Cool Things with Cool People

I’ve had a fair amount of time recently to observe the world. After an unexpected layoff and an even more unexpected rupturing of my ACL, I’ve been left with a lot of time to sit with my thoughts. During this time of observation, I’ve had a chance to think about the question I never know what to answer, “what do you want to do next?”

Honestly, I still don’t have an answer to that question. My career has had many paths. The only common thread is integrations and alliances, from engineering to product, and a detour through partnerships. I’ve even taught college courses and run a non-profit. It can be a lot, but it can feel scattered and like there’s no thread.

For so long, I tried to come up with these excellent mantras that I could use to determine what I wanted to do. In my MBA, I learned about the four necessities people describe in jobs they love. They are:

• Acquire - gain capital to allow them to live
• Bond - work with people that they can connect with
• Comprehend - work on something mentally stimulating
• Defend - work on something that they can believe in

I love this. It’s simple, but more is needed. So my new mantra is to work on cool things, with cool people.

The acquire requirement needs no clarification when asked what you want to do in the future. When talking about a job, it’s almost unnecessary to say that you would like to be paid for the time and services you provide. This is why I’ve distilled this to cool things and cool people.

But that’s a great place to start, but it does need some definition, and that’s what I want to do here.

Cool Things

When I think about working on cool things, it’s sometimes different from what people think. Most people think this means some cutting-edge technology, a nationally recognized brand, or potentially something that is entertainment-focused, such as video games. That isn’t to say that these things are uncool, but they aren’t what I mean by cool.

The cool things I want to work on are real solutions to real problems for real people. Ultimately, at the end of every solution is the user. This could be extended from the problem, such as in my experiences with hospital data automation, or the immediate consumption of the application, like my time in partner tech. However, the most compelling work is that I can explain a person’s role, the problems they face, and how our solution improves their life daily. This means a lot to me.

I got into software engineering to solve problems. Eventually, the problems started to either look the same or not feel tangible and real to me. For example, the normalization of data schemas for databases lost my interest after a few years. But I had traveled the world helping hospitals install the software, and seeing the benefits people had shifted my focus to solving the problem closer to the user.

This has been exciting and precipitated my shift from engineering to product management and partnerships. It’s been an incredible experience and a space I hope to continue to grow in, regardless of the specific role, as I have found both incredibly fascinating and exciting.

Cool People

This is harder to define because there are so many definitions of cool. These definitions could be temporal and quickly become dated, like The Fonz in Happy Days; it could reference their demeanor, like Kobe Bryant on the court when Matt Barnes faked a pass right at his face; or it could be more abstract, like how we all know Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is cool, but we don’t really know why. So the phrase, cool people, has to be definitive, or it’s a useless metric.

When discussing cool people, I want to work with people striving to excel in their fields. People find their work meaningful and strive to be the best they can be. I want to work with people I can connect with professionally and personally. We don’t necessarily have to be friends, but we should care for each other and their well-being. I want to work with people who I can ask questions and trust me to ask questions.

The coolest people are the ones I can learn from and will take the time to teach me. Being cool is about being a part of the ecosystem inside an organization and being willing to work together to move the goals forward.

When I think of cool, I think of Orville and Wilbur Wright. These two brothers spent a ton of time working to build a plane, knowing that only one of them would get to be the first to fly it. Yet, they communicated, worked together, and solved a problem that had never been solved in a completely new way. Their desire to work together meant that the first flight came down to a coin toss because they worked as a unit and wanted to make decisions together. That’s the cool work environment I want to be a part of.

Ultimately, any organization that can thread the needle of cool things with cool people and solves real problems for real people will be successful. That indicates a great culture and a great product market fit. It’s why I’ve distilled my entire career goals for what I want to do next into those five words. So, while it may seem like a weird answer or a cop-out, it’s the truth. Regarding what I want to do next, the problem we are solving and the people I get to do it with are the most essential items.