North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring. And as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus?

Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy? We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose.

I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast. Let's get to it. Today, I am really happy to be joined by Joe Levy.

Joe is CEO of Uplevel, the engineering intelligence platform. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Levy

Thank you, Lindsay. It's a pleasure to be here. Honored.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so good to see you. Okay, Joe, to start us off, what is your favorite thing about what you do?

Joe Levy

Oh, that's a good question. My favorite thing about what I do is truly thinking about the people we are trying to help have a better day in their job. And I certainly think about that for our own team, but I think about that as the problem we're trying to solve.

The most frustrating thing I think anyone experiences in any job, no matter what, ditch digger, marketing exec, anything, is working on something and not having that be appreciated by someone. I think if we can all work to just improve that appreciation factor for someone's work, it can just be much more rewarding for everyone.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. It's like being recognized as the human being that somebody is, whose time and emotional energy is valuable and sacred. And in a work environment that sees the person and appreciates the person, it's life-affirming.

I feel that from you.

Joe Levy

Yeah. And everyone who's worked in any corporate job knows everyone has had that experience. I worked really hard on some idea, some deck, some things, some design, whatever it was, and it just fell on the floor and no one looked at it or no one appreciated it or done something that was good.

That has happened to all of us. At some sense, that's part of learning life, that not everything you do is going to be successful and wildly appreciated. But there's also this feeling of emptiness that happens when you have work that just goes unnoticed or goes without a value statement on it.

And I think the more we can work to recognize that, to keep people from making mistakes and appreciate them when they do, I just think that can be really helpful to folks.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. I feel that in my gut. When you said emptiness, it's like, yeah, that is how it feels.

That is how it feels when there's something on the cutting room floor that you poured your heart and soul into. And with unceremoniously ignored or certainly not appreciated, yeah, there are few things that make you feel smaller.

Joe Levy

Yes, that's right. And there's few things that make you feel bigger than it's Friday afternoon and you're checking out for the week and you're like, yeah, a couple of things I did this week, people loved. I felt like I added some value.

There was some dopamine hit of some people saying, hey, that was pretty good work, Lindsay. And we like that. You can ride that for months.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh my God. Totally. And it's so inexpensive to reflect that appreciation, especially because as a manager, so much of the time you actually do appreciate it.

You're just not cognizant enough of your appreciation to say it. And so just say it. Just bring attention to it.

Joe Levy

That's exactly right. The couple of things about what you just said are so interesting. I find in the work environment, it's really hard, especially in a big company to feel that everyone is doing valuable things because it's just big and complex and has lots of competing priorities all the time.

And the thing I'm working on is not the thing you're working on. And so it's just challenging. And so how do you make sure that's happening at some scale is really, really hard in a complex organization.

And then this other factor that you just kind of touched on a little bit is generally speaking, managers like to find problems and there's not as much incentive to reward work unless it produced a great output. And so there's just this overarching like this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. My job is to go play whack-a-mole and fix things and not, oh, I should just make sure people are feeling rewarded in the efforts they do.

And I think there's an opportunity for those things to come together, but it's a real challenge in terms of just motivation.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so interesting because this is such a deep insight about human nature and the negativity bias and to survive on the savanna, we needed to prioritize negative input. It's helpful to our species. It's super helpful.

And therefore, it's almost like not even just as management, it's just like as a person, as a human being, as a spouse, as a parent, as a friend, to be mindful that we did evolve to have a negativity bias. And that doesn't mean it helps our thriving in life to have this thing. Surviving is the opposite of thriving.

Just because it helped us survive doesn't mean that it helps us be a good person.

Joe Levy

Yes, that's exactly right. If there's an ability to help people do more work that is appreciated, I think it can really sort of lift the whole story up. If you get more of those dopamine hits that you added value in a week, you will work harder, you will be more aligned, you will just feel more appreciated.

It keeps becoming this recursive thing. And if you don't, you continue to burn out, slow down, you're underappreciated, you don't work as hard. It goes both directions.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes, I love it. Let me ask you about up level, because we've been talking generally about team motivation and managing people and appreciating your team members contributions and work, whether or not it reaches market. What is the journey of up level?

What's the problem that you set out to solve that now you're solving? And how is it influenced by this deep interest in effective, appreciated teams?

Joe Levy

That's so well framed. Thank you, Lindsay. Here's an observation I had over quite a few companies.

So I worked at some big places, Microsoft and Accenture, and I've worked at some startups and other kind of midsize companies. And I've had different roles at them. And look, every job is hard.

I mean, marketing is hard, sales is hard, finance is hard, legal is hard, for sure. There is something unique I kept seeing in the world of software development, and specifically like engineers, where there's this expectation that the job is to build software, like literally ship me an app that does something. And of course, that is the output that everyone can point to and realize.

The planning and thought that has to go into that is immense. And what's so interesting is, what we found was the percent of time that a good software developer will spend actually writing code is maybe 10-15%. At some companies, maybe it's up to 25%, but that's high.

And three quarters of their time is doing other stuff. And what's so interesting about it is they want to do more, actually building product. That's like what that person does.

You have a person that loves to build, they're a builder by heart. And of course, management wants nothing more than new features they can go sell. That is literally their objective.

So everyone wants more time to build product, and yet the job gets, again, at best, a quarter of their time doing it. And that seemed much more acute than other functions. And I'm not saying marketing just gets to produce all day, there's a tremendous amount of back work in that.

But I think it's a little different when the job is to build, and you only get 10% of your time to build. That's a different expectation. And so in seeing that, what seemed like the big head scratchers, and everyone asks, well, what's all that other time?

What are they doing? I mean, some of it's probably good, some of it might not be, what is it? And it is this incredibly misunderstood, deep work, thought, design that can be great, and a bunch of other corporate stuff that might not be great, all kind of mixed into a barrel that's not the thing that is measured.

They get measured into the app build and ship, but again, that was like 10% of their time. So we thought about that and said, I think there's an opportunity here. Could we bring a lot of visibility to everything else?

Maybe help them reduce that, understand it, kind of track what's valuable, and put that into it so you can get more time building from. That's kind of the end idea. And the point of uplevel is to help developers get more time building features, and management wants that too.

And if they get that, everyone appreciates that work, customers get better apps, everyone's happier. But it is still shocking how hard that is to get that number up because the overhead is real. And again, some of it's good, a lot of it can be reduced.

Lindsay Pedersen

Maybe not quite that big of a delta.

Joe Levy

That's right.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so interesting how organizations are so interesting, right? And the vortex that happens, organizational vortex, all the things that even though the developer, the manager, the leader, literally everybody, almost everybody at the company wants that percentage to be very high, very high, well above 50%. Everybody wants that and yet it's not happening.

And it's like there's forces. It actually kind of reminds me of what we were talking about earlier with the negativity bias. There's some gravitational pull toward a bloat that nobody wants, and yet there's a tug toward that.

And so, so much of the battle is just bringing awareness to that that's what's happening because it's not serving anybody well, or it's not that big of a gap in between what is creating value for the company and for the human being and what is the actual minutes spent on it. That's not good for anybody. So it's like, it's so fascinating.

Joe Levy

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, to relate this to something I think a lot of your audience will really resonate with, there's the classic marketing, what's the wanna maker line? I'm wasting 50% of my marketing, but I don't know which half, right?

And I can't remember what year that was said, but I'm sure it was 30 or 40 years ago or something probably more. The modern marketing stack of tools, I wouldn't say has solved that problem, but has certainly brought so much visibility to the effectiveness of every single kind of touch point to a customer that you can get a lot better than probably when that statement was made. I don't know what a modern CMO would say the percentages they can't measure, but I'm sure it's better than 50%.

Oh, yeah.

Lindsay Pedersen

And it's directionally so much higher. Is it 100%? No, but it's strong.

Yeah.

Joe Levy

This joke that I'm wasting half, I don't know which half, I don't think would be true today, assuming not. But therein lies the challenge. I think in the software world, it's like, oh no, I hear this all the time from leaders.

Yeah, we added another 100 people to our team, but I don't think we're faster. We're just sort of bumping into each other more and actually maybe even slower. And so it's just really hard because you're not sure where that waste is or how that scales or are you operating that efficiently?

And that was, again, the big opportunity that I saw while we founded a business to really focus on that.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. As somebody who follows you on LinkedIn and listeners, Joe has an absolutely excellent LinkedIn writing column set of posts, so eloquent about protecting the mind space and the time of the engineers, but it really translates to anyone. It's so interesting because I've never managed engineers, but when I read your posts, it's like there's such a blue flame thinking about the way that people work and the psychology behind that.

You're a behavioral scientist of this work environment, so it sounds like software developing is sort of the torture test, the crucible of just because it's 10%, maybe 25% of that time. And so that's a really good place to focus, but it's really a statement on management and on unlocking performance, period. Number one, thank you for all of the writing that you do.

It is so good. And I'm so intrigued how universal it is. Are you super interested in the behavioral sciences and Cal Newport and deep work and all of that?

Do you geek out on that too?

Joe Levy

Love it. I love it so much. Thank you.

I read his book years ago and I think it's fantastic. And some of our advisors are sort of disciples of him and have written their own books. I'll do a shout out to one of our advisors, Steven Rogelberg, who wrote a book called The Surprising Science of Meetings.

It's a fascinating one. He studied millions of meetings in America of which super interesting summaries. Here's my favorite.

The organizer always thinks it went better than the attendees. Classic, simple, obvious thinking that we've all been there, but like why? And so how do you kind of break these behaviors?

Yes, I think it's super fascinating. I'll even take it to a different level for a moment. I appreciate you reading those and yes, there are learnings for all functions.

I think one thing that is particularly also interesting about the software development role, again, marketing, sales, finance, legal, they've just been around longer. They've been studied longer as a discipline. That doesn't mean they're easier.

That doesn't mean they're better. Marketing has existed since whatever people put cigarettes on Macy's commercials in the thirties or something like that. And people have sort of figured out the discipline a little, but they just have more history on it.

Software engineering as a global discipline that has thousands and thousands of graduates every single year, and it has lots of employment is just much, much younger. And so I think the study of that practice and the social sort of psychology around that and the workplace is just nascent. So I do think there's an opportunity, which then points to why are they only, why is only 10% of their work, the thing that's valuable like that seems off.

And so we need to switch that equation for them and help that sort of position, understand it. Yeah. I think that's a big opportunity.

There's not that many large new disciplines in sort of the corporate world that have emerged, right? Most big companies, certainly tech companies now 20, 30% of their teams are software engineers and they didn't exist 30 years ago.

Lindsay Pedersen

That's so wild. Yeah.

Joe Levy

Right. It has been a large department at universities turning out majors, but in computer science, again, only for about maybe 30 years, something.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Zero to one. Yeah.

Well, Cal Newport, now he's a computer science professor at Georgetown where I went undergraduate. There wasn't a computer science degree undergraduate when I was there. And he was now the foremost, he's a very influential voice in this world.

I mean, I'm old, but I'm not that old.

Joe Levy

It was a nascent thing. There was a few people doing it. It was a thing that you knew about, but it wasn't a predominant thing, right?

I mean, for the last 20 years, it's been one of the highest paying jobs out of school. Everyone understands that it's generally a good thing to go study. There's a lot of cachet and learned around it.

That is all again, relatively new in the scale of certainly workplace organizational psychology. So yeah.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah.

Joe Levy

No, it's a fun area. And it really, again, appreciate you reading these notes online. There are lessons for everyone.

I just think it's particularly fun to apply it to this highly paid, very kind of highly intelligent new area that we haven't quite figured out how to make mainstream in the same manner.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Well, it strikes me too that with software development, if you don't ship it, you really don't see it. And actually you could say this about a lot of disciplines, but it's not like you're making a hardware or a physical good or where there's something that you can touch.

There's something very ethereal about what a software developer does that maybe makes this need for concrete appreciation and protecting their mind space even more acute.

Joe Levy

Yeah, it's so true. I was talking to a friend who had worked on a project at Uber that was tipping, you know, Uber released. We were probably all remember quite a few years ago.

It was a time when, you know, you couldn't tip through the app and then you said, and to hear the person described it, it was a big project. Like it touches all kinds of complex things from payments to when you're going to ask for the tip and how the driver is going to get it and all these, all these kinds of, it was very complex. And so, you know, things like this, which you now sort of take for granted, it sometimes get frustrated by and sometimes like, and, you know, there's just a lot of emotional heartache around it.

And it's the amount of people who work on these things for a long time. And the number of projects that also get worked on that never see the light of day. Again, it's a very kind of misunderstood discipline in that manner.

Lindsay Pedersen

What do you think is the hardest thing about being a leader? And you can talk from the perspective of being a CEO yourself or the leaders that uplevel serves, like what's the like kernel that's just so hard.

Joe Levy

I'll make this a little extra personal, and then I'll give you a small antidote that I've heard twice from two different people. So my, my father was a nuclear physicist, very bright patents, all that sort of stuff. We moved to Washington state for the Hanford nuclear reactor on the eastern side of the state.

My mom was a social worker for about 30, 35 years in the social services area, specifically in hospice care. And I think a common thing I sometimes get teased about is, well, your father probably gave you lots of hard science skills kind of in the workplace. I'm convinced I got a lot more from listening to my mom talk about her work and something she said a lot, which another person I worked with echoed almost perfectly was you have, and I'm pointing that won't show up in the podcast.

You have two ears and one mouth. You should use them in about that ratio, meaning shut up and listen. And it's really hard to do that.

You often feel like you're someone that should have answers, but it is so valuable just to throw one or two very generic questions out there and shut up and see what people say. I personally enjoy it. I think you learn a lot about folks when they start to ramble a little bit.

I think you can pick up really on where their pains are. And I feel like that's the hardest and most rewarding part of any leadership job is to really, really listen.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, it's so deep. And it so extends beyond being a leader. It's just like being a person in the world, being a friend, being a family member, a parent, a spouse.

Joe Levy

Yes, certainly could be said everywhere. There's no question. We should all listen a little more.

Lindsay Pedersen

Why is it so hard? Because I feel like I know that I don't know. I feel like I know I should, like you use the word should.

I know that. So why is it so hard to listen twice as much as you talk? What's the root cause of that?

Joe, do you know?

Joe Levy

I wish I did. And look, as an extroverted person, I want to separate that I don't think you can still talk. I just think there's a keen ability to really say, what are you actually feeling?

That doesn't mean the person has to talk for hours back at you. Why are you frustrated by this? What is causing you anxiety?

What do you enjoy? Again, are you getting those dopamine hits at the end of the week? And if you can't get to the bottom of that in some reasonable time frame, then you're not listening or the person's not sharing and you got to take some other tact.

I have found the more you can do that, the more you can really help people and organizations. And like you said, yes, kids, spouse, everyone else.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Well, and implicit in what you just said, I hear it really helps to care what the answer is. It really helps to be curious because then you're actually not working so hard to listen because it's coming from a really pure motive of you actually want to hear it.

And maybe that's like the kind of slow down sometimes to really tap into your own curiosity because then it's not as hard. You don't have to fake it because you just want to listen.

Joe Levy

Yeah. I will say that is a very astute statement. And that is exactly what I would always hear from my mom.

You have to care like you just have to. And it is interesting. And it's very easy to sort of this is my job and I don't really care about the people or I don't really need to hear the story or need to know if you were happy in the week.

Does that really affect me? But I the more you can sort of put yourself in that place of empathy, I think it is great. And yeah, I intrinsically like it.

I mean, I just I enjoy it. I think there's something really rewarding about this is what in that person enjoys and doesn't enjoy. And let's see if we can just help them a little bit more in a week.

Get that enjoyment back.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. This has been such an awesome conversation. OK, I have five rapid fire questions for you with one word answers.

Are you ready?

Joe Levy

I'm ready.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is a song that you have sung on karaoke?

Joe Levy

I mean, I feel like Don't Stop Believin' is kind of the kind of the kind of the gimme. But if there's a better one, I'm going to go Don't Stop Believin'.

Lindsay Pedersen

I don't know that it gets better.

Joe Levy

I don't know that it gets better. I mean, it does. It does.

Lindsay Pedersen

Journey. OK, what is your favorite thing to do on a Saturday afternoon?

Joe Levy

I people who know me, my joke, I enjoy walking my dogs. I have two big energetic dogs and no one in my family walks them and I tease them all the time. But the truth is because I find a lot of peace and enjoyment of just walking around a little bit aimlessly.

And just it's just my I tell myself it's a chore, but it's really my happy place in the day and Saturday afternoons. I could do that a little more often than just cramming in before it gets too dark Saturday afternoon with chai and pepper. Yes, that's right.

Yes.

Lindsay Pedersen

Saturday afternoon with chai and pepper. OK, what is the best non-business book that you've read in a while? Can be fiction, could be nonfiction, but just non-business.

Joe Levy

Oh, my favorite book of all time is The Count of Monte Cristo, because I just think the revenge story is really amazing. I mean, that's Alexander Dumas. That's like a classic.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, but I did not know this about you, Joe, that you love such a highbrow book.

Joe Levy

It is. That's that's going to different level. I recently a friend recommended a book that is going to sound a little businessy, but it's really not.

It's called it's actually very much what we just said. It's called Rest. Oh, yes.

And it's amazing. And what I found so amazing about it was just the relation of how much better our brains can function on rest. And the most genius people of the Einstein and Jobs and all these things came up with stuff, not staring at a screen, but often walking around a field or something else.

And it's just it was really enlightening to read all the science of how the brain works.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that book so much. I'm really having a hard time keeping these rapid fire because that book I find so insightful. It's so related to a lot of the things we were talking about earlier, about how people do their best work.

And it is an amazing book. It was like a social commentary because it's so countercultural to embrace rest. OK, if you could have the power of invisibility or the power of flying, which would you choose?

Joe Levy

Oh, flying for sure.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. OK, how do you take your coffee or tea?

Joe Levy

Oh, this incredibly thoughtful person actually convinced me and her name's Lindsay to swear off caffeine. That was a year ago. It was hell, absolute hell for probably.

And so since then it is the morning. It is just a just tea, just some I don't know, peppermint mint.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, herbal tea.

Joe Levy

Just some herbal tea with no caffeine, because I feel like I have to do something for the ritual, even though I know completely just basically drinking dirt. And it's it's not even interesting, really. But I just want something warm in the morning.

So, yeah, I've cut out caffeine. So then it limits that side of it. But that's what I do.

So it's herbal tea in the morning. And that's about it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Herbal tea. Nothing added.

Joe Levy

No caffeine. I really do not need caffeine.

Lindsay Pedersen

I so set you up for that one. And I didn't really mean to, but I am so I get such a kick out of the fact that I got you off caffeine. OK, those are a rapid fire.

Thank you so much, Joe. Where can people find out more about you online?

Joe Levy

Yeah, I just say go to LinkedIn. That's pretty. I usually keep that up to date, as you said, pretty well.

So thank you for that. And look, it's been a real pleasure. You're a true friend.

I love the podcast. Hopefully this helps some folks. And it's just been an honor being a part of the journey today.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com.

Also on that website are show notes, transcripts and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter. I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.