Matty: [00:00:00] Everybody, that’s my disclaimer of, you know, don’t try to figure out if this is me or someone else because it will be so cleverly disguised. It’s time for Arrested DevOps, the podcast that helps you achieve understanding, develop good practices, and operate your team and organization for maximum DevOps awesomeness. I’m Matty Stratton. Today, we are going to talk about all kinds of things, and I don’t even know what they are yet, but they’re going to be fun and exciting. But before we get into the fun and excitement, let’s have a fun and exciting message from our sponsors. Collecting compliance evidence shouldn’t involve spreadsheets and scavenger hunts. With automated controls and over 75 integrations, Drata automates the process without needing to be an expert. Drata supports 14 frameworks, including SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001. Companies like Notion and LemonAid have shared how Drata simplifies audits through automated evidence collection. Don’t let audits slow down your dev cycle. Request a demo today and get 10% off along with waived implementation fees at drata.com/partner/arresteddevops. Feeling like you have too many alerts, overwhelmed by vulnerabilities, and at the end of the day, not deploying apps as quickly as you would like? Sysdig hears you. Security in the cloud can be overwhelming and security posture is suffering. You need a way to prioritize what matters so that you can move faster. Shift left is the right operating principle, but you must shift left the right way. Sysdig roots everything it does in runtime insights. By knowing what is running in production, you can prevent, detect, and respond to threats and do it at cloud speed. To learn more about Sysdig, visit sysdig.com/arresteddevops. I am joined today by my friend Sydney Miller, and I think we’re gonna talk about topics like pay transparency and compensation and layoffs and all sorts of other really positive and exciting and sunny topics. But before we get into the, you know, wonderful, delightful sunflower of riffing conversation, we’re gonna riff on riffs, right? Sydney, you wanna give a little introduction to our listeners about yourself?
Sidney: [00:02:22] Hi everyone. My name is Sydney. I live in Phoenix. Phoenix, Arizona. I— everybody always asks why, and I have no idea why, because it’s really hot here. It’s very true. I’ve been working on— in talent acquisition for, gosh, 24 years, if I can even say that, that long. But I’ve always been on the back-end infrastructure side of, of talent acquisition. So I’ve worked at some really amazing companies, all the big ones and some small ones, but I’ve really focused on the candidate. Obviously, I work for the company, but for me, it’s about candidate experience and all that comes with that. So, that’s a little bit about me. I’ve got 3 amazing girls, which keep me motivated in the inclusion space because one of them might just become an engineer. And if not, they still need to be heard and seen. So, I work a lot with marginalized populations and getting them into tech, which is another really cool opportunity that I have in my work. So, and I take that very seriously. But I’m really excited to be here.
Matty: [00:03:27] Yeah, it’ll be fun. If it helps you, I’m pretty sure I’ve been working in opera. I think my career in operations was about the same as your recruiting one, and then you tacked DevRel onto it. So, and vendor side. So we just don’t, we just don’t talk about like which high school reunion is coming up.
Sidney: And no, no, we’re just OG. We’re just OGs.
Matty: Let’s kind of, let’s kind of dig into this a little bit. It’s rough out there.
Sidney: It sure is.
Matty: I was open for work, as we, as they say on the LinkedIn profile banner. It was about a year ago this time. I think maybe it was towards, maybe it was the end of June. Yeah. When I sort of threw it out there and was like, hey, and it was, it was different even then. So it was about a year ago. I mean, it wasn’t crazy, but I, you know, I hung out my shingle and got a lot of hits, a lot of junk, but a lot of interesting things.
Sidney: And yeah.
Matty: It’s been rough. And it’s interesting, you know, not only are there maybe less opportunity, I wanna talk about that a little bit, you know, kind of things drying up a little bit, but also more people looking as we’ve had a lot of these cuts. And I don’t know, maybe I’ve been not paying attention lately ’cause it’s better. Partially I’m avoiding Twitter more than anything. So now I’m not seeing as much maybe, but there was definitely a point like kind of, I guess, starting towards the end of 2022, you know, there was a good, 4 or 5 months where it seemed like every couple of weeks we were seeing big things. And again, we can get into the late-stage capitalism problem of all of this too, but maybe we’ll talk about the human impact first, the individuals. These are organizations that on one hand were doing these layoffs and on the other hand are still doing well, but also still hiring a lot. When you see this sort of like, is it a left-hand, right-hand thing where you’re like, you know, Corp A just like laid off 20% of their engineers, but there’s like all these open job reqs as well. And I know what I’ve seen on my side with organizations I’ve been in that sometimes that is a, I think, a left-hand, right-hand thing, so to speak, where the HR recruiting system is not caught up yet, you know, but, you know, sometimes it’s eventual consistency. I don’t know. What are you, what have you seen and what are some of the the things around?
Sidney: [00:05:45] Well, you know, it’s really like you said, it’s a really interesting time. In the last years, there’s been a lot of churn, right? So we started to see layoffs earlier this year of actual, you know, functional roles, right? Where engineering, product, you know, data science, machine learning, all of these kind of more foundational roles to an organization versus like a sales, talent acquisition, HR, things like that, which are more of in a support structure versus actually doing the core work that makes money, right, and makes products beautiful. Now, within the last— since March, I would say I have seen so many sales and tech talent acquisition and HR people on the, on the market, which is an indicator of an overhire, right? So it’s, you know, you can look at it 2 ways, like, oh, this sucks, And this is gonna be the beginning of so much more, but it also could be a course correction based on all that work. I don’t know if you remember early in 2020 and 2021 when the world went remote and jobs were exploding and everybody was, you know, it was like fish in a barrel where you could find opportunity. There really was. And over time, and of course the economic climate and things like that have shown that the support mechanism TA, HR, sales, you know, marketing and things like that are being slashed and gutted right now to kind of make up for the course correction, right? So it’s tough. I mean, I’m seeing even engineering managers— I had one that is, you know, an OG like us who has tons of experience that is looking right now and has had some trouble finding the role because not only are there roles open But these roles are really specific, right? So the more generalist, the more open, the more, you know, I call it kind of the slide, the technical slide that you can get into is so much more. It’s cut down in almost so, so small of a viewpoint that they’re not seeing all the really good talent that’s out there, right? So when people are looking, okay, we have to cut back on budget and we have to cut back on hiring, we have to do this. Okay, well, we’re going to go with all the Let’s find the purple unicorn with a, you know, with a T-Rex on its back shooting off machine guns. You know, how many of those people do you know? Those are really, really specific people. I mean, talk about site reliability engineering, that might be one of them. But, you know, it’s, it’s kind of blanket across organizations right now. And, you know, I have personally experienced 2 RIFs this year. So far and within the, not the calendar year, but the actual year. So I was laid off back in September of last year. And I was at, I left a really strong, very big data, data center company and went and chased the Series B startup, which is what I’m totally used to and love. And it was a fintech. And then all of a sudden the market the markets really started to raise the interest rates. So boom, they slashed our entire talent acquisition team, which was, which was hard. Right. And so luckily enough, I’ve been able to, you know, do a couple of things and maybe we can get into like some of the things that I’ve done and to make sure that I’ve been okay to even enter a job search. And I leveraged Twitter again and was able to be picked up by another Series A startup. Which was awesome. Oh my gosh, I had such a great time there. But again, it was market conditions, right? And so there was a riff and it was, you know, I’m, I’m still like, oh my gosh, what is my value? Right? I mean, we could totally talk about that first initial piece of that loss, right? We could totally dig into that. And, and, you know, I think that that is the one common denominator through all these roles and all these openings. Things is that when someone loses their job, they lose their— they feel like their value is gone. Right.
Matty: [00:10:05] And I have— it’s interesting, because I have like some experiences and things that I know, and I’ll very intentionally be vague, right? So I’m either— either some of these might be things related to me or people I know directly or other stories I’ve heard. So everybody, that’s my disclaimer of, you know, don’t try to figure out if this is me or someone else, because it will be so cleverly disguised. I think it’s almost impossible to not feel this way, to not take it personally, to not take it as a reflection upon your work. And it’s interesting, I’ve been talking to my kids about this for a while. I had a therapist before who used to call it Rule 7, and Rule 7 was don’t take it personally. And that would be the thing is we would talk about that and Jack would be like, wait, Matt, Rule 7. And so, my son that struggles with anxiety that we work on, this is sort of one of the things we say, hey, it’s Rule 7. There’s a lot of ways to have to work with Rule 7. One, especially in a lot of organizations and especially startups and smaller companies, how much of our identity gets connected to not just working in general, but the place we work? Because every company is eventually going to do something that you don’t agree with and makes you really angry. And if it’s part of your identity, and, you know, I’ll say this, like, this was, this is what it was like working at Chef, right? You would say you bleed Chef orange. You know, when we were at Chef, that was our identity. And you know what? It’s a company. It did shit that I didn’t like. I mean, it happened after I wasn’t there. And then you’re like, you feel betrayed by it. And it took me 2 places to sort of learn to distance myself from that. And now I’m in a position where I’m like, hey, I love the company that I work for right now. It’s a great set of humans. I’m passionate about what we’re doing. I mean, I’m focused. I think it’s a great place, but the company is not me. Right? Like, it’s gonna do things. My identity is not that I work there, you know, and they will get the best work they can possibly get from me, and I will be very supportive, and I will drive our message and do all the things I’m supposed to do. But, and, and when I go to events with my colleagues, we will have a great time together because we are coworkers, and, but we’re not a family, right? Or if we are, it’s because we’re individuals together. It’s not because of that. And that’s a hard thing to do. And I think when you get yourself connected to that identity, then when you’re cut off from that, it feels very cold and personal. And I think one of the places to look at this is I think there are times people will say, and maybe it’s, it’s probably true in some cases, that, you know, okay, a bunch of the other companies are doing layoffs, so now this gives us an excuse to get rid of our quote-unquote dead weight. But I think about a lot of places I’ve been and I’ve seen either people’s stories they’ve told me or I’ve seen where some of the best performers get let go. And sometimes it’s because your best performer might be your most expensive person. But I’ve also seen places, there was one organization I knew people who were riffed and they were told, they said, this is not about, you know, this is about correction, right? This is about where we’re focusing on, which, you know, we’re reevaluating. And it wasn’t just a cost-saving exercise. And I think that to me, the proof of that was that people couldn’t request to be laid off, right? Like, there was sort of a question. People were like, hey, can I, can I throw myself on the, you know, the daggers here and, and take it, and I’ll go instead, and you can save my salary or whatever? And they’re like, no, because the decision wasn’t we’re getting rid of people who are bad performers. It’s this particular function is not what we’re focusing on now, and we have too many people doing And it’s, again, it, because you, you’ll look at this in a lot of the places where they happen. You’re like, you’ve got star performers, you’ve got low performers, you’ve got expensive people, you got cheap people. Yeah. Or, you know, and I think it’s very hard to not take it personally. I guess the other question I would ask for you, leadership is never great about this, even when they do it kind of well. And I’m sorry, it’s always white dude CEOs who look like they should have their own podcast who are up there on YouTube crying about how hard it is to lay people off. And it’s— that seems like just besides being super tone deaf, but it does seem like it is hard to do those things, right? And I know, you know, I’ve been in organizations, you know, where I’ll tell you, in one organization I’m in, you know, we, we had, we had a reduction. And one of the things I appreciated was that, you know, it’s sort of like the Game of Thrones thing, right? You carry out the— you say the sentence, you carry out the swords. I mean, that’s a lot of conversations to have, and they’re hard conversations, and they don’t feel good. But, and I do know another organization that I, that had a bunch of RIFs and I was talking to one of my friends there who’s a manager and we were chatting and he said, yeah, I had to call everybody on my team that got laid off and I had nothing to do with the decision, but I was the one who had to call people and tell them. We’re not really speaking to how executives could do this better. I think they just should. But like, how do we, how do we, if we’re in that place and how do we protect ourselves to just like not let the, I don’t want to say not let it get to you, but like, like you said, you’ve been through this recently twice. So like, what’s the, what’s, what do you do to like maintain your mental health?
Sidney: [00:15:13] Mental safety, right? Yeah.
Matty: Yeah.
Sidney: Psychological safety even because psychological—
Matty: Well, you have no psychological safety at that point. There’s no, you’re right. That’s, that’s a given. Right. So yeah.
Sidney: None. Zero. So, you know, I’ve, I’ve got a couple things that I use, but it would be something that I would tell somebody I love the same thing, you know? Because how hard is it to take your own advice? You know, it’s like practice what you preach kind of scenario. And nobody wants to do that because, you know, oh, don’t, you know, so much of our job life is about us being seen and heard and successful and all these things. And let’s just call it what it is. Your job is so important to you, who you are as an identity, because it’s almost like being in a relationship. Right? It’s, it’s a really hard thing to do. And I always talk about this when I’m in interview processes, and an offer situation is probably one of the most critical decisions that you will have in deciding what you’re going to do next for your career, because so much of that is you, right? And you wrap yourself around that. You spend more time at work than you do even with your own family, right? So it’s like getting, you know, entering into a partnership, buying a house, buying a car, and finding a job are like some of the largest things for you to consider, right? But what I’ve had to do is— and let’s talk about like not feeling valued. I’m raising my hand right now, and I’ve got 24 years. I’ve done some super amazing work. I’ve worked at some incredible startups that got bought out for billions of dollars. And when I left, I still felt awful, awful, even if I left on my own accord, right? Because my identity was so wrapped up in, oh, I built that and oh, I did that. And, you know, and yes, those are a lot of I statements. But we can talk about I when it comes to our own personal work, right? Because there’s a lot of we. I mean, and, you know, when you have to own your success as well as your failure, right? So my largest thing is, is When this shit goes down, you got to give yourself space to process, right? No one does it. They go into fight or flight, and it’s like, “I’m gonna find. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do do do do do do do.” And then they’re on this hamster wheel of like throwing out resumes that might not even be ready yet because you’re not mentally there yet. So process. You’ve got to let yourself process this out, right? However that works for you, you’ve got to set up a support system. Right? I mean, I reached out to you and was like, dude, this just happened to me, and you made me feel better even though you didn’t have a job for me or you didn’t have a solution for me, but your support meant everything, right? And we have those people. You need to have a support system. Reach out to your friends, your peers. More importantly, who’s your cheerleader? I know that that’s like kind of a weird thing to call it, but you know what? I’ve got— I’m your cheerleader, you’re my cheerleader, and it feels good, and that’s okay to explore that.
Matty: [00:18:21] Someone who will gas you up because you need that, right? Because you’re not getting much of that. And it’s, I think you may, you know, again, it’s like, you know, all analogy is suspect, but it is in a lot of ways like relationship, right? Like kind of a lot of times and we jump into things before we’re ready. And sometimes we don’t have a choice again with this. Like, so I was gonna ask, like you said, you know, we think about this idea of, we hit that, we, we go into fight or flight mode. We go into like, I have to do a thing. And to be honest, sometimes we have to, right? Sometimes that sort of thing, like everybody, you know, some not. And this is, this is one of the things where sometimes folks, you know, might have the, for lack of a better word, the luxury of being able to say, I have enough cushion, enough of a situation where I can take that. Sometimes we don’t. One of the things I wanted to, to ask about and think what you think about, because we talk about getting ourselves taken care of where we go. And I know, as someone who’s been in this scenario, when you get into that place about— in my notes, I said, if you’re paranoid about being out of work, but it’s not about being paranoid. But if you have a lot of anxiety or you’re in that place, how do you protect yourself? Like, even when you’re thinking about making the right decision, right? So, like, when you’re in that place where you’re sitting there and sometimes you’ll eventually hit the point where you’re like, I just have to take whatever I can get. And, and so, number one, it— you might— and sometimes that’s fine. Sometimes you’re like, that’s actually the case. But like, yeah, I know one of the things, you know, like you said, you’re, you’re that negotiator. The reason I brought this up is you said, you know, that negotiation at an offer is so important because that’s your baseline for so many things. So, if I’m sitting there and let’s say I got laid off and it’s taken me a couple months and I’m finally getting to offer, I’m probably going to say, whatever you want, fella. Like, cool, sounds great. Sure. It’s 20% less than I made my last job. It’s 30% less. I don’t care. Great. Gimme the job. But right, that handles my immediate issue.
Sidney: [00:20:20] Sure.
Matty: But now I’ve reset myself and I, many layoff stories that are decades old now, right? You know, so, yeah. But I, I was laid off from a, a gig in the early 2000s. It was sort of one of those things where at first it was like, okay, not a big, I had a little bit of a cushion. I kind of was doing some side and then I was like, like, okay, no big deal. And especially if you’re like doing really well for a while, you’re like, this is fine. I mean, you can hit the thing where you don’t take it personally. You’re like, whatever, I’m a rock star. I’m just gonna boom, I’m just gonna go get something else. Then you slam right into that wall of reality and go, oh shit, turns out I can’t. And so I took— when I— so I was, I was working for a company that got acquired by GE, and then we got laid off because they’re like, we don’t need all these. That’s fine. That’s the thing that happened. And they actually took care of us a little bit, you know, for that. We’re like, okay. So I kind of rode that out a little bit and then was like, all right, now it’s time to go find a job. And then I was like, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t find, couldn’t find, couldn’t find. And I took probably, yeah, a 30% cut, and it took me years to get that back again. It was a reset. And the reason I bring this up is because I see people today that I know are running into that, and I don’t think it’s tough, and it’s not even sometimes not even a negotiation point. Because it’s just what there is. So while I’m not looking right now and I’m not hanging out my shingle, I still take a lot of calls. And I’m doing that for the perspective of people I know who are looking, because I look at it as like, I know people who are out who are in a similar space as me, right? They look, you know, like their profile is similar to me and experience and what they’re looking for, and I know where they’re at. So I’m like, okay, so I’ll get this call from you know, schmo startup or whatever. And they’re like, we were looking for a head of DevRel, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, all right, well, I’ll, I’ll talk to you, you know, because 2 reasons. Most, 90% of the reason is because I can do a little filtering. The other thing is, I mean, again, boss who’s listening, I’m not looking for another job. But I mean, there’s a number. Someone could come up to me like, we’re going to pay you $600 grand and, you know, $1 million in equity and whatever. I’m like, cool, I’ll just go, you know, that’s not— but that— but, but my point is So I’ll take those calls and I’ll talk and I’ll say, okay, so let’s talk. And I’ll, and I’ll try to get their range. Again, it’s one of those things where, you know, the first person to name a number loses all this stuff. But I’m like, let’s— I’m not actually that interested. So I’m like, give it to me. And I’m like, wow, what people are wanting to pay for that role. But I know people who are in the same position and I know where their numbers are. And I’m seeing them take these jobs where I know it was— and it’s because they have to. And it’s, it’s rough because on one hand you say like, it’s— I guess this was sort of my point is I’ll hear these conversations. I’m sure it’s not DevRel specific. It’s just those are the conversations I’m having where I’m like, wow, good luck finding someone for that. And you know what? They are finding them because there’s people who will have to take it. And it’s, and that’s a little bit, yeah, because of that compression. And so I, you know, sort of the diabolical part of me is like, well, maybe that’s a little bit a part of this is they’re like, cool, we can go get people cheaper now. We can reset. And I’ve been, you know, seen places where I’m like, Maybe they’re trying to get all those people to quit because they think they’re overpaid and they can go and get, you know. So I think there is definitely some of that at a macro level. I think it’s probably happening less, you know, again, if you’re a 40-person startup, like, you just don’t have the ability to run that across the industry. But I think it’s, it’s something, it’s a correction that’s being, that’s challenging for us.
Sidney: [00:23:45] Well, and that’s, that’s the point, right? You were kind of talking about like, how do we kind of navigate this space and how do you keep yourself from being chopped off at the knees from salary? And you know what, the only thing that I can hear in the back of my mind was there was a conversation I had with a CMO, a female CMO. I’m sorry, a woman CMO. Let me correct that. And she and I, I was like, how did you get to where you are being a CMO of this huge financial organization? And she said, you know what, I’ve had my, my times where I’ve had to go so hard and so fast and put everything else on the back burner. And then as soon as that opportunity dried up, I had to take something from the back burner and make that my life and be okay with it. Because you’re going to need to slow down a little bit. You’re going to have to take something that might not feel right because of necessity, which is a lot of what we’re talking about today, right? You know, Yes, like there is a certain amount of money that you need to make to make your life and your costs, your, you know, who you are and your expectations of your livelihood work. You know, we’ve all got, you know, rent and mortgage and bills and things like that where you have to cover that, right? There’s— and hopefully we’re in a position where you can get more than that. But I’m going to be totally honest with you and say it’s okay to kind of take a step back and not rule the world in times of uncertainty where you can just get through, right? Because there’s so much happening right now in the market that, you know, are you fearful for your job? You know, what are— that’s why it’s always good to understand where you are at and what you need from a role, right? Because you can always still look while you’re working. Always can still look where you’re working.
Matty: [00:25:41] How much of that is going to become maybe— I don’t want to say less relevant, but as we’re getting some more humane labor laws about what an employer can ask? Because the reason that reset happened to me was because what’s the question you get asked every time? How much are you making now? And so I’m like, so when I go to a new job, but the, the And while, yes, as again, it’s depending on where the power is in the conversation, I’m sure all your negotiation is you can say, it doesn’t matter what I was making. Let me tell you how good I am and what matters there. But if the power dynamic is different, you know, maybe, maybe the law helps you there more because they just can’t ask you.
Sidney: But, you know, yeah, they, they are not allowed to. It’s illegal.
Matty: Well, it’s illegal across the board in the US, right? Or is it just in some states?
Sidney: So the states that have laws are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington.
Matty: Okay, okay.
Sidney: But if you are posting a role in the United States and it’s remote and not in any of these specific states, or, you know, if it’s remote, you’re gonna have to disclose, right? That’s why you’re seeing a lot of places put ranges on the job descriptions now, because they hire in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, Nevada, New York, all these big ones, right? Because where are you going to go first for tech? Major metropolitan cities. So it’s just easier to disclose. And then, you know, and it’s the right thing to do, right? But the way that—
Matty: [00:27:14] go ahead. What I was going to say though is I feel like a lot of those things are games though, right? Like, I know, I mean, there was a job posting that I saw recently and it was like the range was over $200,000 in the range. Right? It was sort of like we just picked a big number and a small number, and it is technically correct. The number is between these numbers, but there is no way we’re paying that top number. And, you know, so I guess so that point, but then you’re saying also in those states, are they not allowed to ask what you made before?
Sidney: They’re not allowed to ask.
Matty: Okay. So that’s the helpful part. Yeah.
Sidney: So what they will ask is, what is your threshold or what is your expectation? And that has nothing to do with what you W-2’d last year. Right. Or whatever you—
Matty: whatever the taxes are.
Sidney: Yeah. Whatever the government said, hey, come on, let’s, let’s split this. Right. So, it’s the pay transparency laws should, should help. Right. And when engaging with an organization, you give them what you need to be successful. And then if you need to be flexible or they’re like, oh, I don’t know. Well, then I know that out of respect of, you know, securing your financial future, you could walk away from it, or you can engage and push a little bit more. But that is where the recruiter should know this stuff in and out and also be cool enough and not just doing the cattle call scenario where they engage and find out what’s important to you, right? So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of things that are happening now. I mean, there’s some great conversations happening at, at conferences, which I know that, you know, you have curated and, and, and PayTalk. TalkPay?
Matty: [00:29:00] TalkPay. TalkPay. So, so yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that for a second. And I’m going to put a link in the show notes to, to one of the things we’re going to talk about, which is this blog post. So bear with me as I give you a slight history lesson. Not you, Sydney, because you already know this, but listeners. Yeah. So back in 2015, Lauren Voswinkel started a hashtag on Twitter called, it was #TalkPay. And the idea behind this was people would post their job titles and salaries. Sort of doing a couple of things is one, it sort of helps get the idea of like, what should you be making maybe, or what’s available. But it also really kind of broke a lot of this. Like, it’s especially, I, I feel like especially in the US, like part of our culture is like, you don’t talk about what you make. Like that is private information. Like you don’t share that. And the only people who are benefiting from that are the people who are trying to pay you less. Right.
Sidney: You know, exactly.
Matty: So, The interesting thing, so that was sort of the idea behind what Lauren was doing with the Talk Pay movement on Twitter. And then at the same time, or around when this was happening, J. Paul Reid was at the DevOps Days Austin conference in 2015. And he said, why don’t we do this in person? Right? So he kind of, if you’re unfamiliar with DevOps Days, one of the key ideas is these part of the unconference is these open spaces, right? We say, okay, we’re going to, people who want to talk about this thing, we’re gonna all get together in this room for the next hour and talk about that. And so Paul said, let’s do an open space for Talk Pay IRL, you know, in real life. And how does, how does that happen? And I’m going to put a link to this blog post that Paul wrote about the history of this and kind of how it works. I’m not going to get into all the logistics, but the point is, so we did one of these. I, I’ve helped run them at many DevOps Days around the world, different places I’ve been. And, you know, most recently what Sydney is alluding to is at DevOps Days Austin a few weeks ago. Well, whenever you listen to this, I was at DevOps Days Austin in 2023. We actually ended up running 2 of them because we did it twice over the 2 days because there was a lot of interest and we had a lot to talk about. But we, again, you can read Paul’s, you know, go to the show notes of this at arresteddevops.com and you can find the link that I’ll link to Paul’s blog. He talks about how that gets done. But the point is it’s done still, even though we’re in person, in a very anonymous way. We kind of see what the numbers look like, and then we have conversations about patterns and things that we see. And that’s one of the things that is helpful about having this pay transparency. And this is especially important for people that are not under-indexed in that particular role, right? So, if we’re thinking about engineering roles and things like that, people who, you know, traditionally, you know, white men, you know, the majority are paid more. That’s just kind of— that’s a fact, right? We can— if you want to argue about it, go to hell, right? We’re not going to argue about it. It’s not true.
Sidney: [00:31:57] We’re not.
Matty: It’s true, right? But one of the things that will happen is, because to even to Sydney’s point, right? So, and I think this is where you were going, which is while they might not say, hey, what were you making last time? They’re going to say, what are you looking to make? And if you don’t know, I mean, think about this too. And again, so Sydney, you’re a recruiter. You know, you’ve done talent acquisition. You are not a bad person. That said, if you know you were recruiting for a role, and again, and you’re, you’re not a— at this point, you’re not a headhunter that’s making commission on it. You are working at the company. And let’s say you’re like, okay, I’m hiring this, you know, Golang engineer. And I know that we’re willing to pay— by the way, this is not like what numbers should be. I have no idea how much you would pay an engineer for this. Let’s say, you know, we’re willing to pay $150,000 to $200,000 for this role. That’s my range. And I come in and say, cool, like whatever. And you’re like, hey, what are you looking to make, Mandy? I’m like, $110,000. Are you going to say, well, you know what, we’re going up to— we’ll start at one— no, you probably— well, I don’t know, maybe you are. You’re a wonderful human.
Sidney: [00:32:59] But I do.
Matty: Is that common?
Sidney: It’s not.
Matty: Okay, that’s what I’m saying.
Sidney: I mean, the reason why— okay, the reason why is because that when you look at— and this starts way back in budgeting. Yeah, that’s, you know, It starts way back in budgeting when managers— so it has to really do with managers.
Matty: Well, and that’s what I was going to say. I am and have been a hiring manager, and I feel like as much as I want my people to be well compensated, I’m also more likely to be able to continue to get— like, it all comes out of— right, you said it goes back to budgeting. So what I’m trying to get at is, generally speaking, that’s not like someone’s going to be like, you know, tenting their fingers like Mr. Burns and say, ooh, excellent, we get to go screw you over. But it’s like, oh, What a bargain we’re getting, right?
Sidney: Right.
Matty: You know, and so, so what I’m getting at is if you don’t know, you don’t know and you don’t know what to ask for. Right. And that’s, yeah.
Sidney: So this is why you ask. This is a very fair thing that everyone should start to get comfortable with because your white cisgen males, not that we don’t love them, but you know, they are asking for these things. So why can’t you? If you are not, you know, from all sorts of walks of life, especially marginalized populations, they’re just happy to be, you know, we’re just happy to be in the room, right? So what you can ask is, what is the level for the role and what is the correlating salary for that level that you are considering me? That is the number one way to not disclose like, okay, well, I need $180,000 or I need $110,000. And it is the recruiter’s job to ensure that that person is paid fairly within that range because other people at the company are, who are also in that level will be paid at that range. So pay, you know, the pay gap, pay gap is a big deal there as well.
Matty: [00:34:58] So I, I, I, I’m putting also a link in the show notes. There is a talk that I’ve, I’ve seen given twice by Corey Quinn and Sonia Gupta. This was several years ago. They gave it at DevOps Days Charlotte in 2019 and also at the SCaLE conference, I think later that same year. It’s called Embarrassingly Large Numbers: Salary Negotiation for Humans. And it’s a really great conversation. And it, and one of the reasons I especially love this talk is that Corey is a cishet white male and Sonia is not, right? Sonia is a woman of color, right? And so, and in different parts of their career and different things. And so it was really a matter of like, how do we look at this across the things. And you’re right. So, a lot of— one of the things that comes in there, I recommend watching the video. But to, you know, alluding to that is sort of the statement in the negotiation is the first person to name a number loses, right? So, if you ask that, at least you’re starting with that. And you’re saying, what’s the— like I said, get used to leading with that because you might sit there and say— because again, the same thing, maybe you’re looking to make $150,000 and you sit there and you say, hey, Sydney, what’s the range of this? And you say $220,000 to $300,000. Now, if that happens, keep your poker face on and don’t go, yep, because then, yeah, but do it internally and then go tell your dog how excited you are that they want to pay you more.
Sidney: [00:36:16] Totally, because that’s what you’re going to be— when you think about it, it’s going to be at review time. You’re also going to be like, that’s what you’re going to be reviewed upon, is that skill set that you bring at that level. And if it pays $220, You are, you should, in all, for all purposes, get that money, even if you’re at $180,000. Because it’s that whole vicious cycle, right, of that old way of thinking. But it’s also that whole, you know, if I can bring this back up again, hiring managers that are listening, if you’re given, let’s say, you know, $3 million for salaries for the year, you don’t cookie cutter based on, you know, the same type of human, right? You don’t, you don’t look at one human and say, you get $110,000 and you get $130,000 and you get $180,000, even though they’re all doing the same job. Because that’s some bullshit is what that is. And I’m going to call it straight out. And I call it out in organizations that I work at and say, no, you cannot do this because that’s where pay gap inequity is. And I’ve got a great story for you if I, if you don’t mind.
Matty: [00:37:22] Yeah, please.
Sidney: Okay, so there was a time— can’t disclose where I was— but there was a time where I was working on some building an entire organization and an entire team. Okay. And I was working with a woman engineer and bringing them through interview process. And we came to that, we came to that discussion. And I said, you know, you know, hey, here’s the role. What are you looking for? And I said, the What you, what you’re looking for can, can hang out for a second, but this is the level and this is what the position is paying. And she was like, okay. And I said, so, you know, just, just so you’re aware, this is where it will come in. Is that within your range? And she said yes. I said, okay, okay, cool. So when we took her through and she did really all this great work and all this stuff, and then we got to the offer and the offer was $40,000 less than the same same leveled person in the same geography. And I put my foot down and said, no, we need to match the salary. I know you’ve got budget and I know you want to save and I know you want to do this and I know you want to create another role out of this because you got this. We have to pay that person the same because at review time they are going to be You know, given the same review, but they have different salary expectations. When I delivered the offer at the same as the person that was in Portland, Oregon, and at the same level as this person, she was floored when I found out it was $40,000 more than what she, what she needed. And she cried. She cried and said, thank you. And I was like, this is why I do this job. This is why I do this job. And I wish every recruiter in the world would hear this and be like, you know what, that’s the right thing to do instead of being, you know, who and what, how they work. Because I just wish that that’s the world with the way the world works. But that is kind of one of those things where she could have told me, but I stopped it and said, no, this is what it’s paying. And it was fair. And then shored up that pay gap inequity. It’s, it’s, it’s not rocket science. It’s influence.
Matty: [00:39:43] So I think that’s great. I shouldn’t say obviously I think that’s great, but it’s uncommon, I would imagine. But, and that should be the right thing that we do and where we try to. And I, again, as a, as a hiring manager, I can tell you, and I’ve been a hiring manager in many places, and the reality is I have very little ability to make this any better. Sometimes, right? Because it’s sort of like, I mean, I know I’ve, I generally will tell you I’ve had people I’m hiring where I’m pushing for more money and I’m getting TA or finance, you know, executives saying, well, can we get them for less? Can we do whatever? And I’m like, especially, you know, that’s, it’s, it’s hard not making, not saying can’t try harder as a hiring manager. But one of the things I want to say, like also what I’m thinking about, again, I knowing most of our audience, the majority of the people listening to this show are not talent acquisition folks. Who can be yelled at to do things the right way, the Sydney Miller way, which we hope to. If you are, you know, please listen and do something about it. So I’m thinking again about folks who are on the other side of this conversation. And I think it does also go back to like getting that transparency from people who are, have, you know, in that other place. And where I’m getting that is I think about a place I was at where I had a friend of mine who was applying to work on the team with me. And she is, as far as I was concerned, in the ability of work to be able to do, we’re at the same level, you know, different years of experience doesn’t matter and such. And when it got to the point, I said, I was super transparent with her. And I said, hey, this is, this is what my offer was. It was exactly this. And I was actually really pleased with the organization where it came in. And it was to the dime. Identical. Everything was the same. Now, but I will tell you what’s interesting is I’ve also seen though, but part of the reason where that was great that happened, but if it didn’t, she was prepared to know what I had been offered. And I was, you know, that was one of those things where I was like, if someone’s gonna come yell at me, then I probably want out of that company anyway, because that’s bullshit. But I also know places I’ve been where someone didn’t ask. And I’m not putting the fault on the under— under-indexed person. But sure, I can’t help— like, I’ve had places where I know it’s kind of fun— something not fun, I’m saying that very tongue-in-cheek— when you sit there and you’re like, you’re my friend and you applied for a job on my team with me as a colleague, and I didn’t even know till you got hired. And then I’ll say, hey, why didn’t you tell me? And it’s not even because, oh, I want the referral bonus. Like, well, I didn’t want to bug you. And I’m like, yeah, wow, no, reach out. Even, even if it’s— even if you don’t care about my opinion about working there or something like that, If you know somebody in that role, especially at that organization, but something like that, and someone who is not under NX, have a see, you know, have your your your sponsor ally, whatever you want to call the person who can do that, and say just yo dude because it’s dude. What where are you at? And we should be able to have these conversations. And I will tell you something though, everyone who’s listening, oh my god, is this uncomfortable? Just get— just sit with it. It will be hard as shit because here’s the problem. One is we have been trained throughout our life that this is wrong. But you know why it’s wrong? Because it— we’re considered— why we’re told it’s wrong is because it’s boasting. Yeah, right. That, that’s the underlying part of that, is you shouldn’t be talking about how much money you make because that’s bragging, right? And so, so either when someone asks you If we’re in the conversation and you come to me, you’re like, you know, Sydney, you come to me, you’re like, Maddie, you know, you have a job. I want a job like that. You know, whatever. What do you make? I am going to be uncomfortable sharing that information with you for one of two reasons, either because I think the number’s too low or too high. Right? Because none of us think we’re paid exactly what we should be paid. We either think we’re underpaid or overpaid. And so I’m afraid that if I tell you the number and you’re going to go, oh my— well, first of all, I’m afraid that I’m going to tell you the number and you’re going to go, oh my God. And it’s either going to be, oh my God. I can’t believe they’re paying you that much, or, oh my God, you should be making way more much money. And either way, I’m going to feel shitty, right? Because I’m either going to be— yeah. So the reality is, sit with it. It’s fine if that happens. Deal. Because all that’s going to happen is help other people. And I will tell you, I am someone who believes so strongly in this, and it is still hard for me. And that, you know what, and everybody listen to this. That’s my thing to handle. I just, you know what, it’s hard for me. Too effing bad. Deal with it. Right. And I, well, you know this, and again, I’m not going to, but there were times, because again, when we do Talk Pay, it’s intentionally anonymous, but people can volunteer. And there, you know, have been people in the ones I’ve done where someone’s like, hey, that big number up there, that’s me. And they’re not doing it to boast by any means, right? If someone’s doing it, they’re doing it to say, and it should be you, right? Or I’ve seen people in these who say, that smallest number up there, that’s me, right? And, and, and the thing is, I will tell you, when you make that acknowledgment, what people don’t go is they don’t— because the reason that people are afraid to say that smallest number is me is because they think that will make people think they’re not good. But generally what happens is everybody goes Well, that’s some bullshit. Nobody thinks you’re bad. They think you are screwed. They think your employer is bad. So that’s the safe thing. And if you are the high number, for the most part, people are not going to be like, oh, what a braggart. Some of them are though. And this is hard. And you’re going to have to deal with those slings and arrows that will happen, especially when you think about in a less safe space like Twitter, you know, in real life, open space, people, they’re going to think what they’re going to think, but they’re generally not going to say it. But I’ve definitely seen when people have been very transparent about their compensation, especially people who work at FAANG companies and how, you know, which we always have to realize that’s a whole different world than people who work at like Sears Roebuck and Company or John, you know, wherever kind of thing. They’ll look at that and be like, holy shit, you’re making $600,000 a year. I am making 80 grand doing the same job at, you know, this whatever place I’m at. And they will, they will probably be upset about it. And again, it’s too bad because we’re trying to make it better, and that’s the thing we have to do. The, the last thing I, I want to— we have— we’re running out of time. One of the other, other things I want to suggest, especially people who are not cis, cis, cis-het white male, that don’t look like me, find someone who looks like me to be your coach on how to act like a white guy in tech. Because when you go into those negotiations, when you go into those conversations Find someone who helps you have the audacity that you need to have because it’s okay to have that audacity. And I will tell you something. I had an instance where I had to go to one of my friends and say, remind me to be a white guy in tech because I had an offer that came in and, you know, the numbers were fine and everything and they sent me the offer letter to sign and I looked and I said, oh, The title isn’t what we agreed to. And I said, does the title really matter? And there’s a whole other conversation, by the way, titles matter less to people that look like me. But I sat there to myself and I was like, I mean, it’s a whatever. I’m like, does it— it’s not that big of a deal. Does it matter? And I was again, because I was afraid, well, if I push back, are they going to go, oh, well, wait a minute. Like, no, no, no, you misunderstood, sir. You are not going to have this title. And I went to one of my friends and I said, look, I need you to remind me to have audacity. Me and remind me to push back and do that. And he said, absolutely, Matty, go reply back and just say the title’s wrong. And you know what happened? I replied back and the recruiter said, oh my God, sorry, we screwed that up. Yeah, that was a mistake. Yep, no problem. Yep, sorry, it’s going to take us a day because we have to regenerate the DocuSign. That’s what happened. So yeah, and again, people will tell you that if you— if somebody gives you an offer and you say you want more, they’re not going to retract the offer. Now that’s not true. We know people who’ve been screwed that way. But honestly, if that’s the case, good.
Sidney: [00:47:52] You don’t want to work—
Matty: yes, because that is uncommon and it’s a toxic thing. So Sydney, what, what would you leave people with? Again, we have a lot. I think we should— we will continue this conversation. We’ll have a follow-up episode sometime because there’s a lot, a lot to do. But what’s something, if you’re thinking about people that might be dealing with being out of work because of a layoff, because of whatever reason, whatever reason you don’t have a job right now, it’s fine. You know, if you’re struggling, if you’re, if you’re scared, if you’re worried, what’s something they should start doing and something they should stop doing?
Sidney: What they should stop doing, I’m going to lead with this first, is saying that you are not worthy of your next opportunity. Right? Because of whatever somebody told you, you got laid off, you know, something happened and God forbid you lose your job, you know, because that also happens, right? You make a mistake, something happens, you know, things aren’t driving. Do not let yourself cut off your nose despite your face is what my mom always said, right? Make sure that you know your value because those privileged— audacity is privilege sometimes, right? In a lot of these cases, they— all you can do is ask for what you need as a human. Try and get really comfortable with that by letting yourself process what just happened to you through working through your support system. If you can, if you have the means and are into this, get a therapist that will help you drive through some of this stuff because mental health is such a big portion of this. And when you’re ready, that’s when you kind of put your, your best foot forward. Then also, once you get into interviews— I know I’m kind of recapping what we discussed, but it’s really imperative— is ask what the level is for the job that you are being asked to interview for, and make sure that that correlates with a band, a salary band. And do not, do not say, ah, you know, I need to make this much, or, you know, yet. Try not to. I know that’s really easy for me to say because I work with salaries all the time and it’s normalized. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for me too, Maddie. Like what you were saying, it’s like it makes me really uncomfortable to talk about myself. I can talk about anyone else and, and, you know, give this kind of advice, but try and be as confident as possible because all they can say is no. You got a 50/50 shot. Those are pretty damn good odds.
Matty: [00:50:31] Absolutely. This, this has been a fantastic conversation. If you go to arresteddevops.com/itsroughoutthere for this episode’s show notes, we’ve got some links to some of the things we talked about today. If you go to arresteddevops.com/itunes and leave us a review in the iTunes store, that will help other people find the podcast. I know it’s not been called iTunes for many, many, many years. I still call it that, just like I call it the Sears Tower, not the Willis Tower. And also, I know that regular listeners are tired of hearing me say that because I say this every time, but it’s still true. You can find us on Spotify and iHeartRadio and Audible and anywhere that fine and less fine podcasts can be found. Sydney, thank you for joining me today. This has been an absolute pleasure and super fun for a fun conversation around a really hard topic.
Sidney: Yep.
Matty: So, yep. Thank you for that. This has, this has been Arrested DevOps, and remember, there is always DevOps in the banana stand.
