Stop Speculating And Start Speaking Up
Here is a story about why you need to start speaking up. One of my mentees, Ada, reached out to me at the end …
Here is a story about why you need to start speaking up. One of my mentees, Ada, reached out to me at the end of last year and mentioned that there was a new opportunity to head the new mobile division in her company. She really wanted to do it: mobile meant everything to her.
Ada is like Penny from Inspector Gadget, she has a smart watch, a smartphone (both Android and iOS), an iPad, and yes even her dog had been chipped! She spends her nights and weekends building apps and refining them. When her manager told her about this opportunity, she got really excited. Ada was getting tired of doing web development and wanted a new challenge. So she wrote an email to her manager.
Here’s the email she forwarded me:
subject: interested in mobile dev
Hi Mark,
I saw the req for the new position, and I wanted to request to be considered for the opportunity.
To give you a little background, I’ve built 3 mobile apps for iOS and 2 for Android in the last year, and I’ve been educating myself on the latest smart watches too.
I hope you’ll consider me for this position.
Sincerely,
Ada
A month later, a new hire Julie got the position…
Ada was really frustrated, confused, but mostly pissed off! She had sent Mark an email telling him she was interested. Didn’t he see that she was the poster child for mobile with all her gadgets? How could he not even reach out or consider her for the position?
You’ve probably been in Ada’s position before or know someone who has, and been left wondering, “What happened? Why wasn’t I considered for the position?”
It’s easy to speculate but that won’t get us what we want
Ada came to me and asked me to help. She peppered me with questions, “What do you think happened? Did I do something wrong? Was my email unclear?”
I don’t know Mark, and I’m not a mind reader. I told Ada to stop speculating and actually sit down with Mark. Ask him if he received your email, what he thought about it, and why he chose to hire Julie?
Ada was reluctant to approach Mark. She’s a pretty soft spoken person, doesn’t enjoy ruffling people’s feathers, or bothering people. She knows that Mark is pretty busy, and wouldn’t want to take up “too much of his time”.
I asked Ada two questions. First, was she really passionate about mobile or was this just a passing interest?
Ada responded that she loved mobile: devices, building apps, and everything about the ecosystem!
Next, I asked her what she does when she has a really hard bug she’s trying to solve for a customer? Does she just sit and speculate why it’s happening or does she hand it off to someone else to resolve?
Ada told me that if it’s a “really really hard bug” and she cannot debug it on her own, she’ll first jump on the phone with the customer, ask them for a lot of details, and note every single one down.
If she can’t reproduce the bug on her own, then she’ll reach out to the dev team, convey the details, ask about recent changes that were made, and ask about areas in the code base that might be causing the bug.
Most of the time it’s a recent change someone introduced that wasn’t thoroughly tested.
Ada basically investigates the effects of the bug, and then looks for the cause. This is typically called a postmortem, yup just like CSI!
I told Ada that if she was really as passionate about mobile as she says she is, then she should put in the effort to find out what happened if she’s not then drop it and move on. I also encouraged her to treat this situation the same way she treats tough bugs: investigate what had happened and why. She got it, agreed to take the same approach, and got started.
It took Ada about a week to get back to me, and here’s what she wrote to me.
Hi Poornima,
Thanks a lot for encouraging me to sit down with Mark, and investigate what had happened!
I set up a coffee meeting with him off campus like you recommended. I started out by telling him that I had really been interested in heading the new mobile division and asked him if he had received my email.
Turns out he hadn’t.
Apparently I had sent him the email the week he had been on away, and he had received so many emails that he hadn’t gotten back to me.
He later recalled seeing an email with the subject line, interested in mobile dev, but thought that probably meant I wanted to go to training or something because I do ask to go to a lot of trainings. He figured it wasn’t super urgent, and I’d probably follow up during our next 1–1.
Then I summoned the courage to ask him why he chose to hire Julie.
Turns out that when he was away he had been at a mobile developers conference scouting. Julie had seen the req on our site, reached out to Mark via email, told him that she was speaking, and to come see her talk.
Mark was pretty impressed with her talk. They had a few meetings, where Julie laid out how she had helped 2 other companies like ours go from web to mobile.
After that, Mark brought her in to meet with the rest of the engineering and management team. I do remember having lunch with Julie, but for some reason, I just didn’t realize she was being brought in to lead mobile.
She also followed up with a few stellar references and highlighted the products she had built to the management team.
Looking at the candidate pool, Mark and the rest of the team felt like she was an ideal candidate for the position because she clearly demonstrated her abilities to build mobile products. But more importantly, she wasn’t afraid to speak up for the position she wanted and highlight her accomplishments, and that was a key trait Mark was looking for in someone who was going to lead.
While I was disheartened, I realized my mistake.
Mark was actually really happy that I had come to him. He mentioned that they were looking for someone to help Julie understand our web app’s architecture, and be able to design the first mobile app based on it. He asked if I was still interested, and I said, “YES!”
I’m going to be the lead dev on mobile!!
Thanks for telling me to stop speculating and start speaking up. From this experience, I’ve learned that it’s really easy to make assumptions about people, and the choices they make. But I shouldn’t be afraid to ask them upfront. From their response and their actions, I’ll know if they are being honest or just stringing me along.
Sorry for the long email, but I couldn’t wait to share the news with you!
Thanks for all your help!
Ada
Given that Ada is a pretty soft spoken person, I knew it took a lot of courage for her to march up to Mark, ask for a meeting, and investigate what had happened. But I was thrilled to hear that in doing so she made it clear to Mark what she wanted. She not only learned a valuable lesson, she got what she wanted!
Now I want to know if you’ve ever been in Ada’s position: was there a new position or project you wanted to lead, and how did you go about getting it? Let me know in the comments below! Share with me why you want to start speaking up.
