Cracking the Code: Tech Leadership Tactics

Wade Erickson (00:03):

Welcome to another episode of Tech Leaders Unplugged. Today we're getting unplugged with Claude Jones of Center. He's the, vice President of Product and Engineering. And today, our topic's going to be cracking the code tech leadership tactics. And, we’re going to talk a little bit about culture and how different things can enter into an organization that can cause both positive and negative aspects. And so maybe some of those things that, you can look for as a leader, if they start to creep into the organization and, and ideas about how to first diagnose it, and then maybe, improve things a little bit. So thanks so much Claude, for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us today. And, yeah, so tell us a little bit about yourself, about Center, and then we'll get jump into the topic.

Claude Jones (01:02):

Hey, thanks Wade. I really appreciate being on the show today. And yeah. My name's Claude. I'm the current VP and head of product engineering for a company called Center. They are based out of LA founded by Chris Hemsworth. It's a private equity own, own business. And it focuses on the health wellness sector. And its unique value offering is that we have our three pillars of, of excellence movement, which focuses on fitness meals, which focuses on nutrition and mindfulness, which focuses on, you know, meditation. And it's like the three offering there really provides a holistic approach to helping people navigate their wellness journey.

Wade Erickson (01:47):

Excellent. Excellent. And so a little bit about your previous role. I think there's a lot of our folks that maybe touched some of the technology that you were instrumental in. Can you tell us a little bit of time at Walmart Labs and the, those technologies that you were really the lead guy on in there in San Diego?

Claude Jones (02:05):

Yeah, so I, I had the pleasure of actually establishing a Fortune one company, Walmart Labs out in, in the Carlsbad area out here in San Diego, help grow that office from eight to over, over 300 folks in that location. But my primarily responsibilities were building tooling and systems to help drive the curation and management of their digital experience. So their online grocery, their e-commerce site. And then had the pleasure of working with some, some great folks in Bentonville and helping to streamline on the physical side in stores. And so looking at, you know, forecasting, predictability, inventory management from that standpoint. So help build the tools and, and services to help support that,

Wade Erickson (02:50):

Right? Right. And so I know that that was critical during covid, you know, you guys were getting that going and then all the, the home delivery and all that. I'm sure it was quite frantic during those days for all the retailers to kind of adjust to that delivery, that new normal really now. And so you know, first of all, thank you for that. I still use it every day. I still a fantastic experience. You did a phenomenal job there, running the teams there. So yeah, if you want, let's jump into the topic. Cracking the code tech leaders on tech leadership tactic. What, what about this topic interested you and you wanted to share with the community here?

Claude Jones (03:31):

You know, I, I'd say over the last 20 years of, of, of my career, I had a lot of learnings, I'll call them just learnings under my belt. Anything from mistakes that I've made to my successes to working as an individual contributor to an executive leader managing local teams, I've mentioned of eight, to growing that to distributed teams and multiple countries over three, 300. I've worked for small to large companies, and I think one of the biggest things that I've realized is that all companies struggle with the same thing. It's people. And what I mean by that is, if you were to ask yourself, you know, as an employee, as a leader founder, whatever it is, it's the people that you are surrounding yourselves with or hiring, do they have the right mindset? You know, how are they thinking about being able to get their job done? Or interfacing or collaborating with others the potential? Are they curious? You know, can they scale in the position that they're at? Do they have the right experience for the job, you know, that you see and are they the right cultural fit? And when these things don't align correctly, what you end up missing is are the individuals that are part of your team or your company really in it to help the overall success of helping the company achieve their goals. And when that is in a line and things start breaking down that's when chaos starts to happen, and that chaos breeds inefficiencies. And so you know, over my, again, the 20 years I've come up with certain patterns and things that I, I tend to follow at an IC a leadership and even patterns that I've recognized, what I call anti-patterns at the company level, that prevent companies from being efficient and effective in getting their jobs accomplished.

Wade Erickson (05:24):

Yeah. So let's, let's talk a little bit about patterns and anti-patterns for some of the folks that, I mean, that's a you know, a a computer design kind of terminology. But why don't you share a little bit about a pattern versus an anti-pattern, and, and so we can use that lingo going in because I think it is very fitting of what we're talking about.

Claude Jones (05:45):

Yeah. I think that's a good question. And as, as I think about, so if I, if I look at patterns, what I'd like to say, here are some behavioral patterns that I have put into practice as an IC and a leader that I still do today. And then I can maybe talk about the anti-patterns of like, cultural things that we see within the company. So from a pattern or behavior perspective, you know, as an individual contributor or just a person that's trying to manage kind of chaos in, in your day-to-day life. The first one is quality over quantity. And I think we all know these things. It's like less is really more, it truly is. And if you're focusing on delivering high value features on time with quality consistently what's going to end up happening is that you start building what I call like this, this equity, this brand equity for yourself, because you're going to start building trust. People can depend on you, and you're going to have a high quality product that that comes out. So this can be anything from the day-to-Day work, or even translatable to, you know, building, you know, a, a SaaS product, right? Like, are you focusing on the right things, delivering the right quality for that, that consumer. So that's one quality over quantity. The second is working smarter or not harder. And you know, I tend to struggle with this. I'm a type A person and I sometimes try to do everything all at once. And the more that I do, again, going back to that quality piece, is that you know, with all the tasks that I have, are there better ways of helping me accomplish that? You know, can I think outside the box? So an example might be I come into an environment and I might have budget constraints, resource constraints, timing, constraints associated with it, and you know, how do I navigate between those three different levers in identifying the smartest way to accomplish a task to get things done? And sometimes we have to think outside the box, right? We might not have these answers giving us to us. And by thinking outside the box when you're dealing with hard constraints, is what my definition of innovation is. And so, you know, really diving into how do I work smarter within these constraints and harder to get things done? Automation would be a, a perfect example of, of looking at that. I think the third I would say pattern that, that I, I practice as an individual contributor is setting the right expectations with others. You know, a lot of times we might have the urge to sign up for something that might seem unrealistic. How often are we very upfront and transparent about what we can and can't accomplish given the constraints that, that we're up against? A lot of times they don't say that out of fear or mistrust. It doesn't matter what it is, but, you know, what can we do to help set the right level of expectations with others and that will help reduce chaos and frustration and, and stress within in your life. So from an IC point of view, these are the behaviors and patterns that I, I tend to practice. So that, that's that piece. From a leadership perspective there are things that I try to instill in the team or within the org, but really empowering individuals to follow eight things that I've, I identified. The first is providing real time tactical feedback. You know, as people are talking or something isn't going right, how often do we see folks just maybe sitting on something and not really communicating and really getting to the heart of the issue in a very tactful way, right? That causes growth. You know, mentorship is, is going to be key. Making decisions based on facts and not emotions. This has eaten me up sometimes where I've been in a meeting and you're talking about any sort of maybe architectural pattern or approach or a product feature that wants to go out, but you're so passionate about it that it doesn't matter what someone says logically it'll tend to go out the window. And it's so how do you bring folks along to objectively make decisions on the things that need to be accomplished and helping to remove emotions out. It's, it's tough sometimes, but creating an environment to help support that being accountable for your actions, you know, so now you make a decision and it doesn't go well, what happens? And if you don't have individuals or people that are be willing to understand like, that didn't work out the way that I, I thought it was going to work out. It kind of ties into that other thing about embracing failure as a learning experience versus something that's a mistake, right? And the more that you can create a culture to where people are accountable for their actions, but feel that psychological safety, that not only can they say, you know what, I messed up, this is how I messed up, but how can we move forward in a positive way? These are things that help build a very strong culture, you know, and then it goes on with setting realistic goals and expectations. Kind of talked about that, making sure that folks have the ability to do that. Celebrating successes, you know, as a team as you win. And then really kind of working together, you know, as a, as a group for the overall success of the team. And I think when you start looking at individuals being able to manage the chaos in their day-to-day lives to be as efficient as possible as an individual, that carries over nicely when you start looking at getting a collection of these folks that think have that same mindset to help drive efficiency. So those are sort of the patterns that I see from an individual and a team perspective. The anti-patterns, if I could get into that. Or things that when you don't solve, you know, the things that I've mentioned, this causes problems, cultural problems within the organization. Can I get into that Wade?

Wade Erickson (11:33):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, which is great cause this is what I wanted you to set up because patterns are kind of like, maybe some people call 'em best practices, things that you observe that do well, okay? But I've never heard of somebody say, what's a anti best practice? You know, so we didn't really, you don't really have that counter, but in software you absolutely do. You have the pattern of architectural patterns, all kinds of patterns that set up a good arch, a good structure for what you're building. But then you also have anti-patterns that you share that says, Hey, this is where you can jam you up. So maybe the closest thing is like a do list and a don't list <laugh> if you've seen those before. So I just wanted to set the stage for these anti-patterns. 'cause Really you great summary on the patterns, which is good behavior, what are some of the things to notice? And so, yeah, I just wanted to set that up so that when you get into these anti-patterns, people are really kind of dialed in on, oh, this is what I need to look, this is kind of the things that might get me in trouble. These are the potholes.

Claude Jones (12:36):

Yeah. And, and I love the way that you set that up and thank you for giving me the time to kind of set that up. cause It, I think it is important to sort of understand that we're always looking at things at an individual basis. And a lot of these anti-patterns are caused because of the chaos and lack of management and efficiency that go on from a leadership and individual perspective. So the anti-patterns there are four things that I've personally identified that I've seen throughout my career. The first one being what I would call a cannibalistic culture. And a cannibalistic culture is a pattern that tends to surface when you have organizations kind of pitted against one another, right? They're not operating at the same goal, they're not working together as a team. And a lot of this is caused due to lack of communication, lack of alignment you know, the concept of teamwork towards a common goal. Like that common goal isn't set up correctly. And sometimes you'll get organizations and leaders that'll be in place that are like, Hey, and I've had this happen to me in certain companies where it's like you have a platform team and you have a team that's doing platform work, like a application team doing platform work and a platform team. And instead of really focusing on like the reuse, cause that's what a platform team would be used for. It's like, Hey, you know what? The first team to kind of get it done, you know, work on it, who wins? Cause we got deadlines we need to hit, this is what's going on. And so the concept of reusability and collaboration at that level doesn't exist cause they're not on the same goal of that efficiency and reuse. And so now you have teams cannibalizing resources, it's a cost suck, you know, for the company. And it just causes strife between teams cause they're not working together and they're constantly competing against one another. So I'm pretty sure folks have, have found themselves into that situation. But that's the first one, this cannibalistic kind of nature and culture within a business. The second one is this reactive culture and reactive culture. This behavior is when, you know, teams or employees just kind of blindly just take orders without really understanding the what the why or what problem is trying to be solved, right? Leadership comes down and says, we need to get this done, and then people just start scrambling to kind of get it done without understanding anything. And so what you see and why this tends to occur is there is no trust for employees to really maybe push back tactfully and informed just leadership for clarity. Like, Hey, you know, we understand the directive, but we'd love a little bit of clarity on understanding the purpose or the value of what's being, being requested, right? Because the more that you understand sort of the why behind what's going on, the more that you can start thinking about, you know, innovative solutions on how best to solve the problems that, that are being solved. And when we don't really get clarity from, from leadership or wherever that director's coming from, this starts instilling a sense of panic, right? And that panic comes with, oh my gosh, you know, there's too much scope that needs to be done. Or, oh my gosh, the timeline might be too rigid. Or, you know, do we have enough resources and the right talent to actually get something accomplished? And we get into this like, fixed mode mindset, and it feels like there's no room to negotiate. You know, we're not able to set realistic expectations with anything. And so we become very reactive you know, as an organization. The third thing that I've identified is this hypersensitive culture, this anti-pattern. And this is a key indicator of a lack of emotional intelligence within the company. And so instead of being very objective, caring you know, empathetic in the thought process and the decisions that are being made what ends up taking its place is fear, negative intent. And with those things being the driver, what ends up happening is you start avoiding collaboration and you start holding back on providing real time feedback. And so now it's like, Wade, if you and I are working and something didn't go right, and if you're like, man, I don't want to talk to Wade cause I feel like he might take what I'm saying in the wrong way, what ends up happening is there's no way that we can build an authentic relationship. There's no way that we can communicate and have iron sharpen iron. And, you know, it opens a door for fear and misunderstanding in the way that we work together. That is a hypersensitive culture and feeds into that reactive and can ballistic nature. You know, that, that I talked before. The last thing that and I would say the most important sort of anti-pattern to stay away from is what I would call a misguided culture. And a misguided culture is the most damaging because this is really a result of weak leadership, not having clarity on vision and strategy and ensuring that sort of that common message and common goals is something that's spread across the organization. And the main cause for this is having you know, an experienced managers or leaders in their positions. A lot of times you have folks that might be might have a lot of book smarts, but kind of having that hands-on experience might be missing there. And so folks just aren't trained. Or you have folks that have been in excellent IC just really doing an outstanding job, but then they've been promoted to a managerial position, but not really understanding how to navigate and leverage people from a coaching and mentorship perspective. And then, you know, folks that are coming in that are know-it-alls, right? And it's like, how are they collaborating and being very objective in their decision making process to get thigs done? And so when you have, you know, leadership that's driving, it's sort of the blind leading the blind, right? Because no one's really collaborating, no one's really driving vision. And all of these things combine really help stifle efficiency in any organization, whether it's a startup company, a small company, a Fortune one company, it doesn't matter. All these problems are the same.

Wade Erickson (18:53):

You know, as you talk through these four, it was kind of, of course, experience was I was putting myself in different jobs and where these things showed up. And so, you know, as we go back to like cannibalistic culture I think a lot of that, you know, it, it seems like when we find ourselves in urgent stressful situations, some of that stuff actually alleviates because we have to come together as a team to solve it. Maybe this was this c event, you know, when all of a sudden online grocery shopping was critical for people so that actually the urgency broke it down. But then sometimes that urgency if it goes on too long becomes the reactive piece, right? So it's an external pressure and people start to that fear of scrambling and trying to fix things and, and, and the reactive side of them starts to take over. And then of course, the hypersensitive, when things get uncomfortable, people start to feel worried about how they're going to hurt feelings. But I think overarching is this misguided culture because people with experience that have been doing this a long time and been through lots of urgent situations, had to put up lots of fires, bring that experience to the table to actually squash the fire. Let's get back on our team messaging here. We got to work together to solve this. You guys have your roles, you got your responsibilities. So if, am I capturing this right as I'm, as I'm listening this?

Claude Jones (20:21):

You are 100% spot on, man. I love the way that you had each one build upon one another, right?

Wade Erickson (20:29):

So tell me how you fix this. I mean, I've observed it through my own thinking, but tell me your observations about how do you fix this, if you see it, what can we do about the cannibalistic culture to to kind of inject some teamwork team, you know, team working projects or something to kind of separate the work and let's work together to kind of find some common threads that we can help to not have that, or maybe the hypersensitive maybe we, you know, talk things out and, and get a little uncomfortable with each other so that we can become comfortable. Tell me some of those kind of ideas and how you fix this when you've seen this.

Claude Jones (21:06):

Yeah. so I'm going to answer your question in, in two ways. I think one of the things that I've started to do and just kind of organizing my thoughts on ways of fixing this, I, I came up with like five, five core areas. One is, and this is really coming in, starting at, at the company level. Has the company identified what the gaps are? Gaps could be gaps in strategy, vision, resources required you know, technology to help sort of get to the, the next level. Like, do we understand like why the company might not be as efficient as it needs to be? Second is that once that understanding has been put in place it's getting alignment right across the board about what's going on all the way from the executives down to the individual contributors about what we need to do. How healthy is the team, you know, how we align on our way of working. And once we sort of understand these things, you know, how are we navigating through whatever change that needs to occur? So one of the things that you brought up that I would say is the most important thing on helping to bring people along is shared experiences. So you kind of correlated that with, with, with Covid, right? It was a shared experience that everyone was in, and it becomes a forcing function to get us to work together. And the, the big thing about shared experiences that it helps with the few things. Number one, it allows us to kind of accelerate that end-to-end alignment. You know, what do we need to do to sort of accomplish a common goal, right? And so for a lot of companies like let's say with Walmart back in the days, it's like, Hey, our common goal is we're dealing with some crazy stuff, you know, from a business perspective, you know, with the, you know home delivery services and things that we had, we, you know, we were able to focus and have a dedicated, you know, goal of driving towards that, that execution that added not only business value, but also benefic beneficiated, our, our consumers at a very tough time. Do we have the right tools, you know, for managers to hold teams accountable as well? So again, with that shared experience, as you're getting folks together, do we have the right tools in place to help support that? How are we driving the criteria to prioritize our work? You know, is it very clear about, you know, have we aligned the work that we're doing to the business goals? And are we getting the ROI that we're expecting to see? And that'll go down from, as part of how do we measure that, communicate those goals having a consistent way in which we're looking at driving business impact. How are we aligning on our ways of working cross-functionally between product design, engineering, sales, I mean, you name it, marketing. I mean, there's all these departments that need to sort of be aligned on, on that effort. And then really embracing a test learn and kind of pivot cultural mindset, knowing that as we're going into something, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the right direction. And, but how are we leveraging the data? Do we have the right monitors in place to all pivot where we see so I think this, this notion of a shared experience really helps people build the trust. It creates time to work on something small to help show progress that you can build upon. And it allows people to sort of understand where their strengths and weaknesses are as individuals and how to start collaborating, you know, together as, as a team.

Wade Erickson (24:41):

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well this is, we're getting close to the end of the time. I, this goes pretty quick. This is where I like to pivot and talk a little bit about you know, you as a, your personal story and a little bit about, you know let everybody know. Me and Claude have known each other about six years. So it, it was, it's kind of been fun to have a show with a, a friend that I've, I really respect. And this kind of leads into the, the personal journey I'd like you to share a little bit about. I mean, I've worked with PhDs, master's degrees, everything in computer science through 30 years of doing this business in my, and rarely do I date it to come across somebody like Claude who is capable in so many areas. And, and this will kind of touch a little bit on your personal story on how you got where you got and and, and, and some of the leadership that you've shared shown in a tech hub of San Diego. So what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about your personal journey. We have about five or 10 minutes here, we'll go over. I'm, I'm, I'm not, don't have a problem with that. Your personal journey, how you navigated yourself into a software, and then how you climb the ladder a little bit. And and I'm sure it wasn't easy given, given some of the things that, you know, I have a master's degree and a bachelor's degree, and I lean on those degrees from time to time, even though they're from some time ago. They're, they're, they're in my pocket to bring out when I need them. And you've been able to, I mean, you, you lead an organization in San Diego that is hundreds of incredibly talented, smart people that come to gather in your you know, networking organization, free of charge. And so tell me a little bit about that and how Set Tech Hub came about. And then of course, I want you to talk a little bit about your, your child's program, your children's book series that, you know, cause that was quite a pivot to move from hardcore software to something that's very tender and supportive of kids and young kids. So it might be a little too much to talk in 10 minutes, but condense it if you can.

Claude Jones (27:02):

Yeah, I'll, I'll definitely try to do it, man. And I, you know, I've, I've valued our friendship, man. I appreciate you having me on the show. And just give me a, an opportunity to, to share my, my personal journey. You know, my, my background, I, I come from non-traditional means I did not graduate, you know, college with a computer science degree. I was actually in business and, you know, in the, in the early nineties, I had picked up an HML book and just thought, I'm going to learn how to create webpage. And that's what I did. I, I started creating webpage, you know, inline styles, you know, JavaScript, you know, this is kind of the, the, my, my language of choice and notepad was my IDE, you know, back, back in the days. And took a couple Java courses in, in college, but really fell in love with the idea of the ability of creating something, right? Like I could code it and then there'd be something on, on the screen that was functioning and doing something interesting. And I, I fell in love with that. So I'd done that off and on with little projects here and there, personal projects that I had done. And I had the opportunity of working for Solar Turbines as a webmaster and funny story, you know, not being classically trained, we're sitting in the room and, you know, people were talking about cookie management. It was like the, the webmasters meeting. They're talking about cookies, and I'm like, they're talking about deleting cookies and, you know, the size of a cookie and, you know, storing all this information. I'm like, what the hell is going on? You know? Cause I didn't know. And afterwards I had asked someone, I said, Hey, you know, this whole cookie thing, what is that? And you know, it was kind enough not to kind of be rude, and the guy just kind of said, oh, well, this is what cookies is, are you new to this? And gave me some references to kind of look up. But I was fortunate enough to be surrounded in an environment where I had people that were willing to mentor me to really help. And I got my first break working for a company called Chita. And they were, were looking at, they wanted to hire like a frontend developer that did some middle tier work with Java. And I remember the guy who had was interviewing me, his name was Bruce, and he was talking about EJBs, Java beans, you know, lifecycle management. Didn't know what the hell he was talking about, man. And he says, well, you know, I see on your resume here that you, you work with JavaScript. He said, why don't you tell me the difference between JavaScript and, and Java? And I remember saying, well, one has a script at the end of, of its name, and it just kind of shows how green I was as I was sort of kind of going through. And the guy hired me, he hired me, and I was already getting the feeling I was bombing the interview, but his, his grace set the stage for my leadership and how I operate today. And when I asked him, you know, why did you hire me? His response was, you have potential. Obviously you've done some work here, you have the potential. I know you're curious. He says and, you know, you didn't your way through the interview. You were very clear about what you knew and what you didn't know. And he says, I really respect that from someone. And he says, I know that if I put you in an environment that you have the right mentorship the right encouragement, there's nothing you can accomplish. And what he did is he really believed in what I could be instead of what he saw right then and there. And that really launched my, my career. And so, I mean, I've worked, starting as an IC. I mean, I've worked for companies like HNC, you know, fico, you know, Yahoo, you know, to running the Walmart labs building, you know, to smaller companies and doing things and work my way up to, you know, the senior executive level. All because one person decided to believe in me and take, take a risk, right? And my potential and what I could be. And so when I talk about all the other things that I've done, like you mentioned, San Diego Tech Hub, San Diego Tech Hub was an organization that I started back in 2018 initially to help bring awareness about all the awesome things that were happening in San Diego, because people kept comparing San Diego to Silicon Valley or Austin, or, or Seattle. And there's nothing wrong with those cities by any means, but shoot, man, San Diego's a great place to be, and there's a lot of innovation and things coming on beyond just military and, and biotech. And so was it helping to bring that awareness and to showcase the talent that we had here. And as I started talking folks and finding out what their perspective, what with San Diego, they didn't believe that San Diego Tech or San Diego was a tech hub at all. And my thought was, imagine if we can bring like-minded people together that was focused on helping to support one another. Very similar to the experience that I had when I was bootstrapping my career. Imagine what we could create, and a tech hub to me, is really about community and people helping people leveraging and sharing your knowledge and expertise for the benefit of others, which inherently helps support yourself and what you're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, this organization grew from 30 people having that like-minded to over 5,000, you know, if you go want our LinkedIn page. And it really is about people helping people to for the benefit of not only for your community, but for businesses and all the other things that are going on. So and that, that's what I, I still do today, is helping to create opportunities for others by connecting people sharing of information and empowering people to be the best that they can be by unlocking their full potential. Let me know if I'm going too, going too deep.

Wade Erickson (32:39):

We're fine, so it's our show.

Claude Jones (32:39):

Alright. So I think lastly, you know, with the children's books piece that, you know, that I'm working on, this was really an extension of who, who I am as a person. You know, I spent a lot of my career focusing on helping to empower individuals and, and leaders and organizations really to be as efficient as possible, helping to unlock their full potential as adults. But imagine if we can start at a earlier age, imagine being able to instill, you know, leadership qualities in, in, in young minds. And when I say Young Minds, I'm talking like K through third grade, really starting at that early age and being able to teach empathy, being able to teach collaboration, being able to teach, you know, accountability and responsibility, being able to be acceptant of other thoughts and ideas if they differ from your own. These are all qualities that even adults struggle with now, you know, and what we've just talked about. So let's help instill some of these things. And so I created a company called Kids in Leadership. And as part of that company, there are four books that I've created that are part of the as for the Monstrous Series. And these books focuses on topics like acceptance teamwork friendship and and responsibility. And they're all based on elements of my own personal experience growing up as, as a child and things that I've struggled with there. So not only do I have these books that are geared towards empowering children they also allow parent and child to facilitate difficult conversations. So I have questions and activities that a parent can sit down with their child as they're reading the story to help reinforce the lessons of the book. And then recently I have completed educator curriculum. And so the educator curriculum focuses on English language arts, social emotional learning, in addition to STEM based activities that a teacher, homeschool school counselor a nonprofit, you know, group coordinator could, could use to really help to really help build you know, strong leadership qualities in, in our youth today. So this is just a way that I'm trying to not only give back to the professional sector of, of technology and people navigate day to day, but also in the education system to help start raising you know, smart leaders at, at a very young age.

Wade Erickson (35:09):

You know since I moved out here to Dallas, you know, I was San Diego and that's of course how we met through San Diego Tech Hub and, and I helped with some of your mentorship programs into the local high school there where we had entrepreneurial competitions and those kind of things. That's one thing that I really enjoyed there is that you, you, you brought experienced professionals and you brought folks that wanted to come into the this space much like yourself when you were around and bring them together. I've been to so many of these mix up, you know, these mixers and stuff where it seems like it's 90% people trying to get in and only 10% or 5%, you know, are like me trying to share our experience and, and give them maybe a path of, you know, like learn low code, no code. Don't go into learning to script and code right now because that's a changing market. Get in and learn to be an AI enabled programmer with low code, no code to solve problems quickly. And you're going to get a jumpstart on that, and then you can always go back to the beginning and learn, right? So that's one of the great things I love about this technology space that we're in, cause much like you, I started hand coding HTML on Notepad and Hot Metal, you remember Hot Metal.

Claude Jones (36:27):

Yeah, I sure do.

Wade Erickson (36:28):

That was the first markup, IDE and I switched from being a mechanical engineer in the defense industry, full-time focused on IT within a year or so of playing with web pages and, you know, yes, I use all my degrees and stuff and I apply the, you know, mentality to my software work. But you know, that's the beauty of this software space is that you don't have to have a degree and you can make a huge impact on society with the things you can build. So, and it's only getting better with low code, no code and those kind of things. Go ahead.

Claude Jones (37:09):

No, no, no, no, no. That was good. I was just going to comment like I, I, I really, I really resonated with what you mentioned. I think one of the things that, that make you unique and that I really appreciate out of you is not only do you, you have that sort of the academic, you know, background and how you're able to use that, but you have a very open heart man when it comes to how that knowledge is being shared to help elevate someone else, right? Like you, you, you connect, you inform, and you empower, you empower folks to be the best that they can be. And I think the more that companies can can do that, the better off we'll be in helping. I mean, that's what cracking the code is. It's really cracking that, that human code and treating people like people to get to unlock their full potential.

Wade Erickson (37:53):

Well, that's kind of my drugs and alcohol. Getting it into other people, helping people. That's where I get the, the, the energy and, and feel much more of a purpose within, you know, yes, I'm solving problems, I'm creating things, I'm making my money, doing my thing, but unless you're sprinkling all that back, it, it gets a little hollow after a while. So

Claude Jones (38:14):

That's right.

Wade Erickson (38:16):

Alright, well I'm going to jump in show, show talk about our show next week and then we'll do some closing remarks with you, if that's okay.

Claude Jones (38:23):

Sounds good. Alright,

Wade Erickson (38:24):

So next week we're going to Lisa Smith, CEO of tech insurer. That's on April 24th, same time, nine 30 here, Pacific time and of course insurance technology. We're going to talk about the, that space and some of the insights that Lisa has around tech in insurance. Alright, thank you so much. This was such a fun experience. Claude. I enjoy all my interviews. I feel like I'm friends with everybody that I interview, but rarely do I get to have a six year experience coming into these. And you know, I really appreciate you and all you have invested into San Diego, the tech hub. I mean, we persevered through covid when you couldn't meet together, that was a virtual, I mean, we were learning. And I think that in the end it really you know, pressured and resolved all those issues. And now you can have a virtual, you know, San Diego tech hub. It doesn't have to be just face-to-face. And so, you know, 5,000 LinkedIn, I mean, you, you know, you could just blow this thing up with the, you know, methodologies and the process and all the thinking that you put into that face-to-face, brick and mortar. You know, I'm sure that you know, you've got a great team with you working in those endeavors and, and webify your vision for that. And so just to let you know, I appreciate what you do for the people there and the people in the and the, of course the kids, your series is spot on. You know, I think, I think with the internet age and the social media and all that stuff, it becomes, kids have become far more inward and less empathetic, if anything. And so books like these and programs like these help to kind of, you know, balance out some of those aspects that kids are going through right now. And I think we're still really trying to figure out the impact of the internet, social media and all that long term on this generation of the digital natives, you know you know, how they approach school. You know, you can imagine a digital native kid that's been living on YouTube for the last five years going into kindergarten. Yep. And learning about colors and the teacher in front of the blackbird. It's, it's crazy the challenges that education has with this. Basically horsepower, you know, kids on horsepower, they're, you know, riding a Ferrari to school and then they get on a horse once they're there, you know?

Claude Jones (40:52):

That's right.

Wade Erickson (40:53):

Nothing that the, I can't blame the teachers. I can't blame it. It, it's, the technology is just changing so fast that we have to change the environment too. So anyway, thank you so much for your time, Claude. I could spend another hour with you easy, but we are, we do have our boundaries, right?

Claude Jones (41:12):

Yes, thank you very much, Wade. I appreciate it.

Wade Erickson (41:14):

Time in the future when you got another program or another you know, we'll jump on again and catch up with you where you're

Claude Jones (41:20):

Sounds like a plan. I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much for having me on.

Wade Erickson (41:24):

Sit until next week, everybody. Have a good day and a good week.