From Wiring Silicon Valley at Age 8 to AWS Senior TAM: James McDuffie’s Tech Journey | Ep024

Career Downloads Episode 24: James McDuffie

In this episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez welcomes James McDuffie, Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, for an insightful discussion about building a successful career in technology. James shares his unique journey that began at age 8, running network cables through Silicon Valley office buildings for his father’s ISP business.

Key Discussion Points:

• James’s early exposure to technology through his father’s business
• Building his first computer and developing a passion for tech
• The transition from college to his first professional role at GE
• Spending 17 years at GE and growing from software engineer to technical leader
• Moving to AWS and adapting to a new technology landscape
• The importance of mentorship in career development
• Understanding when to seek new mentors as your career evolves
• Balancing technical expertise with business acumen
• The value of admitting what you don’t know

Notable Quotes:
“I come to work to solve really cool engineering problems.” – James McDuffie
“The opportunities are broader than you think.” – James McDuffie

Guest Bio:
James McDuffie serves as a Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS, where he helps enterprise customers optimize their cloud deployments. Prior to AWS, he spent 17 years at GE, progressing from software engineer to principal architect. His passion for technology began in childhood, leading to a career marked by continuous learning and growth.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-mcduffie/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelmartinez-it/

#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #AWS #SoftwareEngineering #TechnicalLeadership

Manuel: Welcome everyone, so my name is Manu el Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their career, their background, and their experience, to learn how they manage their career over time, with the ultimate goal to really be able to uncover actionable advice for you to go ahead and be able to use as you manage your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me James McDuffie, so he and I currently work together, we’ve had conversations in the past, similiar to what the one we’re about to have today, and I’m very excited because he has had a very unique and interesting career. I like a lot of the things that he’s done, the way he approaches learning and kind of his career trajectory, so again, plug in and download the knowledge. So thanks James, I appreciate you coming in.

James: Yeah, happy to be here. You know, we’re down here for re:Invent and might as well make it a double trip.

Manuel: Right, take advantage of the time here.

James: Exactly.

Manuel: If you don’t mind kind of just telling me what your current roles and responsibilities are, and just kind of a summary of what that is, and then eventually we’ll work our way up to that place. Sure, so my current role is a Senior Technical Account Manager for Amazon Web Services, like yourself, and a part of that role is just helping some of our largest enterprise support customers in their deployments on the cloud. So I like to think of it as TAMs are kind of unique in my opinion on the AWS side because we’re less of just someone that’s there to help manage support cases and much more there to be operational architects on the existing infrastructure that you have. So you have solution architects that are very focused on building out new technological solutions, whereas you and I are much more engaged on large migrations and, you know, making sure that they’re running as optimized as possible. Are they right sizing correctly? Are they modernizing correctly? What’s their strategy to do that? What’s the security posture across their organization? So it’s really just, I would like to say an executive level consultant to some of the largest tech companies on the planet because that’s really what it is. I think it’s a very fun and engaging role because every company kind of has their own challenges and you kind of play it by ear to understand what their problem is right now and not only are you trying to be very tactical to solve their current problems, but also very strategic to prevent these problems from ever happening again and then to make sure that they’re architecting fundamentally to prevent those types of problems from ever occurring in the future across any of their newer, you know, future products and strategies. So, you know, it’s a very, very rewarding career path, I think, but one that I was quite, I never thought I’d be in a role like this just because of, you know, we’ll probably talk about in a little bit, but what my background came from on the software engineering side, I never thought I’d be in this type of a role, but it’s fun and I enjoy it. So it’s a great opportunity for me to continue working with some of these large scale customers.

Manuel: Perfect. And now we’ll kind of get into, you know, your background and we’ll lead into what eventually got you here.

James: Sure.

Manuel: What I’ve been doing with guests is really just kind of start off if you just kind of give me a brief summary of kind of where you grew up, your background and eventually what kind of got you interested into technology.

James: Yeah, so my dad was a software engineer starting off in his career and so I was born in LA here in, you know, just over the hill in California. And early on, my dad tried working for a bunch of companies and he kind of just decided the entrepreneurial route was his. So he started his own company and we had an ISP. So, you know, he had a bank of 144 modems in the closet and we had a T1 line into our house and he kind of needed help doing things. My dad was a big guy who was 300 pounds, six foot two, just, you know, just a very massive man and, you know, strong, tall, broad shoulders. And he couldn’t get into a lot of places. So as his, you know, eight year old, seven year old kid, he’d be like, Hey, you want to run some wire for me? And so I, you know, I started working for my dad at a young age, not as an employee, but more just hanging out with my dad. And I would run networking cables and electrical cables and, you know, I got to use all the punch down tools and stuff. And so he ran that business for a number of years all the way until I got into high school. But during that time, I did a lot. We were in the middle of the Bay Area, you know, a lot of the buildings back then weren’t built for technology or internet. And so whether it was AMD or Intel or Silicon Graphics, SGI, they needed their buildings wired. And so they brought my dad in and my dad’s like, Hey, I can’t climb up in that rafters. Do you want to just pull these wires for me? So, you know, I was eight, nine years old pulling wires in rafters at large companies in Silicon Valley. And that’s kind of where I got my interest in it, because I was always around tech in totally different varieties of ways. I remember my neighbor, you know, because we’re in San Jose, and that’s where kind of we grew up in LA, then we moved to the Bay Area. And in that was like 1988, we moved to the Bay Area. And so I was going through middle school and elementary school and stuff. And my next door neighbor, he did a computer upgrade. And I think he was upgrading to like a 286. So he had a 286 motherboard that he was getting rid of. And I bought a 286 motherboard off him for like 20 bucks or something, right? Because he just wanted to get money off it. So I brought it home. And I was like, you know, I was playing with my dad, dad’s old Commodore and all those computers, because we had tons of them, because my dad was in tech. And my dad asked me, what are you going to do with that? I was like, I’m going to build a PC. He’s like, you’re going to build a PC with a motherboard? You don’t even have a processor. I was like, what’s a processor? Cuz I didn’t know. You didn’t know what a CPU was back then as a kid, right? And so he took me to Fry’s Electronics, and he helped me put together my first computer. And, you know, for my birthday, I had a 286 Compaq with all custom built parts with Windows 3.11 for, you know, Workgroups installed. And it got me super excited. I remember the first time, I don’t know what it is about memories, but you have like the smells and the senses all kind of locked into your memory. I just remember sitting at the desk in my room with my first PC, just absolutely flabbergasted that I had my own computer, right? And so that was super exciting to me. And over the next several years, I just, you know, my dad would install servers for people, you know, he was running his ISP, so it, you know, helped his customers install software and stuff on their computers. And then sometime in the mid 90s, you had a bunch of the larger ISPs start coming in, like AT&T would start buying up all the little ISPs because, you know, ISPs were just individual companies back then. And so he had a contract with a company called WebNexus, and he had an exclusive contract. So we had a server at WebNexus on the backbone in the hub at their offices. And when AT&T bought them up, they moved all the offices to their big data center in San Francisco. But my dad had a full time contract with AT&T. So our server was in the AT&T data center in San Francisco. And I remember my dad needed to make some hardware changes. And AT&T was just, they didn’t like the fact that they had this like little tiny private company with a server. So you go to, you meet them at the front gate, all guarded and secured off, and they take you downstairs into the back, all these huge server rows for all the, you know, their switch equipment. And my dad’s server was it locked in a room in the back corner all by itself, just because now my dad didn’t keep it for very long, because it’s, you know, at some point, it was just easier to run it from your own house and not have to worry about all that extra rigmarole. But it was just kind of like that, those types of experiences that just kind of stay with you as you kind of grow up. And so I was very into computers. And then he got a job at a company called PLX Technology. So they make the PCI controller chips for, you know, PCI boards globally, right? And I remember that I went into the office one day, and he had a, his whole team working on a bunch of projects in the back room. And I just remember saying, Hey, dad, I’m going to get some homework done. And I was like, Hey, Greg in the back room is having a problem with one of the servers. Can you take a look at it? I was like, sure, just not even thinking about it. So when in the back room, and it was, I remember it being something simple, like there’s three conflicting drivers and just had uninstall them all and install the right one and it fixed the whole problem. Something that’s super simple. And but I was like 13. So maybe it’s simple for, you know, you would think for like a professional engineer, but for a 13 year old to kind of come in and solve that problem in the early 90s, not…kind of abnormal. And so I walked back by my dad’s office and he was in a meeting with somebody else at the time. I didn’t even know who the guy was. And I was like, Hey, dad, fix Greg’s problem. I’m going to go grab a Coke and do my homework. And so my dad came came over to me where I was doing homework a couple of minutes later, he’s like, Hey, that was the CEO. And he was shocked that you solved Greg’s problem because Greg’s been working on it for two weeks. And he wants to offer you a job. And so I was 13 years old, as a full blown, you know, information technology engineer in Sunnyvale off Matilda Road in the Bay Area doing IT work. But, you know, freshmen in high school, just, I don’t know, it’s very kind of mind boggling.

Manuel: Part of it also. And I’m sure the, the reason that you didn’t think it was like such a big deal is just again, you have exposure at eight, nine years old, you run a cable. So to you, it was just like a thing that you did. You already had your computer, you’re messing around with it. So it’s not like you’re coming as a 13 year old and this is the first time you’ve ever had a, you know, any kind of exposure or experience to this.

James: Actually, it’s kind of weird. I remembered this. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he used to ride a motorcycle. That’s probably why I ride a motorcycle because I just thought he was so cool because he rode a motorcycle. I just remember him pulling me aside one day and it’s like, dude, calm down. You’re making the rest of us look bad. I was just like, oh, okay, whatever. I’m just going to keep doing what my dad tells me to do because he’s your boss and I’m just installing computers, dude. I don’t know what you’re talking.

Manuel: Is that something that you found common with that guy telling you that, hey, take it easy because it is something that I’ve encountered in my career where people are just like, hey, you’re doing something because you enjoy it. It comes easier, right? The more you’re doing this, the more you’re exposed to it. Did you find that common where people are like, hey, slow down because I found that a lot, but more on the public sector side where they’re like, hey, there’s only so much work. They were very much like, hey, let’s take it easy. Let’s make it last.

James: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m a big believer in the Pareto law, which is 10% of the people do 90% of the work. I think there’s a lot of people out there that they got a job and they just, it’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they just have a different mindset on what’s important to them. People prioritize things very differently. I think you and I are those types of individuals that our prioritization is we enjoy what we do. We enjoy technology and it’s not about getting work done. It’s about just doing the things that have the biggest impact and have the biggest impact on those around you and your community and your customers and your technology and your business. I don’t really like to work on unimpactful things. I think people have a different concept of what the goal of their job is. They come to work typically to get a paycheck. I come to work to solve really cool engineering problems. I think that’s taken very differently. I got into computers because they were fun. I never got into computers because I got paid. I’ve never been motivated by title or pay and the only reason I care about title is because it gives you access to those bigger and bigger projects that have more and more impact. I want a title because of the impact that I can have and the projects I can work on, but I don’t really care about a title by itself. It means nothing to me. It’s more about what can I do and what are you as an individual doing. I think that’s the difference between a lot of people and that’s okay. We all have different priorities. We all have different goals. I know people that became an engineer. They don’t want to be a team lead. They don’t want to be a leader within the organization. They never signed up to be a CEO. They just like being an engineer and then doing because it pays for all the other things that they want in their life. That’s fine. That’s 100% fine, but there’s a very big difference between people that are just driven to solve problems and driven to do what I consider fun or you consider fun, but to other people, it just looks like more work. Again, that’s okay. It’s just realizing that yours and my priorities are very different than everybody else’s. As long as I can mentally adjust that, I kind of ignore what everybody else says because their priorities are very different than yours and mine. Talking about competency and why you and I, people look at us as like so much more capable than everybody else. Again, I think it’s just priorities. When I was a kid, I did computers because they were fun. They were interesting. When there’s a driver conflict, I wanted to figure out why. Why am I having this problem? I lovingly love hate relationship, beating my head against a steel post. I hit a problem and I don’t want to give up on finding the right solution. You just keep hitting the post until you solve it. A part of that problem solving is the fun. Then the next time you run into something similar, you’ve already solved it before. That’s just in your back pocket. Now you know how to solve it and you can more easily get past those types of problems where other people who are unwilling to get through that difficult stretch, they’re so used to solving it the roundabout way that they don’t have your expertise to solve it in a very clear fashion. That’s what allows you to accelerate. In AWS, we talk about building mechanisms and building flywheels and being able to figure out how to scale things, especially yourself as an individual. I think those are the things is because you figured out how to solve the hard problems in a very simple way, it allows you to scale much more effectively than people that decide not to spend that effort on those hard problems. Again, it’s just because they’re not interested in solving the hard problems.

Manuel: You bring up a good point and I really think that it’s that priority, but also it’s that curiosity and it’s the enjoyment. If you find a passion for it, I don’t think where people are like, hey, follow your passion. I don’t know that I always agree with that, but I think that if you try a bunch of different things, you’ll find something that really gets you interested. You start to develop a passion for it and then, like you said, you and I like banging our heads against the wall because I’ve done it repeatedly and I will continue to do it, but it’s because I see myself a lot in the things that you do and the things you talk about is I have that curiosity of how does this work? Why can’t I fix this? I’ll have a dent and I’ll go to sleep and I’ll come back the next day and I’m like, it’s true. We’re pulling all these experiences and sometimes and my wife will tell me all the time because she’ll in there. I can’t figure this out. I can’t figure this out and eventually I have to just step away. I think sometimes we get so much of a tunnel vision that just takes it a little bit and you’re like, oh, okay, I get it.

James: Well, I don’t know about you, but there’s often times where I can’t solve a problem and I’ve been working on it for so long. I go to bed and I have a weird dream around solving the problem that makes no sense in my dream. Like the dream is totally psychedelically weird or something and then I wake up the next morning and I know the answer. I’m like, that’s how I need to solve this problem, but you do need to take a step back sometimes and your brain just needs to process a bunch of data. When I was early in my career, I was working with a bunch of our senior leadership because…

Manuel: So before you kind of get into that, I want to kind of, I think I know where you’re going, so then it’s the only reason I’m going to stop you. So you went through, you’re doing this as a 13-year-old and at some point eventually, and again, it’s not going to be a linear, but I kind of want to at least show the progression from there. You’re working in the, you know, basically in Silicon Valley. What did you decide that you were going to do for towards moving towards your career? Did you decide, hey, I’m going to go to college or I’m just going to start working and kind of what kind of led you and what drove you to make that decision?

James: Well, it’s weird because this is probably very not normal, right? When I was six years old, I told my mom or my grandma, I was like, I’m going to be a CEO of a multinational software organization so that I can take care of you, grandma. Well, that was my, you know, six-year-old version of myself, right? And so that’s kind of always been a truism inside of what I wanted to do. Now, at that point, I didn’t understand the difference between an executive versus like a distinguished engineer, an individual contributor versus like a manager. Like, there’s very different roles at that level, but that was my path. That was always my path from a very young age. And when my, you know, in terms of college or not college, I remember my dad going up for a CTO position or, you know, chief technology officer for an organization role, and they turned him down because he didn’t have his degree. They found somebody else in the outside of the org that had a degree. He was on the list of candidates. Dude, a senior director in the Bay Area, but he was making over a quarter of a million dollars a year in the middle of the 90s, which was like insanity back then. Really good in terms of stock market returns and everything else at the dot-com bubble era, right? Just, I just remember just craziness at that time. You know, like at our industry, I’m like, how can we don’t get to live that? That was amazing, right? That doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not driving a Ferrari. What’s going on? But I just remember that very vividly that my dad had that conflict in his life. And I just immediately decided that I had to go to college. There was no not going to college. And it wasn’t because I thought I needed to go to college, because I was already in technology and interest in that stuff. It was just, I don’t want that to be something that prevents me from getting to where I want.

Manuel: You don’t want it to be a roadblock at some point in the future?

James: Exactly, 100%. Now, whether that means you have to get a master’s or a PhD or something, I think it depends on the career field. Some require that. Like a doctor requires an actual PhD. But in the tech company or tech field, I think at least having a bachelor’s is the bare minimum to say that that’s not going to become a blocker later in your career. So I kind of decided on that. But by the time I got to my senior year of high school, I was kind of burned out on technology a lot. And I just want to take take a step back and had a kind of a crazy summer between senior year high school and freshman year college. I went to college and I just wasn’t interested in taking computer classes. So I kind of started with a minor in philosophy. And then I was talking to a pastor friend of mine at the time, you know, a mentor. And he was like, well, you know the difference between philosophy and theology? I was like, what? He was like, one believes that, you know, one explains or answers the questions of the universe from the perspective that there is no God. And one answers the questions of the universe that there is a God. And, and I kind of accepted that as like, okay, that makes that makes perfect sense. I agree with that. And so because of that, I shifted, you know, I got my, my, my, you know, bachelor or associate of arts in psychology, or not psychology, but philosophy. And then I decided to go into Napa Valley for a college that was a part of my religion. So Seventh-day Adventism is what the religion I grew up in in my family household as a kid. And so I decided to go to Napa Valley to Pacific Union College, which is a Seventh-day Adventist college. And, you know, I started with a theology minor or major, because I figured theology makes sense. I got like one, one semester in and I realized that it wasn’t theology, because I like very theological questions. You and I have very broad conversations all the time. And I realized that they were just, it was religion, right? There’s a very big difference between theology and religion. Religion is, here’s the rules and here’s why you should follow them. Theology is like, why are we here? Why does it matter? Trying to figure out that, like, why are these things important? What, what, what is the meaning of life? And I didn’t feel like it was really there. And so after a semester of that, I just kind of decided to switch over into computer science, because it was what I was good at. And then I almost quit computer science, because I got a teacher that he, so I took an entry-level Java, Java class. And I was good at assembler. I was good at like QBasic, like linear programming at the time, but I hadn’t had any experience with structured programming languages. And so he immediately jumped in week one into very complex data structures. I got lost. And we had a large major. And within the first year, half of the major left to a different university for the same major. That kind of gives you an idea. And I went to go talk to the head of the college or the head of the, you know, the computer science department. He’s like, I don’t get it. You have A’s in assembler, which are way harder than, you know, these higher-level programming languages. You should be acing these classes. And I was getting C’s barely passing. And thankfully, that instructor decided to move on into other areas of interest. And then we hired another professor named Robert Ordonez. And I remember just my senior year going into Robert’s office and saying, hey, I’m a senior. I suck at programming. And that I’m the worst student in your major. And he looked at me very funny. He’s like the two you get. You get A’s in your math classes and A’s in your assembly-level classes. How are you the worst in the major? And I was like, I can’t do programming. And so he’s like, we’ll solve this. I’ll make you my student aide. Turned me into a student aide. We were doing a list-based language right off the gate to help people called, I don’t know, what is it? Was it Scheme? I think it was Scheme is the name of the language. And he started going over all the basics. The basics in terms of these are variables. And this is how it works in memory. And this is how basic loops and stuff work. And he brought it down so fundamentally that all of a sudden, the concept of grouping objects and ideas and having a template of an object to create an instance of an object for class instantiation and stuff, which is basic computer science concepts, all of a sudden it just all made sense. And I oddly went from the worst person in the major to one of the best in the major in like three months.

Manuel: Is a lot of that just that other instructor was just, they were going at such a high level that it just wasn’t.

James: So here’s how bad it was, right? So it’s an intro to programming 101. And we started with Java, right? And he kept giving us large applications to go figure out problems. Never dealt with these types of coding problems before. And then I figured, you know what I’ll do? I’ll just take the C++ class because it’s an intro class. And I’ll immediately get it. I’ll give myself a second chance. So the next semester I signed up for C++ programming. He’s like, Hey, you’ve all taken Java class. Let’s do C++ for Java programmers and jump immediately to the intermediate level. I was lucky I had a guy named Andrew in my class. He was kind of a brilliant, brilliant guy. And, you know, he kind of acknowledged where my strengths and my weaknesses were. He was kind of getting what where the assignments were because he was ahead of programming at that point where I was in my learning landscape. And so a couple of the projects had some graphics and I was really good at graphics. My dad had a friend that worked at Adobe when we were kids or when I was a kid. And not when my dad was a kid, obviously, but when I was a kid. And we used to get like every piece of Adobe software for $1 each. From the company. And so my dad was, you know, first on the line. So I’ve been playing with Photoshop and all the Illustrator, all those things since like version one. So I’m really good at those types of tools just because I always had a lot of fun with them. And so Andrew would do the hard coding projects. And I was kind of learning conceptually what I should be doing. And then I would just do all the graphics to make everything look pretty. And so we both got good grades in that class, but I didn’t learn a lick of C++ programming at all. So yeah, it was it was challenging with that instructor. It just, you know, I didn’t because I was so good at other things in computer, I was good at IT. I was good at basic. I was good at assembler. I didn’t know I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get high level programming languages. It just it was a blocker for me.

Manuel: And so having you said it was Robert, right, Robert Ordonez, so him going through and breaking that down, you know, and just really kind of going from the basics. Obviously, it seems like something at that point clicked. And I’ve noticed, you know, over time, and you tell me if this is kind of the start of that influence where you really like to dig deep and really understand things fundamentally. Is that something that came across at that point in time? Because I mean, even outside of technology, like you and I have had broad conversations, but you always break it down, you know, I know that you’re into fitness and nutrition, but it’s not like, Hey, do these things in complex, like I don’t do a lot of that. But you explain it, and you always tend to kind of break things down at that fundamental knowledge. Is that where that came from?

James: Oh, absolutely. I think with Robert, the impact that I have, sorry, getting a little emotional, the thing that really impacted my career was A that somebody cared that much about my success, right, immediately. And then B, in summer, he made me his teacher’s aide. He made me took a risk on me. But more importantly, he literally said to me, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think I don’t think you’re a bad student. I think you just aren’t getting something. How do we how do we change our perspective and look at it from a different angle? Just that idea of pausing, you have all this complexity. Why is it complex? Because you’re looking at it at the wrong angle, right, and being able to take a step back and just make things as simple as possible. Often, there’s some in any learning, regardless of your learning style or whatever in school, the reason people don’t get things is because there’s some little hiccup or some basic concept that they’re missing, right? And once they get that, everything else makes sense. And that was such a light bulb moment, not just for me as an individual, but for my whole career, that anytime I get stuck now, I just try to reframe. And, you know, anytime somebody’s trying to explain something very complicated, I just immediately think in my head, Okay, this is too complicated. What, what, what is the simplest way of looking at it first, before we scale back up to that complexity, right? And so, yeah, I always, that was life changing for me. Like, it was absolutely, it was kind of funny, because I went back a number of years ago, and I wrote this, this, this, you can go to my LinkedIn, but I wrote a recommendation for Robert, because he really did change the entire trajectory of my life by taking the time to help me through that, that really, what I thought was, I told my, I just remember calling my dad once, because my dad gave me a C++ book, and I still have it, because my dad passed away. So it’s really meaningful to me, but he, he signed it, and wrote a little message in it. And I felt bad going to my dad telling my dad, I don’t think I can do this. I can’t, I’ve done classes C++ and Java, I’m just not getting it. And my dad really came back and said, you should stick with this just a little longer. And the combination of him telling me to stick with it a little longer, and Robert being able to help me reframe it, yeah, I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am right now without those people in your life helping you get over those, those hard, hard parts, right?

Manuel: Yeah, no, I 100% agree, and I’ve had people that have touched my career, and even just me personally, right? And they just, you don’t always realize it at that time, but then afterwards you’re like, Oh my gosh, if it wasn’t for this person, or that one thing that they helped me or said and did, like, you know, it’s, it is very much that. And I had, so my dad owned a construction company. And my mom’s on my mom’s side. So my dad owned the construction company. One of my uncles on my mom’s side was working with us, and I was going to college. And at one point my dad was kind of teaching me to kind of run the business. And my uncle saw that and, you know, I’m at college at the time and he was like, What are you doing? Oh, I’m learning how to do this to kind of take over. And, you know, he’s like, Well, what about school? I’m like, Oh, I’m learning technology. I can implement that. And he frankly sat me down and he was like, Listen, this type of work, it’s back breaking labor.

James: Yeah,

Manuel: Right. He goes, You have an opportunity that I didn’t have. I just, I went to, I think he told me like fifth grade. That’s it. This is all I know. And he, you know, had a ranch stuff like that. And he just, he sat down and said, Listen, I’m not saying blow your dad off.

James: Sure.

Manuel: But he could obviously he saw that, Hey, something in your, in your, in, you know, my demeanor was saying, Okay, I’m, this is it. I’m going to take over this business. And he was like, No, don’t blow off your dad. Do the things that he’s asking you to do. But focus on, I was going for an MIS degree. He’s like, focus on that. See where that will take you. He’s like, the goal is for you to get better, right? Like in his mind, he was like, every generation should be getting better, right? Like you’re, you know, like, he’s doing this, but you really need to kind of go and take that action. And I just, I wouldn’t be where I’m at now if it wasn’t for that one moment because.

James: Just those little conversations, those little nudges, those little pushes, it’s, you know, it’s funny because I think about Neil deGrasse Tyson. And, you know, he’s, people always ask like, what happens if we see a meteor coming towards the planet, right? One of the things he says is we nudge it. What do you mean we’d nudge it? Well, if you nudge it far enough away, just a tenth of a degree, you know, it won’t hit the planet. But that, that’s, that’s your career trajectory, that that’s your life trajectory. There’s these little, little tiny nudges that have such a course impact over the overall trajectory of your lives. And, and it’s, it really is the mentors and, you know, or, or, or, you know, just even people that give you that little bit of insight that you weren’t thinking about that can radically change the, the overall dimensions of, of where you end up. It just really is.

Manuel: Obviously, you know, you went through, you graduated college and then what was kind of the mindset or your idea of what you were going to do with that afterwards?

James: Yeah.

Manuel: Or what happened, even if you don’t know, even if you didn’t have a plan?

James: Yeah, I think there’s a couple things to that, right? Is so when Robert came in and I, it all clicked, I remember Robert telling me my final semester, he was like, dude, I feel like I failed as a teacher. And I was like, what do you mean, dude? I would never be where I am without you, right? And, you know, that comment has stayed with me. He’s like, because I don’t think I taught you anything. But, but just going back one second, right? It’s like, they don’t think that they had that big of an impact, but they don’t realize how big of an impact they actually had, right? But I spent, after that moment, I got so into programming that, you know, he would ask for a couple simple lines of code, and I would write an entire application that was multi -threaded with all, like, I think I wrote a, what was it? It, we built a web server, and I built, you know, IIS, just like a Microsoft IIS with virtual directories and everything all on top of it. And, you know, it was, so I built this IIS system right on top of, of his little tiny program. And he was asking for like a three-line piece of project code that was due on Friday, and he gave us a weekend because somebody else didn’t finish it. And all of a sudden, I added an entire application around it. And so I just started spending so much time doing that stuff that I was just like, this is fun, right? I love it. And so when I got out of school, unfortunately, it was right at the middle of the dot-com bubble bust. It was 2005. You know, I graduated from Napa, but at that point, my family had already moved to Carson City, Nevada, or Minden, Nevada at the time. And the interesting thing about moving to Minden, Nevada is, is just like right now, at the top of the dot-com bubble, a lot of companies were leaving California to look at other places that were cheaper to run business, right? And Nevada was one of those places because no, no state taxes, really business friendly, close enough to the Bay Area. So it’s not like, you know, on the other side of the country or something. And, but when the dot-com bubble burst, they all pulled back, right? Now you’re seeing it now where Tesla, the Gigafactory’s out in Nevada, you got Panasonic, you got, you know, Google building a data center. So you’re seeing that same expansion happen now, but that happened in 2005. And then it all pulled back right after the dot -com bubble burst. And so I remember getting out of college and writing all the companies that I dreamed about working at, right? At that point, you know, it wasn’t Nvidia yet. It was like 3DFX. It was, you know, ID Software for gaming, right? It was AMD, IBM, like you name the big companies, I sent resumes. I was putting out 30 to 40 resumes a week every week. No response, like zero, right? The responses I did get is like, not enough experience. Right. And as, you know, as a kid out of college, I used my IT experience for programming experience, but they’re not the same thing. They’re really, you know, IT and programming are really two different fields. And so I couldn’t get a job. And so that kind of really squashed me in terms of what I wanted to do because I wanted to move back into the Bay Area because I grew up in the Bay Area. I knew the Bay Area. You know, I could pick the companies in Sunnyvale that I wanted to work at, like the Google campus or the Yahoo campus. Like those are cool places. I’ve loved the work. Nothing. And so I was kind of really disheartened. I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And so I was at church and one of the churchgoers at the time, he was the director of information technology at the hospital, Carson Tahoe Hospital. And he’s like, if you’re interested, I can get you a job in IT. You have a great IT resume. Come work for me for a couple months until you figure things out. I was like, all right, cool. So I came in there and within a couple of months, I wrote a content management system for all of the documents in the entire hospital because they didn’t have a lot of content management products back then. So I just, you know, built one into Active Directory and tied it all in and built a bunch of web pages and, you know, allowed people to upload and download documents based on permissions and did that whole thing for about a year, year and a half. And I was still putting out resumes to other companies and just not getting a lot. And then a good friend of mine from Water Polo, a guy named Donnie, he was like, you know, I work for GE. I’m sure I could talk to the engineering team and see if you could get a, you know, an interview. And so I was like, yeah, I mean, GE is cool, but I really want to be, I mean, GE is industrial, right? I was thinking high tech, startup, Microsoft, like those types of companies. And I was like, yeah, okay, I guess I’ll go take a look. And so I remember getting on the phone for the phone interview and a guy asked me a question about a data structure, you know, it’s, it’s hash tables, right, dictionaries and stuff. And I’d never used one before for whatever reason. I did a lot of data, data structures, but never dictionaries. And he asked me a question about it. And I remember feeling so deflated on that interview because I didn’t have the answer to one of the questions that he asked me.

Manuel: And it was probably one of the only ones, like everything else.

James: It was a funny thing. I didn’t pay attention to all the answers I answered right. I just, that one thing that I couldn’t answer, I felt really bad about. So I spent literally the next week reading up on data structures on the stuff that I hadn’t touched just to make sure that I was ready. But he’s, I got a second on-site interview and I went in and it was a panel interview. And I was asking me some questions. And I just remember, all of a sudden, somebody asked me a question on CPUs and, you know, scheduling tasks on CPUs. And it’s a topic that I find interesting because as a PC builder and a PC gamer, I care about, you know, all the specs on a computer, how many processors you have, the Hertz rates, the front side bus speeds, the backside bus speeds, the memory, how it all works. So, I mean, on the hardware IT side, you know, I know that stuff. And when I got into those topics in school, those are the ones that I easily understood how all of it worked. And, you know, but that’s more of a, like a hardware, firmware, base level OS type of question. It’s not really a high level software question. You touch on it a little bit when you’re building programs, but not always a ton. And so, I just remember the panel asking me a follow up and then a follow up and then a follow up. And then one of the guys leaves for the people show up in the room. And all of a sudden, I got like eight people in the room just asking me questions about, you know, threading algorithms, algorithms on on CPUs. And I was like, Hey, I think I answered your question. You know, should I keep going? And one of the guys that is like, Yeah, yeah, we’re learning a lot. Keep going. I was just, it was like this weirdest experience of an interview ever. I didn’t really know how to respond to it, right? But I continued kind of the stuff and they asked me a couple more questions on it. And I wasn’t sure how I did on the interview because it was technically my first interview ever. You know, just a weird experience. And so we were going out to lunch and a guy I know now really well, his name is named Brian. We were on the way to lunch. Did I do okay? I mean, you guys brought in a bunch of other people. I was kind of confused what was going on. He was like, No, no, we’re taking you out to lunch. That means it’s going to be a yes, you’re fine. I was like, Oh, okay, because apparently we took people out to lunch if it was a yes, right? And so we went out to lunch and I got a job offer. And, you know, it was really weird because fast forward 15 years later, I’m talking to the hiring manager, Ken, the one that asked me that question about dictionaries on the phone. And I was like, man, I didn’t think I was going to get the job because I failed that interview question on the phone. He’s like, No, dude, I was worried we weren’t going to get you and that you were way too good for us and that you were going to go to some Bay Area company. And I was like, Really? I didn’t even think I did do it. I thought I did horrible. So, you know, it’s that really weird hindsight. But that got me in the door to becoming an engineer at GE.

Manuel: And that’s just that experience, right? So you’re probably not getting the responses from all these other companies, right?

James: Yeah.

Manuel: This is your first interview. So yeah, of course, you’re going to feel like, man, am I doing correctly?

James: Totally confused.

Manuel: I can only imagine the very first time you’re like, I need to answer every single question, right? Otherwise.

James: Well, how would I get the job?

Manuel: Exactly.

James: Right? So yeah, that was such a such a weird experience going, you know, looking back at it. But yeah, it was just very surreal.

Manuel: And as you’re getting that offer again, this is the first time that you’ve had to interview you’re going through this process. Was it something where you just decided, Hey, you know what, they made me an offer, you just took it because

James: Oh, yeah, I didn’t say I didn’t say yes. I didn’t do anything. I just said, Yes.

Manuel: Yes.

James: Because I was, you know, you put out that many resumes and you get no interviews at all. And somebody finally interviews and you get an offer, you take it. Well, you know, here’s the other thing I look at it and you and I’ve talked about this before. I really think that you’re in your best position to look for another job when you have a job. I think you’re in a very bad position when you don’t have a job. So it didn’t matter what the offer was, I was taking the job. And if I decided that I wanted a different job later on, I would go find one because, you know, coming from the Bay Area, people move around 18 months to every year or every two years, right? So I had it in my head conceptually, that I was going to be changing jobs every two years, regardless, because that was Bay Area culture that I came from. So yeah, I was, yes, give me the job. I’ll be looking for another job in two years. Anyways, why does it matter? This is my first job out of college. Absolutely. Just immediately took it. Didn’t even think about it.

Manuel: And what was the position and what did you end up to kind of start now out as?

James: Oh man, I mean, that was like night or that was that was 2005. I think my, remember I was in Nevada, right?

Manuel: Right.

James: In in Minden, Nevada, which is like kind of middle of nowhere in some respects. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice strong community and a lot of retirees go down there. But, you know, you’re definitely not next to a big tech hub at all, right? So I think at the time, it was like $52,000 a year starting as a basic software engineer.

Manuel: And then what were you doing? Like, what were you doing software-wise for GE? And I’m assuming this was still up in Northern Nevada.

James: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so I got hired by a company called Bentley Nevada. And Bentley Nevada was a subdivision, a company underneath GE, oil and gas at the time. And so they did industrial protection systems and diagnostic software. So they have a piece of software called System One. Easiest way to think about it is a, you know, an MRI machine for industrial machinery, right? I mean, you’re not taking scans, but you’re recording data and you’re able to overlay that data to understand the behaviors of what’s going on in those machines. So you think about these large industrial turbine, it has a huge set of metal casings on it. You’re not opening and closing that thing all the time, ever, if ever, you never want to open it because that could cause damage or whatever to your, to your millions of dollars turbine. And so because of that, you want to instrument it. So you understand what’s going on inside of it. So if there is a problem, you can diagnose the problem. So that was the business. And I got put, and they have different pieces of the business. They have hardware, firmware, which is industrial protection system. So if a machine goes out of a safety region, it sits next to the control system. So the control system turns the machine on and off, runs all the parameters. The safety system is an individual system. It’s completely separate. And if it detects things that are out of safety ranges, it immediately turns off the machine to prevent any catastrophic damages, right? So that was their hardware and IOT business. And then in their diagnostic business, they had a large piece of enterprise level software. Back then, most of it was written on C, C++ with an MSC front end. They were using the Microsoft SQL server back end. And so I was put on the diagnostics software platform as a software engineer. And the first team I was put on was just, you know, testing for the most latest release. And so I was thrown on the testing team and just debugging software and trying to understand root cause of issues that were being brought up and identified by the field as we’re going through a full release and testing cycle with very waterfall. So like three months of testing to verify that your software actually works. And since it’s protection systems, there’s a lot more rigor on that kind of stuff. So yeah, just a lot of testing on the testing team for probably like the first three months.

Manuel: Now, I know that you spent quite a few years there at GE, right? So your initial goal was, I’m only going to be here for a couple of years anyway, and I’m going to roll out. But I know and we mentioned trajectory, right? That’s not what ended up happening. And, you know, you didn’t leave, but you did progress up the chain. So just kind of, what is it that made you want to stay? And then how did you kind of develop your career within there over that lifespan?

James: Yeah, I ended up staying 17 years, which shocked me completely. I was never planning on staying 17 years. So yeah, so I started working there and I was, you know, just an engineer. And after that three months on testing, I got put on to a side project that the manager at the time that he’d had three other teams look at and nobody had been able to solve, essentially, it was a database optimization problem. And so over the next four months, I came up with an architecture and a design, and I worked with two engineers from India. And we built the whole platform out. It was called the database maintenance manager. And, you know, we had a lot of database problems, they wanted to auto magically fix the problems, but the problems weren’t root caused in automation. And so the automation actually caused more problems than it solved. And so instead, I identified that you just needed to understand the problems and fix the root cause of the problems instead. And so I built a tool that would help you identify those root problems and fix them. Wild success, like super successful. And because of that, I got moved on to one of our more technical teams called the reciprocating compressor teams. And within the first six months of being on that team, the team lead decided to leave for personal reasons. He had a, you know, family in a different state, and they wanted to just, you know, move closer to family. And, you know, two things happened in that time period, that same manager that hired me, he walked up to me just randomly in the hallway one day, he’s like, you know what, we’re not paying you enough. So within like my first year of being there, he’s like, we’re not paying you enough. And they gave me a 15% pay bump, just randomly in the middle of the year, not even in a pay cycle. And I was just shocked. I was like, oh, okay, I’ll take a free pay bump. Sure, that’s great. And then when the team lead left, he’s like, hey, you can be the team lead for this. A couple of people were mad, brand new kid right out of, right out of college. I mean, to be fair, I’d been in the industry longer than I think most people realized at that point, because I’d been literally in the Bay Area in industry since I was like, you know, 10, eight to 10, in that time frame. But, you know, people were upset that I was a team lead, but we successfully delivered that product. And then, you know, the pay cycle came around. And I got, I got a good raise. And I was really shocked that I got an instant mid-year pay bump and then another big pay raise. And so actually, in GE and a lot of businesses, there’s like, you know, meets expectations, exceeds expectations, doesn’t meet expectations, top talent or needs to be put on a personal improvement program. Within my first year, I was top talent, which is kind of weird for a brand new hire, right?

Manuel: Right. But like you said, I mean, it’s your past experience. It’s just the mindset that you have kind of the way you approach work. Was that something common within the GE culture? Like you said, I mean, he just came out to you out of nowhere and said, hey, we’re not paying you enough.

James: No, so totally weird. Everybody’s like, wait, you got a what?

Manuel: Yeah, because it even me, I’m just hearing that story. I’m like, most times they’re going to take advantage of the fact that you’re a high producer and we’re getting you at a low cost, right? I mean, it’s, that’s probably something that they’re going to do unless, and I don’t know, did your manager ever tell you that they identified?

James: I never had an idea of why they did it.

Manuel: I was wondering if they were trying to keep you there and said, hey, you know what, if we don’t kind of give them give them a little bit of an incentive, right? To kind of stay.

James: I can look back. I can look back maybe in hindsight at the fact that him and I had that conversation 15 years later, where he’s like, I didn’t even think we were going to get you and I thought you were going to leave the company, right? That maybe that might have had something to do with it. He was A shocked that I was there to begin with and B like, he had no idea from my perspective. My perspective is nobody’s been giving me the, you know, the time of day, I’m not getting any job offers. So maybe he thought I was good enough at the time to potentially warrant other opportunities and he wanted to keep me. Yeah. I mean, talent retention is huge. I mean, even in my career, in your career, I’m sure you’ve seen leadership give certain people pay bumps or just because you’d want to keep that talent. Like I’ve done, I’ve talked with managers, hey, this person’s really, really good. We don’t want to lose them. Are we paying them enough? What can we do to incentivize them to stay with us for a little bit longer, right? So I’m sure some looking back that some, one of those conversations probably happened. You’re probably talking about performance between the new employees and having a couple of conversations, but I have no, I had no idea at the time what was going on. And as a brand new person in the industry, I was just like, yay, raise.

Manuel: And you mentioned it, right? Like perception becomes reality. So in their perception, man, if you’re doing this well on the interviews and we’re hiring you.

James: Sure.

Manuel: They don’t know that the reality is nobody else is hiring you because you’re putting it out at the time, right? You’re putting out all these resumes. So then obviously they’re identifying you as somebody who obviously does good work, is able to deliver, they’re rewarding you as part of that. And then what makes you, kind of continue to move forward? Are you still doing the same thing and kind of delivering on projects? And is that where you at this point, because you haven’t moved on, right? Your goal was like two years, I’m going to leave. At what point did you kind of start to get strategic and say, Hey, you know what, I’m going to see how far I can move within here and really kind of maximize.

James: I don’t think I was ever approaching it that way, you know, early on in my career. I was just a young guy working on really fun stuff. And at that point, we talked about competency earlier a little bit, right? One of my colleagues who’s now senior director over in Baker Hughes, which is previously GE, him and I, for years, we’re trying to figure out how do you get people to be more competent in the field, right? And we tried for years to try training and a whole bunch of different things to try to motivate people to become better. But I look back at my career at why I was so good at what I was. I really think it just comes down to time and interest, time and priorities, right? Because at the time I was a young kid, I didn’t have a wife, I didn’t have kids, you know, video games was kind of the only thing I went home to and solving computer problems was just as fun as playing video games. And so there’s many times where my manager would find me sleeping underneath my desk the next morning, or, you know, five o’clock hit, everybody went home. I stayed there all night, all morning, and I fell asleep on my motorcycle jacket at like five a.m. or something, because I was just so tired. And I would do that day after day after day after day after day. You do that enough time, the total, because how many of us spend eight hours a day on our day job? Not all of us, right? You have meetings, hallway conversations, you know, architecture reviews, like testing, like none of that’s programming, or whatever your primary profession is. I was coding 12 to 18 hours a day every day for years. Like just the total amount of programming that I was doing was massive, and I look back at that like I was insane. Now my wife looks at me with a very, you know, solid scold anytime that I’m trying, you know, I fall into those old habits. But, you know, I think that that interest really set me apart from everybody else. And I wasn’t trying to do it. I just had fun, and I was enjoying it. But that made a huge difference for how the business was perceiving me. And because I was getting all these huge projects done, I just kept getting good raises every year. And more importantly, people within the organization were seeing what I was doing, and they wanted me on their team. So GE used to have this amazing culture where you would go and scalp people from other teams for the projects that you wanted to work on. And, you know, if you were working on a super fun project, you would scalp the best talent from the company. So I just remember we had this framework project, which was going to touch every single application that we wrote. And the senior developer walked over to me and was like, hey, do you want to work on the coolest project in the business? And I was like, yeah, what is this? He’s like, you’re going to be done with this project in the next couple of months. I would love for you to come over and be one of the senior developers on this other project. And I was like, yeah, so it was less me thinking strategically on my career and where I wanted to go and much more, I was so focused on the problems I was solving and having fun programming and these new projects that just were cool projects to go work on. I totally didn’t pay attention at all to career development at that time.

Manuel: As you’re going through the one thing that kind of brings me up is that kind of just especially based on where we’re at now, at that time, were you advocating for yourself or was this really more, you’re doing such a good job and it’s management, it’s everybody else that’s kind of spreading the word and kind of building up the reputation or to understand who James is. If you’re spending all this time doing programming 12, 14 hours a day, my guess is at that same time, you’re not like, hey, look at what I just did for 14 hours, you’re just doing it and word is kind of starting to spread, like is that the culture or how did people come to know that James is the person?

James: You and I are extroverts very clearly, right? Of course I talked about my projects and I like talking about the projects because I thought they were the coolest projects and I got given the really hard problems. So I would always be talking to like the senior architects and I’d always be talking to the directors of engineering and like, hey, this problem I got given and we’re going to solve it in this way and it’s going to be great or I could talk to a couple of the tools that we were building for the service teams, I could talk to service team leadership like, hey, this tool is really going to help your team. It does this fit all your use cases and is there anything that we’re missing? I think that’s the one thing that I’ve actually done really well within my career is absentmindedly probably is I’d like to make sure that I’m understanding that the problem is the right problem to be solving. So I go talk to all of the people to make sure that we’re solving the right problem. But that is advocating for yourself that you’re solving the right problem and everybody knows that you’re solving the right problem. So unbeknownst to me, I was talking to all of the senior most people because me and other engineers have no idea what the root cause of the problem is, right? So I was talking to all these senior people in the organization to solve those big problems and they were just aware of all the things that I was doing. Now at some point when I became aware and I think I became aware, I became more aware of that. So GE, we have titles in our business, right? You have, you know, level four entry level, you know, associate, you have level five that’s like a TAM, you know, a standard, you know, professional, you have levels six that senior professional level seven principle, none of those titles existed. You were a software engineer and they had team lead software engineers, but they were just lead engineers, no other titles in the entire organization at all. Okay, nobody had a title. That was just very flat organizational structure. And so at some point, the senior leadership decided that they needed engineering technical leader role across the business. Dude, that’s the engineering technical leader for the business that’s across all teams and all products. I mean, you think about that today, that’s a principle, or that’s a distinguished engineer, whatever you want to call it, that’s that role. And so they approached a mentor of mine named Aaron, if he would be the single threaded engineering leader for the whole org. And at that time, I had been moved over to one of our protection system products. And I was really the I was a senior developer at the time. And I got on that project because it was the next big, huge fun project to go work on, right, again. And but I was just I just knew it. It was just my project. And I was running it into end. But when you think about the business, there’s like four major projects, and two of them were under my purview, and two of them were kind of under Aaron’s purview. And so Aaron went to the business and said, you know, I can’t do this on my own, James os really the owner for all these, he should be an engineering technical leader too. So just out of sheer luck, in a lot of respects, I became the single threaded owner for half of the entire engineering business. And Aaron was the other half, because he ran all the, you know, at that point, we didn’t have cloud yet. But but all the high level business enterprise level applications. And I ran all the hardware configuration applications. And there was like, you know, two or three different apps underneath that. And so we were these engineering technical leaders across the entire business. And that wasn’t me deciding to go for that role. It wasn’t me deciding that I was ready for that role. It was literally just this, the engineering director or executive, a guy named Eric Butterfield, just decided that we needed to kind of follow what the other industry, rest of the industry was doing, and we needed the senior leaders. And he thought Aaron was the guy. And I just, I just got lucky because Aaron thought I deserved to be the other half of that.

Manuel: People say lucky. And I, I used to think the same thing, like, oh, I got lucky. But I think a lot of it is just the opportunities and also the activities that you’re doing.

James: Sure.

Manuel: Right. Sure. Timing does play a part in it. Right. I’m not saying that, Hey, you can do this at a different time. And it would have played the same. But I think it’s a lot of the activities that you’re doing as well. So apart from the fact that you are very experienced, you’re intelligent, you work hard, you know, you’re doing a lot of this. Also, your personality, I think plays a big part in it. Because as much as you are, like I said, Hey, we’re extroverts, we don’t have a problem talking to people. But for them to go through, or it was Aaron, right, that kind of brought you in.

James: Right.

Manuel: For him to go through and say, Hey, I think James, also, there is something there. Is it, is it because you’re an extrovert and you’re able to communicate? You obviously get along well with everybody. And I’ve seen that personally, right? Where

James: I wouldn’t say everybody, but.

Manuel: Most people, right? Like you can get along with most people. So for them to pull you in, there’s something that they see not only in your technical acumen, right? But now, as a leader, you’re having to do more, I don’t want to say manage, but you have to kind of oversee. So you’re responsible for other people. What is that skill set? Or how did you develop that? Or what is it that kind of sets you apart in, Hey, I’m that person that can work with most people.

James: I think there, I think there’s a combination of things, you know, as, as there always is, right? I was not always the get along with everybody guy. I mean, I can honestly say that earlier on in my career, I never thought about it. But having as much experience as I did, I mean, when you think about it, eight year old kid gets a job when he’s 18, that’s 10 years of experience before anybody else even comes into the industry. And then being there for another five or six years, you know, now you have 15 years of experience in the industry and everybody perceives you of having like five, right? And so I can’t say that I was conceited, but I definitely knew my stuff and I could come across as being very full of myself, which wasn’t full of myself, it was confidence because I knew the answers. But that is, that is very easily perceived as this guy’s just being a total prat, right? And so I had, thankfully, a lot of really good mentors, really good mentors that helped me understand, know your audience, communicate the right way based on the people that are in the room. You know, at one point, my manager pulled me aside and told me once I was becoming more of a leader, it was like, look, it can’t be about you anymore. You like to talk about all the cool projects that you did and everybody knows that you’re one of the top performers in the business and we get that, you don’t, you don’t have to prove that to anybody anymore. I never thought about me proving it. I was just always about just doing it. And then, well, I already did this, why can’t everybody do this, right? And at some point, that commutant communication style in your, your career path has to change. And I remember being recommended a book by Eric Butterfield, again, the senior executive, right? He was like, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. The communication that got you to this point in your career won’t get you to the next part of your career. And so it was really, back to mentors, it was really that feedback and that pushing back on me being that really brash kid that thought I knew everything, to being much more considerate of everybody else that I was interacting with. And because of those, those pushbacks and those redirects and those nudges, right, I became a much more effective communicator. And because of those effective communication skills, absolutely those gave me opportunities because I could calm everybody in the room down, get us focused on the right things. I took my ego out of it. At one point, I finally realized it’s no longer about me, it’s about everybody else. And, and, and I’m sure, I’m sure that those things had a big impact in terms of whether people thought I was ready for those leadership roles, right? It’s a combination of all those things of technical expertise, business acumen, which business acumen is a hard thing to learn. It’s probably been the most difficult challenge for me is actually understanding the business side of things. You know, as an engineer, you want to dp things because it’s the engineering solution the right engineering solution, but there’s always business contrast. So I was talking to project managers and, you know, customers and business executives that helped me really understand. Finding the right mentors really is what probably allowed me to get the best feedback to change my behaviors in the right way.

Manuel: And those mentors are those people that, excuse me, are those people that you were seeking out? Or did they just kind of more take an interest in you? Because I’ve kind of seen both.

James: Both, I would say my earliest mentors were probably people that took in an interest in me. I remember the first time I sought out a mentor is people were making a joke. Like a joke on like, James, what do you want to do with your career? Right? And I think I just blurted out, I’ll just be the next Eric Butterfield, right? I’ll be the next engineering executive. And somebody actually asked was like, Oh, that’s that’s great. That would be a perfect fit for you. Is Eric your mentor? And I was like, No, should he be? And they’re like, you haven’t asked Eric to be your mentor? And you think that that’s the role that you want? Why don’t you ask him to be your mentor? And I was like, Oh, that’s a good idea. And so I just walked immediately over to Eric’s office and knocked on the door politely. This was before we had a lot of interactions because he became one of my mentors. And I was like, Hey, Eric, do you have a second? He was like, Yeah, sure, come on in. I was like, Hey, you know, I was just talking to a couple people and your role is something that I could see myself potentially doing in the future. And I was just wondering if you’d be willing to mentor me a little bit if you had any time. He’s like, Yeah, absolutely. You know what, set 30 minutes on my calendar for next week. And we’ll have a chat. And from then on, it was him and I started having conversations on like a bi weekly basis for a while, then it kind of slowed down for month to month. And then unfortunately, he had some health issues and had to leave the business. And we had another executive come and join us. Her name was Wanda O’Brien. And she is she is and was amazing. Like she is just absolutely fantastic. But I just remember asking her, you know, would you be my mentor? And and she pulled me in and she said, Yes, absolutely. But I want I want you to to let me know when you’re ready to fire me. I was like, What? What do you mean? She’s like, Look, at some point, you’re going to learn everything that you need to learn from me. And there will be other mentors that are going to be better mentors for you. I just want to make sure that if I’m going to be your mentor, that you can identify when you’ve learned enough from me and you’re it’s okay to fire will still be colleagues will still be friends. But you need to fire me at some point and find your next mentor. And that to me was kind of like a whoa moment, right? Because I had a lot of mentors at that point that they were all my mentors, like had a lot of mentors at that point, you know, I had the the senior architect and a couple directors and Eric and you know, it made me realize there was a couple of people that I had I had learned all the things that I needed to learn from. And I kind of stepped back and kind of reevaluated who I needed to be my mentors. And I was like, These are were great mentors, like, but I kind of learned what I need to learn from them. I need to start focusing on other pieces of my leadership skills and my personality and see, you know, we’re talking we’re talking about where we want to go and what we want to do. I think it was much less about where we want where we want where I wanted to go, and much more about what skills I wanted to learn, and what things that I wanted to do. Right? It’s like I wanted these people to be my mentor, because I wanted to understand that better. And I knew it was one of my weaknesses. And it’s an area that I needed to focus on improving on in myself. Right? It’s like, you know, we’re you and I were talking about the things that we have in common that we like to go do. And I think that’s one of the things is I’m, I’m very bold about the things that I know I’m good at. Like if you’re talking to me about C sharp programming, I know most of the answers, right? But if you want to talk to me about business acumen, or certain other things, I’m immediately okay with saying, I don’t know that I’m not good at it, but I am interested in learning. And it’s those continuous learning things that keep pushing you forward.

Manuel: That ability to know when you don’t know something, right? Because yeah, I’m sure just like you, I’ve run into people on both sides of the spectrum, right? There’s people that don’t know it and act and speak like they do. And there’s those are like us, they’re like, they don’t know it, they’ll say that they won’t. And I’ll say, Hey, I don’t know. A lot of times I’ll even preface it. I don’t know. I think it’s like this. Yeah, but I’m not sure. And if you know, like, let’s say you’re the expert on that. No, here’s where you’re getting it wrong. And some people will explain it. And some people are like, Well, I don’t know either. So then now I’m like, All right, let me go find it out.

James: So I think that was probably the harshest reality check that I ever had was coming to Amazon, right? Is when Amazon hired me, the TAM role is about earning trust with customers. And it’s, you know, something that we call being confidently wrong. When, when, when, when you’re a principal architect, and you designed every system in the application, you know, it’s very easy to say it’s like this, or it’s mostly like this. And even if you’re slightly wrong, you’re probably mostly right. And it doesn’t matter. You’re giving them what they need or pointing the person where they needed to go to find something. In a company like Amazon, where you have so many services, and like every service is its own business, essentially, like its own sub business, right? So complex. It took me a while that I, you know, I just felt completely overwhelmed for the first year with going from a position where I knew everything to a position where I felt like I knew nothing. And that was a huge challenge for me. But it did help me in a lot of regards because it allowed me to recognize that I had the behavior as a senior, you know, principal architect to, to give answers confidently, all about everything. I had a confident opinion about everything. To no I need to really check myself and make sure that if I don’t know it, I’m okay with saying flat out, like, I always thought I was good at doing that before. But I think that the Amazon culture made me double down on, no, when I don’t know something, I just don’t know something. I’m okay with not knowing it and I’ll go learn it. And I’ll come back with the right answer. I’ll go spend the time to go figure it out and investigate it and become an expert and learn all about it. But, you know, and that’s a hard, that’s a hard skill. It is a very hard skill to be able to recognize where the boundary of your knowledge stops and where you need to take, check yourself to go find or and learn new things. Because learning for most people is very uncomfortable, right? Admitting that you don’t know something is very uncomfortable. And so I think, I think I’m much more comfortable now, just being like, I just don’t know it. And I’m okay with that. And I’ll learn it if I have to. And if I don’t have to, then I’m okay with just not knowing it. I don’t know the answer to everything.

Manuel: This has been a fantastic conversation. I know that there’s still many more questions that I want to ask. There’s a lot that I want to dive into. So at some point, I definitely want to have you back for like a part two.

James: Sure.

Manuel: But before we kind of end it, I just want to ask you, is there anything, at least in this conversation, or things that we’ve covered that I either didn’t ask that you feel are important to cover, like, or maybe just one or two items that you’re like, hey, just to kind of leave as a parting thought.

James: Yeah, I mean, you and I are talking about a little bit previously to this, right? In career wise, I mean, I don’t really think much about the trajectory of my career, obviously. I mean, I kind of knew what I wanted to go in terms of becoming, I’ve always wanted to become an executive. And how that path gets there, you know, I’m still kind of on that journey. But, you know, my son is a junior in college right now, and he’s graduating with a psychology degree. And he came to me earlier this year just saying, I don’t really know if that’s that’s what I want to do now. Right. And I know that when I was graduating college, I thought that a degree said that you had this very particular path. Right. And your career and my career has taught us that that’s not true. Right. There’s a lot of paths. And they all kind of get us in the direction that we want to go. And I think the more important thing is following things that you think are fun and enjoyable and things that you want to do. And so I challenged him a little bit. What are other things that a psychologist does? Because there’s a psychologist can do a lot of different things. Right. You don’t have to be a guy that sits on the couch listening to other people’s problems. Right. You can be you can go to, you know, health counseling, or those are psychologists, UX designers. There’s there’s tons of psychologist roles in software industry and technology, military application, military strategist or, you know, drug traffickers or anything else. All psychologists that have to figure out those types of things. So any industry that he could think of, there’s probably a psychology related role that he could find that he could want to do. You know, a number of years ago or not a number of years ago, a number of months ago, my wife kind of asked me because of the space race thing. What do I want to do in my career? And I love space. Should I have you thought about working for, you know, SpaceX and Elon Musk and you know, I never thought about it before, to be honest. And so it was like, yeah, maybe I would. I mean, not right now because my kids are all steady and in high grade school and high school and stuff. But once my kids get out of school and, you know, they’re all launched successfully on their own. Yeah, there’s a I can now start thinking about my own trajectory even differently than I did before, which is what other opportunities can I have even in my own career to do things that are much more interesting to me personally rather than thinking I’m on that strict path. So I guess in a very verbose way, the one thing that I want everybody to kind of remember regardless is even though you do have a competency level and you want to be competent at what you do, there’s always opportunities to do more things that you’re more interested in and the opportunities are broader than you think. So just kind of open think outside the box and figure out stuff that you think is more interesting to yourself and try to go after those opportunities.

Manuel: I think that’s the perfect way to end this conversation, especially because that’s that’s really one of the awarenesses I’m trying to bring is just, hey, your career is your career, but learning from other people and exposing to different thoughts, different ways that people have approached it and just exactly what you said, you know, I had, you know, we talked about it before, like where I had Oscar here and he’s like, I love sports, had I known that I could marry sports and technology, but again, he didn’t know because he never thought about it or just nobody had posed that question. He had never, you know, been exposed to that. So that’s kind of one of the goals that I have with this. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing and I can’t wait for part two.

James: Yeah, sounds good, man. Let’s do it.

Manuel: Thanks.