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Hello, friends 👋
Spring has officially arrived, although it feels more like summer already.
This is the last quarter of the year and things are starting to ramp up before the silly season kicks in. The tech scene is buzzing with energy, and this month is packed with exciting events and meet-ups you won't want to miss.
This month, we caught up with Dylan Egan, an engineering manager at HashiCorp. Read his interview below, and don't miss our latest job listings.
We're also excited to welcome Andrea back from mat leave; the Lookahead team finally feels complete again.
Have a great September!
🐤🐤🐤
Friends
Let us introduce you to Dylan Egan.
Introduce yourself!
G’day y’all. I’m Dylan Egan, living in Newcastle, Australia, which I’ve been calling home for at least a year. I love being back in a place that’s less polished than a city, which reminds me of growing up in Sydney’s inner west in the 90s.
My avatar, graciously gifted by an old friend, has led to merman being used, but I’m not sure I’d call it a nickname. I wouldn’t say I’ve not embraced it though.
What do you do for work?
I’ve departed hands-on software engineering in a sense, having been an engineering manager for the past six years. I’ve been at HashiCorp for over 6 years, moving to my current role a few months into joining. HashiCorp builds tools for tools, I mean engineers, to help them build things for things, by which I mean people.
Knowing your limitations is helpful and when you realise some people are way better than yourself to do particular kinds of work, you can instead refocus yourself and help them in so many different ways to achieve what you used to do.
What do you do outside work?
I had a life change last year after moving and that catapulted me into a new hobby, cycling. I’m definitely passionate about leveraging the bicycle to explore, whether it is around where I live or further afield, but, obviously, I’m most passionate about wearing skin-tight clothing. 🤤
It has also turned out, that cycling, not the clothes, is an incredible outlet for rediscovering oneself, which solo rides are great for, while also being an invaluable way of meeting a whole raft of folks.
As for projects… I don’t own a personal computer, which has been a conscious decision, so I don’t do anything outside of work with technology, or at least programming. However, I undertook a solo house project, a renovation, towards the end of last year. I decided to under-plan as I had been on a two-and-a-half-year project before it, so I biased myself towards taking it as it came.
If you had unlimited budget and resources, what product would you build and why?
Having been exposed to the housing and construction industries over the past four years through not only the projects I’ve been involved in, but through personal motivation to have a better understanding of the general issues, I’d venture to say that housing is something I’d be interested in building, but not as a product, and especially not as an investment.
In Australia we not only build our houses poorly, but we believe that size, overly large, matters. Unfortunately, that means for most of the industry there are generally two outcomes; affordable housing, which is a lie, as housing isn’t affordable simply because it is built cheap, and architectural or designer housing, which is for the most part, about the art of building and less about solving a fundamental right.
Affordability is a long-term issue, but we generally only think about it in the short term. The upfront cost of owning a home is only part of the way to it being affordable. Anything that impacts your ability to choose between being comfortable and how many meals you are going to consume in a week means that housing needs to be affordable for the longevity of the occupancy.
There are definitely people in the industry doing it better than average, and at scale, which is great to see, but there isn’t enough happening to change the perception of what housing needs to be, rather than what we feel we need. If you’re looking for an example of an enterprise achieving this, Nightingale is a notable one. I’d love to see more folks like them around Australia.
Any podcast you are currently listening to, or a book you are reading?
I’m currently reading Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran. I thoroughly enjoyed Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens and was looking forward to another consumable book that covers a topic and history I’m simply naive about.
I was also recently given A Different Trek by my brother, which I’m looking forward to reading while viewing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
On the podcast side…Lael Rides Around The World. Lael is a person who is doing something they love and it shows. She is unfathomably positive, which is a selfish distraction for me from so much else.
What is your favourite tool or resource, and why?
National Public Toilet Map. Public spaces are so important and being able to find a suitable public toilet is a huge part of that. In Australia, we’re fortunate to have access to public toilets, which is a necessity for everyone. I love that they’ve included features that allow you to search for a suitable toilet for yourself as well. Hopefully, in the future, all public spaces will be inclusive so that you can forego any kind of specific searching.
Toughest work moment?
While I know I’ve had tougher moments in other roles, I still remember a time when I was made responsible for others very early on in my career which led to me having to fire somebody. The moment I spoke those words I immediately felt shit, even though I knew it had to happen. I think it remains the toughest because it was my first full-time job and I hadn’t the desire nor the experience to take on such responsibility. I was simply given it in the void and I was too naive to push back at the time.
Most rewarding work moment?
As a manager, when somebody responds to feedback, whether from yourself or their peers. It is difficult enough to give somebody feedback, so the reward of knowing they’ve listened and responded to it is always a warm feeling. As an individual, seeing people having fun to accomplish their work.
Your one-sentence work-related advice
Do nothing, then do less. As inspired by Do Nothing, Then Do Less | Cautionary Tales.
Your
one-sentence hiring-related advice
If you’re interviewing for a role, remember you’re also interviewing them. Be prepared to push them on what you want to know. If they can’t answer at the moment, make sure they follow up. If they don’t, that might be a good indicator to yeet the fuck outta there.
🫶 Worth sharing
💪 We’ve known Jason Ajai for years, he's a fantastic interviewer. In fact, he is so good that he now runs training programs to help improve your interviewing skills, whether you’re hiring or applying for a role. If you're in a position to pay for structured help in building your interviewing skills, learning from InterviewFit could be a great option.
☎️ Jason Fried shares some excellent questions to ask when checking references.
💬 A Company Is A Language - this is a short but worthy read about how companies are like secret codes—if you don’t speak the language, it’s hard to fit in, especially for executives, which is why new leaders often struggle to stick around.
🚪 The Fabulous Discomfort of Exit Interviews which can be awkward but essential conversations for leaders to gain valuable insights into their organisation's culture and areas needing improvement.
📚 If anyone is after a new book to read, this is a good list.
Featured jobs
Lead Platform Engineer
Join Qsic as a lead platform engineer. Play a critical role in scaling their systems and infrastructure as they continue to expand globally. Remove within Australia.
Product Manager
Lead the development of AI-driven experiences within a core healthcare product, enhancing the daily workflow of clinicians.
Senior Front-End Engineer
Join a cutting-edge startup with well known founders building something new in Sydney. Sydney.
Applied AI Engineer
Join a startup building an AI healthcare platform that makes medical practitioners work easier and saves them valuable admin time.
For more opportunities head to our website or sign up for our job alerts. To build your developer profile, go to lookahead.bio.
Coming up
Golang Melbourne Meetup
3 Sep, Melbourne
CDAO Melbourne
2-4 Sep, Melbourne
Spark Festival
2-6 Sept, Sydney
Future Tech Collective
11 Sep, Sydney
Future Technology Collective runs quarterly events where leaders from various disciplines share content, ideas, opinions and questions about how our world will change as technology continues to evolve.
YOW! Tech Leaders Summit
11-13 Sep, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne
DataEngBytes 2024
24 Sep, Sydney, 27 Sep, Perth, 1 Oct, Melbourne, 4 Oct, Auckland
React Melbourne Meetup
25 Sep, Melbourne
Startup to Scaleup Summit 2024
Thur, 26 Sept, Sydney
Coming up in October:
🗓 This day in history
Many of you like 'This day in history' in our last newsletter, so here are a few things that happened on September 2:
- 1774 – The element oxygen is discovered.
- 1666 – The Great Fire Of London ravishes the city.
- 1752 - U.K. adopts the Gregorian Calendar
- 1945 - World War II officially ends as Japan surrenders, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France.
- 1969 - The first U.S. bank ATM goes into operation.
- 1973 - English writer J.R.R. Tolkien died at age 81.
- 1993 - The first web search engine was launched. W3Catalog was the first engine to search the entire web, it originally named Jughead.
- 2008 - Google releases the first beta version of Chrome.
- 2008 - The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, is powered up for the first time.
PS. If you're not already subscribed to our 'Ducks in a row' monthly newsletter, you can sign up here.
