Eric Müller
Appearances
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We had a deadline. We had overcommitted. There was an expectation that the work was going to be, that we were going to get a release out that day. I'm sitting at my desk. The product manager has his desk next to me. I looked at everyone and said, all right, we're clearly not going to launch today. The product manager raised his eyebrow at me and I said, we're not going to get this done.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Scaling a product or development team inside of a product consultancy in many ways is like scaling one inside of a product company in that you are thoughtful about when you bring staff on as opposed to when you are engaging with consultants. You never want to get to a place where you're like, oh, the money's always going to be there. I'm going to hire 50 people.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And then it's six months later and you've got to lay off 25 of them. That first layoff in a company is devastating to everyone inside of the company because they're like, wow, I thought we were a family and I thought we were going to be taken care of and while working hard and like my buddy who's sitting next to me is now gone and I know they were working hard.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
I think the other thing to think about, there's a million technologies out there. We can't do everything. I'm more than likely to hire people in some of the core technologies we have and then occasionally hire folks if I start to grow in a niche area or bring in a consultant. Work with me six months, a year, two years. Also try to think about processes.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And that's really difficult when you're working across a bunch of different companies where everyone might have a different process. And so you have to be flexible around that. But I think there's something to be said for when you bring someone into the company. And I've always done this is you bring them in and I talk them through what are the expectations.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And so like from day one, they're coming in the door and I'm like, hey, this is how we write code. And this is how we use GitHub. And we have two people do poll reviews. And a lot of that stuff is boring. They're already doing it. But you're setting a marker, right? This is how we do things. And yes, things are going to be flexible.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We may have to change because of a situation of a client or we're in a rush or something like that. But you're setting that cultural beginning. I would say to answer your other question around the challenges of scaling, it's interesting when we started doing this, AWS was just becoming a new hotness. And I think building out that team has always been a challenge for me.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
From talking with people in product companies, they have the same challenge as me, other leaders, which is, It's really easy to say, I've got a developer. I need to bring him in. I'm going to keep them busy. I can justify that. I can go to the board. I can go to whoever and say, give me the money for five developers. They're going to be busy all the time. Don't worry about it.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Bringing on a DevOps team is challenging, particularly with what I do. No one's going to hire me and my team to have a full-time DevOps person for the length of the project. They need that DevOps person, but they don't need them 40 hours a week for 20 weeks. It's hard to keep someone busy, particularly when maybe two or three projects have to start at once. How do I scale that?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And because the nature of DevOps goes up and down, how do I ensure that I can get hired guns back? Because I don't want to constantly meet new people and get them used to the way that we work and teach them how we're using Terraform. But if I don't have them on my staff, I have no guarantee I'll ever see them again, no matter how much they like working with me.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
DevOps is just the hardest area to manage, to scale, to keep those people engaged, to keep them busy, to justify that expense. And I think you have to get to a certain size before that becomes an easier lift.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
There are a number of folks that I have worked with, not just at Presence, but at other companies who I brought on board, I mentored them, and they've gone on to do great things. I know folks who are running their own engineering teams now. I know folks who started their own consultancies.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
I know folks who just went to other companies that are doing the same thing, but they wanted to be on the product side. That just makes me so proud. There's just something about helping someone grow and that they get to a point where they feel like they can't learn anything more from me. It's sad on one hand, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
But on the other hand, it makes me feel good because it's like they've gone as far as they could and they want to go somewhere else. They want to run their own team now. And I'm very proud of that.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
I remember one time where we had a deadline, we had overcommitted. This is when I was actually working a mechanism and we had overcommitted. There was an expectation that the work was going to be, that we were going to get a release out that day. And everyone was willing to work till midnight. But the expectation was we're going to get the release out. And it's about two o'clock in the afternoon.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And I'm sitting at my desk. The product manager has his desk next to me. And everyone's freaking out. We're all mostly working in the office at the time. And I called everyone over to my desk with the product manager. And I looked at everyone. I remember the look on this guy's face. I looked at everyone and I said, all right, we're clearly not going to launch.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And the product manager raised his eyebrow at me. And I said, we're not doing this. We're not going to get this done. And I said, so let's just take a deep breath. Let's figure out what the problem is. How do we solve this? And we'll launch when we launch. And I was quite serious, actually. I was going to go to our boss and say, I'm sorry. We did our best then. It's on me. And it is what it is.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
That moment, my willingness to say, look, I screwed up. It's on me. It's all good. It took the pressure off of them. And suddenly people are relaxed, identify the source of the problem. And we actually launched. Not every mistake or error has that kind of a happy ending. But I think the key for me in any mistake as a leader is to own it. You have to own it. You put the team together.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
You made the commitments for your team. If you are in a bad situation, you let it get that far. So you got to own it. When you own it, that takes the pressure off of the team. And now you have a chance to fix it.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
There was this guy by the name of Brian Gilpin years and years and years ago when I was working at Wells Fargo Bank. I was very early in my career. There was an HR situation with one of his staff members. I believe he basically put his career on the line to take care of this person. I don't remember the names of everyone I worked with from all those years ago, but Brian's name is still there.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
That he was willing to go that extra mile to take care of this person is mind-blowing to me. To this day, it still is. And that level of commitment to his people has just stuck with me, obviously. The next person is someone by the name of Ron Lichty. We actually worked together at Charles Schwab and then he went over to Razorfish and he hired me over at Razorfish. And he has this amazing empathy.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
He's an agile coach, and he helps build teams and solve problems. But the thing that really struck with me around him is his empathy for his team, his empathy for clients, for his partners. He was always calm. He always had a smile. He was a technologist. He could think through problems. And I've just always tried to bring that empathy that Ron had and that passion for the people that Brian had.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Those two people together, I think, really helped inform the way that I manage people today.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
One, this is so cliche, but don't forget to stop and smell the roses. It's so easy to get caught up in your next big thing. And I think when you have that passion, work on it for a while. However, take a step back. Make sure every once in a while you're catching your breath. Your kids are young for only so long. You don't want to turn around.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
You missed when they learned how to walk or you weren't there. You skipped a bunch of Halloweens, take them trick-or-treating and stuff like that. Your product can afford to miss a couple of those days so that you can have those special moments that never come back.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
The second thing I would say is get a skeptical eye to come in and take a look at whatever you have that you're ready to launch to the world. Get someone that you know is going to be honest with you and is not worried about hurting your feelings.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
You don't want them to be a jerk, but you also don't want them to be like, oh gosh, I don't want to tell my buddy that this isn't really hitting for me, right? No, no. You want someone who's going to be willing to look at the product and say, you know what? You need to rethink this portion. You know what? You need maybe a couple more months to make this. You want that person.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
You want someone who's going to be willing to give you those truths. And you don't want to surround yourself with yes people.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
So how do we solve this? And we'll launch when we launch. I was going to go to our boss and say, I'm sorry. We did our best, and it's on me, and it is what it is. My willingness to say, look, I screwed up, it's on me, it took the pressure off of them. And suddenly, people are relaxed, identify the source of the problem, and we actually launched.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Presence is a digital consultancy. So we build digital products for folks and we really like to make that distinction in digital products. We're not really focused on building like marketing websites or anything like that. Our goal is to help companies take an idea or a business or a product and put it into the digital space. And that could be obviously on the web, it could be mobile devices.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We've done IoT implementations in the past, and we can help a company think through a strategy, we hook them up with designers, but more importantly, as we get in there, we really push forward on their actual build, what they're gonna put out there in this space. We've worked with small companies, we've worked with large companies, so startups all the way up to large enterprises.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Personally, I'm VP of Engineering and our CISO primarily been focused on building out our team, working on our process, and then making sure that the teams are able to deliver for our clients. And then on the security side, helping our clients if they have any questions around security, and then also drove our SOC 2 process. So we've had four audits.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
So we went from nothing all the way up to our fourth audit, and they've been really good. And then I've been with the company for, it's 11 years since August. And the reason I always draw that is I started with the company as a consultant. So everyone started in the company as a consultant, except for our founder. And then at some point, I'd say about six, seven months in, he brought me on board.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And then as we grew, I started off leading projects and then started to take on leading the overall development team.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Someone once said it's not minimum viable product, but minimum lovable product. I actually prefer that. And the reason I say that is like, what does viability even mean? You can have so many different ideas around that. Engineering might have one idea. Product might have another idea. Design might have another idea.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And you put that in front of your clients and none of them think it's actually viable. They're like, why are you showing this to me? But I think lovable says something. When they're working with it, you look at it, it should give them a smile. They should feel proud about it. That's what they're getting out there into the market.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And when you have that feeling about your product, I think your clients are going to have that feeling about the product. The first one of those at Presence was actually a really small product. We were working on a redesign and API rebuild for a gaming company. There was this moment, I remember our CEO came by, I was sitting at my desk and the team was remote, we were all remote.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And we were really just trying to get it into the perfect place to launch it. And I remember I was like maybe inches away from my screen. I just really wanted to know, is this lined up the way we want it lined up? I know there are better ways to measure that, but it just felt like I had to have that level of intensity. And not long after that, we launched and everyone was very happy.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
The reason that kind of comes to mind is I think when you're thinking about minimum viable, minimum lovable, you're sweating those kinds of details. It's not about just cobbling something together and pushing it out the door. It's about we're proud of it. We love it. We're going to put our name behind it. This is our first step out the door, and we are just so pleased.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Every product that I've ever worked on, we go into thinking we have all the budget in the world, and everyone has very lofty ideas, and you have that first round where you decide, what do we absolutely need to go live with? And that first pass at that early on in the project, I think is really critical, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Because you've got everyone together, everyone's very focused, everyone's very optimistic, And you can put the brakes on a little bit and say, let's do this thing, right? Let's think about it, but let's be realistic, right? What you're describing is not what you need for the first version. You're describing what you need, maybe five versions. This is 10 years from now. So that's my first pass.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And I love taking advantage of that because like I said, everyone's very optimistic. Everyone's very happy and very excited. And so it's very easy to rein people in because it's like, yeah, we can have that conversation. It's no big deal. And we can make trade-offs. And so you really want to take advantage of that.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Then there comes this moment in the middle of the project and people are trying to increase scope. There's always that opportunity, right? That's often someone deciding they want to impress their manager or they really have a feature they just really love and they don't want to let it go.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
I always like to look at them and say, if I get a bad feeling around that decision, I look at them and I say, that's a great idea, but I'm concerned about its delivery. Is this something that you want to go to your CEO and say, we are late because of this feature? There's a lot of different ways to phrase it, but that's the bottom line question.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And you would be surprised, probably not, at how many people look up to the sky and scratch their head and go, we can wait until the second version of the product.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Our roadmap was very loose. We focused on finding very interesting work. When Jason founded the company, he was like, we're not going to be a designer. We can work with designers, and we're going to have people who are thoughtful about design on our technical staff, and we're going to have product managers and all that. We're going to think about design, but we're not a design firm.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We are here to build products. We're here to help strategize and build the products. That was like that key moment in the roadmap, because then what it meant is we could focus on everything needed to build out a digital product team that could build exciting and well-realized products. From there, it was like, what kind of people are we going to hire? That was a part of our roadmap.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Are we going to focus on consultants or are we going to focus on full-time employees? Every quarter, we would sit down and we would basically survey the company. What are we doing? What do we like? Is there a product area, a vertical, a technology that we want to focus on? And then we'd go out and focus our attention for new work in those spaces. But all that was very loose, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
It was intentionally so because we didn't want to be one of those companies that was so hyper-focused that they missed wonderful opportunities. Or they were so hyper-focused that when, if a particular, their area of focus dried up, that the company went out of business. Like I'd seen that, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Companies that are focused on a particular technology or a particular vertical or even a particular client, like maybe a specific client, and things went bad in that area and then they were gone. And I think the best definition or example of how we succeed in that is we survive two fairly significant economic time periods.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We got through COVID with no problem, and we've made it through the times that are going on right now successfully.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
We have a couple of skills that were always very important to us. So obviously JavaScript, React, Node on the backend, and then AWS in the cloud. And then obviously we'd bring in other technologies as we needed. So when I'm looking for folks, the first thing is obviously their skillset. Do they have the technologies that I'm interested in? And then we do the technical vetting. Can they program?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Do they understand how to solve problems? I think that's more important than pure code writing. And then I start looking for intangibles. And this is, in some ways, very important. So, one, I want every person to be able to interface with a client. And I'm not looking for everyone to have perfect people skills.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
But I don't want someone who is so uncomfortable working with other people that they can't have a simple conversation. And that's important if I've got a developer who needs to figure out how to hook up with the client's API. I need them to be able to have a conversation. So I look for that ability to talk to other people. Another thing I look for is something beyond technology.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
The reason that is, is that I think that we in our industry have done a disservice to folks in basically convincing them that if you're not writing software all the time, that you are somehow not passionate about writing software.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And I have seen a lot of very good developers who had convinced themselves of that, and they write code for 40 hours a week to get paid, and then they have their own side project, and then they have their contributions to some open source projects, and it's 15 years in, 20 years in, and they absolutely hate their jobs.
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
Obviously, I brought in folks who do nothing but write code in their private time. That's great. I've had some very good programmers. I'm encouraged when someone says, I love what I do, but I want something away from this to recharge my battery. And oftentimes, their thing away from programming is very geeky, right? Like, I love photography, but it's very geeky, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
All the settings and there's a lot of math and... It's an incredibly geeky endeavor, right? I look for things like that in people. One of the best programmers I ever worked with, he's a brilliant architect. He was also a great guitarist, and he was into these bands like Dream Theater, which was a very technical math band, math rock they call it, right?
Code Story
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
And you can see how those play into each other. Here's a guy passionate about programming, but it still has that connection because of that geekiness. Does someone cook? Do they like to jog? Do they meditate? What are the things that they do to recharge their batteries so they stay in love with being a programmer, not burn out on being a programmer?