Great Engineers are Always Learning – Lessons from a Unicorn Founder

Transcript

Shane Hastie: Good day folks. This is Shane Hastie for the InfoQ Engineering Culture Podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Idit Levine. Idit it is the sole founder of solo.io, which is officially a unicorn company. Idit, welcome. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.

Idit Levine: Thank you so much for having me.

Shane Hastie: Probably a useful starting point is, who's Idit?

Introductions [00:28]

Idit Levine: So it's very easy to talk about Idit when you're talking about the context of the company, I guess. My name is Idit Levine as you said, I'm the founder of Solo. I'm also the CEO of Solo. I think that I'm very, very technical, so I'm coming with a technical background and running the company in terms of the vision of the innovation, the operation, everything that needed, honestly.

Shane Hastie: If we can go back a little bit in your background, one of the things I found intriguing was you started as a professional basketball player.

Idit Levine: I'm very competitive, so I needed somehow to take my competition out. I was playing since I was, I don't know, first grade or something like that. I was playing in Israel. It's a little bit different, we actually have team in the very early days. We took the championship and went all the way to the professional league and it was honestly a blast. I was in a special class that actually was a basketball player's school. It was really, really fun. We flew a lot all over Europe and played. That was a lot of fun, honestly. I think that make my childhood very, very happy.

Shane Hastie: And how did that help you when it came to your professional life?

From professional basketball player to tech founder [01:40]

Idit Levine: Yes, that's a good question. I think what's special about basketball is that it's interesting, because it's a team play, first of all. So it's not enough to be good when you are one. In order to be winning, you need a team to win. And I think that's definitely forcing you, teaching you how to work together, which I think is how do you do it when you actually building a company. That's what you need to do. You can lead it, but eventually it's teamwork. Solo is not my company, I'm not the one who's doing everything. It never was. And what's special about Solo is the amazing people who're basically part of that organization, and how beautifully we work together. And honestly, that's also, at least to me, it teaches me a lot about how to influence, I think. And the point that if you are hiring very smart people, you cannot just tell them what to do.
Smart people need to understand why the work they do matters

You need to be way more specific about why - why should they do that. And it's not enough to pay them money, I can tell you that much. They need to understand. They need to understand why it's important, specifically good people. Why they're doing is actually going to influence the customers or influence the world or themselves or the technology, or something. There should be a purpose for why they're doing it.

And I think that this is something that I can think that probably investible. You're not getting leadership, you need to do that by lead it. And I think that the company you will discover that is not that different. I mean, doesn't matter that I'm the CEO. If I'm not going to be influencing enough and inspiration enough, the company will go all over the place. People will not do what I want, or what we should do. So I think that it's helped a lot. And now a lot of the competition that I was doing before that in the team on court, now I'm bringing to the ecosystem. So how to create the best product, how to create the best open source project, how to continue innovate, so continue doing all of this. I think that's helpful as well.

Shane Hastie: Tell us a little bit about the story that brought you to founding solo?

The Solo founding story [03:38]

Idit Levine: Actually that's interesting. I wish I had this story of I had a brilliant idea and I decided to start the company. That actually wasn't the case in solo. I will tell you what was the case of solo. I was a good engineer all my life and was very, very technical, but was very, very frustrated engineer. The reason I was frustrated is for two reason, I would be honest. Well, the one is because I really feel that sometime I'm smarter than my boss. Basically I was coming with the idea, I was writing the idea, I was showing it to influence it, and still I needed to get his approval to open source something, for instance. And I was really frustrated because if it's my idea, why can't I make those decisions? So that's number one, which was really, really frustrating.

And the second one is that when I was looking at generally the direction of the company, as an engineer, I honestly did not understand why we're doing what we do. It didn't make sense whatsoever. I saw them making a decision. I said, "What are they doing?" So now I'm older, hopefully a little bit wiser. And I can tell you that I was right on the first thing. I was pretty good at what I was doing. And I feel that a lot of the time in organization, they making decision based on, "Oh, but he's older," or, "Oh, but he was here more" A lot of different reason why someone is the one who's making the decision. That's not how it's working at Solo at all. And in Solo specifically, I don't care how old are you, I don't care what you did in your life.

What I care is how good you are and what you're contributing to the company. And if you are 12, that's awesome. I don't care. If you're really the best, you will lead. So that's number one, which I think is very, very unique and different. And the second one is that I said that I was very frustrated about the direction of the company, or the decision that they made. And honestly, here I was totally wrong. The reason I was thinking that they're making the wrong decisions, because I didn't have all the data. Based on the data that I had, it didn't make any sense. But I can tell you that since then, I talked to the founder that was in the same company that I was working and I discovered what happened behind the scene. And I was in shock.

Make sure you share the facts you have with the engineers, and they will make better decisions

I was sitting there writing code happily, but I had no clue of what really happening behind the scene, and why the decision made. And I believe that smart people making the right decision, if you put all the data in front of them. So in Solo, and this is why I honestly started the company, is I thought we can do it different. I thought that I can be open about why we doing it. And in solo I will never come and tell you, "Hey, Shane. Here is what you need to do." It's always going to be, "Here's what I know. And based on what I know here, I know this technically and I know this market strategically and all this information that I know. There's all of this, I think we should do this. Shane, what do you think?" And then we'll talk about it.

And it's really, really different than in any other companies I think that I worked at, at least. If I'm thinking about what is my dream job, which is what I try to build, is that number one, I want to actually make an impact. Number two, I want to make sure that I'm going to be paid well. Number three, I want to make sure that I be valued, which is very, very important to me. And so all this stuff that is very, very important to me, and I want to understand what we're doing and make an impact, that's exactly what I'm thinking that is a dream job. And this is what I'm trying to create in solo. This culture of it's our company, it's not my company. And we are working on this together and here's all the data that I have. We'll work on this together and we will discuss.

A culture of conversations not commands

You'll never be told what to do, it's always going to be a discussion. And I think that honestly, it's working fantastic. It's making the people very excited. They understand what they're doing, very skilled in the game of kind of like, "Oh, we get it. We need to fix it because here's why." Here is how is influence that customer. So I think that it's really, really unique culture. So if you ask me why I started Solo, that was the reason. I honestly thought that I can do it better and I always was a technology, so I wasn't worried about idea. It was clear to me that I will understand what is the right idea and we will go and attack. And that's exactly what we're doing.

Shane Hastie: That's, as you say, a reasonably unique culture, that sort of clarity, openness, the conversations. How do you maintain that culture as the organization grows?

Maintaining the culture of transparency as the organization grows [08:05]

Idit Levine: That's a great question, honestly. If someone asks you why you not sleeping and that, that's the answer. Oh my gosh, I really want to make sure that I can scale it, but still keep this amazingly functionality, openness. I can tell you that just an example, we had a product manager join us from Red Hat. And Red Hat is a great organization, but product manager is usually the person who's making the decision. So I invited him to the standup with all the engineer, because I wanted him to know who is working on this. And basically in the end of the standup, he said to me, "Can you stay, and me and you will talk about the product?" And I kind of said to him, "Why are you not talking right now?" And he said, "What do you mean, in front of the engineers?"

I said, "Of course, in front of the engineer. They are our customers." I mean, they are the people who use this type of product and he was in shock. So I think that it's very something that's coming from up down. I mean, when I'm hiring executive, I seriously forcing them. This is something that is forced. And if I see that it's not happening after a month, I will go and take them in conversation and say, "Look guys, here's how it's working here. If you want to work for Solo, this is what it means”. And I think it's worked very well. People like it, honestly. Feeling really, really good about that. And again, the ideas that we have to listen, doesn't matter if this guy is bringing the food to the office, or the person that is running the company. If I need to, I will swab the floor. I mean, our job is to enable each other, and that's exactly what we done.

Shane Hastie: How do you overcome the sole hero behavior on teams? Often as engineers, we fall into the trap of wanting to be the best and to hold the ideas to ourselves, to hold the knowledge, because that's how we are recognized, very often. But, you're talking about a completely different style.

The power of sharing rather than hoarding knowledge [09:47]

Idit Levine: I don't know, lucky me. Here's what I believe and this is what I'm teaching my people. If you are really, really, really comfortable about yourself and feeling very, very solid about how good you are, you don't need this. This is a waste of your time. People will know that you're the best, people see and trust me, I see. I always know who did what and how, it doesn't matter who presented it. I have enough eyes everywhere to know who is the person that come with this idea. So I think that mainly they trust me to recognize that, so in Solo I don't see that problem. I really do not see a person doing this. And honestly, the way I'm working with the people, I have no choice. When we talked about what is the dream job for myself, one of the things that I didn't mention, which is very important is learning all the time.

To me, it's the most important thing, always learning. So one of the things, the trick that I'm doing in my company is basically I'm putting them on one product. And let's say it's the gateway, so they're learning Android very well, they're learning Kubernetes everywhere. The second I see that one of those people is feeling comfortable, too comfortable, I move them to a new product. So now work on the mesh. And then you're working on the mesh and feeling comfortable, I move them to the GraphQL. And why am I doing this? Because first of all, that way I'm switching everybody, so everybody learning new stuff. So it's no boring for them, it's not like, "Oh my God, I'm working for two years on this gateway."

Creating environments of continuous learning

No, you're working one year on the gateway and then one year in service mesh, one year on the GraphQL, one year on the serial. You're always moving, so you are learning a lot of stuff so you're not bored. Number two, now we've created honestly an army, let's call it, of amazing technologists that there is nothing they cannot do. Honestly, nothing, because they did this and did this and did this. And that's usually very different when you're going to a company like Google, for instance. When you're going and you are very kind of narrow focus on metrics, that's what you know. You will know it in and out and to the side, but that's the only thing that you know. And I personally believe that product is never only this, it's part of a bigger story. So to me, I think by knowing more, this is where the creativity coming up.

"Oh, look, I know that in the operator system they're doing this. Can I take this one and bring it to distributed replication?" For instance. Can you mix and match. And I think in order to do this, as you said, you need to be very versatile. I think that's how I align that to happen. So by actually mix and match technology everybody should know everything, that's basically the idea. And I think that if that's the case, it's make them very, very strong.

And also for me, honestly, now I have no problem. If I want to go right now and do feature X, everybody can do it, so whoever will be available will do it. I do not need to say, "Well, I wish I can do it, but Scott is already busy on doing this and this and he is the only one who can do that." That's a problem, that's not healthy. So I think in solo I'm very trying to do that. I think it's going well. I think they're excited and people are staying a lot in the company. For instance, right now in the market is crazy, we almost not losing any engineer. I think one person left. So I think this is really, really strong. And I think that the reason is because they're learning, because they're interesting, because they're being treated well.

Shane Hastie: And you touch on something that is really interesting there. The churn that is happening in the marketplace, we're in this phase of the great resignation, or the reorganization, whatever you want to call it. And you make the point that you've lost almost no one. What advice would you have for other organizations to help them retain people?

Advice to retain people in turbulent times [13:14]

Idit Levine: Sometime I see someone leaving the organization and then you asking the manager why is that happen. And he said, "Well, he wasn't good anyway. We want him to go." And that kind of stuff. And to me, it's always upsetting, because honestly, if someone leave the organization, I failed. No one else failed. It's not his fault, it's no one fault, it's my fault. Because in my organization, in order for people to look for a job, they need to have the motivation. They should take the first call. Even if they're not looking, someone called them, they shouldn't take this call. If they're paid well and being treated well and challenge and having a blast and every good team who is also their friends, they will not take the call. It's exactly like in a relationship. If I'm dating with someone and if I'm very happy in the relationship, I will never go and try to eat on someone else because I'm happy.

I don't really care. But if someone is not really great, so maybe you will go and eat. This is seriously the same thing. So to me, everything eventually, all this ecosystem, it's all about people eventually. That's what we're learning, that's what we're doing. So to me again, if they're moving, it means that I didn't treat them well. And my job is to make sure that I seriously imagine what they will want. For instance, when the market went up in the salary, no one asked for salary raise, they got salary raise to the number that it makes us in the market, because they shouldn't wait. I need to understand that this is not fair to underpay people. When someone look to me not happy because he looks a little bit less motivated, it's clear to me that he is need more challenge.

I will take him and I give him a challenge. So I have one guy for instance, who was amazing and lead the team of the getaway and did an amazing job. Honestly, a brilliant guy. And he's in the company for three years and I looked and he seemed that he's a little bit tired, or something didn't work. So I took him and I said to him, "Look, we're doing collaboration with Google. Now, you're going work on this." So now he's excited again, because it's a new project, because it's working with different people, because the challenge is different. So my job is to see this. I don't need them to come and say that to me. And the worst thing is that it'll be too late and he's not going to tell me, but look for a new job. So to me, I'm very good at running people.

I'm very good in always looking and to see what's wrong. So when I manage the team, it was very easy, because I usually manage to catch it. But even when I'm not managing the team because I'm the CEO and there is someone who's leaving them, I can imagine enough what they will want to do. So for instance, I can say to them, "Look, we didn't have a lot of time hanging up in the company, that's the one for the engineer." All the time think about what do they want. Why do they potentially will not want to work here? So as I said to you, until now, touch wood, we have a very, very good time around. And by the way, the guy that left, it was heartbreaking for me. I felt miserable, it was heartbreaking. It was my bad. But my bad in the point that I needed to catch it up. It was very hard to read that. But I felt it wasn't him, he was amazing.

Shane Hastie: And how do you turn this around? How do you attract these people?

Attracting great people [16:09]

Idit Levine: So that's actually is very interesting question. As I said to you, in the beginning I was hiring everybody. And then we grow, grow, grow, and I still was the person who's doing the last interview, but it's not scalable anymore. And when I hire, for instance, someone to run engineering or someone to run the product, I basically let them interview. And I discovered that we not getting as good as a turnaround in terms of hiring. And of course, the organization, the CFO and so on comes. Let's try to teach them. What are you doing that they're not doing. Obviously, if you manage to attract them. And I don't know to say, honestly, it's something that it's more like intuition I can say. I see people and I know what bothering them, or why they're feeling uncomfortable, where they're feeling very comfortable, or what do we want to hear.

And I just know how to do this. But one thing I will definitely say is that those people is coming to work with us and that's, I think, something very important. They are even in the point that it's not that I'm their manager, or we are working together, we a team. To me, I will do everything I can. My job is to enable them. And I think that when I'm doing these interviews, usually it's very clear that I'm not above them, I'm with them. I'm on the same level as them. We are talking to them on the level of their eye, basically. So I think that's the only thing that I can say. I think that hiring in generally it's like sales. It's a sales matter at the point that if I was them, what will make me come. But people are different.

Different people are motivated by different things

It took me time to understand that, but I'm still running what called the CTO office, which is few people. Four people is reporting directly to me. And as part of the time that I was working with them, working with all those people, I tried to motivate them. Said, "Look, we have to do this. This will be huge. We will be the best. This technology, it would be the most innovative thing that we ever did”. And I noticed that, one person in the team that's what he want. He want to be the best. You're telling him, "Listen, we are going to conquer the world." And he will sit and work for you night and day. There was another person that I said to him, "Look, we're going to conquer the world." He said, "I don't care about that." And I was like, "What do you mean you don't care about that?"

And he said, "I care about money." And I'm like, "That's a very strange thing to care about." But it took me time to understand that people are different. So if I want to motivate this guy, I just need to explain him, show him the money. I need to tell him here is how we are going to do this. It will bring us a lot of customers. A lot of customer mean that the company will be successful. The company was successful, you have equity. You know what I mean? Explaining how basically this is the motivation that he has to do, which is something that I don't need to do with the other guy who doesn't care about money, he just want to be the best. So it's really different. It's the same problem, it's just how you position it to people by understanding what they really care.

So I think this is in generally what sell is, right? Another thing that is very important is give them confidence. I think that jumping work is something that is really, really scared. You are leaving something that usually is comfortable. You have a lot of other option and you need to choose this thing. So in order to choose the thing you need to think what you will get in order to work there. The outcome should be so much bigger than what potentially could be the trade-off. It could be also failing and then lose your job and then be in the market again. So it's always about confidence. I think that one of the things that is very important to me when I'm talking in an interview is again, openness. Show them, explain them in details. Here's what is going to be, here's how it's going to work. For good and bad, here's where we are sat.

We don't have this, we don't have that. Here's what it mean to work with us. Here's all the good news stuff. Here's what will happen if you will fail. The worst case you will learn this, this and this, so you will still going to be easily finding a job. You know what I mean? It's kind of help them, reassure them that there is no lot of risk come working for us. And that actually the up skill will be the highlight of their career. And I think this is always right, you need to make the people trust you.

Shane Hastie: Getting some really interesting points there. One of the things that we know about our audience in the Engineering Culture Podcast is a lot of them are newly promoted into leadership positions, or have newly acquired leadership positions. What advice have you got for the technologist who's moving into that leading people space?

Advice for new managers [20:22]

Idit Levine: One thing that people need to understand is that I cannot make someone respect. Let's say that I'm the boss right now and I decided to promote you. I can say you are the boss, but people can still not listen to you. I don't think that leadership is something that you're giving, I think this is something that you take. So when I'm looking at a new guys, I think that the most important thing, as I said, the thing that I'm usually doing is just trying to understand. One thing that not a lot of people know about me, or no one probably besides people that are very close to me, is that I have a daughter and she's on the spectrum. So trust me, there was a lot of challenging time. But I think that I also learned so much about people by actually taking care of her.

And I think that you always need to understand why people do what they do. There is always a reason. If something look to you unreasonable, you need to try to understand why it's happening. So to me, if I'm leading a team, again, it's all about the people. So the people that are working for me is the people that eventually need to drop whatever the interests of surfing the internet or play some gaming, and work on this code. So I have to explain why, and I need to motivate them and to make sure that they will understand why. I want them also to succeed. So for instance, I see someone that struggling in one point. How am I actually going to help him there, because I think that if I were helping him there, I would be able to get from him a lot.

And I think that, as I said, by being with my daughter, honestly, and being in a crazy situation, I think it teach me that sometimes there's people that maybe they're not talking as well as others. Doesn't mean that what they're saying is not true. Sometimes they're saying the most smart thing, and if we not listen, then we're missing up. Or sometimes I have someone that is insecure, even though that is one of the best engineer I ever met, but he doesn't feel comfortable. He thinks that he's good, but he's not really comfortable about that. So you need to get it from there, the environment. But environment will not always people giving you that, it definitely is a manager. Question is how you're going to get that. So I think a lot of the time, as I said, is that it's just helping them understand who is the people that's standing around, who is the people that you're leading?

What are they good at? What are not good at? You're not good, take someone that's very bad in communication and I don't know, maybe putting in ability to fail. So I think that's very, very important. Just understand people, understand what bothering them, understand what are they scared of, what are the strength and just basically work with that. And again, it's very hard to teach. You need to feel it and understand and see the people in front of you. But honestly, I think this is the most important. If I'm looking at good manager, they're not always the best technologies, but it's the people that usually care. And in my opinion, good boss, his job is to basically take care of his people. I see a boss that taking care of himself, taking more salary, but not giving to the other, honestly, I really not appreciate that.

Because I think that the way I'm looking at this, it's like my kids and I will give them everything. It's kind of like the same to me. If you are the boss, you have the responsibilities to enable other, and the way to enable other is by basically give them everything that they need. And if what you need is like hug, it's a hug. And if what they need is sometimes be aggressive with them, so be aggressive or show them, or sitting with them and write the code, or whatever they need in order to enable them. And maybe be there for them and listen to them. I think that this is the most important, in my opinion, just be there for your team.

Shane Hastie: There's not much of that in management training.

Idit Levine: I don't think I ever was training by myself. I think life is training you.

Shane Hastie: Shifting tack. You are one of very, very few woman founders in our industry. What is preventing half of the population from really stepping up and achieving?

Why so few female founders [24:13]

Idit Levine: That's honestly a very good question. And I've been asked that a lot and I try to think about it. Why? And there's two things that I think. Number one, I know that there is a lot of people that trying to do diversity by actually help women. And usually, it's all diversity in general, it doesn't have to be women by basically said, "Look, you have to have a woman in leadership." And to me, I'm not a big believer in this. I would give you maybe an example, because I having a hard time to explain that. But we were in Israel originally, we came to US. My English wasn't good, it was a struggle for me, because learn the new language and so on. But I was good engineer and I was writing code, but honestly I could not write a doc.

Because it was so hard for me with the English that I really couldn't do that, or I couldn't write the email and so on. And one time I was very frustrated about the fact that I wasn't promoted. And I was talking to my husband and said to him, "What the heck? I'm very good engineer. Why? The only thing that I don't know what to do is to write a doc. That's not a reason not to promote me." And my husband said to me, "It actually is, because that's part of the job." Part of the job is to write the doc. So if you are an engineer, need to write a call and write a doc and you don't know how to write the doc, you're not very good engineer. It's very simple. So to me, I don't think that what we need to say to people is that, "Oh, well, maybe she's not the most inspired person."

Or maybe she's talking very quietly. We still need to give her because she's a woman. I think this is a mistake, because eventually we'll give her, for instance, invest in our money and she still need to convince people to come work for her. And she still need to lead that team. And if she doesn't have this ability to do this, it doesn't matter she's a woman, it not going to work for her. Even if she has the money, they need to follow someone. They need to feel that the passion to go after those people. If you are not, you might fail. So basically in a way, even if we are giving her the money, for instance, to start a company, she will fail. You know what I mean? How are we helping her? So I'm very good right now, I'm telling you what not to do, but that's not very helpful.

Bias in STEM education    

So let me go one second and where I think that we can change that and fix it. And I think this is related to when we are younger. I think that if right now I'm looking in STEM, for instance, when I'm learning it in high school. What is the exercise that I've been asked to do? It was around gaming. Robotics, it was building a car. Now look, there is difference sometime by what attractive people and it doesn't have to be. But I can tell you that in my kid it's like this. My son way loves trucks since he was born and my other daughter was really liking dolls. But if all the example that I'm giving on STEM, it's always about cars and trucks, my daughter will feel that this is not for her. But if for instance, I will do those game around Barbie, something like that, maybe my daughter will say, "Awesome. This is something that can resonate with me. I actually like these things a lot."

So I feel like sometimes a lot of the example and the material around the stems when we are young is very kind of like the example is always going to the direction of ... A lot of the stuff that's interesting, a lot of the time boys, and that's a problem. Because then me as a woman, or as a girl that's trying to figure out what I want to do in my life and I can go learn this, but it's about tracks which I don't interesting on this so I can go and learn history. I will go learn history. And that's the problem. So I feel that if we were from the beginning put a lot of example of, I don't know, you want to do robotic leg, build a Barbie that moving, or something like that.

Maybe that will be more interesting to me. Maybe. I don't know that, but I think this is something that we should probably explore. It's just an idea. I don't know if it's a good one.

Shane Hastie: Right back in the education system.

Idit Levine: Yes, exactly. When we are young that they will still belong, that they will understand that writing a code it doesn't mean always running, writing, something that related to a robot or gaming. It could be that it's related to something that you care about. I don't know, something else, someone that potentially care. And I think that will bring more diversity, in my opinion. But again, it's only opinion.

Shane Hastie: On the podcast we ask for your opinion. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. If people want to continue the conversation, where do they find you?

Idit Levine: So first of all, I'm on Twitter, which is Idit_Levine I'm definitely in LinkedIn, so you can find me there very easy. There is apparently only one Idit Levine in the world, I think it's very easy to find me. And then the last, not least, solo is very, very strong as open source community. So our product are on the open source and therefore a lot of people is communicating over Slack. So we have a Slack community, which I'm there, but honestly all the team there. And you seriously just going to the solo Slack, you register and I'm there and you can please reach out and tell me how we can help.

Shane Hastie: Thank you so much.

Idit Levine: Thanks so much, I appreciate it.

Mentioned:

• Solo.io
• Idit Levine on Twitter and LinkedIn