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The Interface Crew interviews the pioneer of Kubernetes, Kelsey Hightower. Kelsey explains what a Distinguished Engineer at Google looks like, shares the spark that lit the fire to explore a career in technology in the 90s, and how important is to take stock of your skills and recognizing your worth.
Interface is a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by EMPOWER at PROS. EMPOWER is dedicated to attracting, developing and retaining Black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
The Power of Community and Advancing Technology feat. the pioneer of Kubernetes, Kelsey Hightower - Part. 1
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[00:00:00] Jenni: Welcome to Interface, a podcast where we connect technology and culture through Conversation Interface is brought to you by Empower. At Pros, empower is dedicated to attracting, developing, and retaining black talent. At Pros, pros helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
I'm [00:01:00] your host, Jennifer Plumer, and with me today is Sierra. And our guest today is Kelsey Hightower, distinguished engineer at Google. Thank you for joining us today.
[00:01:13] Kelsey Hightower: Yo, yo. Happy to be here.
[00:01:15] Jenni: Yeah, so welcome, welcome. Um, so usually my first question is, um, tell us your, your life story. But I do wanna ask what is, since Distinguished Engineer is not a title I see all the time, um, what is that?
[00:01:31] Kelsey Hightower: All right. So, distinguished engineer. When I, when I started my tech career, um, that was not a title that I've ever heard before.
Number one, I've never met anyone in that title. When I got into tech, my goal was to be a system administrator. That's it. I just wanted to come in, be one of those people who work on the servers, eventually learn how to write some code. Maybe I can be a developer. Hell, I even took tech support when I got started.
And a lot of [00:02:00] times those roles aren't really thought of in terms of levels, right? Like you're a system administrator. I mean, maybe HR has different levels, right? HR may say you're a system administrator, level two, and typically those designations are based on your level of experience. Uh, there's a challenge with that though.
There are some people with 20 years of one year experience and so they may be a system administrator, level eight, and you ask them what's the difference between a level eight and a level one system administrator? And a lot of times it's not really clear outside of they've just been doing it for so long.
Um, in terms of the distinguished engineer title, there was a lot of career progression over time. You go from spending a lot of time writing code. So some people would say that's your early years, that's your junior year. And then eventually you move up and instead of just writing code and maybe implementing things that are given to you, right?
Maybe a product manager goes off, the business goes off and someone says, these are the things we would like you to build. And if you can do that, then you start to have a [00:03:00] really good and productive junior engineer career. But then the next level comes from getting in earlier in that process. And I'll think a lot of times when we say staff engineer, maybe the next level from that, or a senior engineer, the next level from that, that's gonna be someone who's gonna probably be in the room a little earlier in that process saying, Hey, maybe we shouldn't build it quite that way.
Or maybe there's something that we can use off the shelf instead of writing any code at all. And that really starts to show your seniority. You're just not blindly following directions, right? You actually have enough experience to push back. And then we get to that next level, that principal engineer and that principal engineer, again, not on the management track, so you probably don't have direct reports.
This could be very different than a team lead. And sometimes a lot of principal engineers do become team leads, but that principal engineer is that person who feels like the director without authority.
[00:03:52] Jenni: Mm.
[00:03:53] Kelsey Hightower: You can't tell nobody to clock out. So if that's what you were looking forward to, that's not gonna happen.
But your goal is [00:04:00] though, to be having that big picture in mind. What could we build? What's the latest incre greatest technology that's out there that could be leveraged for some of the things that we wanna do on our long-term roadmap? So principal engineers, I think, get much deeper involved. They have that big picture, they can work across the organization and maybe you creating standardized processes and so forth.
Then eventually at a company like Google, lots of other big tech companies, there's that distinguished engineer and a lot of companies will reserve that for someone who has demonstrated extraordinary value to that particular company. And so a distinguished engineer, you have to kind of earn those stripes.
Rarely do you get hired in as a distinguished engineer. Typically a distinguished engineer has done things that maybe helped change the industry to some degree. Different companies have different criteria, but one of the goals that I think I've done is things about empathetic engineering. So not just writing code all the day, but getting people to understand how to write code on behalf of the customer.[00:05:00]
Very different way of thinking about, you know, just building products and shipping them. , but doing that with empathy and so starting a program around it, those are the type of activities that change the engineering culture, and those are the things that we would expect of our distinguished engineers.
[00:05:17] Jenni: Awesome. Thanks for that explanation. Um, it definitely goes through the progression. Um, let's go back. So I wanna rewind now, cuz like I said, we, we usually start with your, your story. And I, I read a really great article which had a lot of those details, but definitely through your words. Um, and, um, we love hearing stories of kind of untraditional paths, right?
Um, you know, people think, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Take AP courses in high school, and then I'm gonna, you know, be a sophomore when I start college, and then I'm gonna graduate, and then I'm gonna get a tech job. And we like to hear, you know, people whose paths don't quite, um, match that cookie cutter, um, experience.
So, pl please tell [00:06:00] us how you, how you got into technology and your path to where you are now.
[00:06:06] Kelsey Hightower: The first time I remember touching a computer, I think my in Long Beach, California. , this is the nineties, and this is when people were wearing, I don't know, cross colors. Like you didn't match on purpose . And so in the nineties I was all about sports and my dad was a huge Houston Rockets fan. I mean, we used to watch Hakeem, Elijah Wand, like my stepdad is from Nigeria, so it don't matter what's on tv, you watching the Houston Rockets, that's what's gonna happen.
And luckily for us, they were actually good for a while, right? And they won two championships. We won't talk about the fact that Michael Jordan was not playing those two years. But we won.
[00:06:46] Siara: City, baby, you're not gonna take that away from us.
[00:06:49] Kelsey Hightower: we're not gonna take that away. Hakeem Loon was everything. And so me and my brothers, we used to play basketball all the time.
You know, that's all I wanted to do. You [00:07:00] play basketball, you play football, you play track, and look what nothing else was going on. You join the soccer team. And so for me, athletics was everything. That's all I could think about. And luckily for me, I, I found school fairly straightforward and I won't say easy, but it was straightforward enough for me just to get that a study just enough, get the a and then go focus on sports.
And the first time I got a computer, I think my dad bought one, put it in the house, and all I looked at it was to play video games. So I'm not one of those early people that knew I wanted to do programming early on. It wasn't until I got to high school, my mom moved from Long Beach, California to Atlanta, Georgia, and we missed about six months of school.
[00:07:42] Jenni: Ah.
[00:07:43] Kelsey Hightower: so during that transition, it's like, Hey, I got straight A's, but now I got a situation. I don't have the time. And so when I go to this high, , they had a program called, uh, technology Student Association, tsa. And if you went after school, you could [00:08:00] get those missing credits so I could actually graduate on time.
And so I got in there, I was like, look, I'm running track, I'm starting to work at McDonald's, gotta earn some money. And I realized that this technology thing kind of cool, you know, I'm like this athlete trying to be cool. You know, how you trying to be cool with your name, brand clothes on collar, pop looking like the music video. I'm trying to be cool from first to last period, but then after school I gotta switch it up because, you know, this is a, it's a different persona, and the Technology Student Association. one thing that I learned though, are the person that led that, his name was Mr. Dewey, and he just exposed us to everything TI basics, so you can program your calculator.
We were doing AutoCAD, we did all of these things and instead of me just staying there just to get the credit, I'm competing at the state level, um, going to do various tasks where you demonstrate your technology skills based on what you're [00:09:00] learning in the association. And at that point, I kind of knew that I was very curious that this could actually be a role.
only five nine, so sports wasn't a real reality for me. You know, you don't know that until you stop growing. And so that, I think that was kind of my exposure to saying, you know what, this tech thing, and I actually turned out to be good at it. I would go down the Jekyll Island at that state competition, and I would get second place in AutoCAD and only got second place because I couldn't print out the particular project.
[00:09:31] Jenni: And I'm like, wow, I'm, I'm really good at this. And so I decided after high school that I wouldn't go to college, even though in Georgia, if you have a 3.0, a better. , you go to school essentially for free if you can
Oh, I didn't know that. Hmm.
From UGA to Georgia Tech to Clayton State University, you can go to school and have pretty much everything covered for you.
Even with that incentive, I didn't think it was for me, I think I went to two classes and I made a mistake. I'm [00:10:00] pretty sure I picked the wrong classes, but I picked maybe some intro to tech or something and we were in there doing Microsoft Word and Excel. Nothing wrong with those,
not what
[00:10:13] Siara: Not what you were looking for. Yeah.
[00:10:15] Jenni: yeah, that, that, that didn't feel like that's what, what Bill Gates was doing.
[00:10:19] Kelsey Hightower: So I was like, I, I don't, I don't know if this is what I want to do for the next four years. So to wrap this story up, I decided to go for IT certifications. I went to Barnes and Noble. We had bookstores back then. This is around the year 2000, and I got an A plus certification and I was sitting there like, you know what?
I need something that can. be a little bit faster, a much faster feedback loop. And I just read that book cover to cover two and three times, and I would go and take that test. And if you've never taken one of these IT certifications, at least back then, you would just go on like these strip malls. These weren't universities, right?
These are little testing centers. [00:11:00] And you would go in there, it's like on the left, you can get a blood test on the right, you can take your A plus certification. That's that's what we talking about. And so you sit in this little room and the computer comes up and basically, most of the time, at that time, the tests were multiple choice.
And so I'm just breezing through this test like, oh, I got this because I'm telling you, I read that study guide back and forth and make sure I knew exactly everything. And then when you hit enter, the dialup modem would go off and you would get your results back. And that was one of the most proudest moments in my career because.
I was finally official, right? I'm like, look, I finally can validate all of this stuff that I'm learning. And it felt like I had all this power because all the jobs, the entry level jobs required things like a plus certification. And so once I got that certificate in hand, I kind of felt like I had permission to kind of go do my thing.
[00:11:56] Jenni: But there's an important part of this story. I was still afraid to apply [00:12:00] for those jobs when all the jobs you had before were Pizza Hut,
Yeah.
subway,
I worked at Pizza Hut high school too.
So you, so you know what's up, And so when you go through that trajectory, you don't even know what to wear to the interview. You don't, you don't really have a resume, at least not one that you're proud of.
Mm-hmm.
You don't wanna go list all of those jobs for a job like that. And so I was very hesitant and I just didn't apply. And so instead, the funny thing is, I got a contracting job at that same testing center.
[00:12:37] Kelsey Hightower: After you passed your exam, they would ask you if you would like to teach courses to other people who were on the certification track. so I was like, cool, let me do that. And so that was kind of my first experience teaching others what I had just learned. And so maybe that's my first ever public speaking doing that.
And
[00:12:58] Jenni: Uhhuh
[00:12:59] Kelsey Hightower: this job [00:13:00] fair where, I don't know when, I don't know if y'all remember Dialup,
[00:13:03] Jenni: I do.
[00:13:04] Kelsey Hightower: like if you remember Dialup. So for, for those that might be too young, they don't know about that. Dialup Dialup is, you got this modem and it plug into the wall where the phone's supposed to go. Yeah. And make all those noises and you getting on and you excited cuz it is gonna be about 12 minutes before you can get on the internet.
But once you oh you, you doing your thing, you clicking around, you seeing no news, you got three email messages cuz sending email one cheap back then. And so, , someone would pick up the phone and that's a wrap. So if somebody trying to call somebody else and they pick up the phone, your internet connection is disrupted.
And so back then though, this is the transition to high speed internet. So in Atlanta, bell South was going around recruiting people who had some skills related to computers because the people who were doing phone installations, computers wasn't a skill that they had. And so they went to these kind of places to recoup people [00:14:00] who at least had their a plus and network plus certifications.
If you had those two things, then they would train you how to do these service calls to hook up high speed internet, uh, for other people. And that was the first, I guess, tech job that I had because it didn't require an extensive resume. Um, you would drive around in your car every morning, you would wake up, you'll get two or three, maybe five if you were any good, and you would just go do these new installs or troubleshoot fixes.
throughout the day, and that's when I really learned how to work with people. You going into people's homes,
[00:14:33] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:14:34] Kelsey Hightower: right? And then people looking around like, you know, in Atlanta there's a real, there's a little divide going on. So certain neighborhoods it's like, Hey, you hungry
[00:14:42] Jenni: Yeah,
[00:14:43] Kelsey Hightower: certain neighborhoods?
It's like, can I see your badge? And so dealing with that, help me understand that tech was my superpower.
[00:14:50] Jenni: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, That's, yeah, that's definitely a different perspective when, you know, my, my experience has all [00:15:00] been in an office, so, you know, my end users don't know that I'm involved. But when you're taking, that's very personal, right. And very face-to-face with, um, people and, um, intimidating. I don't know if I could have done, , could have done
[00:15:14] Kelsey Hightower: Well, remember, I, I'm in survival mode at that point. You know, when you turn 18, at least in my household, you had to leave.
[00:15:22] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:23] Kelsey Hightower: were no staying home till you 26.
[00:15:26] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:15:27] Siara: I I just wanna say throughout this story, I was having so much nostalgia you took me, I was like, okay, the nineties, which is 30 years ago, by the way, people,
[00:15:38] Jenni: say that. Don't say
[00:15:39] Siara: let's just pause for a moment for that.
[00:15:42] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:15:43] Siara: years ago,
[00:15:44] Kelsey Hightower: And, and, and the nineties, you know, like, you know, this is when, you know, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, all these folks are at their peak. I mean, I heard Long Beach on a song
[00:15:55] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:15:56] Kelsey Hightower: you, you know what, I, I'm in the right place. Right? If when , [00:16:00] when you listen to the radio, you hear your city, feel like, okay, we, we, we've arrived.
But that was also a weird period of time because that's when they had the Rodney King riots.
[00:16:10] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:12] Kelsey Hightower: Right. That's the first time I ever seen police brutality on the news. Right. Like someone with a camcorder. We not talking smartphone, no smartphones yet. talking camcorder with the little tape in. Recording this thing.
And I remember I'm in elementary school at this time, I think going into middle school, and I'm walking home and I remember there was a Nintendo game on the floor, like a brand new Nintendo game, and it was double dragging. This game is like $40 and I picked a game up and I'm going home like, damn. Like they people are just dropping Nintendo games on the floor.
What's, what's going on? And so I get home and of course I'm watching on tv. People are looting,
Yeah.
right? People are looting, things are [00:17:00] on fire. And I look down and I was like, but I got a free Nintendo game. I'm in elementary. I don't know what all of
[00:17:07] Jenni: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:08] Kelsey Hightower: Right? So then you explain to your parents, where'd you get the Nintendo game?
I literally found it
[00:17:13] Siara: on the ground, walking home,
[00:17:16] Kelsey Hightower: walking home. So, The nineties was definitely a very influential period in terms of culture, you know, hip hop, um, at least as a, as a, as a person in middle school starting to become aware of the world and how it works. Um, a lot of that kind of played out and I don't know, it keeps me, I'm very empathetic about the path that people take into this career, and it's not necessarily the one where, you know, you come from a great household and you have everything and you just choose to get into technology.
For me, it was a survival tactic. That was the best way for me to get a decent job that was respectable, that didn't require me to go to college. So I was all in.[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] Siara: It's one of the reasons I say over and over again that I love the tech industry is that it really doesn't matter what your path is, as long as you learn what you need to learn and you can prove your skills and do the work, your value will be upheld in this, in this industry. Whereas a lot of, you know, you have to, well still that way, you know, you kind of have to note in some instances it's kind of who you know, not what you know.
But for sure in tech, it's like your skills will get you to the places that that you need to go no matter what your path was to get there.
[00:18:41] Kelsey Hightower: So, so you put on a thread
[00:18:43] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:44] Kelsey Hightower: unravel it?
[00:18:45] Jenni: Okay.
[00:18:47] Kelsey Hightower: I wanna unravel it because what you're saying is a hundred percent right. I think when we start to get to that, that early six figure mark, you're right, there's so much demand in this field. that [00:19:00] I've watched a lot of people go from making 40 grand a year to a hundred grand a year, and a lot of people will put down their biases and their prejudice if you got the skills.
This is a fact, it reminds me of like the sports industry,
[00:19:17] Jenni: Mm.
[00:19:18] Kelsey Hightower: Not too long ago you couldn't even play in some of these leagues. Now if we winning, it's all good as long as we winning.
[00:19:27] Jenni: Oh, I never thought about it like that. Yeah.
[00:19:30] Kelsey Hightower: the interest aligned, but there's a, there's a, there's a problem though. What is your worth? If we don't know?
I'm gonna be honest with you. I didn't know 85% of my career because I remember taking a job look making 45 K in 2004. You, I was good with that. I didn't know any like 45 k doing tech support. We good? And then I remember. One of those jobs I was [00:20:00] afraid to apply for. I say, you know what, it's been a little while.
I'm five years in the game. Let me just see.
[00:20:08] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:09] Kelsey Hightower: And I go to the job interview. I get me a nice little shirt and tie. And the funny thing, I had this suit, I'm buying off the rack. You ain't got that kind of money.
[00:20:20] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:22] Kelsey Hightower: You ain't going to mac this, this, this Marshalls now they ain't no European cut. Everybody look the same from Sunday school to job interview.
It's the same soup.
[00:20:36] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:38] Kelsey Hightower: And I remember I called my Homem EC teacher, Mary Ramsey. Cause I took Hom, EC. Ec. I said, Mary, you gotta tighten your boy up. Finn go I, I go to this interview and I said, A financial institution. And the dress code kind of requires certain tie.
[00:20:55] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:56] Kelsey Hightower: So I go to Miss Mary, Mary Rams ears, and she, [00:21:00] she, she typed me up.
She get me right on the spot, just like, all right, let's taper this. So I'm feeling good. At least my pants ain't too long.
[00:21:07] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:08] Kelsey Hightower: And so I go with a little bit of confidence. And I'm telling you, I didn't know what kind of skills I had because at that point I was working in web hosting and we were getting calls on the phone.
Hey, I need a new server. My server's broken. My database is corrupted, my email isn't working. I mean, we, you, you taking every problem and you got minutes to solve it. You ain't got hours, you got minutes. You need to, in and out, in and out. Skills is sharp and you don't know how good you are because now at this point, year, year in doing that, you're so good and you don't even know it.
So I go to the enterprise, I drive, I don't know, 25 miles north to Alpharetta.
[00:21:47] Jenni: Okay.
[00:21:47] Kelsey Hightower: The outfits is different, the vibe is different. You know, the marble floors. The clean elevators, the receptionists at the desks, it's different. So you go into the interview room and I'm, I'm nervous [00:22:00] because I'm like, I don't know the skill difference between where I am and where they are.
And after the first five interview questions I was like, I'm on a different level, not in a, their trash world, but I'm on a different level. Something's different. I'm answering these questions and even finding answers that they're giving me and saying these, that's the wrong answer. not how that works.
Pull out a laptop. If you do this with this, you're gonna get that. Not that I do this every day. I mean just to be humble cause I don't wanna not get this job, but I would hate for you to leave this room thinking that that's the right answer.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, people are laughing. All of my other skills come into play.
and I was lucky I didn't know that. That's the superpower. Letting people understand who you are as well. Not just what you know in your mind, but also who you are. What type of person will they get a chance to work with. And so I'm driving home [00:23:00] and you gotta call the wife babe. I killed it. Uh, they weren't ready for your boy, they wasn't ready.
Answer all the questions. Cause you know, there's interviews where you feel like you giving your best. That was one of the interviews where I felt like I gave my best. So I'm driving back 25 minute, 25 miles at probably 45 minute drive. I went on my lunch break,
[00:23:23] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:24] Kelsey Hightower: I'm at work. I went to my lunch break, did the interview, came back and on the phone the recruiter said they wanna offer you $90,000.
[00:23:35] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:35] Kelsey Hightower: 45 to 90.
[00:23:37] Jenni: Yeah. That's nice.
[00:23:39] Kelsey Hightower: like, things going to change. We A few things gonna change.
[00:23:46] Jenni: Uh,
[00:23:47] Kelsey Hightower: Y and, and I get back to work and they were like, when can you start? I'm like, Monday, I, I'm like, I know I should give a two week notice, but would they give me a two week [00:24:00] notice? Maybe they wouldn't. I got back to work and I told my manager, I was like, yo, and this is my manager at that time is one of my best friends, Joe
[00:24:08] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:09] Kelsey Hightower: and I caught you. I said, Hey, Joe, man. Amen. They got 90 over there. He said, where? And I told him I was like, in Alpharetta, that's where the, and at first he was kind of like, man, you just kind of switched over to the engineering side. You right. You know. But he was like, I'm gonna be honest with you, man. That's more than I make,
[00:24:34] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:36] Kelsey Hightower: go get it. Uh, you ain't gotta apologize for me. I'm happy for you.
[00:24:41] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:41] Kelsey Hightower: And so I took that job and I'm, I'm gonna tell you throughout my career, things have double Triple 10 Xed
[00:24:48] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:49] Kelsey Hightower: because you don't, you don't know your worth. I won't tell y'all the numbers because you know, get to kidnap territory. don't need leave my family alone. I'm broke. I don't got no [00:25:00] money.
not a fancy.
[00:25:05] Siara: Yeah.
[00:25:06] Kelsey Hightower: nothing. No, no, no, no Jewels, no nothing. Leave me alone. . You see me? I got nothing for you. But it books outside a book for you. But that's as far as we going. But I remember I was, I was, I'm at Google, four years in and I give this keynote at the big Google Conference. There's probably 30,000 people in the audience.
And, uh, I'm doing good. I'm, I'm making good money more than I ever thought I would ever make in my whole life at some point more than I thought I would ever save in my whole life.
Yeah.
and I remember I got this call from Microsoft. I was like, man, I don't, I don't mess with Microsoft Windows. Nah,
[00:25:51] Siara: tried to do you dirty with that Microsoft Word class back
[00:25:54] Kelsey Hightower: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nah, y'all try to, y'all try to get your boy early in [00:26:00] the day. So I was like, nah, I don't really, I don't really do Microsoft, you know, I'm about Linux Mac as far as we go. I might do Chromebook,
[00:26:12] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:13] Kelsey Hightower: but we not doing windows.
[00:26:15] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:16] Kelsey Hightower: And it sounds like I can't even mess with that babe. Cuz a lot of what I do is rooted in an authenticity.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not going to tell someone about something that I wouldn't use.
And then my wife was like, just, just, just go and see what they talking about that's what you be telling other people to do. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I'd be telling other people to do. Go find out. And so I remember I went up there. And they were so cool. That's the first time that I went through an executive recruiting process because they saw me as an executive.
Mm-hmm.
I, I think people at Google saw me as an executive too, at least by title. But I didn't, so I wasn't, I wasn't [00:27:00] recalculating the value. I was good where I was. And, uh, I met with the team. I spent some time with Microsoft ceo, Satya,
[00:27:11] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:12] Kelsey Hightower: and, uh, I'm like, yo, and the questions is very different.
[00:27:16] Jenni: Yeah. I'm very curious about this process.
[00:27:19] Kelsey Hightower: the questions is very different.
[00:27:22] Jenni: When people know who you are. They do not ask for a resume. It's not gonna tell them anything that they don't already know.
Mm-hmm.
And so I real, because I don't have a LinkedIn, haven't had a LinkedIn profile in a
Yeah, I was trying to look for it. , I did not find it.
And so I'm thinking, oh, I gotta get me a resume. I haven't done one of those in a long time.
[00:27:43] Kelsey Hightower: And so they were just like, they just knew all about me. They had done their research, they kind of knew my impact. And actually in the interview process, people are telling you your impact. They're saying, we've seen this from afar, and so we know what we [00:28:00] would be getting. We just wanna make sure you know what you would be getting.
And so the interview process is very different. People aren't trying to validate your skills because you have so much public body of work. This is why I think it's so important to have that public presence. You choose how you want to do it. You could flex on them on Instagram front of the rented Ferrari.
You could, if that's what you wanna put out there,
[00:28:26] Jenni: Right.
[00:28:27] Kelsey Hightower: that's an option. Or you can put your intellect on full display. You can give people a living resume. , you can show them all facets of your skillset if you into software. GitHub is a living body of work that you get to keep updated and to show off all your skills.
And so for me it's like, it's like when the athlete, when you play in the league, your games are on film. What resume, what resume do you submit as LeBron James? I'm [00:29:00] Look, you not
[00:29:03] Siara: the record. Check. Check the film.
[00:29:05] Kelsey Hightower: It's on film. It's no, you can't lie. There's no need to lie because it's on film. And so when I got there, I felt like, man, I didn't, I didn't remember I'm, I'm almost 20 years into the game. I thought I was doing all the things and I didn't know that the value had reset. In fact, Joe, what he say after one of those verses, he says, yesterday's price is not today's price. I ain't know the price went up. . And so I remember I got this offer back
[00:29:37] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:40] Kelsey Hightower: when people add a zero to your income, you be like, what?
What? What's, what's,
[00:29:44] Siara: come on.
[00:29:44] Kelsey Hightower: this, this, this a typo babe, this a typo. Don't even get excited.
[00:29:49] Siara: Don't
[00:29:50] Jenni: happening?
[00:29:51] Kelsey Hightower: let me, let me call them. Don't get excited cuz after taxes, that's not going be that. Let's
[00:29:59] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . [00:30:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:30:01] Kelsey Hightower: no ideas. Now she got a career too. She's a professional in her games, so we see this number. She was like, I told you, I was like, yeah, you said go
[00:30:12] Siara: like remember what I said.
[00:30:14] Kelsey Hightower: And I, and I had to give her credit so that I'm acknowledging publicly.
[00:30:17] Jenni: Very, very nice. Very good. Good job,
[00:30:20] Kelsey Hightower: And so I look at it, I'm like, I'm like, okay, I think maybe this is what the number supposed to be.
[00:30:26] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:26] Kelsey Hightower: And so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna counter.
[00:30:31] Jenni: Okay. Oh,
[00:30:33] Kelsey Hightower: let's, let's, let's let, not too much, but come on now.
[00:30:38] Jenni: we're gonna, we're gonna start negotiations.
[00:30:42] Kelsey Hightower: So I'm like, okay, let me negotiate just a little, I'm gonna tell you Microsoft is family forever. I didn't go work there, but they're family forever. Cause I did my little counter thought I was doing something.
[00:30:55] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:56] Kelsey Hightower: They countered back higher, says we not playing.[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Siara: Wow.
[00:31:01] Kelsey Hightower: okay. I'm done playing too. So I go back to work and look, I'm, I'm doing well at Google.
[00:31:08] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:09] Kelsey Hightower: I have no complaints at this point. My career is doing everything. And I just talked to my manager and said, Hey, I've been rocking with you at that time, four years, one manager, four years straight. That doesn't really usually happen in large tech companies. And so we were partners. and I sl him that offer.
like Joe Rodriguez years before, my managers were like, holy crap,
Uhhuh.
but you're worth every penny.
Mm-hmm.
He told me I was worth every penny. Now I don't know how to feel about that because why am I not getting that now?
[00:31:50] Jenni: Yeah. So this must have led to another conversation.
[00:31:53] Siara: I appre I appreciate, but also.
[00:31:56] Kelsey Hightower: Well, I mean, again, I never asked [00:32:00] for more. If, if I've never had saw that offer, I would've never had a problem.
[00:32:06] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:06] Kelsey Hightower: know what I mean? So it, it was fine until I understood something different. And so one thing that he did, it's the reason why Im at Google still seven years now, is because he said, I just want to see, I'm curious, could you share the offer with me?
[00:32:23] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:24] Kelsey Hightower: And I just wanna see if they'll match.
[00:32:28] Jenni: Okay.
[00:32:28] Kelsey Hightower: I'm just curious. All the work you've done, all the work we've done together, I'm just curious. And I told him I'm not trying to do that because if I hadn't already made my mind up to go, I'm not trying to play that game because life has been good so far. I have no complaints.
There's just a better deal on the table.
[00:32:47] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:48] Kelsey Hightower: And so he goes off and in a short amount of time, it's countered quickly, but in a way that wasn't like anyone was feeling like they were being held out stitch,[00:33:00]
[00:33:00] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:33:01] Kelsey Hightower: no one felt like there was an ultimatum
[00:33:03] Siara: right,
[00:33:04] Kelsey Hightower: and they fixed the numbers. And of course I'm like, I'm really good now.
[00:33:10] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:11] Kelsey Hightower: So I go back to the Microsoft team, you know, I'm in my head. I ain't like windows. No way. and I'm just being funny.
[00:33:22] Jenni: no.
[00:33:23] Kelsey Hightower: was very, no, seriously, I'm just being funny because when we're in the interview and they ask me like, what parts of the Microsoft conglomerate do you like? I'm a fan of Xbox and Xbox business. I'm a fan of GitHub. Remember, Microsoft owns GitHub,
[00:33:38] Jenni: Oh, okay.
[00:33:39] Kelsey Hightower: most of my time.
Like, you know what I mean? So when it comes to developer tooling, Microsoft has been front and center forever, and things like GitHub expand that. So I knew that there was gonna be a path for me to kind of come in and stay authentic to who I am, cuz I use some of those tools anyway, right? code. All of those things are all in the [00:34:00] Microsoft realm.
So it wasn't going to be a stretch to make that leap, but I had to give myself more reasons than just that they countered,
[00:34:08] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:09] Kelsey Hightower: And so I go back and I say, listen, I appreciate you all because you've got me the biggest raise ever. I would've never asked for this.
Mm-hmm.
But now I have and I got it all because you put it on paper.
And they weren't even mad because after that, one of the senior VPs there, Jeff Sunquest, he met me at a conference probably six, seven months later and he was just like, Hey, let's just meet. We're in Seattle. Hey, let's just meet. And he, we rolled up, took me to breakfast. Cause I had a keynote later in the morning and he pulled out this bag.
He had a bag and it was a, it was a Microsoft Azure, might have been a GitHub hoodie. And it had my name on the sleeve. [00:35:00] And he was like, we wanna be on Team Hightower. And I was like, Jeff, that's what I'm saying. He was relentless with the recruiting process,
Uhhuh.
but he was recruiting the person.
Mm-hmm.
He wasn't recruiting a software engineer.
wasn't recruiting a Linux system administrator. Is recruiting the person. And that, and to cap this story off, a year goes by and I get to meet Satya at this hotel room in San Jose. He was like, Hey, just wanna meet. And I'm telling you, it made me feel so good about my career at that point, because I meet with his admin downstairs and he is like, yo, thank you for coming.
Um, you know, Satya just wanted to meet, have a discussion. And I was like, yo, what is this like all about? And he's like, they were sitting around the table, what executive did we want that we didn't get? And your and your name was on the list. And so that means not just one or two people, there's a few people in your corner.
This is team [00:36:00] Microsoft. I don't work there,
Mm-hmm.
but this is how they talk about you when you're not around.
yeah.
And so I go upstairs. Now look, when you're flying to a meeting to meet with Satya, I was like, man, I gotta read his book. He has a book called Hit Refresh. He's a phenomenal tech CEO by the way. So I'm reading his book on the flight.
and one of the opening, I think it's in the first chapter, he talks about starting his career at Microsoft as a developer advocate for like cloud and as CEO of Microsoft. He's advocating for the soul of Microsoft.
[00:36:34] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:35] Kelsey Hightower: And I'm ready now. Read the book. We go up to the hotel room now. Satya knows I'm coming. It's probably been on the schedule for two weeks at least. And so I walk in the hotel room and if you've ever been to the Bay Area, uh, his hotel room was facing like the mountain ranges, so it's like this very picture esque scenery.
[00:36:57] Jenni: Uhhuh
[00:36:58] Kelsey Hightower: And he's [00:37:00] just sitting there looking at the mountain range as if I'm an uninspected guest. So I walk in like, we not taking photos for the Vanity Fair, You know what I mean? You knew I was coming and he just started laughing. I told him I was like, Satya now you knew I was coming. You ain't have to be facing the mountain acting like you in deep thought And he just started laughing and one thing he told me was really dope.
Google had just gotten a new executive leader at the time, and he came from Oracle call and say what you want. But a lot of people had kind of a pre-thought about how a new leader from a company like that would behave. And also anytime there's a big change, a lot of time other leaders wanna look for something new.
I wasn't necessarily in that category, but he told me something. He was like, listen, we had like an hour long conversation. But one of the things he told me that stuck with me was [00:38:00] when we gave you that offer, the way we kind of did it, we were almost thinking like we were giving you, um, we were giving you support in order to run away from that new Google situation.
[00:38:15] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:15] Kelsey Hightower: but we should have gave you something to run towards,
[00:38:18] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:19] Kelsey Hightower: right? So instead of leaving an ambiguous like, you know, figure it out when you get here, that should have been presented clearly. So that way, instead of you feeling like you were leaving Google, it would've been like you're coming to something else.
And that kind of just stuck with me. So when I make decisions now, ask myself, am I leaving or am I going? that kind of stuck with me forever.
[00:38:40] Jenni: Yeah. That's definitely something as you know, people, some people do like pros and cons list, but yeah, there should be like a, you know, what is the purpose of me making this transit?
[00:38:52] Siara: I just wanna say I, I love the story and how you told it, even from the early years of kind of being in [00:39:00] that survival mode. I relate to that story very much. Feeling like I had to write out my own plan because I didn't have the most supportive, you know, household. I didn't have a bunch of resources. And it's like, you gotta go out there, you gotta figure it out, you gotta get a job and you gotta figure out how to finish school and you gotta get the best paying job that you can and you just go and run your own race.
You don't have time or you know, the luxury of looking in all these different places. You gotta keep marching forward. What you said about not really knowing what your worth and your value is because like, I'm, I'm good. I'm content where I am, I'm doing my thing. I love what I do. I'm enjoying it. Like I, my family is good until someone presents you with something or you're put in a situation where you're kind of rattling off things that are just kind of second nature to you, and then you have this light bulb moment [00:40:00] of, well damn.
I didn't know I was as good as I am. And then you kind of start to re like, I'm still good, but you start to reevaluate, okay, are there some other options for me or is there something else that I could be looking towards, even though I'm very content with where I am. So I really, really love that aspect of your story and how you presented that.
I think a lot of our listeners can relate, especially to having an untraditional path of getting into tech and just in, in general, it's, you know, it's okay to be content, but also be listening and, and looking for where your value is, what your worth is, all the skills that you have. Don't let that stuff, you know, just go to the wayside.
So thank you for that.
[00:40:45] Kelsey Hightower: you know, I, I'm hearing you and it's, it's funny that there's this emotion because even though my mom had never told me anything that way, I know that was her life for a long time.
[00:40:58] Siara: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:59] Kelsey Hightower: right? Because [00:41:00] that move from Long Beach to Atlanta was behind a divorce. So now you single mom again the second time is a single mom and there's a lot that goes into it.
And when you in high school, you don't understand the dynamics. Number one, there's a bunch of the emotional stuff you're dealing with that you can't even talk to your kids about. Like it's just that that's a
[00:41:21] Jenni: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:41:22] Kelsey Hightower: that at least for my mother and I know a lot of single mothers, that's a boundary they don't really want to cross cuz they don't wanna poison the waters.
[00:41:29] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:30] Kelsey Hightower: But then there's this other piece of you in survival mode. And the thing about grinding, it doesn't leave a lot of room for strategy,
[00:41:39] Siara: Right,
yes. Absolutely.
[00:41:42] Kelsey Hightower: You know, you, you taking extra shifts when they come up. You doing everything because you want to be on your grind. You don't want to feel like that. You're not taking advantage of every opportunity that's given to you.
But the truth is, good opportunities typically are not given.
[00:41:58] Jenni: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:58] Kelsey Hightower: taken.
[00:41:59] Jenni: [00:42:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:42:00] Kelsey Hightower: You have to take 'em. Most people ain't trying to present good opportunities cause they, they're keeping them.
[00:42:06] Siara: Yes.
[00:42:07] Kelsey Hightower: Not a lot of people pass along great opportunities. That's why they great. They keep them and then they give you the rest of them. oh yeah, I got something for you. It's like, did you not want it So I, I think that's a a, a very powerful thing. Is that, the thing I wanted to say here, to make it super clear, the reason why I'm trying to give so much insight about my journey is that after survival and everything is good, then you have room for strategy. You can relax and there's nothing wrong with relaxing.
You ain't gotta work all around the clock forever. But there's some room for strategy.
[00:42:42] Siara: Yeah.
[00:42:43] Kelsey Hightower: And that proactiveness meaning is not on your organization or the company in which you work to train you. Y'all, I know y'all hate that when people say, ain't nobody gimme training, it's like, stop that. That's not.
That's on you. I think now that we have time for strategy, let's [00:43:00] make sure we strategizing about career trajectory, career progression, thinking about how to make sure that you have that living resume in the world. I can separate you from the pact and then we're not gonna all be fortunate enough to know our worth at the right time all the time, but at least we can talk about it a little bit so that people can at least have it in the back of their mind.
Am I getting what I worth? And do I even know?
[00:43:22] Siara: Yeah,
[00:43:23] Jenni: Yeah.
[00:43:23] Siara: absolutely.