Eiffel's tower - Nickolas Means | #LeadDevAustin 2018

here we go, good afternoon everyone, here we are the end of lead developer Austin. I hope everyone had a wonderful day and got a ton of value from all the amazing content so far. I know I have as an Austin native. To criticize Brad for his brisket comment, there is a barbecue master in the world who has a James Beard award and he is here in Austin and the reason is that anyone can throw a pork shoulder and a smoker and get good results, but brisket is an art, like Mary said, I'm an engineering manager at github and I'm incredibly cool.

I'm incredibly grateful for the time to be here with you today if you received an alert about a vulnerable knurled stub, please check out any of the repositories you manage, that's my team's job, if you have any thoughts on that functionality I'd love to hear them , we are also actively looking for engineering managers, so if you are looking for a place where you can grow in the craft of engineering management and have a big impact on the way people build software. Come talk to me, so I get married. He said I love telling stories. We'll get to some practical things at the end.

I promise, but for now I invite you to just sit down. and enjoy it, so if you've ever been to Paris, you probably remember the moment you first saw the Eiffel Tower, maybe it was through the window of your plane, maybe, like me, it was from the Tuileries Garden , looming over buildings in the distance, and It probably gave you chills saying, "Oh my God, I'm really here. I'm in Paris." Even if you haven't been to Paris, you probably still recognize the Eiffel Tower immediately whenever you see it in print or on film. It is the emblem of Paris. and France and is almost universally recognized this summer.

I was incredibly lucky to find myself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with my family. I'm not normally one to put up vacation photos in a room full of strangers, but this photo of my son Holden, then seven years old, is one of my favorite photos in the whole world. We just finished a picnic at Tamar's Pizza store and champagne as you do and my son took out his travel notebook and started drawing and you can see how captivated he is by the

tower

. You can see how hard he is working to get every detail right.

I mean, I felt like Howard does this to you, he draws you in and makes you pay attention. Now I knew a little about the history of the

tower

. The Eiffel Tower already, but as I sat watching my son draw, I wondered about the circumstances that caused the tower to exist when it was completed in 1889. The Eiffel Tower, at a thousand feet tall, became the tallest structure of the world by almost doubling the height of the recently completed Washington Monument, how did Gustav II fall? He built something so tall using technology from the late 19th century.

Why did he build such an ostentatious piece in the first place? We will answer those questions that we need to know a little about the history of France, just a little. I promise this is Napoleon the Third. He is the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous Napoleon. He was elected president of France in 1848 and at the end of his four-year term he decided that he was not done yet and that he was gone. He was really ready to give up being president, so he staged a coup and declared himself Emperor of France. Now the French people weren't exactly thrilled about being under an emperor, but the previous four years had been a period of great prosperity for France and the rest of the world. the people simply couldn't be bothered to rebel against the Emperor, so they just lived with him for a while.

Now prosperity ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Napoleon quarreled with Prussia, which is one of the states of modern Germany. north to counter his growing influence on power in the region, now Napoleon bit off more than he could chew and was captured in a massive defeat at the Battle of Sedan on September 4, 1870, and you can see our friend Napoleon here handing him over on his sword after losing the battle was a shame to him and a shame to France now after the capture of Napoleon the French established a new republican government and the first task of the government was to get the Prussians to return home and they will not annex all their territory.

Northern France and the way they did it was by offering to pay huge reparations to Prussia for all the problems they had caused them during this war, prosperity disappeared and they were not only bankrupt but also their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. It was a serious blow to the collective French ego. Ten years later, in the early 1880s, France was almost back on its feet and had largely recovered from the defeat at the Battle of Sedan and the subsequent reparations they had to pay for the Republican War. government enacted at the end of the Franco-Prussian War at the end of Napoleon, the Third Empire had stood firm in the face of many challenges and was slowly but surely guiding France back to prosperity, on top of that, the renewal of Paris that lasted thirty years by Georgia Jeanne Hoffman was about to finish replacing the narrow medieval streets with wide tree-lined avenues like this one that bears her name and Paris was ready to show off and what better day to do it than to mount another World's Fair, the Prince Alberto, her husband.

Queen Victoria of Great Britain had the idea in 1851 to invite all the nations of the world to come to London and show their industrial progress. France liked this idea so much that she embraced one of hers years later, in 1855, and then again. in 1867 and then again in 1878, eight years after Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Sedan. Now this, eight years after the defeat, was to mark the French recovery from the war, but the French were still so entangled in internal political turmoil that they did not do so. I didn't really start preparing for this exhibition until about six months before, so it was a bit of a disaster and, in the early 1880s, a movement to host another World's Fair was gathering steam in Paris, an organizing committee of organs was formed to begin making preparations and the first thing they did was choose a date and what better date than the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, now the storming of the Bastille is the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution that overthrew the French monarchy and celebrated as Bastille Day. in France to this day, just like Independence Day in the United States, each of the exhibitions held in Paris had been grander than the last and this one was going to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, so They needed to make this special so that the organization committee began to think about how they could do that and they decided to organize a design competition to see who could build the best monument to be the centerpiece of this exhibition.

Well, that contest caught the attention of these two gentlemen, Maurice Coquelin and Emile Noogie, two structuralists. Compagnie engineers the tied mount fell now that the two had just finished working together on the beautiful Guerra Beat Viaduct at four hundred and seven feet above the tree or the river below it, it was the highest bridge in the world when it opened in 1884 . had the idea of ​​using exactly the same engineering principles to build a giant tower as the centerpiece of the exhibition and so they got to work on this sketch by Maurice Koch. Lien is what they came up with.

You can see sketches of some famous objects. on the right to show scale there is no sun here Statue of Liberty the Arc de Triomphe they were proposing to build a tower 300 meters high thousand feet the tallest structure in the world co cleaning Oogie excitedly took this sketch to his boss to introduce them to their bosses, as you may have guessed from the name of the company, was none other than Gustave II. Now if L had been a little lukewarm about all the competition, his company had just finished the Garry Beat Viaduct and he was really looking forward to a break, not another big project to take on and besides, he didn't really like these big exhibitions.

First of all, his country continued to build these exhibitions. They had spent a lot of money on beautiful buildings that occupied it for six months. While the exhibition was open and they were all going to be torn down, I felt like building important things, things that were practical, things that would last like a bridge over the Tria River, the design competition's requirement that the central monument be easy to dismantle was a complete free fall without beginning, he was not interested in Cokely, no new gay had hoped to change his mind because of nosov's grand, grandiose idea, but it was not enough, he absolutely brought this man, Stephen, so vast that he was a fellow chief architect and suggested several modifications to the design to make it more useful and aesthetically pleasing and if you look at the Co cleans drawing you can see the modifications he saw sketched in pencil and there is a glass observation pavilion on the first deck and then on the same part.

Above there is a dome with another observation platform and a place for the French flag. At the top you can see the final design they made. There are three viewing platforms, as well as the decorative lace-like arches at the bottom that form the Eiffel Tower. is known for everyone being suggested by the saw vest now this made him more excited because people can see all of Paris from heights previously reserved for aeronauts, it would be possible to make meteorological observations, maybe even radio transmissions from such a high point . So he quickly purchased the patent for the design from Coconino VA and saw the vest and began the hard work of selecting the design for the competition.

The idea was immediately popular with the French public who loved the idea of ​​upstaging the newly completed Washington Monument and surpassing the American upstarts, however, it was not immediately popular with architects, artists and, most importantly, among politicians in Paris, so he went on the offensive. This was his first writing on the subject. The burning tour Dutoit is the method how our destiny chooses the position. Did the sweet aroma quattro ventilate enough, which roughly translates to 300 mija, a 300 meter high iron tower for the 1889 exhibition and if any of you speak French, I deeply apologize for this particular copy that Was it sold at auction in 2015 for just under ten thousand dollars? to General George Boleyn J, a prominent politician who would become French war minister, but felt that he was giving these things to anyone who would give him an audience.

He also went to Seville's Teta Aunjanue partner, the Society of Civil Engineers, to present. the idea of ​​him and introducing himself to the questions, and boy, were they happy to ask him questions. One of you, the main critics, was Paul Planet. I am the founder and editor of Arc Future, the architecture magazine. Locke Construction Modern Planet was not impressed with the design of the moors. and felt it went against the work Hoffman had done to beautify Paris and the major renovation specifically in the May 1, 1886 issue of his magazine, he said that if Elle's design is nothing more than an artistic scaffolding of crossbars and an angle iron, it seems The horribly unfinished art of Peter, a powerful politician who would become Prime Minister of France, denounced it as anti-artistic, contrary to French genius, is a project more in keeping with the United States, where taste has not yet It is very developed than Europe and much less France, but it falls.

The main critic was Charles Garnier, a prominent French architect. He led the most famous protests of all and formed the committee of three hundred and one members for each meter of height of the proposed tower and was made up of some of the most prominent figures in the arts and architecture. in paris his protests published in the prominent parisian newspaper that tom said in part imagine for a moment a vertiginous and ridiculous tower dominating paris like a gigantic black chimney crushed under its barbaric ball no-trade dom the son of tour jacques the louvre the mass Moses in the valley the Arc de Triomphe, all our humiliated monuments will disappear in this horrible dream.

Garnier had a flair for the dramatic, but since at that time Edouard Lacroix was appointed Minister of Commerce and put in charge of the entire exhibition, that meant he was in charge. After concluding the design competition he had also been among those who had pressed his design had a copy of his manuscript on the project and he and the rest of the political class had come to like the design and the call for final proposals. , Lacroix had amended the guidelines to require a tower at least 300 meters high and suggested it could be built with iron and an obvious nod to the design of the moors.

Now some of the other entrants in the contest included a 300. A one meter tall lighthouse to symbolize knowledge of Paris. This lighthouse was going to be built from granite, which meant it would be too heavy to build. Another was a 300 meter high water sprinkler in case Paris ever enteredin drought and they will need to water everything. Of the gardens that Hofmann had just installed throughout the city, the best was a 300-meter-high guillotine in honor of the French Revolution and there were also other designs, most of them more serious, but in the end it fell on the sign that it was the only one. which had some important engineering behind it, was the only one that was practical or even possible to build, so on June 12, 1886, Lacroix was very happy to receive the news that his design had been selected, that joy was short-lived.

However, since the government refused to reduce the estimate of 6 million francs by about 1 million dollars. At the time of building the tower, the government had originally committed to financing the entire tower, but they quickly backed down and offered 1.5 million francs, 1/4 of the cost of the tower that they believed it would take to get investors. for the remaining 4 and 10. half a million francs and to do this he needed to make money from the tower, so he requested in the provisions of contract number one that he be allowed to charge the entrance fee to go up the tower in addition to what people had already paid. fair and number two, let the tower remain intact for 20 years, not the year originally planned to give yourself more time to get your money back.

The government agreed in principle to this, but this created another problem. You see, the exhibition was going to be held at the DeMars tent in the 7th arrondissement, just south of the River Sen, Mars' tent was the main drilling ground for the French army and he had proposed putting his thousand foot tower right there. in the middle. The military was already resigned to losing its drilling ground during the year it would take to set up and host the exhibition. You couldn't stop it from happening every time the crazy French government decided they wanted to have one of these exhibitions but having a giant tower in the center of their drilling field for 19 years after the exhibition closed just didn't work, so That after much negotiation it was agreed that the tower would be located in the northwest part of the Mars tent, near the edge of the cen, leaving most of the field open for military exercises once the rest of the tower was dismantled. exhibition, now that it fell he knew this would complicate the foundations, but he had no choice but to compromise if he wanted to build the tower, French bureaucracy being what it was, it took another six eager ones. months for the contract to be finalized with the financing in place, but finally on January 8, 1887 it fell, he had a signed contract in hand, he immediately began gathering supplies and hiring workers and on January 28, 1887, the workers began to work on the foundations.

They had just over two years until the exhibition's scheduled opening. Now I mentioned that moving the tower closer to Sen complicated the foundation work and this is what I mean by each leg of the tower resting on slabs six and a half feet thick. one concrete one for each of the main beams for each leg, the east and south legs of the tower rested on solid ground on the workshop side of the construction site, the west and north legs, although they were much more complicated because they were on the side of the At the site closest to the center, the soil here was made up of millions of years of much less stable river sediment deposits, so in each of the four legs of each slab the Piles were sunk 72 feet downward to reach the bedrock beneath the sediment. and what's more, it required six-and-a-half-foot-thick foundation slabs to be excavated and poured below the Sen's water table.

Water infiltration was a big problem for them, so they usually used giant 50-by-20-foot cast iron caissons to do it. their job, the way this worked is they would dig into the foundation pit and slowly this case would sink into the ground as they dug, they would inject compressed air and that compressed air would keep the water out of the foundation so they could actually pour. the concrete and curing it five months later, on June 30, 1887, the foundation was finally finished and this is what the foundation of each of the four legs looked like when it was completed.

Each foundation pillar had two bolts embedded in it to screw the shoe together. of the main beam and to give you an idea of ​​scale, those bolts look a little small, but they're actually four inches in diameter and 25 feet long, so the foundation stays in place. II Phil's team quickly began the iron work which can See here how the main beams are attached to the foundation pillars and the reason for the angle here is twofold: it allows some of the weight to be supported vertically and some horizontally as it the weight of the tower pushes down at an angle. and this is very important when you have a silty sediment soil that is not very stable, it gives you much more stability but also makes the tower more resistant to the horizontal forces at the top when the wind hits the tower.

Remember that no one built or constructed anything. This tall one that no one had ever competed with wins at a thousand feet in the air. Work progressed rapidly on the tower largely due to the accuracy of the drawings. Bruce Bayou Phil's office in total made 1,700 general drawings and another three thousand six hundred. and twenty-nine drawings of specific parts, the position of the rivet holes was calculated to the nearest tenth of a millimeter and the angles were calculated to one second of arc, which is one thirty-six hundredths of a degree, these parts were then forged drawn with precision. and drilled at a fill and level factory in one of the Paris suburbs and brought to the site in a horse-drawn carriage Henry Ford did not support his Model T for a few decades, but by early 1888 they had reached a critical point in During In the first phase of construction, because the rest of the tower would be raised from the first platform, it was absolutely critical that all four legs of the tower be level.

The tower was so tall that even a few millimeters off the mark here could result in a significant tilt. at the top of the tower and he felt that a plan to deal with this was ingenious. Each leg was built at a slightly steeper angle than necessary. Talking about a centimeter or two here is not much and then you can't see it in this image. but at the top of the scaffolding, where the tower rests, they are not connected directly, there is actually a larger sandbox there and the reason for the sandbox is that it allowed for precise millimeter adjustments to the height and angle of the paw.

What they had to do was there was a cork at the bottom of the sandbox, so they would take it out, let a little bit of sand come out, measured from the cork, and when they finally got to the level they wanted, they were done when they were on all four legs. . To have exactly the same height all they had to do was attach them to the platform and they were locked in place and so on March 20, 1888 the first and most complicated part of the tower was completed, they still had 800 feet to go. and It only took them a year to do it, as they built from the first level, it became more and more complicated to get the pieces they needed to the area where they were actually working on the tower and to solve this they used the first level as a staging area.

A large steam crane again knowing that Dustin's internal combustion engines would lift parts from the ground level to the first level and on the first level platform they built a small circular railway and would use this railway to transport the parts to the leg of tower. that were going to be lifted and to do that work they had smaller steam cranes which you can see at the top of the picture here. They were actually mounted on the elevator tracks, so they moved up the tower as it moved. These are actually the first tower cranes in July, the tower was completed up to the second level and if you look in the background here you can see the other buildings for the exhibition starting to take shape.

The exhibition was scheduled to begin in about eight months, they still had 600 feet to go, another problem the team had to solve was how to rivet the pieces so high above the ground that the Eiffel Tower was almost entirely assembled by riveted The prefabricated pieces were brought to the tower, lifted and placed in place once the equipment was secure. If they had the correct assembly, they would begin the tedious process of driving rivets through all the precisely aligned brackets. The problem is that before they could drive the rivets in, they had to heat them until they were red hot, if you've never seen that. a rivet essentially looks like a screw without threads, it has a head on one end and is a smooth shaft and they had to be heated red hot to form the head on the other side of the rivet, they did this on the ground, the rivets would be too cold for Hammer when they climbed the tower.

Typically in construction this day you would have a small forge somewhere on site and a riveter running around with red hot rivets in a 10 bucket to where the rivets were actually being driven in, but that wasn't an option. here, so they invented a portable forge and you can see what's going on in this picture. There is a worker in the foreground here who is heating rivets in the forge at work. At the tower level there is a worker behind the beam holding the rivet head in place with a pair of pliers. There is a worker in front of the beam who has a tool to shape one head on the end of the rivet and then a fourth. worker swimming swinging a hammer there were crews of 24 men working all over the tower at the top of the construction and the reason for this is that the Eiffel Tower has 2.5 million rivets that these forges would go with them to the top of the Well , the really complicated things behind them, besides the height, the top of the tower rose quite smoothly, they added about a thousand feet each month until they topped the tower on March 15, 1889, when the tower was structurally complete long before the tower.

The opening of the exhibition fell marked the occasion by inviting 15 journalists and Parisian dignitaries to climb the 1,710 steps to the top to raise the French flag at the top fell, you can see it in the center here it is said that he commented at that time gentlemen the The French flag is the only flag in the world with a flagpole 300 meters high. The reason they had to take the stairs is because the elevators weren't ready yet. This might have had something to do with the fact that they were the most complex passenger elevators in existence. had been built to the state in which I don't have time to tell you about it here if you want to know more find me after its fascinating history, but even though the first 30,000 visitors to the tower after the opening of the exhibition had to climb the The stairs, including ma cherie, fell here to the left.

The tower was a great success. He felt he was figuratively and literally on top of the world when it was completed in 1889. At 1,063 feet, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure in the world, more than 500 feet taller than the previous record holder, the Washington Monument. which is roughly equivalent to an 81-story building, the Eiffel Tower would hold the height record until the Chrysler Building in New York reached its peak 41 years later it held this record for 41 years no subsequent building has had the record for longer It's a remarkable achievement that broke all kinds of new ground and it's the kind of work we all say we want to do well we want to go further we want to solve hard problems that no one else has solved we want to ship amazing things so what can we learn from Gustave?

You helped us get it right to begin with. I want to try something. I'm about to put a word on the screen and I love you without thinking about it too. Give me a Thumbs up or thumbs down to show me your general feelings on the topic. Alright, I hope you have your thumb ready. Well, here's your word. Some thumbs up, mostly thumbs down. I'm glad because I don't know what we would do with it. rest of our time together if everyone had said: yes, I love politics, it's my favorite, most of us would prefer to just keep our heads down, write code and lead our teams correctly, asked a study published in The Wall Street Journal in 2011. participants about their approach to office politics by giving them these three options number one, it is better to know what is going on but not participate directly number two, it is better to stay completely out of office politics or number three, it is better to participate to to be able to get ahead now people responded between the group that wanted to stay informed but not participate and the group that stayed out of it completely. 83 percent of participants chose an answer that said they were not involved in office politics at all, so you're not alone.

I bet some of us have even left jobs because our companies were toopolicies. I know, but here's the thing and it took me too long to accept this. All organizations are political. You can't escape politics by just moving around enough until you find the right manager or the right company whenever you have more than one person working together on something you will have politics because politics is nothing more than how humans share power and take decisions together, that's it, that

means

that doing something meaningful at your company, whether as simple as doing the job you wanted or as complex, is to completely overhaul your company's hiring practices to improve diversity and representation, requires understand and participate in your company's policies.

I know what a positive and encouraging message to End the day, but stay with me, politics doesn't have to be negative and disgusting, there are a couple of things he did that give us a great example to follow to do politics the right way , let's go back to the work he did. Even before the tower was built, remember this document with the really long French name that he felt drawn up to promote his plan for the tower, he passed around from official to official handing out autographed copies and talking about what he wanted to build and what he felt.

It was an action It was really quite simple, it's just networking and self-promotion Now we all love networking and self-promotion, right, but they're kind of like politics, they get a bad reputation that they don't quite deserve, so let me rephrase that. a little bit for him and I'm going to change these terms all this is not what it's like making friends and telling stories that's all that's all he was doing he felt like he would invite someone to lunch or more likely spend an afternoon on the terrace of a Parisian cafe drinking a bottle of wine together and he tells them stories, maybe they talk about the Guerra Beat viaduct, he could even tell them that when a train passed over the bridge it moved exactly eight millimeters, exactly as his Moll mathematical models had done. .

As predicted before construction began, he would show them the final drawing of the tower and perhaps even tell them about how amazing it would be when a tower on French soil surpassed the height of the great obelisk the Americans had been working on. from time to time for 40 years he listened to his stories, and at the end of the conversation he would have made a friend, most importantly, he not only did this with people from the exhibition committee, the fact that this document was an autograph of Jorge Boulanger tells us that the blonde Shea was in the government and would become Minister of War, but she had absolutely no decision-making power for the exhibition, nothing to do with that and that's what networking is all about, it's just making friends, maybe you're in a position to help one. another at some point, but that's not an immediate focus, so what does that mean to you, having coffee with your product manager to be a human being?

It's not just someone who leaves things on top of their backlog and sets unrealistic dates. Have lunch with someone in sales because they are the ones who listen to the questions their clients ask and most of them have no idea how we do what we do and are fascinated to hear the second part. Self-promotion is about making sure others know what you've been working on, not in a boastful way, but in an informative way. In a perfect world, doing a good job would be enough, but your manager doesn't pay that much attention. You as you think you are, they're juggling so many priorities, so you need to tell them what you've been doing, you need to give them that information that shows what you've been working on and what you've accomplished is a big part of how you build your reputation in working with your manager and with other people, whether you want a promotion or generate more influence to be able to make big changes, this is a big part of how you do it if you want something to help you learn how to do this more effectively.

I can't recommend Dale Carnegie's classic about winning friends and influencing people enough. It's full of timeless advice on how to do it right in a productive, unscrupulous way that benefits you and the people who help you. you're talking, but there's something else you think you have to teach us. Let's go back to the contract he signed on January 28, 1887. If you remember, the French government had initially proposed to cover the entire cost of the tower, but that last minute. he resisted and only agreed to cover a quarter of the cost now, at that point we have been pretty easy to release, he didn't play hardball and demand that the government fulfill his original proposal or he would just take his ball and go home, but that didn't en What he did instead was a bit of negotiation.

Now that word probably makes you think about buying a fast car and trying not to go broke, so let me rephrase it a little for you too, cooperation, which is really good faith negotiation and working together. Finding an outcome that works for everyone if L understood the French government's position and had empathy for the government representatives he was talking to about organizing an exhibition is expensive and, frankly, they didn't have the six million francs to give him, so Instead, he worked with him to find a way to satisfy his need for six million francs to build the tower and his need to not give him six million francs to build the tower.

He found that solution mutually beneficial and was able to charge the entrance fee for 20 By the way, for years it turned out to be a phenomenal business in free fall, a staggering 1.8 million people climbed the tower during the exhibition, paying an average of 3 francs for the privilege, so the tower had paid for itself at the end of the fair. and he had 19 more years to take advantage of it when he works for something we want. There is a temptation to view that process as a zero-sum game. Someone has to win and someone has to lose, but that's usually not the case.

They needed six million. francs to build the tower, so your bust is that your executive team wants a piece of functionality delivered on an absurd date, so you need to tell them in clear terms that it is absolutely impossible, in reality there is almost always a middle ground where everyone They get most of what they want, the trick is to find out what everyone in the situation really wants and why they want it; It requires you to exercise empathy and compassion and ask probing, closing questions that build understanding for when your product manager starts pushing. For that unrealistic date, try to understand why look to see if there is a smaller piece of functionality you can offer ahead of time that will satisfy whatever need is driving the momentum.

If you want to learn how to negotiate well, pick up a copy of Herb's classic. Cohen, you can negotiate. Anything, the title is a little cheesy, but this book changed the course of my career when one of my mentors recommended it to me years ago. Cohen teaches a negotiation style that revolves around understanding everyone's needs, especially your own, and reaching an agreement by finding mutually beneficial ways. To fulfill them, what about bad politics? Are there organizations and managers that are too political? Of course, if you find yourself in an organization that regularly promotes those who play the game over those who do a good job, you may have to leave or if you find yourself working for a manager who always takes credit for your good job, there may not be enough contacts in self-promotion to avoid it, but if Gustav Excel does not consider the French government too political to navigate and negotiate with, there is a good opportunity.

That bar is most likely higher than you think, but there's another layer we need to consider here. Everything I've shared so far has been for us as individuals, but this is the lead developer, what does this have to do with how we lead our company? teams Okay, what's the conventional wisdom around politics for TuneIn leaders who care about their teams? a tweet Jason Frite sent out not long ago that addresses what this common wisdom is for leaders. I'll give you a second to read that conclusion from this tweet is that you may need to get involved in organizational politics. do your job, but you must protect your teams from the politics Jason calls here so they can keep their heads down and remain productive.

Now there is some truth to this constant interruption and jumping from one priority to another or being counterproductive for your team and helping them stay focused writing code eight hours a day will probably be very productive for them and you too, but there is more to reality. nuances. The downside to being a closed, waterproof umbrella is that it becomes an information choke point for your team. Over time, you will also disconnect your team from the mission of your organization and, since we know that a sense of purpose is an important motivator for most humans and that disconnection can quickly lead to dissatisfaction and even leaving your company, putting yourself in that spot as The leader is also almost guaranteed to exhaust you.

None of us are built to endure that kind of load, so what do you do? Well, one of the engineers on my team introduced me to a new analogy that I like much better than the umbrella. in my interview process for github, Steve Richert said that instead of using the term umbrella, he actually liked heat shield better and I agree with him now that we get the term heat shield from the world of space travel and orbital reentry because it wouldn't be one of my talks without an aviation reference of some kind unlike an umbrella a heat shield is not designed to be waterproof an umbrella will block all the rain that hits it but a heat shield blocks enough heat so that you can surviving re-entry is a careful process calculated commitment if you blocked all the heat it would be too heavy to reach orbit in the first place but it is not enough and you cannot survive re-entry this is your job as a leader you need to block enough organizational noise so that If your team has consistent direction and large blocks of time to get work done, but not so much that they lose context in the connection, blocking out all the noise may make them feel more comfortable, but it will ultimately prevent them from delivering the value they intended.

They are capable. They will also stunt your professional growth because, as I said before, all organizations are political, if the people on your team never have the opportunity to see organizational politics and see you work with organizational politics, they will never learn how to develop their influence and sell their ideas. ideas or negotiate. For the things they believe are important as a leader, you have an obligation to help your teams learn how to navigate your organization, it's a skill that will serve them well for the rest of their careers, so in the end 20 years, if L had been promised that the tower was too important a part of Paris's overall identity to do anything other than leave it right where it was, so he felt that the tower is still standing one hundred and twenty-nine years later and although It hasn't been the tallest structure on the planet for a long time.

While it remains the most visited paid monument in the world, with almost seven million visitors a year waiting in line for hours to enjoy the stunning views of Paris it offers. If he hadn't been willing to participate in the politics involved, we wouldn't have done it. If you have the Eiffel Tower, the same thing happens to you. You can choose to keep your head down and jump from job to job whenever you catch a whiff of politics that will hinder your career, even if you are the people on your team that you want. To stay on the individual contributor path and become a senior technical contributor, you will need to understand politics to develop the influence you need to drive technical decisions if, instead of applying, you accept that politics is a reality that is neither good nor bad. nor bad in itself and you learn to participate in organizational politics in a way that stays true to you and the things you value.

You can find ways to have a big impact on your organization and maybe even the world. You can help your teams be as impactful as they may seem. intimidating but you can do it I know you can good luck