2022: In Conversation with Kelsey Hightower

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VMware Explorer 2022, that's out the way. Kelsey Hightower, distinguished engineer at Google. Last time you were on, we didn't bother with the title. My team asked me, what's Kelsey's title? I'm like, Kelsey doesn't care about titles, put whatever you want on the lower third. It matters. Finally, why does it matter? Well, it was funny, I wasn't gonna, I tweeted the other day, I don't talk about titles very often, actually never. But this one is special because I've always looked up to the people who earn that distinguished engineer because the distinguished engineer is very different than most roles.

It's not about how much code you write. It's not about coming up with the one idea that has never been seen. You can do a lot of those things along the way. But that next level tend to be reserved for impacted influence. You don't have to be someone's manager. And it comes from getting your peer group. There's a bit of politics sprinkled inside of it. But it's also a good testament for this continuous way of doing it. And honestly, the reason why I really tweeted it, I was at KubeCon when I found out that I hit that milestone.

And I was like, I'm just gonna roll with it. It's not that important to talk about. But I remember other Googlers had found out too, and they were like, congratulations. It mean a lot to see someone that has done it their way. You didn't try to be a corporate shield. You didn't try to outdo another team and take credit for it. And he told me, you walked in your truth with it. When you're on social media, we know you're being truthful.

When we watch the keynote, we know you're being truthful. And some of the PMs are people I actually work with. So it wasn't like they only saw what was happening outside. They can be like, remember that thing we did together when we was writing that product description, and you said go left instead of go right. And then we shipped it, and it landed with customers, and they decided to use it. That's a distinguished set of activities. And I did this Twitter space, because you saw all the people just telling me stories.

Hey, Kelsey, you don't remember me, but you picked up the phone, and you gave me some advice about just keep going with it. And to see you keep going with it, and hit this thing that, I'm gonna be honest with you, most of us in this space, we've never seen a person that looked like me hit the L9 before. And so you realize like, damn, it's 2022, and we still hitting that ceiling. And so it was important. So we did that Twitter space, and hearing people tell their stories about the path, they was like, yo, we feel like we can do it more now, that that's something we've seen somebody that looked like that achieve.

And I love the fact, I wanna dive into this your way a little bit. Because I think we can romanticize when someone achieves what you've done, and they've done it in the way that you've done it, and we can romanticize it, and like, oh yeah, there was no hiccups along the way. I just did it my way, and everyone accepted my way, and it was fine. So I wanted to talk about that, and listen to a good deal of the Twitter spaces.

It's three hours. And it's like, I think at some point, 1,200 people or more, some insane number of people listening to that live. But I wanna talk about kind of those hurdles, and how do you push through. I have this saying in life that the average person, we all have stories about when we hit a wall, and we stopped, and we tell that story to somebody else, and they say, yeah, man, that was rough. I would've stopped too. The people we look up to are people who have the ability to go through those walls, to say, man, I got knocked out, but I got back up, and I kept at it.

And we look at them, and we say, okay, that's hero status, because I would not have done that. So I wanted to talk through, like, what were those moments over your journey where you just say, you know what, I need to pull my bridges up, and I need to punch through this. I'm being honest with you, man, like the first, I didn't start my tech career as a W-2 employee. I had a computer shop that I opened 20, 30 miles outside of Atlanta in Jonesboro, Georgia.

And look, I'm 19, 20 maybe, and I got $1,000. I got two choices. I can rent the apartment, or I can rent this little strip mall thing, and get a little computer store going. Now, depending on the choice I make, you gotta sleep in the truck behind the store. So you sit in the Jeep, you know, you can go take a shower at a friend's house. Mom may let you fall back through to take a shower, but you're not gonna stay there, because you gotta move on.

And so I'm sitting there, I'm like, I remember just telling my, I will never be broke again. I'm done with this, this struggling piece. But then I started to find my groove, is like, once you have a skill set, like getting into IT, building PCs, getting little contracts with local businesses, and you're being their IT staff, you know, a little insurance company. They don't have no full-time IT staff. So you're that, and you're starting to make money, so you can start to hire a person or two, and you start to kind of start saving, and you get in this mindset of, you don't need permission.

Because the reason why I was scared to go into the tech world, when I would look at those job descriptions, I was like, nah, I don't have all, they asked me for college, I dropped out, so I ain't got none of this. So I was like, well, I'm not allowed. So I'm gonna just open my own thing and make the best of it. And so, you know, when you sleep in your car, you get a lot of time to think about stuff.

It ain't no Netflix streaming. You thinking about, okay, where do we go from here? But it's like, you don't have the fear, though. You're like, no one pushed, and then when you push through, you're like, yo, ain't no excuses in this game. And so whenever I got any other opportunity, it's the same approach. You always gonna hit a wall. Hey, you shouldn't be doing that. You don't belong over here. Why are you touching the code? No one told you you could do that.

I'm like, yo, that's this temporary roadblock. You ain't the king of all software. And so when I found open source, ain't no permissions there either. You go over to open source, and if you wanna contribute, for the most part, most people are like, oh, you took the time to contribute. First of all, thank you. And I start to see all these outlets in the world. And it's like, yo, one company is just a department along the way. If it works for you, you stay there, and it's a good deal for everybody.

But if not, open source is an outlet. Speaking at meetups is an outlet. And so for me, I've always been able to push through because it's like, man, it's too many opportunities out here that if you fall, it don't matter. Ain't nobody keeping a score like that. So when you reach L9 at an organization like this level of distinguished organization, when I was at Lockheed Martin, probably the closest thing that we had to this was the ideal of a fellow. The fellow is the person, it doesn't matter what their expertise is, you call them in because they can help you solve serious problems.

You'd have fellows who would work on an F-35 project that were IT specialists, but they come and help with engineering problems on the military's biggest projects. So you have, at that level, you have this ability to look at things differently. And you just described how you were able to look at things differently. From a personal side though, there becomes a time where you're comfortable. You know what, that $1,000 I gambled back in the day, I don't have to do that anymore.

I make six figures, my family's comfortable, I'm comfortable. I personally got into a point in my life where I told my wife, I want to coast. It's like, I'm good. We got a 1,500 square feet house, I got a new car, the kids are in a great school, I want to coast. I just want to go to work every day and come home. She said, no, you have a responsibility. You have to keep going. That's my keep going.

What is your keep going like? I met you right before the camera, seven, eight years, I met you seven, eight years ago. Seven, eight years ago you were successful. What made you follow this path? So there's the grind, and then there's being yourself. And when things are in place, maybe it's financial independence, maybe it's you tried to be yourself and it was accepted. Either way, you get in a scenario where all you got to do is be yourself. Then that becomes, to me, much easier to keep going.

It's hard to keep going when you don't really like the job. It's hard to keep going when you don't really like the role. That's hard, but then that's a grind. Then when someone says, we like you when you give your perspective on something. Then keep going is just simply living for me. I don't have to be right. I don't have to be the expert. All I got to do is be helpful. That's it, in my own way.

So when a team comes to me, and Distinguished Engineer, to me, my way was partnering with the other teams and somehow influencing them in the way that they were willing to share credit. Because the thing is, you ain't nobody's boss. You're not no one's manager. You ain't no one's team lead. If you go in and add a value, that's one thing. It's another thing to have that value show up and then the people circle around and say, I'm gonna also give you credit.

Sharing credit is something that requires a lot of trust above and beyond being helpful. And so when I see that L9, it's like, you've done that. You've lived that where people are comfortable seeing you get to the next level. That's what it means for me inside of an organization. On the outside, you've seen this before. You take the time to give people a little bit of advice about where you're at. Maybe they're trying to do the things you're doing.

And you say, look, this is how we do it. We use these kinds of cameras. We go to these kinds of events. This is how I do my research. This is how I figure out. This is just how I do it. It may or may not work for you. It's like, man, Keith, you said something that was three years away from even thinking about. You just shortcutted my life three years. And honestly, that information turns into something where they actually generate an income from.

And if they're like me, we appreciate that on a whole different level. You wake up in the morning, it's like, man, I'm so glad Keith gave me that advice. So when they see you, they'll be like, yo, Keith, I didn't tell you at the time that conversation we had, I turned it into this. And so throughout the seven years since we've met, the number of times I'm just walking down a street, I've never seen you anywhere in the world. And the last time this happened was when I was in San Francisco.

The last interview we did, dude comes out of the restaurant. It was like, yo, you ain't gonna remember me. But you picked up that phone and you told me step one, step two, step three. But you told me those steps after listening to who I wanted to be and not just telling me how to photocopy you. I'm just letting you know that it all worked out. You know, it's super rewarding when you can just be you and people support you for being you.

Have you ever had a job, role, or opportunity where, you know, like, it's just, this ain't me. Oh yeah, I mean, I won't mention the company name, but I had a job where I was there two weeks. And I walked in and I saw all the cubicles and I just had this allergic reaction to just being another employee behind the cubicle farm. I was like, that's not me. I know I'm supposed to be this thing that HR has put out. I'm more than that, though.

I'm not saying I'm better than nobody, but I'm not a nobody. And so, just conforming to that, that wasn't gonna work. So I said, you know what, I gotta do something that requires all of my talents. My ability to code and my ability to inspire. And if you ain't got a job for that, then what do I need to just be another engineer at your company for? So that was kind of the game changer for me. So I have this other thing that you can't teach somebody how to be homey.

Like, I can't, if you've never been hungry, I can't say, you know that feeling in your stomach where you haven't had enough to eat and you, it's not like pain, but it's an uncomfort? Like, nah, I don't know what that is. And careers, so we've both been in positions where we've given people advice. And you've given step one, step two, step three. And then you see that empty look in their eye, you're like, they're not homey. Like, we're going to have this next, we're going to have this conversation again.

Let's talk about people like you and me from a given advice perspective. At what point do you say, you know what? I gave them the advice, it didn't work. Do I follow it up with more advice? Or do I just say, you know what? I got more people to influence and who can use this time. I'm mostly just sharing my experience. And if it comes off as advice, then cool. If they can use it, then cool. Because I think everybody's on the same trajectory.

You live in the world, and if you're paying attention, then anything looks like advice. That stop sign looks like advice, you should stop. If you don't stop, you might get hit in traffic. So to me, it's really about what you pay attention to. So for me, I'm knowing that if people reach out, then I'm going to take the time to share what I can. And if that turns out to be a good guidepost for them, then so be it. But I'm not as much concerned about them taking the advice and doing something with it.

That's not a requirement of what I'm giving. It's like, yo, I'm going to give what I have. I'm going to be as honest and transparent as I can possibly be. If you know what to do with that, great. Only you know how to really apply to your situation at this time. I don't have an expectation that you need to give me a remediate return. I'm like, hey, I spent all this time with you. Where's the results? That's not part of the deal for me.

So honestly, it takes the pressure off of me. It takes the pressure off of them. And I just say, hey, food for thought. If you hungry. So last question. We could talk about this for hours, but we have a practical time limit. You accomplished this over the past three years. There's been partially over the past three years. I know it's over your entire career at Google. But the past three years, for people who look like us and for people who don't look like us, it's been a tough past three years.

Like there's people, I'm sure there are CEOs of startups, CEOs of companies that were in your inbox doing the George Floyd thing, talking about Kelsey. How do I handle my employees of color? Okay, that's one. Interestingly, you're contacting me, but okay, that's one thing. And then two, there's the constant pool of people needing stuff from you. How do you refill the tank? You have a family. You talk about your beautiful little girl. I don't know if you have more children, but I feel like, man, Kelsey's daughter, rockstar.

Like she's going to be another fireball. Like how do you refill the tank and make sure that you have enough energy for not just your passion on the work side, but also you're just being. I'm going to be honest with you. Years ago, I said, if I'm done now, I'm good. And so then the tank just stays permanently filled because I'm done. It's enough. If nothing else comes, not another keynote, not another line of code, not another invitation, not another thank you, not another dollar, I'm good.

And so operating from that, then we all bonus. Everything bonus. When I wake up in the morning, sometimes I ask this question, why do I exist? You know, it's in the morning. You ain't checked email yet. You don't exist to check email. You don't exist to make Kubernetes better. That's not why you exist. So I just asked that question. I never have a great answer, but I know what's not the answer. And so for me, it's enough.

And so when you operate from enough, then you don't need much more. So when you see somebody in need, you can help because you got enough. When you got more than you can use, it's okay. Like you fool and you got a whole plate and they say, you can't take it with you. You say, oh, would you want some of these? I got enough. So for me now, the permanent fix for me now is I got enough. Everything else is extra.

So seeing somebody smile, I'm like, yo, I got a bonus. I don't need another award. And if I get it, I'm gonna put it to the side. I'm gonna look at it. I'm gonna be like, but I was already good. And you gotta be careful not to stop appreciating all the good things that happened to you. I'm careful not to do that. But I'm also knowing like I was good before this too. And I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna be good after this.

And so that really helps me kind of stay grounded in reality too. I'm not better than nobody. That person that's gonna outshine me, I'm gonna give them the flashlight. That's my end game. And I'm able to do that now because I am truly in belief that I got enough. Yeah, there's a line from a movie or TV show I love says, I will be fine being the match that lights the fire. We're out here, there's enough. Like we're in the world.

The thing I've looked at is that there's several trillion dollars of investment money sitting on the sidelines that can't be invested. I don't even want 1% of that. Money is not even the thing of it. The point is there's plenty of opportunity out there for all of us. And if I can help anyone with this content and having Kelsey on, get to that level and you come and you stop me on the street and you say, keep that thing, help me blow up.

I'll be your biggest cheerleader and I'll share it with Kelsey and he'll be your biggest cheerleader. We could go on literally for hours on this conversation. I don't know if the Twitter spaces is still available. They usually go out to a week or two. But if you don't already follow Kelsey on a platform, 160,000 Twitter follows last time I checked, chances are you do. If not, follow him. When he says that his DMs are open, they are literally open.

I don't need you to DM me to introduce you to Kelsey. If he has the time, he'll give it to you. I really appreciate you stopping by Kelsey. That's a wrap for us for coverage from VMware Explorer 2022. We really appreciate the time, your time, taking out your time to watch my content. It means the world to me. Talk to you next event.