Career Journey 3: Assembling & Nurturing Engineering Teams | Code Story's Noah Labhart

**Noah Labhart** (0:00)
What I really try to do is I try to insure that it's not me against you. It's not boss giving feedback, right?
It's us facing our shared goals.
And so in the beginning with the best advice I was ever given with my wife, to treat all problems this way, it's also got the problem. That's right. Yeah, it works in relationships too, right? It works in marriages, it works in relationships. It's the same sort of idea, like, hey, we're on the same team, and we're facing this problem right here together. And this problem may be that you're not performing well in this area. And we've agreed, or you've agreed, and you've signed off on like, you want to get here, right? And me as your, yes, manager, but also your boss, your mentor, your friend here, I want you to succeed.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:49)
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Hey everybody, we are back on Dev Interrupted. This is your co-host Conor Bronsdon and today I'm delighted to be joined by a fellow podcaster, Noah Labhart, co-founder and CTO at Veryable. Noah, welcome to the show.

**Noah Labhart** (1:56)
Thanks for having me. Super stoked to be here.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:59)
You might also know Noah as the host of the podcast, Code Story, which features loads of amazing tech leaders, such as our very own Dan Lines. But in his own right, he's a founder, a CTO and software architect who spends a lot of time reflecting on the careers and the products that other leaders have created and understanding the best routes to be an incredible engineering leader and build excellent engineering teams.
If you aren't familiar with Code Story, definitely check it out. I know I really enjoy your podcast and your email newsletter is great as well.

**Noah Labhart** (2:30)
I appreciate that very much. It's a labor of love, as I'm sure you know, but get to talk to some amazing leaders.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:36)
Well, we're very glad you were able to join us on the show and it's definitely something we resonate with because that's kind of our favorite thing as well, is talking to these incredible leaders and learning from them and challenging them on their approaches.
It's because of those conversations that you have on the podcast and your career experiences that they really make you a perfect person to have on our show to continue this series that we've started on the career journey of being an engineering leader. You describe yourself as someone who is passionate about building world-class teams and that's exactly what we want to talk about today. How to build great teams and be an excellent engineering leader. To start, there's an intriguing approach that you've taken in building your engineering teams, particularly with hiring career-changing engineers. Can you explain this concept?

**Noah Labhart** (3:22)
I think it's important to define what a career-changing engineer is.
Generally speaking, it's someone who perhaps worked in a non-tech or non-programming environment prior to getting into a tech job. Probably in the middle of those two things, there's a boot camp or some sort of self-learning process where they have learned the practical skills to come in and do some programming.
What we've done at Veryable is really pay attention to those types of individuals. One, because they're excited, they're hungry, they're new in their career as far as the technical side of things. They're really excited to dig in, to build new things, to create a name for themselves. Then two, they have a perspective on the environment from a user standpoint. They see the world not just from the coding IDE and then the command line. They see the world as the end user because they used to be one. We've seen a lot of value in having team members that have those experiences in their career prior to coming into technology, helps them create a well-rounded product.