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Welcome everybody to Balva's Goomi. It's a podcast about all the things that are fun for software developers and managers. My name is Vicky Kalmonovic. I'm an engineering manager. And today I have Cecilia Borgu with me. Which is so amazing. We're recording from Devvav's day's conference. Cecilia, how are you? I'm so happy. I'm so happy to be here and everything is so fun and exciting and the energy and this conference is just through the road. I love it. Whenever there's tourists in Israel, everybody becomes such a Zionist. Everyone's like, it's an Israel, the most amazing place in the world. But they gave me food. I've eaten some sugar today. So I'm not big sugar. And you've been to Jaffa today. Yeah, I've been to Jaffa. And I actually bought a woolen hat because I'm going back to Sweden and it's snowstorms. I've found the perfect woolen hat while walking in 21 degrees weather. You can find anything in the Holy Land. And today we're going to talk about the amazing question of, do we even need managers? Right? So I think before we get to the main event, can you share a little bit about yourself? Well, I've always got a passion for tech. Started out with playing too much Nintendo back in Sweden and grew up. Being really fascinated by everything tech. Are you related to Anita Boeg? No. Anita Boeg? The Anita Boeg organization, which does the grist hopper. Oh, no. No, sorry. No, sorry. We are so many different boards. So, resist is a few tiles. Okay. No, passion for tech and everything. So ended up in a master's degree in computer science and that was just a perfect fit. I was thrilled. And back in the night, it wasn't even. I didn't know that programming was a thing that you can actually be a programmer or a developer. That wasn't a thing. So I was just having fun and kind of jumping on this and university degree and didn't know where to end up, but it was perfect. So since then, I've been working at startups and bigger international corporations in all the roles as a developer, engineering manager. I've been a product. I've been CEO of companies and CTO. And right now, I'm trying to help companies on an engineering basis. Six or nine months, things with trying to get them through change because change is so painful. And that's everything we're doing right now. Everyone is growing. Everyone is shrinking or emerging with it each other. So I'm using my painfully learned experience to help others kind of through this, coming in with some structure. So basically when companies understand that they're going through change, they call you for a specific role. Is it just like CTO or CEO roles or is it changing based on the company that context is changing? And right now, it's such a huge need. Going on an engineering basis. So I've also been a CEO for a consultancy helping with agile coaches and trying to get other organizations through change. And what I've seen most efficient is when you actually come in and work kind of doing some operational role and then you can kind of strive and then you get the credibility from the others because you're actually there to deliver something. And then you can also help to see how do established change in this workplace. That's interesting. Are you being measured as well? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. No, I've got kind of so when I'm starting my assignments, I'll always kind of ask them what would make us toast in champagne when I leave? That's a good question. Yeah, I know. I know. And not everyone kind of knows the answer, but they kind of, yeah, we need to be more efficient or we need to come to this or we have these problems. And then there's also kind of that is the outcome that I'm judged on. And then also I have a lot of output kind of just being running meetings and running, delivering things and keeping everyone happy and so in the workplace. So I think, no, it's the perfect job and everyone has problems, but then I can come in and it's different problems. And then I have the energy to attack them. And then after nine months, I'm ready to attack other problems and other organizations. And it's interesting. You say that sometimes you're an interim CTL and sometimes you're an interim CEO, right? No, so I've never been an interim CEO. I've only been a permanent CEO. Ah, yeah. No, but that's actually, and that even suits my question better because sometimes you do this kind of role and sometimes you do this kind of role. And we know from management roles that it seems like there's a true, like two branches that you need to choose one of them either to become a manager or to become an IC, right? But you show that, you know, you can go to the branches. Yeah. So that depends on kind of how you define an IC. So right now I don't have no one is reporting to me. So that's also special. Yeah, I'm running these projects kind of across. I'm working as kind of interim VP engineering at the epidemic sound right now. And it's, and I'm responsible for different projects to output there, but I don't have a team. I don't have people reporting to me. So I just kind of tie people to me and influence and working through them. Amazing. So let's talk about what is a manager? Yeah. What a question. No, I love the question because I've been to so many, so many developer conferences. There's so many engineering conferences. And I've seen the, I see the contempt for managers. And I've been a, a manager since I was 27. And I've been a developer for many years. And I've been working in infrastructure and in so many different places. And I become a mate. I became a manager because I wanted to unblock. I want, I saw the structures that were blocking us. So I wanted to do something. And I wanted, and I was prepared to take the hit of becoming a manager to kind of unblock because I wanted to do that. How can, how can you be prepared without knowing? No, I wasn't. How did you know? No, people. So it was my manager who asked me to become a manager of this group. And I was like, no way. Yeah, I did not want to become a manager. I was a leader in this gout movement. And I knew how hard it is to kind of lead other people. And I was like, no, I want to be at work and kind of have fun and drink beer with my colleagues. So when you represent the company, that becomes different. And I was not sure that I was prepared to take that step. But anyway, I did it. And I saw that I could provide something. I saw that I could provide a value and saw the impact of what I was doing. But coming to that manager contempt, I think I can see where it's coming from. Because as a manager, you always have hidden cards in some ways. And you have that power position, but because maybe you are there to decide salaries and there can be a sense of unfairness and that the manager. And I think the agile movement that we're in right now helps dividing leadership and makes people accountable and dividing the leadership between. It's not all that managers should not have all the answers anymore. Because you feel like before the agile movement, that's what the world looks like. I think so. I think here are cool. Listen to your manager do what they say. Only do what you're told. I like him. I like him. I think about right now is the office space movie. I think the TPS reports and everything and that manager coming with us. Claiming reports and not trusting and not encouraging the creativity of the accountability of the IC or the person. That's no fun in that. I feel like sometimes I hear a lot of stories about managers that do things that maybe they shouldn't or they act in ways that can be poisonous and stuff like that. And it just seems to me like some managers still live in the ways of life of the 80s. That you need to be poisonous to your people in order to increase velocity or you need to ask for your people to ask of you for vacation days and stuff like that. The world isn't like that anymore. And we need to be clear on what we're asking managers to do. And we need to be clear on what responsibility the group can take and teach how to give room and how to take room and how to. What I believe is I think servant leadership. If you Google servant leadership and read about that, that's what we're doing. We're there to remove blockers. We're there to create the structures and to coach people to reach their full potential. Already. How do you do that? That's amazing. We do that. So it kind of be clear on what we're here to deliver to the team and see what blockers we have. See map out the competence and the skill of the team. See what we're lacking. See if anyone want to go that path. Talk to the people to see kind of okay. And I know that people kind of they get pulled brain block when asked, where do you see yourself within five years and so on. But I still do that. I still ask people. And then I have this mind trick. Do you know how you create a statue of an elephant? How? So you take a block of concrete and then you remove everything that is not an elephant. And then you have an elephant left. And that is the metaphor I use because when I'm talking to people because they still need to know where they're going. And often it's very hard to say where you're going, but it's easier to say where you're not going. So like, okay, do you want to become in a leadership role? Do you become a generalist or a specialist? And then you can start thinking. And then I kind of have three meetings. And then I have a pretty good picture of where this person would like to be and kind of how I can develop and how I can look out for that person. And there. So I think that is kind of how you can help individuals reach their potentials. Yeah. You talked a little bit about being a leader and the girls girls. Girls girls. Yeah. And I'm just a person. There is enough like in America. So what is the difference between being a leader in an organization like that, then being a leader in tech? So when I started out as a man, I thought it would be a kind of a difference. And then I realized that I had been leading people that weren't paid to do the job and do it. Yeah. So I had to end, I was leading through kind of we created really big, really large scout camps, you know, for 40,000 people from a lot of countries for over three years. And then you had to have a really clear goal and to be really because people were doing this outside work time. So kind of having that vision, kind of being very clear on kind of what would this would ask us from people and kind of bringing that into my work life. And I had such a head start because in work life, you kind of, you did that, but you also had a salary to give people. They were also there because they got paid, but to be very clear on the vision, why were they there and keeping that target very kind of in their vision. I think that really gave me a head start. Amazing. Which tools from the leadership that you've gained from the scouts? You took to your life as a leader in tech. So to create strong, inclusive, cross-functional teams and making use of everyone's skills, kind of very different people. Because probably like in the scouts, I'm guessing if you do a cross-functional team, you need to have, you know, those two people who can be more physical, those two people who can do like, and they're kind of working. We don't form teams. Teams kind of we work with the teams that are, kind of the small groups, the groups. And they kind of, we have no choice but to kind of use the skills of everyone there. And everyone needs to talk with it and everyone needs to cut it. And you do all that and kind of seeing that and having reflect, okay, what did work sitting by the campfire, talking to people, meeting people, kind of between four eyes and just talking to them and saying that, okay, how did it feel today? And kind of how, how do I, it's like, no, I'm really tired and I was sad when this happened. I'm not talking that through. Yeah. I think bringing that kind of reflection, learning, talking to people, seeing everyone in the team, checking in, kind of every morning, kind of seeing everyone having that laugh at the end of the day, laughing and doing things together. Actually, that's really interesting to think of the motivation because what is their motivation to chop wood? What is our motivation to do the tasks that we do? And you know, I have been emptying latrines on scout camps. What is your motivation for that? Yeah. And still, it's like, you know, having so much fun because it's fun to work. And it's the same thing with this conference. And I've been in Sweden, I'm in the volunteer organization for a Java conference. And it's the same thing to pack 500 goody bags or kind of 1600 good bags at one evening. And you do it in your laugh and with the other, because you want to see that joy on people entering the conference. And I don't get paid for that. It's just fun to make things together. Yeah, we talked a little bit about manager's content. Manager's content, right? Which kind of changes because the identity of the manager needs to change, right? Yeah. What should it be now? So I think we can see all about what it shouldn't be, that controlling and poisonous and toxic and authoritative and everything. But the question that's interesting right now is how do we help managers to transit, to transition into this new? Because we need people with the domain knowledge and everything going. And we need them to understand that they have a value and there is a role for them to play. But we need to be very explicit on what it is and what it isn't. Do you think that a manager needs to be the one with all the answers? Definitely not. Can I why would it? Because the future is so complex. We don't know what challenges lies ahead. And the probability that the manager would have the answers to questions we don't even know what they are, is so slim. So the manager's role is to foster collaboration and synergies and innovation within that team, making sure that we keep our eyes out, that we keep our skills sharpened at all times and kind of really stay relevant. That is the role of a leader of a group if needed. So in the ideal world now that we have one leader role is the product owner and kind of keeping eyes there, but not kind of as a sole, kind of just relaying the product need to the team and creating that vision. Maybe an engineering manager to look out for the team health and all the individuals. But then we also have team members appointing scrum masters to just have someone to look out, kind of do we keep the velocity, are we learning, are we getting more efficient. So there are so many different leadership roles divided on too many of the individuals and the teams. Emma, actually, I'm at the point right now where I need to define together with my product managers some success matrix for the project that we're working on, for the product that we're leading. And I'm trying to think like I'm pushing this as a manager because I want to understand if we're measuring velocity correctly, if we're measuring our people, if we're enabling enough our people. And it's not really specifically an R&D role to do success matrix, right? But as R&D leaders, it's like every year there's more and more responsibilities that R&D leaders need to take on themselves in order to really see because we're the performers eventually. So there's more and more roles that we need to take on ourselves. How can we balance all these roles as engineering managers? Yeah, sure. No, the pressure on engineering managers and then all the levels up until VPR and VPR and D's they do everything. No, I know. I know it's so tough. And kind of being CTO in the leadership team, you often have 80% of the company. It's like a small CEO role. So many things that you need to do. No, I think it's important. If you're at a bigger company with other engineering managers to be t-shaped in that team as well to see, you have your strength in maybe people development or velocity or delivery or maybe DevOps or something else and just to map out the skills so that you can see what are your engineering manager colleagues good at and how can you help each other there to not invent the wheel over and over again because so many things are domain specific to that company that you need to kind of come up with that you can't copy for somewhere else and share that kind of share best practices. But to kind of define it, what is the expectation and keep true to that. And for me, it's always like individual health always comes first for that and kind of team health and delivery and kind of staying true to that so that you see what your important is. Of course, there are many things to do at all times, but to know when you really can let everything else go and just focus on an individual. Yeah. Do you have an example of an organization that you helped where you saw that there was manager contempt and you helped these managers maybe do a turnaround or maybe you allow them get some tools to make a healthier team? Yeah. I've seen an organization and I've helped organizations to be more clear into create a structure around what do we deliver from the teams and engineering managers are all way off and responsible for delivering the how and also in the relationship to the product owner and kind of what is this. So one tool that I've used to make it more concrete is like a pie chart to just relay how is time divided for an engineer and a team and that is me. I don't think many people do that. No, and kind of just to set expectations because communication and conflicts often come from mismanaged expectations. So to and that it differs a bit, but I'm saying that so of course a team's role is to deliver value business value until I deliver that. So at least 50% or 60% will go to road map work and that will entice everything around product discovery and writing the tests and writing the delivery and quality and everything. But then there's always other piece of the pie that is kind of just organization individual and team health which is meetings and going to standups and everything. Maybe that is 15% of the engineers time. And then keeping the lights on just responding to if you have an operational role that could be even more and fixing any bugs that come up that are really urgent and then don't forget kind of 10 or 15% to take excellence and take depth and fixing that that needs to be cleaned out kind of long term to not have a too depth to kind of pay off because then even less time will go to innovation because you're only fixing keeping the lights on and that share well kind of increase if you don't invest time in tech excellence and becoming better of what you do. Yeah, I completely agree that you can't. It's like a task train. If you just do the task after a task after a task and when you say you don't leave time for excellence it's looking at the bigger picture and maybe looking in the long term and when you're doing excellence you're thinking of growth. When you're doing a train of tasks you're not really you'll never be able to do growth. So what do you think is the need for leadership right now in organizations? Right now in Sweden we discuss a lot how to balance innovation and tech depth and when to do what and you know sometimes you just as a developer you put your hacker hat on and just get it out there. But if you do that all the time then kind of performance will be hit, you don't do it fully. So when did this to create those as engineering manager to facilitate that discussion that needs to happen or maybe tech leads sometimes tech leads and engineering managers will share this role but to balance and to talk to and involve the full team and this and I with the full team I also mean the product owner to kind of define what kind of delivery is this is this a perfect concept where we just want to validate the business value. But when we validate the vices in the business value we need to solidify and to make sure that we can maintain the feature long term and that might yeah maybe we need to one or two sprints to making sure that we have the performance that we have the accessibility and everything else but the value of kind of performing those perfect concept is also valid. So what kind of deliverable is that? So you mean like whenever we do a POC maybe we need to define properly what the purpose of the POC is. Yeah and if it is a POC or if it's a long term delivery that we're doing. So if it turns into a long term delivery that we're doing is this a part of the innovation that you refer to? Yeah and in the innovation we need to see that okay first we deliver a proof of concept and then after some time we will say that this will be maintained long term and then we need to solidify it and then we need to spend some cycles on actually making sure that we live up to the quality levels that we need or that we agreed to and maybe we haven't maybe we haven't agreed on that and maybe we haven't talked about that in the organization. How many customers is it okay to say that it works for 10 simultaneous customers that are connected or are we looking at kind of a million? What is that level and we don't want to over-engineer things so we need to come up with kind of what level is good enough? I think a lot of the things that you talk about like measuring how much of the percent of the engineers' day goes on what and how many customers can we benchmark performance on amount of users that can use the system and stuff like that. I don't think a lot of people actually do that and I think it helps so much of the day to day just to understand the long term, the short term. It really focuses a lot of things. It's amazing what you're saying and people are so scared when I'm talking about percentages and kind of talking about measurements and everything. Numbers are so important. Numbers are so important but I don't want people to kind of go out there and create really complex jira tools and the measurements often enough. It's kind of just look at your last sprint. How did you divide over these kind of keeping the lights on with fixing bugs, fixing other things, spending time in meetings and doing the roadmap stuff? What was that and what do we want it to be? Is this what we expect? Because sometimes you also fix, you have a too big SLA. You fix too many bugs for other people where you shouldn't. Kind of no. We are not producing the business value that we want to. Yeah and this is something that needs to be calculated within the delivery rates. Like I delivered a lot but it's just it wasn't the right things. It wasn't the valuable things. Is there anything that you want to share with managers who feel this is I think an angle that is even more interesting to me. Like as a manager, if I feel that there is contempt towards me, is there anything that you can share with managers who are listening right now that can help them at the moment because sometimes we just don't have the right tools to make everything better? No. So no, I would say it's a tough question. But I'm thinking about how much my networks have helped me and looking because I'm doing this. I have high values. I know that I'm doing it kind of not for my own sake and not for prestige or politics or promotion or anything. I want to unlock people and talking to other managers about this and seeing for what it is that someone in the team has an immature picture of what a manager is and that comes out and the frustration is not on me. It sounds on roll and some luggage on that and seeing that seeing that person. And so at one of my assignments the past years, someone said, Cecilia, it's easy to love to hate you. He thought I was too positive, too happy, always, and so on. And he was very frank with me and kind of all the time. And I just kept on. On my values, I talked to him, I kind of tried to be of support. And then after a couple of months, he really understood what I was doing. He totally changed. And I just got a LinkedIn message from him. Kind of, hi, Cecilia, I just wanted to catch up and so on. And it's the same thing that I'm doing when I was a scout leader. I was a scout leader for 17 years. I saw some of the kids were bullying other kids. And I was so mad. And I put down this behavior is not allowed. And I could see they didn't understand. It's like, okay, they don't understand. But I'm there. I'm there as an adult to say no and this behavior. And then when their empathy has, when they're maybe sometimes the coin will drop. And they will understand. And it's the same thing with people here. But if you feel too much manager content and if you don't feel kind of that's someone is saying that you need to feel also that you're doing a good job. You need to feel that. So maybe sometimes it's just to change organizations. Yeah. I think the point about empathy is the main point here because a lot of managers really, they need to understand that it's a big part of the job, you know, to be empathetic towards your people. And the fact that it's not personal like you said before that to try to, you know, separate the personal from the professional. It's really hard. It's true. But it's really crucial. Yeah. You need to do that. Yeah. And to deliver this to... I haven't figured out how. So no. So part of me kind of going as an interim consultant. It's also because I'm so passionate at what I do. I kind of dive in, I put in too many hours and too many things. I kind of get too attached to things. And I want to do that. I want to be that. I want to, I have this drive. But for me kind of going in as a consultant, it really can because I then I get that distance. And I can see what it is. And kind of this will not be forever. And it will not kind of affect it doesn't, of me because I will move on eventually. And I'm here and it tells me kind of take that step one at a time. And this person doesn't understand why they didn't get the promotion. But they will. And if I just lay out objectively, kind of where these were the requirements. And some other person were elected or something. Kind of that was I try to be fair and objective in everything. I say and even if I can see that the person, this was not what the person wanted to. Kind of it's still kind of this was the best thing that I could do. Yeah, because sometimes we're so deep within the situation. Yeah. That the person that comes from the outside and just lays everything down on in writing like this is what was supposed to happen. This is what happened. Now we need to figure out why there was such a difference. It makes all the difference. Yeah, I think it's amazing. And that's what I'm doing. Kind of trying coming in, trying to explicitly map out the structure that I'm seeing. And as just asking people because I have, I can play a new card all the time. And I can say that, okay, this is this what I'm looking at. And can I, this was happening. And then people can say, no, it's actually this and that and pretty much, I'm kind of pretty close to what's happening. And that is helping create the transparency of the structures that we're seeing, creating some structures. And I can document things and so on. And you can also challenge decisions that were previously made. By asking those questions, you can raise things that might have happened with inertia and not intended even. No, exactly. So it's really cool. Yeah, and I can also ask people too. Even if they're afraid to do some change, I can often find the smallest step they can do to test it. And then like, okay, let's, let's feel the organizational change. Not leapy, let's see. And that's the name of my company as well. Be afraid and do it anyway. That's amazing. Because I've been telling managers, it's a carry Fisher quote, you know, from Star Wars, yeah, I've been slayer. So I've been telling kind of every time I've been a manager or managers, I've been always pulling that quote out with a Princess Layon, the carry Fisher, about doing that. Because confidence will follow. It's the action. Kind of just start doing it. And we will be there to support you. Because you are doing this for the first time. We're there and we will be fine. Amazing. So what's the answer to the question? Do we still need managers? Oh, the leadership is more important. It's more important than ever. And if it comes in the role of a manager, we need to see leadership. What is it? And divide it. We need to be more clear on what kind of leadership is this. Because we don't need the manager who knows it all and to have all questions. That's not we need everyone to take on leadership responsibility. And then we need some of the people who have the courage to point out the direction, who have the courage to see and make the structure even better and more efficient. And not everyone has that courage and not everyone sees it. And we need to encourage these people because they're doing a great job. Thank you. Is there any tips that you want to share or anything that you want to say? I should have prepared some. Three tips. You could just have wild or something. No. I don't think you've shared a lot of valuable information. Yeah. No, I don't have it. Yeah, I don't have anything. But you can tip some Israel. Yeah. Best place for ice cream in Java. Oh my God. I think it's so much good shopping in Java. I'm definitely going by there. No, but I think just stay true to your values. Don't forever fall into bitterness because that's not a place you want to be. And before you do that, kind of just say that if you're in a situation that you don't want and there's only three options you can have, it's either to change the situation, to try to change it. And I think that's what we managers do all the time. The second option is to get away from it, to quit. And then there's only one option left. And that is to accept the situation. And bitterness is not an option. Yes. Wow. That's so important. Thank you, Ceciliam. It was such a great pleasure having you. I had a great time. Yeah. It was so insightful. Thank you. Now I'm going to do the closing in English, also for the first time. No. So thanks everyone for joining. Palobar was Gumi on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And see you next time. Thank you, Ceciliam. Thank you so much. Bye.