I'm originally from Glasgow, Scotland. I majored in computer science at Strathclyde University. I spent six years in law school working for British Telecom with a large software engineering center in Glasgow. During that time obviously I did a lot of coding and started to develop a new appreciation of actually engaging with customers and thinking about the business problems that we're looking to solve, and how technology could actually solve those problems. That was when I really started to move from software engineering and into the early days of product management and really kind of thinking about how we remarked technology to solving business problems. Long story short. I moved out to California to the Bay Area in 1999 to work for a startup that was in the telecom business. I think that's a good example of incidents or experiences that manage or shape your career path. And if any of you guys knew me in 1999 the last thing you would have predicted is moving from Glasgow away from my family and then just go to California. One of the important things for me is really being conscious and always being aware of opportunities that you see in your environment and being brave and comfortable enough to take a leap of faith. We don't need to be reckless all the time. But I think as you see opportunities come up, you need to recognize for what they are. And one can always make a case that there are no bad outcomes, there are only learnings. In my case, even if I moved to California and it doesn't work out, I can come back home. It's fine. I spent an amazing 12 years in the Bay Area and then moved to Austin in 2011. My wife was originally from there. She always wanted to move back, and at that point, I really moved away from being an individual contributor and product management to actually running other teams. And I think the other area in terms of, incidents that shaped my career, I think moving from an individual contributor to a manager or a leader requires actually a very conscious mental shift on your part. You really need to get comfortable taking a step, and quite frankly, get the limelight and actually being incentivized to really help other people grow and nurture in your group and making them the faces of the label of the things are being built and getting satisfaction out of that. There's a conscious shift there moving into people management. And then over the last eight years in Austin, I've had the benefit of working for a couple of big companies in Austin that have had tremendous network effects. I think the other thing that's important as move forward in your career is getting comfortable going out and meeting people. It could just be something as simple and going for coffee or having lunch with people that perhaps are working at places the interest you or doing something that interests you as well. Getting out of your comfort zone and actually going to meet folks because one of the benefits I have had at the time of bizarre voice in the time it spread fast is the network effect in Austin is absolutely tremendous. When you actually get through a store in any company in Austin, there is an XBV or there's and heck spread faster working there. That was incredibly helpful as I moved up. And that's basically culminated where I'm at today when I'm VP of product technology at Indeed. Our mission is to help people get jobs, which is it is a pretty cool mission statement which we live and breathe every single day.

As I have kids, the mornings are very much the school runs so that's usually the first part of the morning. Then, usually, I'm in the office by 8:15. And I usually like to take the first hour of the day to just set the level. And not something as simple as just checking your account or what are the upcoming events of the day. If you're using a to-do list or something, looking at what is at the top of mind for that day and figuring out when you want to allocate time for that individual contributor work. One of the things I found very, very helpful, and especially you guys will find your calendar fills up incredibly quickly, is the importance of blocking not just half hours, but you 2-3 hour blocks of time really just to think. This is incredibly invigorating to just that actually sit down and have that block a time where you can actually just deep think, and if it's a problem or an issue that you need to just crank through. Otherwise, that time just gets sucked over with everything else. In terms of responsibility side, I've got a team of over 100 people, product managers, designers, and engineers spread not only in Austin but in Seattle and out of the Bay Area. So for me, the majority of the job is really ensuring that those people can be the best that they can be. I tend to think if I'm not spending a lot of my time generally thinking about the folks on the team, then I'm not doing my job properly. So a lot of that is really just ensuring that the people are in the right environment to win, the obstacles that they have, are removed from their way. So they can really just go and deliver amazing work. And I think that's one of the things that, for me, is really understanding the altitude of what you want to work. I've got tremendous people on my team. I absolutely do not need to micromanage them. That's completely counterproductive. So for me, it's understanding the altitude of what you want to operate and ensuring that we could free up those folks to really focus on doing their best work. And the kind of decisions along with people are performance reviews but also things like are they aligned? Does everyone understand the vision and they understand the strategy? Do they understand their objectives? A lot of it is alignment because the reality is that things change on a daily basis. You need to be able to react to that. There's always course corrections. The main thing is, you want to make sure you're not confused and we know where we're going.

I report to Indeed organizing business units. And I report to a general manager for the enterprise business unit. For now, I have a very strong working relationship. We have directors of products, directors of software engineering and then individual product managers, product designers and software engineers in our development teams. A lot of my work is also cross-functional. Interacting with VPs of sales and customer success, interacting with the Director of business development. And I think that's one of the things actually with product management is that you have the opportunity to do interact across functionally. So much of what you do on a day to day basis that is managing alignment. So the cool thing about this role is that you get the chance to interact with pretty much everyone across the business because ultimately customers buy products or clients buy products, but they also interact with the entire organization. As a product development team, we need to understand what all those interactions are. And are getting the right levels of satisfaction across the board. In terms of approaches, to be effective and working, I'm a big fan of treat others how you would like to be treated. I'm a big fan of people just being open and reaching out. That's typically I approach, it's like, don't be shy. People in the C suite are generally very, very approachable, but you make a point of introducing yourself and then looking to grab time with them, could be just 15 minutes one on one. Personal engagement and building those relationships is important. The other thing you should make sure is that you're conveying the right information at the right level. You forget sometimes that presidents and CEOs are super busy. You need to be thoughtful about the things that you communicate with them.