile against the search criteria and then they click all and then they email everyone.
Whitney Lee: Kind of like
Sidney Miller: the email I received yesterday where they were like, Hey, by the way, you want to be an SRE? Like, trust me, if I could be one, I know I'd love to be one, but it's just not like in my mind capacity to do that, right? That's why I recruit. engineers versus I being an engineer. Um, I don't know if that, that answers your question, but there's a lot of different ways to kind of attack this, but yeah, there's, there's variations of recruiting, I think people who've been in the, or in the world of recruiting for long enough back to when things actually used to use fax machines and resume, paper resumes are a little bit different and, and feel the, you know, The end point, right?
Being like, you have empathy for the person that's on the other side of the communication versus just being like, ah, well, I'm just going to go ahead and just, you know, blanket this and see how many come back and pepper that and see if what comes back where it's a little bit more focused. And, um, you know, the way that I take, go back and answer your question, how do you get through the, the, how else do I say this?
The BS.
That's by being really really tight knit and close with your hiring leader and understanding the criteria and understanding the environment and understanding the technology and being like You know, so say, um, you know, that both of you are my hiring managers. I wouldn't be like, okay, so, you know, you want them to start on this date and they need to have this, this, and this great.
Okay. I'll go and find them. Whereas it's like, tell me the impact of the job. Tell me what you're building. Tell me why it's scalable. Tell me why, you know, why this is an important language. Why are you building it in this state? That and the other thing, what are the implications downstream and upstream?
Those kinds of things that like, I'm sure y'all could probably, if you had a good recruiter, they've asked those kinds of questions because then it's like, okay, I kind of understand the, the job, right. But also like, it's my job to go in there and weed out all that stuff. And it does take a conversation, right?
I mean, some people reload it with questions that, where you have to fill it out at application. And I mean, that's okay and fair and whatnot. I mean, that's a
Whitney Lee: very big. Have you ever
Sidney Miller: just gotten
Whitney Lee: it totally wrong? Have you ever just hired like the worst, worst people? How did you, how did you figure it out and how did you learn from it?
Sidney Miller: Um, so that's a great question because there's only so much time that you spend with people and if they're like all like, you know, If they can talk the talk, yeah. Yeah, and if they can talk the talk and they come in and then they're not a culture fit or, you know, which I really don't love culture fit.
culture fit, that kind of scenario. That's
Whitney Lee: culty.
Sidney Miller: Yeah, right. Um, but if they're not a fit to the organization, that is something that is really hard to kind of navigate through. That's why very, like very pointed and very organized interview panels and consistent interview panels are important, right?
Because not only What's an interview
Whitney Lee: panel, just like a way to talk about everyone someone's interviewing with one at a time or is it a literal panel? The actual
Sidney Miller: interviews, right? So typically it would be a conversation with me where I kind of cover all the brass tacks. I get all the questions, answers for the, for the hiring managers.
So they can be like, okay, we're going to cut that person. We're going to keep this person. We're going to cut that person because this is the person in the profile that I need. And then I, it's my job to do all the selling of the org. The team, the technology. So when they get to the hiring manager, the hiring manager isn't spending time selling the job.
They're actually talking about the content of what they're about to build and what they're about to do. And then, um, not only that, but like, it's, you know, it helps them have a, just a more well rounded, like, you know, does it pass the sniff test kind of thing? Like, cause I'm not technical, but I'm, I'm technical enough to be dangerous.
Right. I can hang, I can hang with people because I've been doing it for so long. I kind of understand how it all kind of works together, but I couldn't build for anything. Right. So, um, so once they get to the hiring manager, that is one part of the interview. process or interview paneling. And then the final interview would be consistent of, you know, two to three, um, interviews with the same people with the same question sets.
And then the most important piece to me, I think is the debrief. So that is when the entire organization or the entire interview team gets together and discusses and has feedback sessions with the hiring manager about like, what went right? What went wrong? What kind of questions should we be asking?
Like, do we need to sharpen this? Do we need to sharpen that? And it's really like a great learning experience. So you can get really razor sharp on like, okay, the profile is in the person is this, you know, and like, We need on the team, but not only do we need it on the technical sense, but this is what we need from an empathy perspective.
And this is what we need from, from a human perspective. And this is what we need for, you know, a kind of feedback perspective. And so you're, you're digging more than just being like, tell me, tell me a time that you had a challenging time at work. You know, that's very vague, you know, these whole, like, tell me a time conversations are like, for me, I'm like, You know, it should be like, let's talk and dig into this and let's talk and dig into that, right?
Which is more impactful than having a super vague question about a time that they philosophically thought about something, right?
Coté: So, so what, how do you, There's a lot of stuff that has to go right in that process. Oh, yeah. And, and like, what do you do to like, uh, interview the companies you're going to be working for?
Like, how do you figure out like, my whole system is going to work here? Or. It's not right. Like what are the questions you ask of a company before you go to work for them?
Sidney Miller: Oh gosh. So I asked, I asked them to, to clearly define what their interview pathways are and how they, how they source their, their candidates.
Um, if they're like, Oh yeah, we just throw up a job rec and just see what comes in. Well, I know that I can make a huge, like, blow out impact at that company because I'd be going out and sourcing, which is something they don't do, right? There's a lot of, a lot of recruiters that'll just pass paper, right?
Because not, and I don't want to be like all like, and my own, You know, profession, but it's people have gotten super lazy, you know, like COVID was like fish in a barrel. It was like, okay, you know, there was tons of people who wanted to move. And, you know, it was just a really exciting time. And there was a lot of opportunity and everybody was like going willy nilly, but like, especially in cloud and infrastructure.
Right. So we saw a whole bunch of hiring happening there, but, and that was, that was, it's not that anymore. Right. Right. It's not that anymore. And so it
Coté: sounds like one of the first expectations is, uh, we're going to. Not just get fish out of the barrel. We might have to go hike somewhere.
Sidney Miller: Oh, yeah.
Coté: Continue this metaphor to, uh, do our fishing or whatever.
And, and, you know, so forth and so on. Right. And like, like, for example, you know, like how have you managed the, the, the whole debriefing retrospective stuff with teams that don't really do it well. And, you know, do it well, could just be like not taking it seriously or not contributing or not Just not, not, not doing it.
Like, how do you drive them to do that?
Sidney Miller: It's by listening and educating at every step of the way, because to be honest with you, you know, especially dealing with engineers, there's a lot of people who are super cerebral, right? And they just communicate differently. And you have to understand that about people, right?
Not everybody's going to be the outgoing recruiter type like me, whereas going to be, some people are going to be a little bit more reserved or have their feedback be very short and punctual and all of that. Okay. That's okay. Right? So I think it's over time just making them, you know, making the interviewers comfortable with their voice because so many times in interviews and in feedback sessions, it's like, well, I don't want to say the wrong thing because the hiring manager really likes this candidate.
Right. Which is important for the hiring manager to always go last. Because then it's not a biased kind of scenario where it's like, well, I can't really say anything that's against this candidate because my hiring manager really loves them. But if you give the people the opportunity to speak their mind and say, these are the reasons why, um, I really liked this candidate, or maybe I could struggle with this candidate or they didn't have this, or they have this, you know, like it's a way for you to be seen and heard at work.
And when you actually are those things, production, um, And innovation just, I say this all the time, it just falls out of people because they feel included and they feel like part of it and that their voice matters. Right? And when you give people that opportunity, it just, it, It's, it works. And I don't know how to explain it other than just giving people the space and the time to be themselves, but also be heard.
Coté: And so like, let's see, uh, like, like connected to that. So it's always fun to talk with, uh, people on the other side of the table, this stuff. Yeah. Right. I've never recruited anyone.
Sidney Miller: Yeah.
Coté: That I, you probably
Sidney Miller: have, you probably have, and you just didn't categorize it.
Coté: I think, I think Whitney and I co recruited each other for this podcast.
So we'll, uh, there was no docu sign involved, so I'm not sure it's on the board, but
Sidney Miller: we'll see. There was no
Coté: offer negotiation.
Sidney Miller: That's right. That's
Coté: right. Like, like in the tech world, like, what do you think about the effectiveness of, You know, whether it's an infrastructure or programming of like, whatever you want to call it, practical tests, like, you know, there's places where you sit down and do some coding or, you know, um, I don't know if they still do this at Pivotal or whatever we call it now, but you would spend like an hour or so coding with someone or doing something.
And I don't know, maybe if you're doing SRE stuff, you like read some log files. Yeah, . Uh, but like, are you yum literate that, is that good or bad? Or when does it apply or, or not? Like how does that fit into the, the process?
Sidney Miller: So I'm a true believer that if you are going to in like, make a test or a code sample, a priority and a, and a pre requisition of interviewing.
that it better be the candidate's own code set and that they can have the opportunity to submit it before the interview and that the interview is actually about their code because there's a million ways to look at code, right? There's a million ways to look at it. And, um, yes, I'm sure that there are, you know, bits and boops and things that need to go in, go in a certain order for it to work, but then The innovation is in that, that one person's perspective, which is, to be honest with you, is their whole livelihood, their, their, what they've done in an organization, the education that they may or may not have, because that's also a thing, you know, it's that whole person that's coming to you and said, I've seen this, I've seen this, I've seen this, and I've coded this, and this is the reason why I did it.
And then working through, and if there's a mistake in it, being able to see how there's like, a way to solve it together. I think that that is the most humane way to interview against a code set versus being like, Oh, here's a, here's a, here's a go test. Go see what you score on it. Because is it applicable?
Is it all like, um, you know, the whole,
Whitney Lee: I'm hearing two things, like it should, A, it should mirror what the job actually is. Like, it shouldn't just be a random, like, test about how good you are at something or not. And, and so second of all, it should really reflect what the new skills you need for the job.
And then second of all, The ones where you're having to do it live and people are watching you do it, you're advising against those. And for one reason, it sounds like it's coming back to the diversity and inclusion hires, like, this is something that maybe white males are socialized to be more comfortable being watched while you're doing something.
And other people might feel nervous about it.
Sidney Miller: Well, and let's also talk about our neurodivergent friends.
Whitney Lee: Yeah.
Sidney Miller: Where it's, it's So hard and tough to be like, okay, you know, there's, there's all sorts of different types of people and everybody learns a little bit different and everybody codes a little bit different.
That's why I think that inviting somebody and letting them know, like, Hey, we're going to walk through some code sets because to be honest with you, you're going to walk through code sets and code reviews. You're going to walk through code sets and, and, um, you know, working one on one with people. So, you know, and then there's Special concessions and special accommodations, concessions maybe wasn't the right word, but accommodations that we, you know, you do ask, like, do you need special accommodations for this, and they can opt into that, or they can opt out of that, and it, I think that that truly is an inclusive, um, kind of way to think about it, other than like, here, go to this external testing site and see what you score.
You know, because, because if you're just looking at like fundamentals, like who, who's going to sit in and code from their CS degree and learning, like, you know, not everything's a binary tree. Crying out loud, right? And like, you know, let's do bubble sorts, you know,
Whitney Lee: maximize the number of parking spaces that fit in this lot.
How
Sidney Miller: many golf balls fit in a Jetta that is going from Boston to California? Well, you know what? I. You know that what does that have to do with the job, you know, yeah, um, I don't know
Whitney Lee: I
Sidney Miller: hope I got I
Whitney Lee: got a Task I've been interviewing for jobs lately and I got a task and I had one thing that struck me about it is like Okay, I agree with most things on this task, but also one part of it doesn't make sense at all.
So I'm just going to ignore that part and solve it for everything else because that part's dumb. But like, there's a younger version of me that would have like, bent over backwards to make it fit exactly in the parameters that they asked for. And I don't know if that's, I feel like that, that's something to be careful about too.
I think socialized, um, like being a woman, I'm supposed to follow the rules. Like that's something I've had to unlearn. And now I've unlearned it, but like, um, I think you're hurting yourself in the, if you're giving too rigid rules and not leaving enough space for someone to be who they are and make sense of it.
Sidney Miller: Yeah. What happened to creativity in the workplace? My gosh. You know, like, yes, we're all supposed to do this. And yes, it all sounds good. It's supposed to be like, no, no, you know, because you know, what I would do with me is, is be like, you know, I did all this, but I saw this as like a fundamental, like this, this doesn't make sense to me.
Could you explain it, why it's important here? And then I can answer and just push back and be like, you know, it's not that I didn't do it. It just, in this exercise, it didn't make any sense to me because of my history, my background and whatnot and everything I've done didn't have this component in it.
So why is it important here? And then.
Whitney Lee: I didn't do it. I acknowledged in my, that I didn't do it and they, they loved what I turned in. Like, like they didn't seem to mind it one bit that I didn't do the part that, that I thought was dumb. Yeah. There's also always
Coté: the, uh, the, the danger that it's a trick question.
Like I, I, I remember, uh, in one of these practical or whatever you want to call it, interview, uh, things, I remember it was intentionally stupid. And, uh, the whole goal was to be like, are you going to tell us this is stupid? Which in, in, in my older age kind of seems stupid.
Whitney Lee: I guess it was
Coté: effective at the time, but yeah, I mean, no one likes trick questions.
That's, that's true. Yeah, exactly.
Sidney Miller: Like, I mean, wouldn't that kind of, so maybe And maybe I'm just that certain type of person, but like trick questions. Are you going to ask me trick questions every day at work? Like, why are you, why are you emulating this? Is this the way that you work internally? Because that to me is a sign of ego.
Yeah. Right.
Coté: That brings up a good topic. Like I, I, uh, uh, I like to think when I, when I'm talking with people, I'm also trying to not, maybe not here. When I'm talking with someone about a job, I'm trying to like reverse interview them, like figure out if I would like working there and like, what would you recommend people do for that reverse interviewing?
Like, like, you know, It's, it's, it's like fine to say you should figure out if this is like a place you want to work, but like, how do you actually do that in an interview? What do you ask and how do you kind of process that?
Sidney Miller: Yeah. So I think you sit down and you think long and hard and prepare. I mean, that's one thing that people don't do.
They're so busy. Right. But sit down and write out what's important to you as a person and as an engineer, because. You need to ask questions based on that and it's, and it's okay to because people are waiting for you to ask questions. Like one thing that I would say, you know, how rigorous is your, um, is your sprints?
Um, like how, how, how does your team deal with conflict? These are all very fair questions because they're going to ask you and you can almost turn it around and say, you know, well, this is a great question for me, but, you know, I'm curious, like, what has happened in this organization? Why is, why is this job open?
Did somebody leave? I wouldn't necessarily go like, what are the conditions about it? Cause nobody can say anything because it's an HR, you know, legal kind of thing, but you can kind of sniff around and get like to the bottom of it. Like, why did you choose go or I keep picking on go? It's just easy. Why did you choose this?
This pathway, you know, and, you know, ask, ask those implications, like I said, downstream and upstream. Those are really good questions to ask, because do you want to be part of maintenance, or do you want to build, right? So think about, think about those types of questions that you would ask like a friend or a colleague.
Something
Whitney Lee: about my recent experience job searching, I don't know if this is specific to me, but it's very weird. And that is, That is, nobody talks about money until the last step. Which is so dumb. It's so dumb! Can we please, like, that should be an upfront part. It's such an important factor. And I, and, and, it's almost like, the times that I've said to a recruiter that it is an important factor, they've, they've been offended.
Like, I should love the idea of the job so much, that it doesn't matter that it pays me. Competitively. Like, I don't understand. Is this normal? I guess is the question. And if it's normal, what can we do about it? Okay.
Sidney Miller: I nail down, I talk about what the salary is, what the equity component is, what the level is like all those things, because I'm not wasting my time going in like for a junior role when they're like, but you really like us, don't you?
You know, or we're, we're XYZ company and we're a unicorn. Well, that's great, but how am I going to pay my mortgage? You know, like it's a job
Whitney Lee: in the end. I do want to love it, but it's, it's It's a job. It's something I'm trading my time for money. So let's talk about a very important component up front, please.
Sidney Miller: I absolutely 1000 percent agree that you should talk about that in the first call. It's something that I do as a recruiter, and it kind of sometimes makes people uncomfortable. They're like, why are we talking about this? And I'm like, because I want you to understand what you're about to walk into. And you can turn that around and say, I want to know what I'm about to walk into.
And I need to make sure that this makes sense for me financially, before we move forward, you know, you've have a range, what's the level and what's the commensurate compensation based upon the level. It's very fair. And they are supposed to, Put this on their job recs if they hire in the state of California, New York, there's 13 countries, goodness, states where you, and maybe more, and I haven't had that much coffee yet, but, um, there's, it's, it's a law and FYI, no one can ask you what you make, period.
It's legal. So if somebody is like, tell me what you W2'd last year, you'd be like, hmm, funny. You can't ask me that.
Whitney Lee: I've heard that you're not ever supposed to say the number first as a candidate. Yeah.
Sidney Miller: Well, I mean, so that's, so you could, you could, you could be like, my threshold, my floor is this, but my expectation is this.
And it could be or could not be what you've already made. It could be 20 percent more. It could be 40 percent more. It could be whatever you want it to be, to be honest with you. Cause nobody can ask you the question to produce receipts. Does that make it complicated? Yeah. But you know what? That's what, um, there's all sorts of systems called like Pave and Radford that people like have these, like, if you're a level five engineer, which means that you're a senior IC, It equates to this much money in this demographic, right?
But there's always wiggle. There's always wiggle, you know, like, so, um, I think it's unbelievably important to talk about compensation in the first call. And I don't think that anybody should be fearful to do that because if they're going to hide that from you until the end of the call. What kind of company is it?
Whitney Lee: Yeah.
Coté: And no one wants, no one wants to spend like a two or three weeks interviewing. And then you find out like, Oh, this, this pays a third as much as I thought it would. And that's not good for anyone.
Sidney Miller: Yeah. And then it turns into a terrible candidate experience. And then everybody ends up leaving. Like, okay, that was a waste of time.
Like time is money people. And you know, like. You could be interviewing at another company that's been completely transparent with you, which transparency is an anomaly nowadays. But, you know, with all these laws going into effect, they should post this stuff, especially if it's remote. And if it's in California or New York, some of the big demographics or the, the, the big, um, geographic, geographical areas should have it posted.
And it's okay for you to ask what that is. What's the compensation?
Whitney Lee: There, so sometimes I'm on program committees and I help decide like what talks get accepted to a conference. Sure. And I'm struck by One emotional and mental dilemma I have, I can see where this talk is objectively good. It's well written, it has a clear outcome, it um, all the grammar is correct, you know, this is a good one.
But then it's like inevitably by someone who's privileged because you have education as part of what's enabling you to be able to write that proposal. For sure. And then I see other ones that are really interesting, have an interesting premise, but then the follow through, and maybe it's just a language thing, or maybe it's not.
It's an education thing. So how do you, and I imagine you must see something similar in your job position. And so how do you navigate someone? I guess it all comes back to the DE& I initiatives. How do you help underrepresented people have their voice heard when maybe their voice isn't as educated sounding as yours?
Everyone else is. So this is
Sidney Miller: your influence internally is a big deal. So, you know, see yourself as the subject matter expert in recruiting and say, why is it a prerequisite to have a master's? What about a master's is going to make somebody who has 10 years of code experience that probably can, that, you know, look at their github.
I mean, look at, look at this, look at that. Like, why does a piece of paper matter? And normally that is just like old school thinking where, you know, I have gone into organizations and said, I understand that like in some scientific fields and some things like that, it's kind of a thing. But in engineering, think of all the people who've gone to code camps in the middle of Baltimore, right?
And that is inclusion, right? Not just hiring everybody that went to Stanford CS school and, you know, graduated in this top of the class that tends to look and feel and seem all the They have no groups. It's all, you know, like the same thought because they were all studied the same thing, right? Whereas if you get somebody who went to Stanford and you get somebody from that boot camp in, in, um, Baltimore and, And you go into these specific parts of the country, like, that are predominantly, uh, mis you know, or that are not represented, and you give them the opportunity to be seen in the process.
I mean, the process is, is consistent and compliant because they're, you know, the interview panels are all the same, the questions are all the same. That's what, you know, I'm here to do and ensure that it's not like, oh, well, you can meet this person and that person and this person, and then it's not a consistent or compliant interview process.
Because that's where bias is introduced. But when you make it about the individual and you bring them together from different pieces of the world, that's how you get innovation, right? So it's our job as recruiters to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I understand that you want an Ivy League, but why? Why would you fill your team with Ivy League?
Tell me why. And then just start to challenge that. And if they keep, you know, if they keep saying, no, it needs to have this, or no, it has to be that, you could just be like, we need to make sure that we check for unconscious bias. And bring the bias in conversation, which a lot of people are not comfortable with.
Like I could care less. Like my job is to make sure that this is the best team in the world. And when I was at GitHub, we did that type of work, right? Where we would, we had, we hired seniors, we hired people who would just come out of like, And, you know, who had a year experience that used to be a stay at home mom, you know, like all that experience of these individuals made the site reliability org at, at GitHub, what it was.
And I worked really heavily with one of the directors and said, we're going to look at this different as, are you okay with that? And she was like, yeah, let's go for it. And we were able to build a team that was. Super, super, um, inclusive, but you should have seen the stuff that they were making because it was like, just because it made a better team.
Yeah. So here's another example. So I was at a company and we were at an offsite and the, um, SVP of the CTO, SVP, we're all sitting at the end of the table. And then of course, everybody else is at the edge of the table and, and we're sitting there and they were talking about a complex issue that they couldn't figure out.
Right. And they were just like, da, da, da, da, da, da. And one of the people that was new who came from like a larger organization, not a startup was like listening and, and was like, have you thought of, you know, Doing it this way or maybe that way. And they were like, no, could you help us? I'm new. This is like, I've been here a week.
Like, oh my God, like, I'm not going to screw this up. They came through to a solution. It wasn't, it wasn't both of their ideas that ended up being baked. It was the, it was the combination of the thought process that solved the problem, which just goes to show you that. Everybody should have the opportunity to work on an issue to, you know, regardless if they're, you know, young in their industry, in the, in the industry, or if they've gotten, you know, 30 years experience, you know, because there's got to be common ground in the middle, you know, especially for innovation.
Whitney Lee: What's, what's a bias that people have, but don't know they have? What do you see?
Sidney Miller: There is, it's kind of hard to do that because everybody's an individual, right?
Whitney Lee: Okay.
Sidney Miller: So it depends upon, you know, it depends upon what you bring to work every day. To be honest. Um, I think that one of the most common ones is language.
I'm just going to call it out. Language is hard, um, so people are like, you know, can, can they communicate correctly, um, or, or, um, the other thing too is, you know, if our neurodivergent friends haven't looked for, um, special accommodations because they don't want to, like, pin themselves as being that person too, because people are really sensitive about it.
Communication that way as well, right? So communication is a big one that trips people up and, and you have to just make sure that you talk to your teams about like, everybody communicates differently. Not everybody's going to be Sydney. Not everybody's going to be like, you know, XYZ person that, you know, Is going to attack it from all sides.
Um, you know, there's going to be different types of mindsets and different types of communication patterns they have to match, you know, but it has to make sense, but I think that that's one of the most common biases and then also the education, education bias is so big and it's, oh, it makes me so angry because, you know, some of the best engineers I know never went to college.
Whitney Lee: Yeah. Yeah.
Sidney Miller: You know?
Coté: So like in, in the, uh, let's see. In, in the, in the bigger world, uh, I don't know what that means in the bigger world,
Sidney Miller: but
Coté: there you go. Like, like, like, you know, I, I look at, uh, surveys a lot because my, I have a thrilling, uh, entertainment sources, but something that I see over the years consistently is that let's call them CIOs or hiring managers, whatever, like, like they're always, uh, freaking out about not being able to hire the right people.
I mean, or the skills that they need, or like, there's a talent gap or something. And it could be a time like now where you get 600 applicants, or it could be a time like several years ago where you, you know, you get five or whatever. But it's like all the time people are complaining about not being able to hire people, which is As, as let's say an IC type of person, I always think like, there's a lot of us out there,
Whitney Lee: right?
Like,
Coté: like what, like, like what's going on that on one side, it seems like people are upset they can't find people. And on the other side, people are like, I'd love to be found. Like there's, there's some weird disconnect going on.
Sidney Miller: So I think to speak to that is, is your leader? Or are they here?
Coté: Right.
Sidney Miller: And that is something that people like myself are supposed to crank those levers.
So it's like, open your mind, open your mind, see that there's more to this than just Stanford or, you know, Harvard or what, whatever, right? It could be anything. Like, I only want people from large organizations because we're working on Big problems that we're working on this. So I don't want to seem somebody who's been in the startup world because that normally means they've only been around for two years, two years in a startup is probably worth more than five years in a big, big organization.
You can at me about that, but like, honestly, like I've been in enough startups and I've worked at all the big ones, like I've said, and I have seen more. Innovation cranked out of startups because of necessity and, um, and whatnot. So to me, if hiring managers are like, there's just no talent out there. Well, what are your parameters?
And what are you, what are you trying to, what do you, what do you need to get over as an, as a leader to not see what I'm seeing in, in the competitive marketplace, because here's all the data. Tell me what I'm missing, right?
Whitney Lee: What if someone wants to be found? What should they do?
Sidney Miller: Um, so, so socials, network, LinkedIn.
I mean, I, you know, again, LinkedIn is a tool for me. It's not an end all be all, but it's, you're seeing it turn into this whole thing versus a network community to be like a job finding or, you know, uh, representation kind of like, I'm, I'm looking for a job, I'm open to work kind of stuff, um, socials, but I would say.
Network as much as you possibly can, you know, because you never know who knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody and good people are out there. There are good people in this industry. There really are, you know, so ask for help. I mean, and if they don't want to help you, well then later, later.
Coté: You, you, you brought up a topic, uh, again earlier that I wanted to ask more about, which is, Uh, uh, I don't know, like, like oftentimes when I go through life to add too much context to this question, I feel like, uh, someone forgot to give me a manual about how, how things operate. And one of those areas, I think I've been a little better, but like, I always feel like I could read more manuals on how to like network and, and networking, not just the initial thing, but like what you're talking about earlier is the.
Let's say long term multi year networking, which is to say you keep it alive somehow. And, and like, you know, to systematize it, to only be half joking about it. Like, should I be asking people every three months how they're doing or every eight to 12 months, right? Like, or, or a touch point, like how do. Do you put that in your calendar?
Like, how do you make sure that happens?
Sidney Miller: You could. I mean, you know, it's funny because people start to network when they know they're going to be looking for another job. Other people kind of understand that, right? But then again, those people that you're probably reaching out to, get it, right? Because they've probably done the same thing.
Um, I have, I have a beautiful example of how I've turned a network. network connection into something larger. And it's a friend that you and I, Whitney, have together. Um, and he and I met when I worked at GitHub and he was, he was a candidate. And I was like, okay, you're awesome. Like, let's, let's stay connected.
Right. So we did. And, um, we eventually became friends. And he is one of my biggest cheerleaders, but also sends me leads all the time, right? He sends me people that I can help. And that's not just to find a job. It's for negotiating all sorts of things, right? Because, you know, I've seen a lot, I've done a lot.
And, you know, I can pretty much say that I know how the inner workings of how this, you know, stuff goes down, right. And I don't, I don't mind sharing it because, you know, You know, people are like, shh, don't talk. It's like, says who? Knowledge. Knowledge is, you know, power, especially in negotiations. So, um, you know, I kept, I kept in touch with him, like, every three months when we first originally started.
Because he, I knew he was somebody not that could help me, but was cool to know and was really, really smart. And I knew that my end all be all wasn't going to be like, you know, that I could probably take him to the next role that I was going to hire for at the next company, which I did. You know, which I did because I remembered him and I kept that relationship really fresh and just, you know, said, Hey, you know, how are things going?
Are you good? Like, what's up, how are you as a person versus being like, I see you as a dollar sign as I'm going to hire you and fill my, or, you know, there's, I
Whitney Lee: think that's part of it is seeing other people as people and not as like, I'm not building my network. I like genuinely like you, I am building my network, but.
And then I'm pretty good at, if I, if something in my daily life reminds me of someone whose path has crossed mine, I just reach out to them and just like, oh, that's made me think of you. Or vice versa, if someone's approaching me for the same reason, I make sure they feel welcome and rewarded and happy that they reached out to me.
Coté: That's a page of the manual that I've only recently found in the last
Whitney Lee: few years. It
Sidney Miller: feels
Whitney Lee: good! It feels good when this stuff happens, right? It feels good when it comes your way, but it's also when you're putting it out there, it's an act of vulnerability to be like, hey, I saw this and thought of you, or I like this thing you're doing or whatever.
Um, I think when I was younger, I used to wait for those interactions to come to me. And now I feel more in charge of them where I'm the one putting them out there. And, uh, and I do that for funsies. Yeah.
Sidney Miller: Yeah. Well, I think, I think you probably are in a place in your, in your career where you like. I can really, I can really help somebody.
And if that's just giving them the ability to feel seen that day, that's amazing, right? Because that'll be worth its weight in gold, you know, down the line for whatever it is that you need, whatever you need from that relationship, right? Because it's about relationship building. It's not about like, How can, how can you help me today?
You know, like that feels very different than being like, Hey, just checking in on you, seeing how you're doing. I really enjoyed our conversation last time. Right.
Whitney Lee: Or, you
Sidney Miller: know, Hey, my friend has this great job. I thought of you, here's this, you know, let me know if you're interested. I can make the introduction or if not, and you're not ready.
That's cool too. Just want to let you know that I thought of you today, kind of those things. Right. Because it feels good because we forgot. For a long time about how to be a human and how in humanity in general, right. Being like, you know, the, maybe that's the oldie tiny part of me. That's like, you know, good people do good things and have, you know, good experiences because they, they move forward on them, right.
They action against them instead of being like, no, it's going to be weird. And I'm going to be, you know, seen as, You know what? It's probably going to brighten that person's day because how does it feel when it happens to you? It feels good, right? Well, so
Coté: I, I have, I have one last question and then whatever, you know, however, you know, Whitney has, well, we'll see, maybe I'll come up with more, but on, on the topic of, of our professional life, so like looking through your background and as you've gone over, you've worked at a lot of places and, and like, how.
What's like the process is the wrong word. What's like the journey that you go through when you end up getting a new job? Like when does the spark into your head at first and how do you evaluate it and like, what do you do? And then all of a sudden you're like, Whoa, I met a new job. I mean, you seem like someone who's more conscious of the effect.
Yeah. You know, it's going to happen, but how do you decide to get a new job?
Sidney Miller: There are so many ways I could answer this. Um, there are so many ways. Um, you're either shown that you need to get a new job.
Coté: That's a good use of passive voice.
Sidney Miller: You know, excuse me, is this a family show? Can I say no? It's not? Okay, when the shit goes down, you better be ready, right?
You know, there's that you can feel like, maybe this isn't the org for me anymore. Maybe it's grown, or maybe it's like taking a different direction. And like, your gut is everything. And I'm not saying like, you're showing the door. I'm just saying like, you're seeing things that don't assimilate with you as a human being anymore.
It's
Coté: starting to get smelly.
Sidney Miller: Yeah, like, you're like,
no, you know, like. It's hard when you're, you're like, you work so hard for something and then all of a sudden it's like big, bad, big company comes in and is like, ha ha, we're going to absorb you. And you're like,
Whitney Lee: yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Sidney Miller: I don't know what you could
Whitney Lee: possibly mean.
Sidney Miller: I don't know who we're talking about, but you know, no, I mean, and that's okay. But then there's all these people that want to work at the big companies and want to do the things. And there's good people in all sorts of different types of companies. But it doesn't mean that you have to sit there and take it either.
Coté: Right, right. And, you know, uh, to, to, to interrupt all the different ways, but, and to ask about that, like, have you, have, have you come across many people who can operate in most of the, or at least two of those situations? Right. So you have like, you've got like the startup person and then you could have like big company person.
And on the extreme end of that, you could have like, uh, I still work on mainframe software, right? Like, like kind of like working at a, whether it's PE or just sort of like steady state, like profit reaping. Right. So like, I, I I'm, I'm just thinking out loud to not get around to asking the question, but I don't think I've encountered that many people that thrive across that spectrum.
Like they seem to work really well in only one, maybe one and a half of those.
Sidney Miller: So I think that that's changing since COVID. I mean, I honestly, like back in the day, it's like, okay, I'm going to work at the state for the rest of the day, get my, you know, get my, um, pension and that's, that's okay for me. Right.
It's fine. Will they last in a startup? Not going to probably be the right fit. Will you be okay at a startup if you come from a big company? Yes, but depending upon if that org that you're in, were they kind of like an incubation? Were they kind of like a startup themselves? Were they working on something that was new and fresh and whatnot?
Then you see a lot of people translating in and out. You know, there's a lot of people like, I'll never hire somebody from a big company. Well, why? Why? Let's find out what they did. And you know, what group were they in? Because that's a big company that does a lot of things. And if they are acting as a startup, then great.
And then there's people who are like, I don't want people from a startup because they only last 18 months and move on. Well, how much are you paying them?
So there's all sorts of different things that you can think of, but you know, I think, I think you're going to see more big companies look for scrappy because we need to stay in front of all this innovation that may or may not be happening nowadays with all the new, new technologies and AI and all that shit coming in, you know, right.
Coté: Spoken exhaustedly like someone who worked at Sun Microsystems. Here we go again.
Sidney Miller: Yeah, here we are. You know, um, but yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think there's, I think you're going to see a lot of transition between, I mean, I, again, like, and I don't want to call out our friends that work at like state level entities or, you know, the government, but those pretty, pretty much run.
Unless they're like at a consultancy that gets brought in to do the innovation and then leaves. So there's, I guess you could dissect that a minute.
Coté: Like, you know, I, I, the, the, the joke in this area I always make is like, I don't, I don't know if I want my bank to be innovative. I kind of like what they do.
And if they never changed how they operate, that would probably be for the best, which I think has been proven time and time over again in my lifetime. Right. Like what I want them to do is just like a yearbook, just never change, just stay the way they are. And so that, you know, and similarly, I think with the state, you kind of don't want the state to change if.
You know, just as the way it's functioning, right. The way the bureaucracy works. You want it to be reliable. You almost, I guess by definition, at least in the American system, what's, what you want to happen is there's laws. And then the government works on those enforcing and working in those laws. You don't want innovation, uh, in, in the system.
Sidney Miller: Yeah, but you do want innovation when you're sitting in the DMV.
Coté: This is true.
Sidney Miller: Right,
Coté: right, right, right. I agree. There's uh, there's uh, you know, innovation as in make what we're doing much better. Versus innovation of like, what, what if we decided there is no property ownership? Why don't we try that out in Louisiana for a while?
Sidney Miller: Right?
Coté: Yeah.
Sidney Miller: Oh my gosh.
Whitney Lee: No. My last question has to do with. into tech, if, or even to like corporate life. So, so I come from an artist background, my degrees in arts. I've have a lot of experience as a musician and, and I still have many friends who are artists and, or musicians and maybe still working a restaurant job on the side and we're all getting older and, and some of them are talking to me about like, how can I.
I actually want that corporate life now because that's how I'm going to get retirement in healthcare. Um, not in the way I'm going at it now. And, and, and they absolutely have skills that I know would transfer into this world. But convincing anyone in the first place sounds like a tall order. Like, what advice do you have for that person?
Sidney Miller: Well, it's, so a lot of this has to do with privilege. Right? Yes. Because training and boot camps and all this stuff costs money. Yeah. So, you know, there might be a way for them to do research on like local grants for, you know, like women in tech. There's, there's local money that can be, you know, you can go out and find it.
Do I know what that is right now? No. I mean, I can help research if anybody wants to ping me, but, um, you know, there are like retooling. Scenarios, which are all kind of the, the rage right now and getting into, you know, there's all sorts of, there's all sorts of schools, there's all sorts of like trainings, there's all sorts of things, right?
Um, I think they just have to look at what they're passionate about. Is it web design? Is it actual code? You know, and the way that they could do this for free is just amazing. And, you know, I've talked about GitHub a lot, but it's a free service and you can get involved in community there and you can start to learn and you can find, um, you know, people who will be your, your ambassador and, you know, help you see what you want to do.
And you can test out all sorts of different things like the, the GitHub universe, so to speak, is a real vast one and it's, it's right there for you. Right. You just need to act, act and get involved, which how, how much do you want to advance in that is time invested. You know what I mean? So that's where I would start is to poke around, like, what looks interesting to me, what is, what is going to align with my passion because a lot of creatives and a lot of artists and a lot of musicians end up becoming the best software engineers because they already predisposition to think in that really mechanical way.
They're very cerebral already because, you know, music is just like code. I, you know, like, like I have a very, very good friend, Amy Toby, and that's what she, she got her degree in and was, I think, computer science and, and music. And like, she's a brilliant at, she's brilliant at trombone. I don't know. Is it trombonist?
Is that what?
Whitney Lee: Sure. That's a
Sidney Miller: trombone. Trombonist. Trombonist.
Whitney Lee: Trombonian. Trombonian.
Sidney Miller: Tromboner. You know, she's, she's brilliant at it. And I like, I meet people all the time, you know, on engineering recruiting calls where there's guitars and keyboards and all sorts of instruments and all sorts of like, Oh, I'm into, you know, um, electronic music and I create my, I'm a DJ or I'm this and that and the other thing.
And it's, that's really important, you know, to kind of anyways, see is that, you know, your predisposition already to have that kind of real critical thinking mind. If you come from the arts, because it's very systematic sometimes. Right. So anyways. There's
Coté: almost like combining things together. There's, um, uh, you know, you, you've got, you've got the skills as we've been talking about, like you're capable of doing something and then there's even the, I don't know how you categorize it, there's the, uh, I have the skill of learning skills, right?
So it's kind of adaptable, but then, but then, you know, a lot of what you were just talking about is. Uh, I know how to direct my passion to something. Right. And the other side of that is like, I can be passionate about something like, you know, uh, I have passion for stuff, but I don't know if I'd be good at doily manufacturing just because I have no passion for it.
Right. And so, I mean, when, when you're thinking about people in the tech world, how do they balance, how do those two things kind of like come together to make. A good person. I mean, not morally good, but you know, an effective person. Cause it doesn't, it seems like you've got to balance them out somehow, somehow in the tech world.
Sidney Miller: You know, I think that that's a really interesting question, to be honest with you, because Everybody is an individual and what makes me tick is going to look different than what makes y'all tick. And like, I think, I think ultimately, if you have the passion, you're going to learn about it. And then the technology comes right.
And then the, the, the actual tactical piece of what you do comes if you're passionate about it, because you're always learning or you're stretching yourself, or you're working in different collaborations, or you're doing this, that, and the excuse me, this, that, or the other thing. But then you also have that Emotional piece that I think draws you to the humanity in the org, which also has to be balanced.
I mean, there are people that are, you know, that are the world's biggest, you know, what. And can code, can't code themselves out of a paper bag. But then there's also, you know, people who are like this, the world's most subject matter expert and they're the kindest people you'll meet, you know? So, I mean, I don't, I don't know that that question is like, there's a lot to unpack in that question, to be honest with you, because I think it just has to be like, who are you as a human?
Who are you as a holistic person? Right. And why aren't we talking about those things when we're, when we're in the interview? I'm, I'm an open book, but that's, I'm a, a total different animal, right? Whereas most people are like, I can't say this, I can't do this. I can't ask for that. I can't, you know, and it's all these reasons why they can't.
Versus like, I can. I can ask these questions about compensation. I can ask this about like, what is the parental leave about? What is, um, you know, tell me about your benefits. Because there's a million hidden costs and benefits, right? You know, ask for, asking for things that you need. You know, what is the trajectory of this, this project in the next 3, months?
Things like that, you know, because you're too worried that you're going to screw something up and not get the job.
Coté: All right. So, so very last question. What do you think you would be doing in your life now if you had kept working at Neiman Marcus?
Whitney Lee: Oh God,
Sidney Miller: I would be dead. I really truly believe that because the lifestyle was very much Devil Wears Prada and I would have probably had a heart attack by now.
I mean, no offense to my people in fashion, but like, that was not my bag. That, that, the whole situation for me was like, Ooh, that's bright and shiny. And this is all what I want to do. And you know, I was lucky enough to be one of the 13 that got chosen that year to be in at Neiman Marcus. It taught me a lot about what I wasn't going to take at
Whitney Lee: work and what I
Sidney Miller: wasn't going, what I wasn't willing to be like, you know, um, What I, what I, what I really truly wanted was to be closer to humans, not to shoes.
And that's okay for me. And I'm not talking bad about Neiman Marcus because Lord knows, like, you know, it's a people shop there and you know, it is what it is and it's just, I just found out early that that was not what I should be doing and that I should be helping people, even though you can help people in fashion, but I mean, you can, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's ways and, and all of that. And I don't want to be all like, you know, Disparaging, but like it wasn't for me and I'm so glad that I saw that so early on and was like, I'm not doing this.
Coté: So do you, do you think this, this, uh, it, it, it seems like there's a, like a leaky abstraction, so to speak, or, or there's a leakage between, like you're saying the devil wears Prada.
So the fashion industry and then you have, uh, the channel, the stores, uh, and then you have the buyers and, you know, there's other people running around, but do you think. The, the culture leaks from the fashion or from the customer or like where, which way does it flow? Like, do the customers define? What you didn't like about it, or is it just like the shoe people who are manufacturing the shoes?
Sidney Miller: Leadership. It all starts with leadership. I feel in all of my travels, and this is just not about fashion. If you have leadership that is a certain way and isn't matching humanity, communication, um, willingness. Um, you know, feedback that's concise and actionable and kind versus like, Hey, guess what?
Remember nine months ago when you did this, it was wrong. So you're not getting a raise this year, you know, you know, like
Coté: a long feedback loop,
Sidney Miller: leadership, it all starts with leadership and that bleeds down. But then also if you have toxic employees, though, that bleeds up. Right. So how do you. How do you kind of figure that out?
I don't know. That might be a secret sauce kind of question, you know? But it does. I mean, if, if leadership allows a certain behavior, then it's going to keep happening, right? And if, if employees allow a certain type of behavior, it'll keep happening.
Whitney Lee: And it's not just what you allow, but it's what you model too.
Sidney Miller: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, like, did I have a great experience when I was at Neiman Marcus? Yeah, I learned a lot. But it just again, it just, I mean, and I've done this throughout my career, like, this just doesn't feel right for me anymore, because of how I've shifted as a human being, you know, now I'm a mom, and I work in tech, and I do this, and I have certain things that I need, right?
So I'm going to leave this organization because it doesn't suit me anymore. Right? Because I need more flexibility or I need more money or I need more benefits or I need more like fill in the blank for anybody that's listening. It's, it's more about like ensuring that you're checking yourself against the values of the company, right?
Coté: Well, that's a good place to end. We should model some good behavior and, uh, try to end on time. That's what we promised for you. Just a little bit over. Well, this has been really fun. It's been great. Yeah. If people want to network with you, so to speak, or just find out more about you, where would you point them at?
Sidney Miller: Um, so you can find me on Twitter. I'm at SydneyMiller2. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, of course. This is Sydney Miller. I'm the only Sydney Miller in Phoenix, Arizona.
Coté: Just get a phone book. Yeah.
Sidney Miller: It's just the yellow pages.
Whitney Lee: Wait,
Sidney Miller: no, it's the White Pages, isn't it? Oh,
Whitney Lee: it
Sidney Miller: is the
Whitney Lee: White
Sidney Miller: Pages! The Yellow Pages is business!
Oh, I don't know if you want to find me in the Yellow Pages, because I don't have a business. Yeah, otherwise you would have to be,
Coté: you would have to be AAA1 Sydney Miller.
Sidney Miller: I know,
Whitney Lee: right?
Coté: The best plumbing companies ever began with AAA. That's
Sidney Miller: hilarious.
Coté: All
Sidney Miller: right. Has this been helpful?
Coté: Oh, yeah. Oh, it's been wonderful.
What fun.
Sidney Miller: Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. I hope I haven't been talking out of both sides of my mouth, because if I have, let me know.
Coté: Well, and the front too. All, all three sides are good. Well, speaking of talking out of the front, this has been another Software Defined Interviews. You can find the links we mentioned and stuff for Sydney if you go to SoftwareDefinedInterviews.
com and I don't know, search around for it. Once again, I've forgotten the episode number.
84!
Episode 84. So softwaredefinedinterview. com slash 84. Uh, just like my other podcast hosts, Whitney is always there with the, with the episode. So, uh, we'll see everyone next time. Bye.