RWL049 How to Thrive as a Remote Developer with Insights from PandaStrike’s Chief Panda Dan Yoder

Remote Business Building With PandaStrike

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:00

Hello everybody. This is Alex from the Remote Work Live podcast. Hope you're doing well. I have a really great guest with me today. I have Dan Yoder, who is the Chief Panda with PandaStrike, and, yeah, I'm just as curious as you. I'm going to ask Dan in a minute all about PandaStrike and how it came to be, but I'm really glad to have you here, dan, and thank you so much for joining me.

Dan Yoder

0:27

No, I'm excited to be able to do this. Thank you.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:31

Excellent. For all of you who don't know, pandastrike is a remote-first business built by and for developers and DevOps professionals. And, dan, I knew I had to have Dan on the show because I know a lot of you are building your business and I know there are a number of you as well who potentially want to join a remote business. So I think, dan, because of his experience, he's got a lot to offer in that way, because he's been building remote development teams for the best part of a decade and he's been in the world of software development for the best part of 30 or so years. So, yeah, a long time, a long time. So you know, I thought he has, he has all the experience. We need to understand those side of things a bit more. So, dan, I'm really intrigued. Tell us more about PandaStrike. Tell us more about your journey to PandaStrike.

Dan Yoder

1:30

Yeah, I mean. So I'll briefly go back to years before PandaStrike where I had, for various reasons, opportunities to get a feel for remote work, starting with working with a consultancy back just 20 years ago now, and where we had some clients where they were remote and it started me thinking, well, if you can do remote, we weren't remote. Everybody would come into an office and work, but the client was remote. You start thinking, well, why do we all need to be? It turns out that this happens all the time. Big companies have offices all over the world. Sometimes they routinely coordinate projects between them. You have in sales. The sales representatives are often, you know, all over the place and no one seems to think anything of it. But then you say, oh, I would like to have you know. I think it would be great if the development team works remote and everybody kind of freezes and is thinking, well, oh boy, how are we going to know that they're actually working? That's right.

Dan Yoder

2:46

So I had experimented as a development manager, as a hiring manager, with doing remote and I'd learned some interesting things about how to do that. And so when I started PandaStrike I had sort of just decided it was a little bit accidental. I just decided whatever I'm doing next, I want it to not have to be a thing where everybody has to go into an office. Fair enough. I didn't really intend to start it as a dev shop. It was more intended to just be a temporary thing while I figured out what we were doing, to just be kind of a temporary thing while I figured out what we were doing. But we were very clear with clients that we were a remote shop and if they were going to hire us they weren't going to see us very often. And then it just kind of worked out that we kept getting business, we did good work, people kept coming back for more and I guess it's been seven years and we're still. We're still here.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

3:48

So still doing that, excellent. Why panda strike?

Dan Yoder

3:51

I'm intrigued you mean the name? Yes, yeah, I. I wish it turns out. People seem to really like the name, uh but I do, yeah, I love it it.

Dan Yoder

4:03

I so, and I wish it. I could say that it was some sort of inspired stroke of genius, but it was literally. Um, it came out of frustration because I couldn't come up with a name that people liked, and so I would make this joke. Well, you know, I could always just call it panda strike, and people would laugh. And the third time I made the joke I thought wait a minute, you know, maybe, maybe this isn't a terrible name. So I tried it at a client. Up until that point I'd been calling myself Dan Yoder Enterprises. So then I went to a client. I said, yeah, we're, we're Panda Strike, and I sort of looked around the room to see what would happen and everybody just kind of nodded and went okay, and I thought, all right, well, you know, let's just go with it fair enough?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

4:50

well, it's. It's certainly memorable. You know it's, and that's what you want, isn't it? You want people to remember the name, don't you really, I guess?

Dan Yoder

4:58

yeah, yeah, I mean that um, and then, and then the we did a logo contest on 99 designs. That actually worked out pretty well. So we came up with these cute little pandas and so, yeah, that's why I wish I could take credit for it, because from a branding standpoint it's memorable. We've actually had people asking us like if we have plushies or anything with the little pandas, that kind of stuff. So, um, one of these days maybe we're gonna open up a little storefront and sell plushies instead of development consulting well, I know my little girl would love one, because she loves pandas.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

5:31

She always goes on about pandas there you go, yeah and then, dan, tell us about your um, some of your typical clients and your typical work, if there is such a thing with Panda Strike.

Dan Yoder

5:46

No, there is. The pattern has been our strength has mostly been in doing work for, you know, where there's a lot of scale involved, so where you know you've got a consumer facing thing associated with like a movie launch or something and there might be millions of people uh, using that and, um, it needs to not fall over right away, um, and so it's been a variety of companies where they, they kind of already know that that's what they need and they, they just are looking for people who can execute against that, or, in some cases, companies that didn't know that's what they needed and maybe were either more successful than they anticipated or just didn't quite get the architecture right the first time around, and so they needed somebody to come in and kind of help them very quickly get things stood up and then, and then you know, usually on those kinds of deals, once we've done that it's, you know, we just kind of, uh, you know, then they can kind of continue on, but but yeah, that's that's been the pattern. It's more like we're not the shop where, if you want, I mean I would love to do more like visual design work where we have more. It's very, sometimes a little frustrating because it's hard sometimes to point to what we did exactly. You know, we can point to a consumer app or something and people go, oh wow, you designed this Like no, no, we didn't design it, we just made sure that it doesn't fall over when people use it.

Dan Yoder

7:22

So it would be nice to do more of that when people use it. So it would be nice to do more of that. But for the most part we're the ones doing the behind the scenes stuff so that it's fast and secure and doesn't fall down. You know, if there's a big spike in usage, that kind of thing.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

7:35

Are you able to drop some names, some names of some of your clients, or is that something that you keep in-house?

Dan Yoder

7:42

Well, our biggest client is Disney. Wow, you, you know we can't, we can't talk a whole lot about that, but yeah, that's, that's probably the biggest marquee name that we have. We've done some work with some smaller startup type companies as well, um, but that's, you know, that's the one that everybody would recognize I'll tell you what pandas and Disney.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

8:06

My little girl, will be loving this interview.

Dan Yoder

8:09

I think the thing is, what I have to keep under wraps is that my stepdaughters are very much into Universal Studios these days.

Effective Remote Team Management Strategies

Alex Wilson-Campbell

8:22

So yeah, that's you know, know yeah, but it doesn't get much bigger than disney, so that that's really good. So tell us about your team. I mean, you've got you. Obviously you're a distributed team. Are you mostly located in america, north amer, or do you have other people across the world?

Dan Yoder

8:47

We've historically been mostly in North America. Uh, we, but we have had a few people, um, we've had, uh you know, ranging from Mexico to Australia to, uh, to Finland at various points, but for the most part it's partly just because of time zone issues. It's not anything where we are saying, okay, well, we only want to work with people from North America. It's more just like we did have an experience where we had a developer who was time shifted pretty badly because needed to be able to coordinate with the client, and I think that was actually kind of causing like low-key depression wow and so we were a little concerned about.

Dan Yoder

9:37

You know, people a lot of times will come when they're applying for uh. You know, when we're looking for people and they'll say, well, I don't mind time shifting, you know, I don't mind, I can adapt to a time, the different time zone, but what we've in the limited experience we've had with it, it's, you know, I'm not sure that it's the healthiest possible thing for the people involved. So you know, that's that's certainly part of uh. We don't really like to ask them to time shift. So if they're doing, if we've got a client where they want to have regular meetings or something, and that's something that we take into consideration- Right.

Dan Yoder

10:19

But we are looking more at doing Canada and Mexico and anything within that time zone range where it can be coordinated reasonably with people who are based on US time zones, because most of our clients so far have been US based.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

10:34

Right Apart from the coordinating teams and time zones and working across time zones over the years, I'm sure you have challenges in terms of managing your team. How do you overcome those challenges of managing a remote team?

Dan Yoder

10:54

Well, you can also look at it as a little bit of an opportunity. I think it depends on whether or not you're like. From my perspective, I felt like I kind of had to unlearn things that were related to learning how to manage teams when you're on site, and one of the biggest things is just trust, right. Just you know, saying okay, look, we've made a big decision to hire a person. Let's not, let's not start off on the wrong foot by assuming that they're trying to not do the work. Like if, if we're hiring people that we don't think are probably trustworthy, then there's a problem with the hiring process, and so we sort of try to give people the benefit of the doubt and sometimes that there's been a couple of occasions where that's burned us a little bit, but in general, um, you know, a lot of it is being able to let go right and say, okay, um, you know, we trust that people are going to behave like you know that they're grown-ups.

Dan Yoder

11:56

We don't need to babysit, we don't need to micromanage, and, as a manager, like it's when you're first managing I mean, there's always a strong tendency, I think, for for people who are just learning that, um, to tend to want to micromanage you become. You start to become a little concerned that, well, what if it's not right, what if we don't make the deadline or whatever? And I think some of it is just it's a great opportunity to say, well, I can't, you know, I can't really do that, it's remote, it's, you know, I can't be helped, I can't, you can't be, like, literally, you can't be looking over people's shoulders. So, uh, you know, you know that's a challenge but also kind of an opportunity to grow as as as a manager and a leader no, I can imagine and I think you're how many in your team now you've got, um, I mean, all the team that you have.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

12:47

Are they all on your website, all the pictures there? Or is it a bigger team than that? Uh?

Dan Yoder

12:53

yeah, I try to keep that up to date. I haven't, I'm not sure when I last updated it. We currently have nine people.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:02

Okay, nine technical staff, technical staff. So you've got technical, I suppose. What's the makeup of your team? So you've got technical, you've got administrative as well. What's the spirit of?

Dan Yoder

13:15

your team. So we have an engagement manager who works with the clients to make sure that basically, everything's going well, going smoothly, and this kind of is another aspect of. Probably the biggest thing that we do as a value add as a firm is making sure that the communication is happening.

Dan Yoder

13:34

So, when you're talking about remote, that's the number one thing that can be neglected. Talking about remote, that's the number one thing that can be neglected. I've actually seen cases where teams have sort of forgotten about a remote person that was on the team because the rest of the team wasn't remote and so a lot of it is just making sure that some people aren't super comfortable being really assertive. So we have an engagement manager that sort of helps with that. So if it seems like they're having trouble getting feedback that they need or direction or you know, or there's the client's unhappy but they're not, they're not talking to the you know to, to to us about it. You know we were pretty proactive about that. And then we do have, you know, pretty much a full-time administrative person that is really, you know, that's kind of it's pretty much runs the business actually operationally. So it's probably closer to like a COO or president type of role.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

14:32

Okay, and apart from that, yeah, you said communication is important. Yeah, you said communication is important. I think that's a recurring theme on a lot of people I've spoken to who, like yourself, are managers, leaders within a remote business. How do you actually because you also talked about the, you touched on the depression, your suspected depression of one of your members of staff how do you keep everybody sort of I guess I don't know engaged and sort of on board with everything that's going on? I mean, some teams do meetups and all that sort of thing. What do you do?

Dan Yoder

15:13

We do online meetups. I would love to do stuff that's in person, but there's a couple of things that we found that were a little bit tricky about that. One is just, we're relatively small, so the cost has been a factor, but there's also, for, depending on the types of folks that you're hiring, it can be a little bit it's a little bit intrusive, right? So, you know, there's this presumption that, okay, you know, we're going to have a company thing, you know, and it's going to be, you know, july in this location, and there are people who have families and responsibilities that are outside of work, that, or commitments that they're making, and they, you know it's, it's. It's a lot to ask them to say, look, you know, if you don't come out at this point, then you're, you know you're excluded, right.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:05

Implicitly.

Dan Yoder

16:06

And so I think it's something that is great when you can do it, but we've we've sort of not felt like we were like, if you can do that more often, maybe it's not, then maybe they weren't able to come once but they could come the next time. Um, so we've been, we have done some stuff opportunistically, like when a client has wanted to have a kickoff or something on a project, we'll fly some people out and you know, we try to take advantage of those opportunities as much as we can. But other than that, everything's online. We do meetups online where everybody does joins a call and um, and we do a lot of checking in with people, um, and you know, occasionally just throwing out like a conversation teaser just out of nowhere just to see um, we've tried a bunch of different things and, uh, you know, I do think it's like an ongoing learning process, figuring out what works. But so far, as far as I'm aware, when we've talked to people who are leaving the company, that's probably the most relevant, because people who are still working maybe they're not always going to be 100% candid, but generally people have been going to be 100% candid, but generally people have not felt that it was problematic.

Dan Yoder

17:33

But I also think that has to do a little bit with if you're hiring people who are drawn to remote work. I remember we had one candidate who just in the end just decided that it would be too isolating, that he was too social of a person, just didn't really want to. You know there are people that just don't. You know that that camaraderie at the office is a big part of their, of what makes them tick. So it's not for everybody. But if you're hiring people and you're interviewing or vetting process, you're sort of making sure that they're really excited about working remotely, like a lot of your audience probably falls into this category, right? You know, then I think if, as long as you're making the effort, people are fine because they're already kind of, they're already kind of in the mindset that this is what they wanted, right, they wanted to be able to work remotely, yeah.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

18:26

I'm with you on that, because what I've found is a lot of people who work remotely have a certain attributes and a certain tendency to want to do that, don't they? And, like you said, there's certain people who need that sort of camaraderie and the constant contact with people, and it just doesn't suit them, I guess. So, no, I'm with you there. And something that I mean talking about people and hiring, I noticed that you mentioned. You talked about diversity. I think it was on your linkedin profile, I think I saw this um, diversity and inclusivity in tech is a strength and a moral imperative. What, what led you to, to sort of to, I suppose to to say that?

Building Diversity and Allyship in Tech

Dan Yoder

19:14

well, I mean, the first thing I would do is sort of defer to people who I have learned a lot from on that score. Groups like Code2040, for example, have been, I think, doing a lot of great work to help people. You know there's, if you try to, if you, if you're, if you're thinking that you want to be an ally, um, right off the bat, you start running into a lot of uh, there's a lot of people that will challenge that. Right, They'll say, well, you know, um, hiring pipeline, all these, there's all these objections and and so it really helps to sort of study and pay attention and listen to the people who are actually really doing the work, because there's a lot of really good. Is that?

Dan Yoder

20:18

In pretty much any other field, like if you're talking about, say, genetic diversity in a population, it's just understood, it's self-evident, that genetic diversity is a strength. Suddenly, in tech, you're lowering the bar, right, You're supposedly diluting your talent level or whatever, and so when you, when you start thinking about it in terms of, well, that's odd that in this one case, we sort of see diversity as some kind of liability or obligation instead of a strength, Um, so that that's, that's, that's certainly uh, you know something where I've learned a lot paying attention to people who are, basically, this is what they do Kim Creighton is another one on Twitter, Marco Rogers, as well as another person that you know, and I think, if you're paying attention and you're trying to, you know, you're trying to figure out, you know the, you know what's the, you know what's the path forward, Because it's not immediately obvious how to. You know how to, sort of, you can say those things, you can say that you value them, but how do you really execute on them? What does it really mean to put those things in practice? And that means, among other things, being able to advocate for them, and probably one of the most important things I've learned recently is signaling to people that you're an ally. One thing that we learned that I think is really interesting and I'm not really sure I think I've seen this. I wish I could remember off the top of my head. I wish I could remember off the top of my head.

Dan Yoder

22:23

We just put one line in one of our when we ran an ad for a job opening, and it made a really interesting difference in the types of folks that were applying, which we just simply said that we'd had before, that we valued diversity and we added that we were looking for candidates who valued diversity and all of a sudden, I think that's a very different signal, Definitely, and that seems to have made it's a small sample size and I would say that at this point I'm very I think you need to, particularly if you're from a place of privilege need to approach it with a certain amount of humility. But you know, so we're still learning. But that was like that was kind of amazing to see that. You know, again, small sample size, we're still learning.

Dan Yoder

23:14

But you know, that's kind of maybe gives a little bit of a flavor of you know how I've been thinking about it and how I got to that point and why I, you know, said that on my LinkedIn profile. It's funny, I actually just changed that. So it's sort of interesting that you, the profile that I had there had been, was like way out of date. So I just happened to notice that I was like, wow, none of this is true anymore. I should update this.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

23:45

No, yeah, I'm with you there, because I used to have to write a lot of adverts. Still do a lot of copy. It's amazing how you talk about humility, but I think when you're doing things like hiring or marketing or whatever it may be where you're communicating, you're trying to communicate to a certain person or group of people, even if you're not trying to. I mean, I think sometimes there's a tendency probably, probably not to to think about what you're trying to achieve when you're writing copy or you're writing whatever it may be, cause it's just those subtle little things in your narrative, in your sort of text, that can change who actually, you know, reads beyond the first couple of lines, isn't it? It's just like it can. Certain little tweaks and words can appeal to some and it can sort of really sort of put other people off, if you see what I mean.

Dan Yoder

24:46

So it's oh yeah, absolutely uh. Yeah, where that actually started was uh, there's a. I wish I could remember. Maybe I can follow up uh later, if you yes want the names of these things.

Dan Yoder

24:57

But, um, there's a tool that, um I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it basically was analyzing writing for gender bias. So I ran our ad through it and it was, like you know, dudes are going to love this ad, and so I was like, all right, I tried changing it, gave me some suggestions, like, if you, if you want not just you know, uh, men, to reply to this ad, here's some suggestions. So I tweaked the wording a little bit, um, and just like you're saying, I mean, it's astonishing. Uh, you know, these small things, they the signals that you're sending. Uh, you know, people make associations to their past experience or to things that they've, like everybody now, just as a standard thing says oh, we value diversity. So if you're not going to say anything more specific than that, you might actually be signaling the opposite, right, that it's just lip service and it's. You know, like I said, I'm still very much learning, but you know, I, I do think, paying very close attention to that. And then, of course, you know, as a company, I've I've heard over and over the number one thing is word of mouth, and I've certainly found that to be true. Just in general, whether it's clients or as an employer, your reputation will precede you. So, having people who have had a positive experience with your company and then they can sort of speak to it, they can say, look, I know it's uh, you know, I had a, I had a good experience with this company, so, um, it's uh, it's all those and and you know, it's just, it can be this, it can be small things. It doesn't have to be, um, you know, some big uh initiative or really, if it's an initiative, an initiative, there's probably something a little off right there. Right, I mean, it's really just integrating that mindfulness into the way that you're operating as a company. And I know in a previous podcast you talked about shared values and I think you know inclusivity sort of begets more inclusivity and pretty soon you have a company full of people who value that and that now is one of your shared values. And it can't really just come from a statement or an initiative or something. It has to just be something that you're living every day.

Dan Yoder

27:35

And you know, a lot of times it's just a learning process, like, oh, I, you know I, I. And language is a big part of that, not just in ads, but in the way that you're communicating the like. You know gender pronouns, um, you know the use of like, a like one thing I've been trying it's kind of an endless battle, but the word you know, the, the, the, the word guys, which I tend to use. I use that a lot. Yeah, yeah, I have had that like as a habit linguistically, but it's for a lot of women, it's, it's excluding, so, um, you know it's, it's a, it's like a. You're just constantly learning and working and the language itself evolves and so on. So I think, like you said, I mean the smallest things can make a difference to people.

Dan Yoder

28:23

It's not, it's not really that that hard in a lot of cases. Right, you know it's. It's not like people are asking for the sun, the moon, the stars exactly, yeah, and I think that open-mindedness is why you talk about mindfulness.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

28:37

That's where it starts. Really. It it's like you said it's not, there's not real, it's just humanity, isn't it Just to sort of being humane and understanding of other people. It doesn't have to be anything technical about. You, don't have to go to school to study how to hire culturally, you know how to hire a diverse team. It's just you know, just understanding people. Like you said that open-mindedness can help you to just understanding people. Like you said that open-mindedness can help you to you think right, yeah, you think so but it's for some reason.

Dan Yoder

29:05

Um, that is a lot more of a challenge and it seems like it ought to be. Yeah, and I suppose it's because part of what's happening is when people are going to school, they're actually learning bias, right, as a part of that. You know the way, the institutions of our higher learning and our culture and so on. There's just a lot of conditioning.

Dan Yoder

29:28

So, pete, you kind of have to, you know, unlearn that and kind of get in touch with your humanity, right, like you're saying. It's really just about that. You know, if, if somebody is, you know, named joseph, and they say, hey, can you call me joe, you call him joe, right? You're not like, oh my god, what a pain you know. If somebody, if somebody comes in and says hey, you know I'm, I would like you to, you know, use, uh, not not say guys, when you're talking about women and people are like, oh my gosh, this is, or you know I would like to correct yeah, yeah, yeah oh yeah, the whole political yeah, like it was just this was this huge ask or something.

Dan Yoder

30:14

I mean it's just asking people. I mean it's there, that's your prerogative. You know, generally in in in other contexts, if you want to be, you know you, you get called what you want to be called, and, um, and that's just one example, right, but that's such a small, it's such a small ask, but for some reason it it turns into this um, you know this and and I think it is because it sort of does challenge, you know the dirty little secret is, exclusion does benefit a lot of people. So you know there's whether people are fully conscious of that or not. Um, at some level, if you're defending it, um, you know it may be because you do have a vested interest in doing so.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

30:59

Absolutely. And I think the whole idea of marketing in itself and hiring, there is a certain amount of intent in excluding certain or has been a certain amount of intent, because if you're selling a certain thing to a certain, you want to target a certain group of people and a certain demographic, then it's inherent. But yeah, it's a tricky one. But one thing I know that is tricky as well is people have obviously these challenges hiring developers because of some, you know, there's apparent dearth, I guess, of tech talent as it stands and it's not easy actually developers. Hiring developers is very different to, I think, hiring many other different. I mean, I've hired so many different types of people. I mean, how would you advise businesses to go about, you know, hiring a team of developers or a developer to work on their project?

Dan Yoder

32:05

Well, there's a. There's a lot to that question.

Empowering Interviews in Talent Recruitment

Dan Yoder

32:08

I mean the first thing certainly is um, don't you know, be aware, like, don't exclude three quarters of the talent pool you know are, you know? Well, just don't, just don't do that. That that you know. You can't talk about it. There's a Darth of talent when you know we're not even talking about all the people that are. Actually there's a lot of a lot of people who do have the talent and they're not being given the opportunity.

Dan Yoder

32:37

And and um, one of the things that I think is important in that context is understanding. You know, in most other things, like you know, we don't, it's not too controversial, uh, to say that somebody has a talent for a thing, right, and so you know, uh, you know it's, it's just reality, whether it's sports or chess or playing the piano, I mean, you get, you know, um, a high school kid, lebron James goes to the NBA at 17, right, um, the you know, um, there's a young woman I forget her name who just became the youngest, I think, international master in chess, and she's like 13 or something like this. So the youngest ever, uh, woman, I think it was. Uh, or you know she's still a young woman, but um, you know, then that's true in development. So, if you're, when you're excluding that kind of talent, uh, because they're, you know, you're looking for experience, or you're just whatever, signaling to people that you're not actually going to give them a fair shot.

Dan Yoder

33:54

Uh, and then you're saying, well, it's really hard to hire, well, you know, I mean you have to, you're not going to get, you're not going to get the, the top tier of talent. If you're, if you're saying, well, they absolutely have to have 10 years experience and, um, you know, and they have to be a culture fit. Right, I mean, you're, you know, you need, you need to. If you're having, if you really have a problem with talent I, you need to. You need to sort of stretch a little. Right, you need to figure out how you're going to adapt to get the talent, how you're going to maybe invest a little bit in people. Uh, because the talent is out there, it's I, I, you know, I have myself been able many times to find uh, talent, I think partly just in places where people had overlooked.

Dan Yoder

34:38

I mean, I, at one one gig, I was able to essentially almost assemble a team just from people that were being passed over by other groups. Right, I mean, it was uh, the you know. So I I've experienced that personally. I do think anything where it's technical, whether it's software development or data analytics or financial forecasting, anything where you need a lot of technical background you also do need to understand. You know that it's hard to. You know you have to put the investment. It just depends on you know, do you have people that really know their stuff doing the actual interviewing right in the interview process, and are you simultaneously trying to get candidates to put their best foot forward? Right, foot forward, right, you know it doesn't.

Dan Yoder

36:01

If you have somebody who's kind of a toxic personality and they really know their stuff, but they're, you know, they're basically just kind of almost humiliating the candidate, Um, and then again you're kind of wondering, like, why are people not, you know, applying? I mean, what is that person? They may be good at what they're doing, but what are they really? What is that costing you? Right? I mean, you know, in terms of, especially if you're trying to grow and hire, that person is probably driving away. You know a lot of talent. So I think it's also about you got to get both. You got to get people who are uh, that shared values thing again comes into play and and that are technically competent, right To know how to look for. Okay, this person is going to do really well here. We're probably going to need to train them up a little bit over here, you know, and like I said, I mean sorry, that's an easy one to just kind of go on and on about, because hiring is really hard to do well.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

36:56

No, it is. Well, it's like you said if you're getting people through the door. No, it is, and well, it's like you said, if you're getting people through the door, but the at some stage in the process, the, the person doing the interviewing, is putting them off in some way or another shape or form with the, with the questions and the, the atmosphere. It's making your life twice as, twice as more difficult, isn't it so? Because for me, hiring is about an. Interviewing is about trying to understand somebody and make them feel welcome and you know, like I said, not to humiliate them, just to sort of get them to talk, get them to open up and talk about themselves.

Dan Yoder

37:33

And some of those people end up being the best people because sometimes they're not being given the opportunity and when they get one, they are all in. And you know, I mean you, you know that. So you're it's like a, you're missing the opportunity, kind of like double, because you're getting somebody who's also going to be really, you know, truly grateful for the opportunity, going to be really, you know, truly grateful for the opportunity and, um, you know, and and that that that putting the best foot forward thing I think is so important because it's an intimidating process and it's so lopsided. Already You're an employer, they're trying to get a job right. So you know, you're already in this, this thing, where you've got an asymmetrical power thing happening. You certainly don't need to add to that Right.

Dan Yoder

38:23

So, like one of the things as, as a practical matter, maybe this will be helpful to some people is, like one of the things that we do is we ask somebody to tell us what kind of problem you know, like what, what can they show us to demonstrate. Instead of saying, like how do you implement a red-black tree or something right, we say you know what kind of problem you know, do you think that you could solve? To demonstrate. You know, where are you strong? You tell us how you. We want to see what you can do. How would you like to show us that?

Dan Yoder

39:01

Right, and it's a little trickier because it's a little harder to evaluate, right, sometimes people might want to do something in a language that we're not as familiar with, or a framework, or you know something like that. But, um, you know you're more likely to get people to be excited about talking about you know something that they know they can do. You know you're more likely to get people to be excited about talking about you know something that they know they can do. You know, uh, then you know and it still accomplishes the same thing at the end of the day right, that they're you know they're able to show you that they have competence and skill technically, or sometimes we'll just explore, like, what's something that you're really proud of that you've done and let's talk about it. You know some to get them on the, to get the interview on that, into that mode of you know somebody starting to feel maybe kind of good about themselves, right, like you know yeah I'm actually kind of I'm kind of awesome really right?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

39:57

no, and I think those questions that you mentioned, that they are the kind of questions that empower, empower the the interviewee to, like you said, to really open up, to really see that you value what, what they have to bring, rather than saying you know, this is what we want, this is what we want you to do, when we want you to do it, how can you add to that sort of thing? Is you? You're empowering them by essentially opening the floor up to them to give their response. But I love that one, I love it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

40:26

Well, dan, it's been great speaking to you and it's been eye-opening, it's been interesting and in fact, I could speak to you for much longer because you know, I've got, as we've been talking, many more questions have been just popping up in my head, but I, as we've been talking, many more questions have been just popping up in my head, but I know you're busy and you've been very kind with your time, so I really want to say thank you for um for for joining me. I just wanted to know, just just finally, what? What are your plans for the the fourth coming year? Any, any, uh, any, any new developments with panda strike at all that we should look out for? Um?

Future Collaborations and Networking Opportunities

Dan Yoder

40:57

no, not, not so much. Uh, it's pretty much steady state. You know we're trying to grow the company a little bit, but, uh, um, in a, in a fairly modest way. So, no, no big initiatives there. We do have some open source projects that, um, I don't know, hopefully next year.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

41:16

I mean, we we haven't done a lot of promotion around them, and so that's something that we'll probably be doing more of um, uh and um, and you know there's a couple of other irons in the fire, but nothing that you know, uh, makes sense to talk about yet well, one thing for sure I'll be keeping a an eye out to see what panda strike is doing and, of course, I'll be sharing across our networks and keeping people up to date so they can either approach you if they need some work or we'll be, I guess, keeping our ear to the ground in case you're hiring in the future and what's the best.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

41:54

Sorry, go ahead Dan.

Dan Yoder

41:55

Oh, one thing I wanted to make sure to mention is, even when we're not hiring, we have a lot of alumni at this point who have worked with us over the years that are also very pro-remote and have typically gone to work for other remote companies. So we're sometimes able to make connections even when it's not us doing the hiring. So just that's something to keep in mind. It's not just we're a pretty tiny company, but we do also know a lot of folks who are doing remote, so we can connect people up.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

42:30

That's, uh, you know, something I thought maybe worth throwing out there that's definitely worth throwing out because, like you said, um, you know, I think if you, if you've worked in a remote space, then it's always good to. I think a lot of the people who own remote businesses prefer people who have that experience. So it's good. So we'll keep that connection open and we'll make sure that we highlight that in the show notes. So everybody look out for the show notes.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

42:58

And you can find PandaStrike at pand, at panda strikecom as easy as that simple enough, right, yeah thank you so much for your time and, as I said, we'll be keeping an eye out to see what panda strike is up to in the future.

Dan Yoder

43:11

Thank you thank you, and I really enjoyed it me too.