Narrator: You're listening to the Humans of DevOps Podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the SKIL framework.
Lindsey Pollak: I lost almost all of my speaking business at
the beginning of COVID. And I had to pivot very quickly and
the metaphor that I used was recalculating, like when your
GPS takes you down a certain road and you make a wrong turn,
and you have to find a different path.
Eveline Oehrlich: Hello, and welcome to the Humans of DevOps
Podcast brought to you by the DevOps Institute. My name is
Eveline Oehrlich, and I'm the Chief Research Officer at the
DevOps Institute and your host today. Our podcast today is
Navigating Your Career During Times of Crisis, and we're
having an exciting guest, Lindsey Pollak. Hello, Lindsey.
Lindsey Pollak: Thank you for having me.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yes. excited that you're here. Thank you for
giving us your time. We're very grateful. Let me tell the
listeners a little bit about you because there is a lot of things
here I want to make sure that they know so first of all,
Lindsey is a New York Times bestselling author and one of
the world's leading career and workplace experts. She was named
the 2020 thinker, 50 radar lists, which honors the top
global management thinkers whose work is shaping the future of
how organizations are managed and led. Of course, that is a
very important topic in where we are in this world. She has
written many books. Her latest book is the response to the
COVID crisis. It's titled "Recalculating, Navigate your
Career Through the Changing World of Work". It was published
in 2021. Other books, the remix "How to Lead and Succeed in the
Multigenerational Workplace". Then she wrote to the yearbooks
for some of the younger professionals, which I was just
telling Lindsey, I was going to order for my daughters, but I'm
don't want to intrude on them. So if they're listening in
ladies, maybe you should get them. The first one is called
Becoming the Boss new rules for the next generation of leaders
and getting from college to hear your essential guide to
succeeding in the real world. Normally, Lindsey has a great
speaking audience and consulting clients, which include more than
250 corporations, law firms, and she speaks at conferences and
universities. She has appeared on today's show, The New York
Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR. And she's also an
ambassador for CAP Finiti V. Brand, LinkedIn, and a
millennial workplace expert for the Hartford and Chair of
Cosmopolitan magazine millennial advisory board. Welcome again,
Lindsey and thank you so much for being here today.
Lindsey Pollak: It's my pleasure, Eveline and thank you
again.
Eveline Oehrlich: So when I was listening to one of your
stories, where you talked about hiding under the cover after you
graduated eating ice cream, not knowing what and how to get
started, and that reminded me a lot of myself when I started my
career at 24. Not really wanting to be a programmer, and
somebody called me a programmer, which was a very huge
disappointment. I wanted to just walk out, because I was a 4.0,
master's student in computer science and the gentleman called
me a programmer. So I thought, wow, we have to have this
wonderful woman on this podcast. So again, thank you. We have
ambassadors at the DevOps Institute as well. So I'm
curious, what does your work as an ambassador actually include
Lindsey.
Lindsey Pollak: So I've worked with a couple of organizations
linked in, I was an ambassador for six years from 2009 to 2015.
And now, as you mentioned, I work with kept FINITY. And it's
essentially aligning myself with organizations that I think have
a lot of value to the people I serve, which is people who are
interested in their careers. So I guess it's similar to being a
spokesperson or a partner. But I like the word ambassador,
because it really is a community oriented role that I partner
with organizations that I believe in to get more people
involved in their communities and kept FINITY has a Strengths
profile product that helps people find the strengths that
they have that are unique to them that can still serve them
in their careers. And I really believe in that mission of
having a strengths based career as you said, a lot of us aren't
sure what we want to do when we graduate. And I think when we
start from our natural strengths, we often find a lot
of value and a lot of happiness and fulfillment when we follow
that path.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yep, that is exactly what I keep telling my
daughters to try look for that happiness and fulfillment, and
as they're just starting out the career, of course, they
sometimes think their mom doesn't know anything, just
because I am old. But I sometimes give them a hard time
that I am not yet old. I am still here. And have advice to
give. Great, yeah, we have forgot. We have over 250
ambassadors who help us in a very similar role. So that's
great. I was curious about that. All right, let's talk about this
whole topic on Skilling and Upskilling. And in the future,
we've just done some research from the DevOps Institute where
we found that getting, there was a significant amount of lack of
skill. That's really the number one challenge for our audience,
which is IT leaders, CIOs, and so on. And they're having a
challenge in terms of keeping and retaining and hiring new
skill. So I want to explore this term of with you. Of course, the
great, great resignation is one great vinegar. Yeah, but I have
also heard about the great renegotiation and a great
reshuffle. The three sometimes seem to be used at the same
time, but wanted to see what you're seeing relative to this
whole grade resignation. Is that a US thing? Is it you see it in
Europe? I do see it in Europe, because we've, you know, where I
live it, it is Europe. But I'm curious, what do you see in your
work and in your day,
Lindsey Pollak: You know, I prefer to call it the great
reshuffle or the great reevaluation, because some
people, they're not actually resigning, but they are
rethinking how they want to do work or how they want their
careers to be. So we do see a lot of the statistics of people
actually quitting their jobs and starting other jobs in the US
and elsewhere, like Europe, as you mentioned, but I think the
broader picture, which relates to rescaling and upskilling is
that COVID And the advancement of technology and globalization
and all of these different factors generational change, as
well, are all causing people to pause and say, Am I doing what I
want to be doing? And is this a, an industry or career that has a
future to it. And for a lot of younger people in particular,
who see many adults now working into their 60s into their 70s,
even some people into their 80s, it's a very long term choice.
And so when you think about what you want to study in school,
what kinds of organizations you want to work for? I think the
skill conversation is really important. We have a huge need,
particularly in the US for STEM talent, science, technology,
engineering, and math. And I know that's a global phenomenon.
But we just simply don't have enough people to fill the jobs
that we're going to have. I think that's also a really
important point for older workers who, you know, maybe are
in their 40s and 50s. And say, you know, I'm nowhere near
retirement, what kind of career is going to carry me through the
next several decades where there are going to be jobs available.
So I think a lot of it has been accelerated by COVID. But these
trends of looking for more fulfillment, looking at the
future and what it's going to be, I think that's been going on
for a while, and it's only accelerated with the pandemic.
Eveline Oehrlich: So do you think this is going to get
better or even worse than where we are at this point of time?
What's your crystal ball saying?
Lindsey Pollak: My crystal ball is saying that we are in the
messy middle of this, we are at the moment where people are
quitting, people are restarting people are searching. I think
there's a lot of uncertainty right now that has continued on
from the pandemic. So I think that it's a tremendous
opportunity for job candidates and employees to use their
leverage right now and say, particularly if you have a
technical skill that you are in demand, if you are eager to
learn a new skill, I think there are tremendous programs and
opportunities globally to rescale or upskill. In
technology fields, there's a lot of government and nonprofit
funding for that. Now. I think if you're an employer, this is a
challenging time because employees do have leveraged,
there's a lot more opportunity out there, particularly for
organizations that offer some kind of workplace flexibility.
So I think the companies or the employers that are smart, are
saying well, we should really look at our well being offerings
or employee benefits, how well our managers manage talent, how
well we train employees to keep their skills sharp. I think I'd
be a little concerned as an employer and make sure that I am
looking at the future and I think for employees use this
moment of leverage and opportunity to put yourself in a
good position and take advantage of the opportunities that are
out there.
Eveline Oehrlich: Mm hmm. Yeah, so we see some changes in of
course, the work hours right? Friday's off. We're to DevOps
Institute have actually implemented that for our team to
have a Friday, summer day, that means that's the day where we
start learning, doing some training to ourselves or having
some special projects. I hear a whole bunch of new things. I
keep saying to some of my enterprise clients that just
putting up a workout place in the basement or having a beer
fountain in the developer community. That's kind of a
popular thing, having the, you know, 12 different liquors, or
whatever it is to your developers or others is not
going to cut it, you have to dig a little bit deeper and think a
little bit deeper. So yeah, interesting. Most we'll see how
that does. I want to shift our thinking a little bit,
particularly in light of your book, "Recalculating". I have
ordered it, it's not here yet. But I do know that you have
written and talked a lot because I listen to some of your
speeches. They are around the mindset. And I am actually a big
fan of Dr. Carol Dweck, who I've tried to get onto the show,
hopefully one day she will say yes, I'll keep working on her.
Tell me about this mindset. And what what can we what have we
learned during the pandemic? In terms of our mindset?
Lindsey Pollak: I love this topic. So I wrote recalculating
because of the pandemic, I lost almost all of my speaking
business at the beginning of COVID. And I've had to pivot
very quickly. And so I started researching how people were
responding as employees or business owners like I am to the
pandemic. And the metaphor that I used was recalculating, like
when your GPS or your Sat Nav takes you down a certain road
and you make a wrong turn or what have you. And you have to
find a different path. And so when I think about people
navigating through any environment, but particularly
challenging times, I think about how they make choices. And what
struck me as I was interviewing people, is that you could have
two individuals in the same situation, for example, somebody
who had been unemployed for a long period of time, and one of
the people would say, I'm never going to find a job, nobody's
going to hire me because I've been unemployed. And the other
person in the same situation would say, everybody's gonna
want to hire me, I'm so refreshed. I've been out of work
for a while I can start, you know, hit the ground running.
And that's where I decided to start the book with a chapter on
mindset. And I think those two sides are very good examples of
what Carol Dweck refers to as a growth mindset or a fixed
mindset. A fixed mindset says, This is what it is, it's never
going to change. So for example, I don't have a good singing
voice, or nobody's going to hire somebody who's unemployed. And a
growth mindset, all you have to do to adopt one is to add the
word yet to the end of those sentences. So nobody's going to
hire somebody's unemployed yet, well, I haven't found a way that
they're going to do it, or I don't have a good singing voice
yet. I'm sure if I took some classes and practiced, I could
get better. And what I found is the people who were willing to
find different paths, try different strategies, use their
network, get some extra training, who had that growth
mindset that their situation could change, even during COVID,
which was such a challenging time, that made all the
difference. So I really think while a lot of people are
experiencing burnout, and mental health challenges that often
need professional help, we also sometimes do ourselves a
disservice when we sit in a negative mindset. And assume
that things can't change when actually very, very, very small
steps can make a big difference in finding a job or even when
we're in a job making the changes that we want to see for
our well being or for our career development.
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Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, so in our field in it, there is of
course, a lot of topics around automation, right? We NIT
doesn't matter if we're an IT operations, if we're a site
reliability engineer, or if we are developer, we are wanting to
do an automate ourselves, to some extent out of a job and for
some individuals. That's a significant challenge in my
research, over the years, in large and with Corporation,
there's always this one or multiple people who are saying,
I'm just going to do it the old way. I'm not going to be out of
a job, I'm not going to be automated away. And, and that's,
I think the biggest challenge our community has, to some
extent because there's this fear, right? What advice could
you give those folks were saying, Hey, I'm going to do my
process the way I've done it always, and I'm not going to be
replaced by a machine even so that individual could do
something much more valuable, and maybe even something more
interesting. They still will not be able to change the mindset.
How could these folks think differently? What would you say?
Lindsey Pollak: That's such a good example in I think of a
parallel in journalism, you know, that so many journalism
jobs have been lost, but many people have survived and thrived
by pivoting their skill set to something else? So I think it's
a classic growth mindset exercise, which is, where are
the opportunities? What do we know is growing? What does work
what people have found success despite automation, and rather
than focusing on what is not going in your favor, what is not
helpful to your career, look for the opportunities, and I'll give
you a framework to think about one of my favorite frameworks
for generational thinking is rather than doing things the old
generation way, or the new generation way, I like the word
perennial, which was a term coined by a technology
entrepreneur named Jean appel. And a perennial is someone who
knows their history, they know the way things have been done.
So they have that grounding that a lot of IT professionals have.
And they keep up with the times. So it doesn't mean you erase
everything that made you good at your job in the past, it means
that you use that foundation that you continually build on
it. So I think of some architects I worked with, who
had learned how to design with a paper and pencil. And then in
the 1980s, CAD technology came along. And so they learned how
to design in CAD, but they know how to do both. And they see
value in both. So when they see a new technology coming along,
they don't say I'm a dinosaur, I'm never going to learn it.
They say, Oh, great, here's another tool to add to my
toolkit. So I think it's really about being willing to change
with the times and putting yourself in a mindset of saying,
okay, things may be different, but I'm going to seek out the
opportunity. And I think sometimes older people get more
worried that they're not going to be able to keep up with the
times when I think we're all perfectly capable of it. We just
have to make a choice to adapt with those times and not decide
that we have been overrun. Does that make sense?
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, makes perfect sense. And I have
actually a follow up question, because I know you've done some
research in the millennials as well. What I also see in the, in
this space is that of course we have folks like myself, I am you
know, a baby boomer, I've been in it, I know how to do certain
things. But there's new folks coming in. They have great
capabilities. They, for example, can manage five different
screens and write code on all of those together. I can just
follow one. And I may be content switching maybe in two things,
but they're just incredible. And I can deal with it. Because
maybe I don't know, maybe I'm having a growth mindset or
because of my personality. I'm not sure. But there's a lot of
folks that I meet in IT organizations who are threatened
by millennials, not just because they have technical skills or
abilities, but they're just different. What advice would you
give those folks because I know we have people, mainframe folks,
we still need them. Some of the largest financial institutions,
if we turn the mainframe off, and we go to cloud, it's not
working, we cannot we cannot get our money. So what what advice
would you give somebody like, like a baby boomer, like myself
or even older? How to deal with that?
Lindsey Pollak: Yeah, I see this all the time. And I think
particularly in technology where things are so stark and move so
fast. I think that one way to reframe it is rather than saying
they're faster, or they're better, is to say that they're
from a different culture. So just as you're in Germany, and
I'm in the United States, if I came to Germany, I think I'm an
expert on my topic, but I would inherently understand that I
would probably have to adapt a bit to the German culture. And
so it's not good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse. It's
just a different culture. And so if you see it that you come from
the culture of a baby boomer IT background, and the young people
you're working with or in a millennial or a Gen Z it
culture, then you both have things to offer. And so if you
come at it from that level playing field, a lot of younger
people would love to hear how you learn to code 10 or 20 years
ago, they would love to hear about your purse. spective that
the architect who learned to design a pencil, he said, a lot
of young people say, show me how to do that. I've never done it
that way. That's really interesting. I can learn from
that. And so I think that the magic happens when we just spend
time together and have curiosity, rather than judgment.
So I love to talk to people who did business in the 80s or 90s,
you know, pre email, pre technology, you know, how did
you do sales? What did you do? What are the tricks that you
used, and there's a lot of value in that in some of the tools
that other generations haven't use. So I think if you see it as
a cultural difference, rather than a judgment call, and you
bring your natural curiosity, I often find younger people think
that older employees are resistant to that conversation.
And the older employees think the younger people are
resistant, and when they actually get together, they have
a lot to talk about.
Eveline Oehrlich: I love how you face that the magic happened.
And actually, has happened to me at the DevOps Institute, just
recently, so. And we actually learned from each other. And I
think that made us both a better individual, and it has tightened
us or connected us towards a better team. I love the term the
magic happens. All right. Fantastic. I have another
question. Because of we also do assessments at the DevOps
Institute, we have an assessment, many enterprises do
assessments, but not as much about the skills as you have
written and you have an assessment model, but we assess
the capabilities around processes. How fit are you
around technology, but I'm really want to dig into your
example. In your book, you said you had that you have a
capability to assess skills, how and what would you suggest? How
was it? Because I always thought I cannot? How can I assess my
skills? Because if you would ask me, am I my human skills? Right?
Am I a great collaborator? Am I a great communicator? For Yeah,
I think I am. Am I empathetic? Yeah, I think I am. So I'm
sometimes thinking, how can I assess my skills? Yes, I can
say, I'm not really good at cloud, or I'm not really good at
security. Because I'm not a security expert. I'm an
operations person. But assessing skills tell us a little bit more
on that topic, because that really intrigued me. And I know,
our listeners are curious, because we just did a upskilling
at 2022 research, and we'll talk a lot in that research, we talk
a lot about different skills.
Lindsey Pollak: So I like to differentiate between skills
that you can learn hard skills, like written communication, like
particular coding languages, and then the word strength, which is
the company Captain entity that I'm an ambassador for. And the
difference is a skill is something you do that you're
good at doing. But a strength is something that you're good at
doing. And it energizes you. So you could be very, very good at
filing papers alphabetically, but it doesn't excite you.
Right, it doesn't interest you. So the difference with a
strength is that it excites you, it energizes you. So it's
something that you want to do. And what's really interesting
about a lot of strengths, and I think the difference between a
strength and a skill is there a lot of people, for instance, who
are really good at math in school, and so they became an
accountant. And they don't really like it, they're good at
it, but they don't like it. And I'm sure that's true with a lot
of technology jobs, you had an aptitude for it. So you did it.
But if it doesn't energize you, it's not a really great career
choice. So the magic is finding the things that you're good at,
and you enjoy. And what's very, very interesting to me, is a lot
of times, we actually do a terrible job of knowing our
strengths. Because when something comes easily to us,
and it doesn't feel hard to learn, we don't think that it's
a particular strength, because we think though, everybody must
be good at that, right? So if math comes really easily to you,
or coding comes easily to you, or empathy comes really easy,
easily to you, you might not value it, because you're just
don't think it's a big deal, that you're good at it. And so
when you assess your strengths, and I can be happy to provide
you with a link in, in your show notes to take a simple strengths
profile finder, there are things for instance, I was speaking to
an academic, a PhD professor, and he said, he's really burned
out on writing. He's very good at it. But it doesn't energize
him anymore. And so he doesn't want to do it. It also tells you
what are what's called your unrealized strengths, which are
those things that you're good at, but you don't even realize
about yourself. And sometimes that's really helpful for people
who are reskilling or who are looking to change careers
because again, it's something that you've been really, really
good at. Maybe you love introducing people to each
other. Maybe you're very social, as you said, maybe you're very
empathetic. And so maybe you've been coding, but you'd actually
be really good at managing other people to code because you're
very empathetic and a good teacher. So I kept filling his
strengths profile and happy to share that link. But I think
that magic again, is the skill that you actually enjoy doing.
Eveline Oehrlich: Hmm. That relates to the great job then
right? So what is that great job, is the great job, the place
where I have energy? My husband, sometimes I have to tell you
this, my husband sometimes says he cannot. He's in construction.
He does all kinds of things, right? And on Sunday night, he's
like, I cannot wait till Monday. I'm like, Oh, wow, that's really
exciting. I'm just saying way I love what I do. I'm an analyst,
I get to do research, I get to write, I get to speak to very,
very good and fantastic people like you. So I love my job. And
I would say I have a great job. But there's a lot of others who
don't, because they don't have that excitement. So that is the
great job. One part of the great job is that excitement, I know
what I'm good at. And I can thrive in that. And I learn what
else goes along with the great job, because I know you talked
about that as well.
Lindsey Pollak: I think that's a really good description of it.
And look, we can be you know, happy in our jobs, but not every
minute. And every task that we have to do, I don't want people
to think that work should be bliss that you know, and if not,
you're miserable. I think it's a combination of where you feel
fulfilled. And I actually use the word energy, instead of
excitement. It's not like you're giggling every second, but you
really feel energized by it, you feel like you're making a
difference. You feel like your work has purpose. You're not
slogging through the day. But I think the environment in which
you do it is equally important. And I think this is a big change
in the workplace, which is do my values align with the
organization that I'm working with? So do I feel that the work
that we're doing and a big picture, there's my job, but
then the bigger organization, I think millennials and Gen Z's
have put a lot of energy and attention into making sure that
their values align with the organization they work for. And
I think that's part of the great resignation that you brought up,
is during COVID, people had a lot of time to think about what
they really wanted in life. And if the organization they were
working for was at odds with what they wanted from their own
values, I think a lot of people made a change, not necessarily
always because of the actual job, but sometimes for the the
broader picture of the organization.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, absolutely. I am hoping my
daughters are listening into this at some point to get them
excited about or energized. I love that word. You have given
us some great language. Well, this has been fantastic. where
can folks go to learn more about your work? Of course, the books
we read about the books, but is there a place you would tell our
listeners to go and say, Hey, check this out?
Lindsey Pollak: Yes, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So feel free
to connect with me there at my name, Lindsey Pollak. I also
have a website, Lindsaypollack.com. And under
the tab that says Recalculating, that's where you can find that
free Strengths Assessment if you're interested.
Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. I have one more surprise question
for you. What's your favorite thing to do on the weekend?
Lindsey Pollak: Oh my, favorite thing to do on the weekend. You
mentioned the ice cream. The ice cream example is I live in New
York City and there are a lot of ice cream trucks. So my daughter
and I go out and I love vanilla ice cream with rainbow
sprinkles. So taking my daughter for an ice cream cone on a sunny
weekend is my favorite activity.
Eveline Oehrlich: That sounds fantastic. That's what I might
do this weekend too. We have 33 Celsius here in Germany, so
now's not the time to visit. But if you ever come over here, I'll
take you for ice cream. We've got some great Italian ice
cream. Lindsey, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for
your time. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the ice cream and
everybody else. Thanks for listening in. Have a great day.
Cheers.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
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