 Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming to our session We wanted to pull together a panel to talk a little bit about some of our experiences over the years as we've all kind of grown Into different leadership positions here at Red Hat and at other locations So first of all wanted to start off with panel introductions. So my name is Jenna Albertson I've been in the software industry for about 25 years, but I didn't start there I actually was an accountant and then was going back to school to get my degree in geology When I took my first computer science class and it was hooked since that time I've worked for a few stops a few startups started my own company worked for a few larger companies and eventually ended up at Red Hat during that time I have been a Java developer a website developer team lead project lead and Currently working as a manager Very excited to kind of share my experiences during my journey with you and Alexander we have this passing my game. So My list of achievements is not as long So if my name is Alexander Federer when I'm team lead of CI team in Red Hat and If we talk about the starting of a career, I actually Got a degree in completely unrelated topic which is differential geometry No one knows what this is and like at a certain point in time I decided that I wanted to go to something less nerdy and so I switched to IT and and I started from a very very lowest level from junior support engineer in the call center and then like clamped it to Support engineers is admin DevOps engineer built engineer CI engineer and currently CI team lead Hi everyone, my name is Alex Kassel Oboeva. I also work at Red Hat have been for more than seven years now I'm an engineering manager, but Similarly as my colleagues here, I don't have a background in IT Actually, I finished my bachelor degree in mass media communication and even studied archaeology for a year So the way to the engineering and to Red Hat was not super narrow for me either I began doing part-time jobs of during my studies first as a translator then writing documentation technical documentation and I would say this was the start of my career in IT in general and later in Red Hat where I started as a technical writer Which was basically just one step to the engineering Hi, I'm Erica Erica von Bielow. I currently lead the auth as an authentication authorization team for open shift I came to open shift in Red Hat through the Coro s acquisition where previously I'd worked on the operator life cycle management As well as quay for a bit previous to that I think Jessica will be the only one who studied CS. I studied math and found my way over into startup land and Where I worked in education technology for three or so years It was an exciting start-up ride from very few to Exponential growth every year That's I started Managing a an engineering team there when I transitioned over into Coro s and I became an individual contributor again and Unexpectedly found myself back in a team lead role recently Hi, I'm Jessica Forester So I'm also at Red Hat as Erica hinted at I do have a little bit more of a traditional background So I went to school for CS and math I've been doing software development for I guess about 12 years About 10 of that was that focused more on front-end engineering development Went in and out of the team lead position as I transitioned companies So did it for a little while changed companies went back to individual contributor And then at Red Hat I've been a team lead and now I am what we call a group lead and open shift Which is the easiest definition as a team lead of team leads So it's kind of like an architect for a smaller portion of the product Apologize for the patience as we pass this back and forth So as you kind of can see we come from a lot of different backgrounds Different experiences and it were all at different stages of our career What we're hoping to do is as we start sharing our stories and experiences with all of you That will give you some insight into your journey as you're moving through your careers also During this we really hope that people kind of reach out and ask questions as things come to you Love to be able to share our experiences on any questions that you have So I kind of wanted to start off with maybe something that that we've all Something in our in our background that we kind of see is sort of a key turn around or Aha moment in our careers that we that we wanted to to share with everyone. So for me I had I Had been a team lead and a project manager for for several companies Had had a lot of experience with that when I was and I was working for a smaller startup And they asked me to move into a management position. I had no experience in this other than being a team lead and Accepted the position and it was a disaster I didn't have a lot of good mentoring right at that time I didn't have a good role model that I could be looking to for a lot of that management Experience that I needed and at that time I said this is this is definitely not for me It is not something that I want to pursue and I left that job and moved back into being an individual contributor At that time it seemed like a very good decision and it gave but it gave me a little taste of Management working with people trying to to handle some of the problems in a different way and kind of got me Started on a path where I was starting to look at that as a possible future for for myself So I guess for me the the turning point was Similar in that I I got into the team lead position and when you when I first got into it It was very focused on the technical side of what it meant to be a team lead, right? Making decisions about what which technologies we were using Helping coordinate who is going to work on which pieces But over time I started to realize the thing that I actually enjoyed most about the position was the people side and Getting to mentor people and help them grow and helping them work through whatever might be going on And I think that's what eventually led me to really want to go into the group lead position because you know that the More strategic you get to be the more you get to advocate for the people that are working with you in your teams I don't know how much this counts as an aha moment, but just that I was reminded I Have failed at leading whether it was managing or team leading recently or any other Avenue many times and When I'm like mentoring someone on my team, I like if they're not failing at something I feel like they're not trying like they're not pushing themselves and I want to push them harder because that's how you grow and that's how you learn and I'm kind of having an aha moment even myself right now that that's also true Of when you're leading but you kind of fail and and it's really scary Of course because you feel like there's people that you're responsible for But so much part of it is learning and growing just the same as you would in your technical career Okay wanted to bring up a topic that I'm sure everybody has heard quite a bit about because it's all seems to be in the Media a lot especially in the technology industry and that's talking about imposter syndrome so kind of back to to everyone here is is this something that you personally have experienced and If you have do you want to share your story and kind of your experiences and and how you've overcome that? This is actually my favorite question and The thing is I believe I'm not just like experience it. I'm also like embracing it and using it into my To my benefits so the thing is like imposter syndrome is the feeling that you are not for this position that you are like Only pretending to feel in this position and there are like real people doing this job And you are just like someone who is not really like deserving this this kind of work and of course there are like two ways how you can see this and How you can resolve this feeling so first of all, of course, it's like talking to other people and Opening up and seeing what other people think about like share your feelings with others and see how others react the same To the same questions and you will notice that like everyone basically feels this the same feeling and it's you're not alone And this is like a natural thing to have but the second part of it is Especially in my case where I came from the Pre-Ormathematics to the IT and all everyone around like seemed to have a lot of experience already and I don't and so my solution to the problem of like not being on the same page with others is that I just created my own so the thing is like I Really thought about like being system administrator or support engineer and something But I realized like I have my own way of thinking of something and I created my job I actually created my title this CI engineer thing when I started to work in the company I was a DevOps engineer and like I Spend some time and see like no, I'm not a real DevOps I'm like only pretending to be a real DevOps engineer, so I just invented my own name and say like Since today, I'm not even trying to pretend I find my own way to do things So I would just add and I think it helped me in my career as well It's important to be honest with yourself because everybody has doubt So like even if you have a lot of confidence in most of the things that you are doing Like sometimes you are just doubting what you are doing and in that moment I would say it is important to really be honestly able to evaluate Your sides your weaknesses and also the the strong sides and try to see the positives and the value that you are For example bringing to your team so while it is Really simple to find all the negative Sides that you have and things that you are doing wrong It is important to also think about the positives that you are bringing so really saying honest and true to yourself I remember when I my first software engineering job I was a nervous wreck for at least the first couple months like go home throw up so nervous all the time I think I've gotten better. Although every new job or position definitely brings a new round of anxieties with it Now the way I tried to look at it I don't know that I will ever get rid of the feeling that I don't Know what I'm doing or that I am not qualified I'll probably always slightly feel those What I now concentrate on is that Even if I'm not qualified now or don't know what I'm doing now I do deserve the opportunity to grow and to learn from this and that I am capable of Learning and improving and becoming something good enough to fill whatever the role might be I Guess since everyone else has talked I will say yes, I too have had imposter syndrome many times And for me I remember the first time someone told me what it was and it was the biggest light bulb I think I have had in my life probably of yes That is what I have been feeling all this time And I think once you understand what it is and you can recognize it It makes a big difference later on because you catch it you catch yourself doing it And then it's easy to turn it around and I think Alexander like you said use it to your advantage And push through it and get fuel from it Yeah, I know kind of sort of feeding off of that I I I have suffered from that for a long time without actually realizing that that's what it was I actually had an interesting conversation with with my manager when I was telling him that you know, it was explaining you know You I'm getting involved in a lot of meetings that that then deal with a lot of long-term planning and and Suddenly I feel intimidated. So if I'm sitting at the table with it with a bunch of directors and VPs Across the company it makes me it makes me nervous and then I start questioning should I even be here? Do I have the right to be here? They obviously all know no more and and it was funny because he said I feel exactly the same way when I walk into those meetings and for me that was a really Positive statement to make because suddenly it felt like it's good that I'm not the only person out there doing that So I agree with what people have said Talking about that making sure that you're communicating that with people that you feel comfortable with is is an important way to get over that yourself and be able to To understand that if you're being asked to do that you're being given the opportunities that it's a great chance for you to be able to Embrace that take take a chance and and believe in yourself because somebody else is believed in you to get you to that to that place So talk another one about this so this is one of my personal challenges as I've become a leader and that's Delegating so very often when you're getting moved into a leadership position That's happening because you you are very good at what you do and people see potential in you The problem is it is sometimes very difficult to let go of those the the need to be as successful and do the things that you've been successful for For me, I've had a hard time Delegating and I tell myself it's because I don't want to burden anyone else with all this work So I'll just keep doing it all myself Then I know it'll get done it'll get done right and it's not then I'm not imposing on anyone else Kind of the way that I've been that I have managed to sort of break myself of that is Reminding myself of the fact that I have a limited amount of time to get stuff done So if I am doing all of the things that means some of the things aren't getting done And the things that aren't getting done may be things that are only I can do handling one-on-ones Doing some more of the strategic planning and those are the things that I shouldn't be dropping and I also look at it from the perspective of I Have This is an opportunity for me to give people on my team a chance to take on new Challenges and opportunities and so if I am always holding that to myself I'm not giving them the chance to be able to do that and and move forward So you guys have some more so For me learning how to delegate was the hardest part of becoming a team lead So I touched on it earlier that at the very beginning it was very focused on the technical side of things and as I learned to delegate and Open up more of my time to other parts of the job and the role That's when I was able to spend the time with the people on the human level and see where they were at and help grow Them more so freeing up your technical side as you're coming up into a team lead position Really helps you be a better mentor because you have time to sit back and think about where everybody is at And once I got really comfortable with well as comfortable as you can be Delegating that's when you know around the same time I felt comfortable moving into a Group lead position because you know the more strategic you become the less involved in day-to-day Development like an individual contributor might be you have to get really comfortable delegating things Oh boy, do I feel this one right now as one of these team leads that she's talking about There it is this is something I struggled more with as a technical team lead rather than when I was an official manager When I was a people manager by title. I felt much more comfortable saying No, I can't take this on this is not my responsibility and it very explicitly in making sure people on my team owned whatever it was on as a Technical team lead I find this much harder because I feel that like I'm supposed to upkeep some sort of technical Side that I need to still be demonstrating my technical expertise and how am I doing that if I can't even code a hundred lines or whatever This is very challenging It's good to hear from a group lead that part of it is just giving that up and Thinking of things from a more strategic point of view There are parts to art to the technical product that are not about just the code There especially when you're doing systems designing like we are an open shift The code is maybe the least important not the least important. It's a There is a many other aspects to go on about so this is a Sort of a team leadership therapy session for me here Of learning how to properly delegate because yeah, I think you can't you can't grow yourself Or what your team can do if you can't delegate? So before I move forward with any other our questions, does there anybody in the audience that has questions that they'd like us to answer Yes Yes, so so what? Oh, sorry. Yes. So so this the question was was kind of to talk about from the perspective of as we're moving from the Tactical to strategic. What does that personally mean mean to us? So for me, I think that a lot of what has a lot of what is has been different in my career As I moved from being that job engineer up to being a manager has been a lot of change in how I focus my time and energy so When it when I was was programming it was very much about the what do I need to get done now? There's a there's a always a list of tasks and things that I need to accomplish I'm thinking about things like the training and everything I need to do in order to empower what I'm trying to do right at This moment a lot of what I focus on now is not so much the The day-to-day activities in there a lot of that I've sort of delegated down to my team But thinking in terms of where do we need to be in in six months? Where do we need to be in a year? What are some of the things that are coming down the Down the road that I can see from other teams that might start impacting the stuff that we're doing So there's a lot more communication a lot more connection with with folks outside of my own organization being much more aware of what's going on in the in the industry and and how that may be impacting us and figuring out how I can make sure that I am preparing my team To be able to accept things that might be happening in the future that they may not be aware of yet So whether it's helping them plan training helping figure out how I'm growing their careers so that they'll be able to Expand out and and be able to support new projects as they come come up There's a lot of different ways in which you're sort of looking at things, but not looking at them necessarily On the day-to-day or the tactical in a tactical way I think I I can Talk about totally different aspect of the same thing. So for me this So what you were talking about is like how you doing this Strategical thinking as the leaders should position while you're there what I was wanted when I went to talk about is about the career growth actually and and your Tactical to strategic idea of how to grow in your position and the thing is like I met certain people who Just finished from from school or something and they say like oh I want to be like this administrator System administrator, what should I do and then they try to reach to that point and so on and This is like the year tactical goal Yeah, they want to get into this particular position and they the scope their career growth their efforts to get to this particular thing, but if you But this Scale is really too small and when you think about your career growth in general You need to understand like the life is long and like in five years. There will be no system administrators and some other like Sites really reliability engineers come and then like in ten years It will be we're maybe all talking to machine learning and and Artificial intelligence instead of writing our bar scripts and then like in thirty years You're still be there and you may be doing something completely different. So from a very beginning Just like you shouldn't limit yourself to one particular Tactical goal you need to understand that you need to invest in a wider Scope and the wider a set of things which may Play a role later on you don't know yet. Don't don't limit yourself to to to be too narrow goal in this case Any other questions? I'm sorry motivation Vision what's your vision of a career? My own personal one That is that is a great question and and I will say Right now a lot. I would say my vision for for my career is I'm incredibly happy in In the work that I that I'm currently doing I love managing teams and I love being on the engineering side of things So my goal is is basically to continue to grow my skills and in helping Manage my team Understand my the business better and better And then and just to continue to kind of grow in the same direction that I've been going in But I don't have any real long-term plans for Any kind of advancement beyond that I think right now Vision for myself or with a word that I think of is impact that I want to be growing my impact on whichever Team I am on Whichever industry I'm in and on the world at large. That's the motive Largest motivator I think for me any Issue I want to see my career growing Meaning that I'm having a larger impact on the world that I am more able to affect the changes that I want to see Okay, I think I saw one more. Yes. Yes Okay, so the question was As leaders what is our advice for for trying to find a mentor and that's great because we were actually going to try to Talk about mentors in here. I would say Very often within within the companies that you work with there's there's often programs set up to try and help match people together for mentorships Personally, I've had some some great success in finding good mentorships working through the companies that I've worked for and had some fantastic experiences with being paired up with folks that that I would never have chosen for myself But it has turned out to be an incredibly positive Engagement and I've learned a lot from them. I think especially because they're coming from a different Portion of the organization doing very different jobs than I've done and so they bring in a completely different insight in in there I think that I have I know that a lot of times people look for external mentors I have never done that and been able to have any success with that. I don't has anybody else had So In my experience like I have never had official mentor like from a company provided sign or so on but for me the main mentoring part was actually Fedora community the open source community and it was like there's certain issues with that so If you go in from mentors looking for advices from a community you need to understand to have a basic understanding to how it to differentiate the good advice from bad advice because like Community is different. Everyone is different there. You need to know your Need to understand to whom to really talk and listen and who are just like doing nothing useful for you But once you get this kind of habit of understanding how to deal with the people in the community It provides you a lot of help in this area So I think there's two points I want to talk to here the first one is Jen touched on the official mentoring stuff I have tried that before and honestly I haven't had much luck with that and I think something that I was told and that helped me is if the mentoring Relationship is not working. Don't continue it So when you want to establish a mentoring relationship You should make sure going in that you both agree on what the goals are and if you are the mentee you need to be the one to come to the table with what you want to get out of it and Don't put it all on the mentor because odds are your mentor is probably very busy And so be ready to say before you guys meet like these are the things I'm going to want to talk about and give them a chance to prepare So it that all helps you may still find that the mentoring relationship could be three months It could be a year It could be a career and it entirely depends on what the goals are for that mentorship So the other thing that I wanted to touch on is something that I heard about a few years ago Which is the distinction between a mentor and a sponsor I don't know if you've anyone's ever heard of this but a mentor is usually a Tactical I want something out of the relationship because I want to learn something a Sponsor the best definition. I've heard is someone who advocates for you when you are not in the room and So think about who in your organization would be that person and make sure you're establishing a good Relationship with them because you want to make sure that you know when people are saying well We need somebody to do this role. We need somebody to do this thing who'd be good for that I know that person So that's what you want to look for Apologies for that all these static in here So for anybody on the panel are you is anyone involved in any leadership opportunities that are outside of work? Or have have you had some in the past that that? That you want to share they kind of have led you either That that are helping to build your leadership skills now or that help bring you into the leadership opportunities that you currently have So, I mean this probably isn't too relevant for you guys because none of you are in high school anymore But so I actually got started in leadership, you know very early I was in our marching band and my first taste of leadership was leading as a section in band And you know, it's it's not very different than leading a team of people, right? You have to find motivation You have to plan, you know, this is the same kind of things that you do with leading the team of people in the industry I will represent the There are a lot of different opportunities within open source for leadership There I Currently leading the policy working group in Kubernetes. So if anyone is really interested in policy Come talk to me and I'd love to geek out about what is otherwise Considered a very boring topic Which is one of my advice I would give if you're afraid of where to go in go try somewhere boring because most likely It's not actually boring once you learn about it, but it will kind of scare people off and give you opportunities That is one piece of advice of where to find leadership opportunities at open source the other one is off hours Very good place to find opportunities Within open source I find I found that Half of it is just showing up and the other half is Taking on when they need help just volunteering There isn't as many there aren't official barriers of qualifications that you need So and if They're asking volunteer It's a very it's an interesting type of leadership usually within open source because there's actually I would say more politics often So that is in itself a very interesting learning opportunity you definitely learn how to work with people and what the various Factions and within the technology are So that is another opportunity. I would recommend people check up Yeah, and I'll share mine. So this is this is a little bit more recent But I have the opportunity to take on a leadership role in running a nonprofit Organization that we had started to bring girls into technology So it's a high it was a high school program for girls So that they could get involved in technology and I will say it was it was an incredible learning experience for me So even though I was a manager and had been leading teams for a while This was my first time ever leading an entire entirely volunteer organization And it's and it's a different style of management It's a different way of being able to lead and encourage and empower people to to work with you It was incredibly frustrating at times It felt like I should have been it a lot of times it felt like I should have had more of those skills I needed in order to make things work a lot more smoothly But I think there's once you start changing dynamics you can learn a lot from that situation Get a better understanding of yourself and and some of your some of your skills and capabilities And also some of the areas that you need to continue to improve on so for me it was a great growth experience because One it was wonderful to be able to to get out there and help run that program and get that started But it also it plugged me into a completely new Organization and a new way of managing that I hadn't done before and it took a lot We'll weigh a lot of lessons from that that I now apply both to my current job But then also I plan to use for future opportunities of being able to work in the volunteer And I will say volunteering is a great place to get a lot of leadership experience Because you don't necessarily have to start off. I did with trying to run an entire program from scratch But there's the opportunity to be able to step in and take on smaller roles Get comfortable with that and start building out your your resume and your reputation And that gives you a lot of skills that you can then pull back into the workplaces You're trying to look for positions of leadership inside your own company And kind of since it's related I have a question on Talking about building your brand so I know everybody's probably heard about that building your brand and understanding what that is And so so thinking about it in terms of not necessarily always thinking about things related to work But how can you build your brand? even outside of work in in different ways that can that that lets you help focus the Characteristics that you think are really important that you can then bring back into into the workplace and so I Will say for me it relates that one of the things that I'm incredibly passionate about is making sure that we're bringing more women into technology and especially impacting kids at a younger age so that that they become excited and Inspired by that and being able to do that and and I've done that a lot through volunteering work that I do so I and one of the reasons why it impacts me so much and why it's so important to me and that I want that to be kind of part of about who I am was I did a training class in the in the some of the schools that we have been in North Carolina and One of the things that we did was it was we would set up sessions And then we would talk to the kids about what the session was about and they would get to to decide whether or not they Wanted to sign up for our particular session so I was doing one on computer programming and one of the girls in the class asked the question Can girls sign up for this and so I use that as kind of my Call for Empowerment to make sure that I am always making sure that I am focusing on this both in my job and and also in the volunteer work that I do So you you guys have any stories on? Building your brand that you want to share. I will just talk about the Technology again part of it. So as I said when we discussed earlier like for me the Huge struggle was to find my place in the engineering and in like in the right role for engineering So one of so the solution I got to myself is to create my role myself and just create a name for for it and since then I'm trying to kind of Define what what what this role means actually and one of the like work I do in the background and I'm trying to Identify what what is this thing which I called myself actually means and what is the theory behind it and how to Have to create a certain knowledge around it because of the The topic of continuous integration whatever is like such a weird thing everyone talks about no one knows What does it mean actually? So one of the things I'm doing in the background is My ideal Like my dream is to write a book about it Currently I'm writing just like small pieces, but maybe someday it will it will help We'll see if it works out, but yeah, this this is kind of a work It's not a personal brand, but it's like the brand I want to create and I want to fight for and leading that direction So I wouldn't just like to add that like from my experience building some sort of a brand is mostly about finding your purpose in life or your career purpose and It is often a lot of trying and failing And also in my case like when you look at the background and the studies That I've been through like I've been obviously looking for my purpose in my life But I think like after like in the end. Oh, I found it similarly as so Jen, I would say like since I'm also a people manager First starting as a as an individual contributor working with other people and then becoming a team lead I have realized that this is this is basically the area The focus that I would like to have an expand on in the future. So just keep on looking Any other questions for anybody? Yes Okay, so the question is how important is it dependent for you to work on location? And how difficult I guess it can be if you're working remotely to be able to to grow your career in a positive way Yeah, so so I will say I'm gonna speak on behalf of Red Hat and then you guys can all tell me I'm wrong, but I Feel like especially for Red Hat that They do a very good job of trying to make sure that we are keeping people Giving people opportunities whether they happen to all be in the same office and local or where they tend to be remote And and I may be speaking more from from the experience that I have had in in the groups that I have worked with But we have a lot of teams that that have individuals that are scattered all over the globe and We work very hard to make sure that they are all considered part of the team and are getting opportunities to be able to to work and Grow into leadership opportunities in different ways. So from previous teams, I've managed, you know, the the I've actually had one team where the majority of the teams were all located in one office in North Carolina And yet the team lead was located in Canada And that worked out very well It just takes more time and effort to make sure that you're giving people the ability to be able to work effectively that way I Will say at other companies that I've worked at it has been almost impossible for you to be able to move into Growth opportunities unless you happen to be physically located in the same office is where the majority of the folks were So I definitely think this is an area that the Red Hat really excels So of the my answer would be like it is possible to get into leadership position from remote work and like I'm work remotely and Isolated from my team basically for for example, but to make it work You need a specific effort. So you cannot just take a team Put them in different remote locations and start working like this. You need additional effort. You need additional Policies additional workflows to make sure that a remote work Actually works for you. So it's a I Saw sometimes that the people try to do this remote work by just sending people away and then and trying to keep up Over the same workflows they had before and it always fails like miserably Yeah, so you really need to invest your time into organizing in a remote friendly way I Lead my team remotely to people are in Raleigh one of them is here and bring out Another is in Boston, and then I'm in New York, and I do think it is an additional challenge to be remote from the main kind of center It can feel I think the challenge at the biggest challenge is keeping aware of things outside your immediate periphery and Building relationships, especially with the people who are highly influential in your organization So I know that there are hallway conversations that I'm not going to be there for and that can be You know a damaging for your not damaging, but a disadvantage for your career It's something you do have to be aware of and really work to overcome To make sure that you're not letting yourself kind of fade away if that makes sense But jumping on those video calls as much as possible This also I noticed kind of comes head to head with just growing organizations meeting These sorts of skills anyway. There's a point where your organization doesn't fit in a room anyway And it being on separate floors is almost the same as being in separate towns it the Your team can be made stronger by having a good remote balance that forces you to document things properly to make Process that are going to work So working at it now. It is a great way also to ensure you have a stronger organization So the question was When you build your brand that are you specialized in certain direction or you more going into general thing and trying different things I just want to share this story The thing is like I'm see engineer. I was like looking into CI and trying to Build something about it, but I was also like curious about this You know Raspberry Pi staff and for people who are like deeply theoretical like me actually making led light blink is some achievement of my life so I Actually did it in my free time and I like created certain like library a recompiled device three once and so and This actually led me to redhead to my current position So it it was totally out of scope. I planned for it was just for fun And then eventually it kind of helped me to to get into the conversation and to get into the position Which I am here now So like you don't have to focus on something. It's good to have primary Goal or maybe primary target. I think but it's also like don't don't Skip all these other things you're interested in if you're interested in them. Just do them. It's also Yes, I think the official business school thing they tell you is to be a t-shaped person Which is you know Broad in many areas and then deep in one area and I think that's generally good True, but not great advice. That makes sense Personally if I'm told I have to find something I like or pick a favorite I Blank and freak out and that will never work for me That isn't to say I haven't found areas that I've developed more depth in But if the way I found that was mostly by spreading my tentacles everywhere, which I still kind of do Maybe that's not a good thing, but and certain things kind of you notice Hey, those are related to each other or that's an area that it seems like kind of has a common But I've heard people talk about in different areas. Is there something here we can learn about and then just following your interests. I Think passion being passionate and interested in something that especially that Maybe doesn't have as big a like people aren't paying attention to in a more holistic way is a great way to Find it and build your expertise Without feeling forced to do it Really quick I think for me Being a front-end engineer the thing that that let me do was I got to actually interface with broad parts of the system Even though I had a specific technical focus building the front end I actually got to see huge huge sections of the product and it made it very easy for me that to then Transition into a broader role because I was in familiar with all of those other areas so you can you can be broad at a Shallower level and then be able to dive into an area when you need to it if you get the chance to be familiar with it Yep Yeah, so I just I wanted to thank the panel for doing this and and definitely thank the audience for all of your questions in there And I hope that some of the stories that we have provided will give you good insights for As you're trying to develop that your own career and your own career path to a leadership opportunity. Thank you