CONTENT WARNING: This week on Geeking Out, we will be talking about mental health issues, including suicide and suicide ideation. Tim Banks is back again this week to geek out with Adriana on a very important subject: mental health. Tim shares his personal experiences with depression, therapy, and suicide attempts, emphasizing the need for open conversations about mental health. They discuss the societal stigma around mental health, the importance of support networks, and the role of leaders in creating a healthy work environment. They also touch on the need for self-care and setting boundaries to maintain good mental health. This raw conversation sheds light on the struggles many people face and highlights the importance of prioritizing mental well-being.
About our guest:
Tim’s tech career spans over 25 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started in avionics in the US Marine Corps and then into various government contracting roles. After moving to the private sector, Tim worked both in large corporate environments and in small startups, honing his skills in systems administration, automation, architecture, and operations for large cloud-based datastores.
Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with the open source and cloud computing communities in his current role. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. He is the 2-time American National and is the 5-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.
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Transcript:
ADRIANA: A note to listeners. This week on Geeking Out, we will be talking about mental health issues, including suicide and suicide ideation.
Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today for the second time...I am super happy to welcome back Tim Banks. Welcome back, Tim.
TIM: Hey, Adriana. How's it going?
ADRIANA: Not too bad. And I'm so excited that you agreed to come back for a second show because of something that you posted online recently that just like I don't know, it kind of got me, like, all verklempt thinking about, like...it was on mental health. And I'll let you open up the conversation.
TIM: Sure. And I'm sure there's probably one at the beginning episode, but just the content warning, talk about things like mental health, self harm, suicidal ideation and attempts and stuff like that. So just understand that this is going to be a real and raw. I'd been working on my mental health and been talked about.
I've been in therapy and stuff like that, and treatment for depression like medicine and stuff like that. And I've been open about that. But I had a couple of life events happen that kicked off a pretty bad depressive spiral that was already in the middle of a depressive episode that resulted in a suicide attempt at the beginning of July, which was obviously unsuccessful, but only barely.
And I don't want to use a wake-up call because it's really more than that. It was like I really have to focus on nothing but my mental health for a while. Like nothing but my mental health. I had to do that. And it was things like having people, my network of friends inside in Tech and outside of Tech, but definitely some folks inside of Tech who, you know...I can't be alone.
They were driving like half an hour to come stay at my house for the entire day or two days or three days, right, to I wasn't alone because I couldn't be alone. They were calling, they were sending stuff, they were sending food and things like that. I had my mom come into town and just help me out and just really focusing on nothing but myself, my own mental health. And even that, I mean, that was just the beginning. There was a lot that has to be done.
And the reason mostly that that had to be done is because I had kicked that can down the road for so long, right? And there are things I could have been doing, should have been doing, could have been more diligent about or conversations I could have had earlier down the line that would have probably not come to this point. And they say everything happens for a reason, and I'm sure it was, but I would sure hope that I wouldn't have to endure all of this for that reason.
For everyone who's listening, I am, night and day dramatically better. So I've been going through treatments called transcranial magnetic stimulation after I finished intensive outpatient DPT therapy, still on my antidepressants and just been really doing a lot of work.
And I feel mentally and emotionally better than I have probably any time in my adult life. And I'm almost 50. But the hard part is this was not like a sudden thing.
The very last part of it was sudden, right? But the road to get to there was long, right? And as I look back, I realized that there's, like I said, a lot of stuff I should have been doing, should have been focusing on a lot of red flags that I realized now, that I wasn't okay, right?
But there's levels of marginalization that sometimes made it difficult to see or recognize or talk about. And it's funny because the one way the patriarchy screws men over specifically, is that we have this weird thing about not talking about our feelings or emotions unless they're anger, but we can't talk about being hurt. We can't talk about being sad or scared or stuff like that. We're socialized to not do that. We're socialized to, quote, unquote, be strong for the family or whatever like that. And that's bullshit.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree.
TIM: Can't do that.
ADRIANA: Yeah. And I think it's so important for us to have these conversations out in the open because there's so many people suffering in silence on a daily basis. And it's so nice to hear that you had such a wonderful support network when things got really bad for you, that you had people who really wanted to make sure that you were okay and were taken care of, which is so nice. But I think that comes from being open about our mental health issues as well.
TIM: Yeah. And I think it was interesting because I was not only open about it to the community, but also to my family, especially my children. Father of five, and I have four under 18 that stay with me from time to time. And this happened while they're with me. I've had conversations about my mental health before, but I tell them I am sick, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: I'm sick and I can't do the things that I was used to doing or that you would like me to do right now. I can't. And having those conversations when my littler ones are like...they don't really know how to categorize it. They just know that I'm not well. My older ones kind of understood, and I've talked to them more in depth about that kind of things because I want them to understand that they're probably at some point going to go through this.
Mental illness can be genetic, or...however passed down it is, it can be passed down. So I don't want them to feel like I don't understand or that I don't want them to ever feel like they can't talk about these things with me, right? But also understand I'm at a very crucially low capacity, critically low capacity.
So I'm going to have to ask you to self manage some things or take care of some things or talk to one of my adult friends and your adult friends that we have in your life or other folks like that to help you out. Obviously, as it's gotten better, my capacity has increased and they've noticed. But having that conversation saying, like, I understand you have these expectations, right?
This is what I'm capable of delivering right now. And right now capable of delivering is near zero. And being frank about that. And that's the thing when you tell people, it's like, "Hey, I am not okay." I'm not only not okay, but I have been faking and struggling and masking for so long that I have far beyond depleted, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: And we do that, especially neurodivergent folks. We will a little be the walking wounded. We'll just be held together with bobby pins and bubble gum, just making it through there because we are so used to masking. People who suffer abuse are used to masking, right? You just cover it up and hide it over. And we should probably not do that. But also we have to give people space and safety. These are the buzzwords that actually are important.
But people have to have space and safety to feel like they can talk about these things, right? That was really why I was okay talking about at work. I called a couple of friends I had from the hospital...called Kat Cosgrove, who's a good friend of mine, and I was like, "Hey dude, here's the deal..." She was absolutely wonderful.
And then I just got a lot of stuff done for...in ways that I was thinking about, "I'm going to lose my job or something's going to happen." And she just mobilized in a way beyond what you would do just for a coworker, but for someone who is a friend. And I cannot be grateful enough to have her and other folks like her in my life.
And so I think going out and being that vulnerable and saying to somebody like, "Hey, I really need this help. This is where I'm at and I need this help," and having that person take the ball and like, "I got it."
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: So building the support networks are important and it's so funny. We talk about in tech, we spend a lot of time and money and have a lot of resources and tooling so we don't have to talk to each other and we should talk to each other more and not about tech. I draw my beat constantly is that tech...the actual tech is the least interesting part about our jobs, right? It is about people. It is about connections, it's about communication.
ADRIANA: It is so true. And I think having those lines of communication open with our friends and family is so important. And also, I think back to my parents' generation where talking about mental health issues is so taboo. Like, "Oh, that person's crazy." They're going to be...There's so many negative connotations associated with mental health issues from that generation to the point where then people won't seek the help that they need, and then there's the tendency of passing that mentality down to your kids, so then they sort of see mental health treatment as like, "Oh, no, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken." Okay, so, yeah, you're broken. Fix it.
TIM: It it the phrase you're looking for is generational trauma. And that's exactly what it is, especially among marginalized communities or immigrant communities like that. But think about it. Like in our parents' times, they didn't really have mental health care as a thing that you could walk around and have if you were crazy. You went to a place where crazy people went. That's literally how they thought about it, right? And then you were stigmatized forever after that point, right? And so we've come a long way since then as far as the resources and tools that are available to us.
But we have come a long way, I mean, objectively in how we talk about it. But also, I don't know if we address it really with the seriousness that it is, because it goes to like, "Hee hee...I'm on antidepressants" as like as a stand up bit, right, to, "Oh, we should watch out for suicide."
And there's a long way between those two that we should really be talking about. And so I'd mentioned to you before and mentioned other things that the treatment I underwent, transcranial magnetic stimulation, I only knew about because one of my friends in tech told me about it after.
She was like, "Oh yeah, I see what you went through. This really helped me and you should look into it." Right?
And that treatment has been life-changing. But I've also talked about meds. Like, I have a conversation about what meds I'm on, and people are like, "Oh, I've done this and look for this," or "This has worked for me." Other folks like, "Oh, you're on this. I should try that."
Because we do that for code, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, true. So true.
TIM: We do that for literally anything else. Why can't we do that for our own mental health?
ADRIANA: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's really just, like, keeping that dialogue open, and I guess...being curious, too, right? Asking the questions, "What are the things that I can do to improve my mental health?" And sometimes that can be like research on your own or asking friends, like posting it out to the community...I think anything like that. To get that information right, we have to arm ourselves with information and try to squash the disinformation, because that's the other thing that will go, right?
TIM: It is...it is really bad sometimes. Or the stigma is like, oh, the right wing Twitter, if you're on SSRI, is like, oh, you're on...Like half the country, I feel like is on SSRI sometimes, but it's not really that. It's not that bad. And there are more people that, you know, walking around on mental health medications than you would ever imagine or who are having things to deal with, whether it's epilepsy or whether it's ADHD or whether it's other neurological conditions.
That are separate from your kind of traditional mental health things, but still things that they have to deal with that have side effects that have diminishment of their available capacity. And in the end, when we talk about it from a practical standpoint on teams, when my depression and my anxiety are really giving it to me, right, my mental and emotional capacity is exhausted, right? I don't have it. And now that I don't have it, I'm like, "Wow, I've got capacity for days." Right?
And so recognizing that as a thing, the practical matters, how can we do as people in business, tech and leadership, you probably want to get a gist of how folks are doing, right?
"Hey, how are you doing?"
"What's your capacity like?"
And in a very judgment-free way, it's like, hey, man, look, you don't have to be all in depth of your employees lives and have to request information that they don't necessarily feel comfortable giving you, even if you make it a safe space, right? But you can just say, "What's your capacity?"
So that way I know how to task you or give you fewer tasks (more of the point) so that you can focus on stuff. Like, "What's your capacity like?" And if it's low, what can I do to help you?
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely.
TIM: If you just ask those two questions in your 1:1s, right? That's a lot. Like, "What is your capacity?" And if it's low, what can I do to help
ADRIANA: And those are definitely conversations that we don't hear enough of. And then you end up in situations where there's a lack of empathy, right, because you don't fully know, well, you know, this person isn't performing up to their full capacity because there's all this other shit going on, right? But you haven't had that conversation. So now it's just like this resentment.
TIM: Like, this person should be doing more. They're not doing this or compared to doing whatever, right? And you don't know what they have going on, and they don't necessarily need to tell you, right? Obviously, if someone has a long-term low capacity thing, let's talk about this and see what it is.
But there could be...maybe there are a lot of things you can do that involve, hey...that don't involve necessarily, like butting into people's mental health. Burnout is a thing, and it happens, right? And burnout will affect your capacity. So it's like you, as a leader, need to be more mindful of what your team's capacity actually is, right? Instead of what they want it to be, or what it, quote unquote, should be. Of what it actually is, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely.
TIM: And this goes very much into a business and like, leadership kind of aspect, because we run our people at Razor's Edge for, quote, unquote, productivity developers, right? We are pushing for more and more and more and more and more productivity without adding the number of people, mostly, especially when they say, oh, we're in this, quote, unquote, preparing for this economic downturn, which is bullshit, because there isn't one. But but ideally they'll say, "Oh, we need to get this and we need to do this." "We need to meet these numbers," or whatever. But you, as not a manager but as a leader, need to understand what your team's actual capacity is, right? Especially you've been running over or at capacity for an extended period of time. You have to rest, you have to recover, you have to push back on things. Everything can't be the top priority, and that's what leadership is, right?
And say, like, "Hey, all right, hey, we really need to ease off the throttle."
"We need to come in here, get some maintenance."
We need to, like, "Hey, on-calls have been really brutal." We got folks who haven't had vacation in six to eight months, right? We've got folks we need to regroup, we need to let folks rest. We need to put the yoke down for a while, right?
Or just eats up...[inaudible]...and go into like, and we have this notion of velocity that's fueled by gamification and metrics that said, "Oh, if we do this fast, this number commits."
We have to have more and more and more velocity and more and more and more and more, quote unquote, productivity, right?
ADRIANA: And then you eventually hit a wall.
TIM: And you lose empathy with it. Yeah. And you can't understand why you keep squeezing this rock and no water comes out.
ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. And it reminds me of I remember when I was a manager, I was drawing upon...trying to draw upon some of the negative experiences that I experienced, having crappy managers who didn't care about my mental health and vowing that I wasn't going to let that happen to me. Making sure that your direct reports are okay, right? Like asking the question, "Are you okay?"
Making sure that if you notice that they haven't taken any vacation for a long time, like, buddy, you need to take some vacation. You absolutely need to. And I think the other one, too, is as a manager, I think it's important to advocate for your direct reports, but also encouraging your direct reports to advocate for themselves. Because sometimes it can be so easy to just ask more and more and more of them and lose sight of the fact that you might be burning them out. And so kind of teaching them, encouraging them to call you out and say, "No, I've had enough. I can't do this anymore."
I think it's really important to have those kinds of conversations, and I think it's part of making that safe space with your team as well, so that they do feel comfortable enough so that they can come to you and say, "No, I'm tapped out. I can't do any more."
TIM: I think also but it's hard, especially if you're running at diminished capacity. You already have a lot in your plate to summon up, to muster up that gumption, to be like, okay, I need to push back and work. I think we should...early. But when people are in it, I'm all for like, hey, so anybody can advocate for anybody, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah.
TIM: If your work spouse or your best kiki buddy over there at the water cooler or the person you bullshit with around in the group chat, whatever, if they know something's up, you can advocate for that, especially that person has more privilege, has more seniority, has more whatever, more ability to withstand any pushback, right? They'd be like, "Hey, you know what Adriana needs? She's going to need some time. You need to take it easy on her for just a little bit. Like, I'll take some things, assign some out. We can push that. That's not important. That can do it, like, things like that.
And then you as a boss have to be like, word, right? And obviously, like I said, if it's for a couple of few weeks, whatever, we can figure out if it's something that's long-term, then there...you know...you can take some time off, take disability, whatever, but like, to understand that that this is not okay, we'll get to it eventually. No, this is acute. This is a need. This has now become a priority, right? When someone is having problems, that is a priority, right? Because no feature you're going to launch is going to be worth more than what could happen to people if we do not give them the time to rest, recover, and focus on their mental health, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: Somebody's like, oh, yeah, we launched this feature, but three of our developers swallowed bullets. I'm like, okay, wow, I'm so impressed with your velocity. We need to do a better job of putting the people first. And it's not just devs, it's operations folks, it's finance folks. Salespeople, I think, probably are very stress and anxiety-driven, and I think we don't appreciate that enough as sales as developers, because we get salaries, a lot of them get paid on commission. So there's a lot of anxiety around that and there's a lot of pressure on them, right? And a lot of that we can fix. Culturally, fixing the sales culture is probably never going to happen, but we could hope. But that said, you can still, especially as a leader, you can fix that culture in your company, right?
You can have realistic stuff, you can have realistic expectations and also leave time for your people to be people, right? And so, I don't know. I am fortunate to be where I was. I was fortunate to be my company at Dell with the people I was working for. But if I was with there are other companies I work for, I know that I would not have had the support that I had here. And it sucks, right? Also, because I know that I've been here, I've been in this almost 50 I've been in the industry now. It's my 27th year. If someone who's junior may not have felt the ability or like, they could say, "Hey, I really need this time release," whatever.
So that's why it's important that we who've been there for a while advocate for the other folks that may not be able to advocate for themselves.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, because I think back to my very first job out of school, and I worked for a consulting company, and the hours were absolutely brutal, and I hated my life. And I got to the point where I was still living with my parents, and my mom was like, every day, "Are you coming home for dinner?" I'm like, "Mom, I'll tell you when I'm coming home for dinner, because the default answer is no right now, because we're working ridiculous hours."
And then I finally hit a point where I'm like, I just cannot take this anymore. And I spoke up for myself. Like, everyone else on the team was dying, but I was just like, I don't care. I'm going to speak up. And I remember getting a bit of a reprieve, but boy, did I feel guilty because I'm, like, the only person complaining about it, which is terrible.
TIM: It is and also, there's that thing of, like, leadership by example. Like, if you want to have your people have healthy relationship with work, you should probably have a healthy relationship with work. And I've talked in the past about the idea of divorcing my self worth from my job, which helps a lot, because that way it's like, hey, work is work, and I can like, work, and I love my job, right?
But it is not me. It's not who I am. It's just what I do for a living, right? It is not what I would do if I was rich right now, you know what I'm saying? But once you can do that, once you can compartmentalize the things that are they're part of your life, but they're not your life. Once you can compartmentalize those, it gives you clear to focus on that kind of stuff.
Like, if you're worried about my career, I was like, I promise you, I don't care so much about my career as I just want to get paid. Right? But I don't have to be a superstar. I don't be a rock star. I just want to make money, right? I make the money. I don't care. You know what I mean?
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.
TIM: And so, that's helped because I know that when I have really been invested at work, like, personally in the politics and all of that is devastating for my mental health.
ADRIANA: It's exhausting. Yeah.
TIM: Because there's so many things outside of your control. Yeah.
ADRIANA: It's so exhausting. I mean, honestly, that's one of the reasons why I went from manager back to IC. I'm like, no thanks. I just want to be off in my little corner doing my thing.
TIM: It is great that people can step into those roles, because those are necessary things. But also, you still have to approach them, like I said, with a healthy relationship to work and with your job know?
ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. Yeah. Because you can still get wrapped up in the job regardless of what position you're in. And I can speak for myself. I have been talking about...in my circles, having a healthy having that work-life balance, which is super important to me. But I'm also sometimes the worst at it. I finish work and I can't stop thinking about it.
And then something happened to me this summer where my mental health took a toll, where it just got to the point where I was having a physiological reaction to all the things that were accumulating. And then on top of that, I lost my mom last year to cancer, and it's coming up on the one-year anniversary of her death. And so all of these things accumulating, this anniversary coming up, and me just realizing that I've been hustling so hard and haven't had a chance to stop, and constantly thinking about work and body's, like, "Hey, guess what? You're done."
I had to take some steps to take care of myself. I promptly found myself a therapist, which I'd been putting off for years because I had a bad relationship with a previous therapist. So that kind of scarred me like, he was an asshole. And so I didn't go to therapy for years, but I'm like, "No, I need a therapist." I need to put processes in place to basically end of the workday. You're done thinking about work.
TIM: Close the laptop and done.
ADRIANA: Now it's time to think about non worky things. So, yeah, I mean, putting this shit off does not do you any favors whatsoever.
TIM: You know what's funny is that my ability to compartmentalize work has been greatly enhanced by working at home than by going into an office. Because when I'm commuting to work, I'm still thinking about work, right? Commuting back from work, I'm still thinking about work. I'm thinking about the whole process of getting ready to go to work. I'm thinking about work, right? But it's like when I walk into my office door here, I'm working. When I close the laptop, I'm not working. And that context switches so fast.
ADRIANA: It yeah...it's funny. I don't have a problem with switching off from the working from home. Same thing. Like, just because I'm working from home doesn't mean that...(now I'm not) thinking about the work things.
TIM: I look at, like, playing Call of Duty. Like, look, I have an Xbox. Call of Duty is right there. But if I'm not playing Call of Duty, I'm not thinking about Call of Duty, right? You know what I'm saying? I'm not like, OOH, Call of Duty is there to think about. I have a KitchenAid, right? I'm not thinking about baking because my KitchenAid is sitting right there. Right? Okay, cool. I'm not in the kitchen. I don't think about KitchenAid. I'm not even thinking about it. Maybe the context of what am I going to cook tonight? But I'll do that at the time of thinking about it. And so that's why I have this room set apart. Now, obviously, I have the space to have my own office, but you can have your own routine to do that. But I think what's more, the point that I'm trying to make is that one of the things that has helped me out is having these routines, right? Having these boundaries set and then being able to like, hey, this is my boundary. Like, my laptop is closed. I am done. I'm not going to look at this rest of the day.
Some people don't have their stuff on their phone. So you'll have two phones, whatever it is. Right. But have boundaries around what you're going to do. And that's not just for work, obviously.
That's on other stuff. There's people that like...I am this person, people are going to come to me, and I'm going to solve all the problems and do a lot of emotional labor. And it's difficult for me to say, like, "Hey, I don't have any more"...you know what I mean? I don't have any more capacity left in me. You're going to need to go to somebody else for that.
I feel you. That sucks so much. I don't have it right now. I can't pour from an empty cup. And a lot of us do that, especially women with children, right? You all have to do so much. Not that men don't ever, but we all know that women, by and large, have to do a lot of the emotional labor when it comes and physical and manual labor when it comes to the household and taking care of kids and stuff like that. So you're context switching, but you don't ever really get to turn off
ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. And I definitely felt that more like when my daughter was really young and I had to have to rush out of the office to pick her up from school, and I'm like, but I haven't finished solving this problem. And then it's like, well, never mind. Time to start job number two, you know? Mom mode enabled.
TIM: Yeah, and it's it's harder when they're little. But also, I think one thing that helped me is that, you know, me and my ex, who we co-parent with, we've been very good about raising adults, right? The kids have responsibilities. They have stuff they got to do, like, hey, man, look, you're ten years old. You know how to empty a dishwasher. I'm not doing that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, totally.
TIM: Right? There you go. Have at it. You want to use the Xbox? Cool. You're going to learn to put the silverware away, and little things like that help. Because in essence, what I'm doing is I need to delegate these things to you because I don't have the capacity to do it all, at least not for a long period of time, right? And a lot of times we feel like we can't do that. Why? Because, oh, you're supposed to be able to do all this. You're supposed to do this, you're supposed to do all that. No, it's supposed to get done. I don't have to do it. Right. There are other people who consume from this who eat at the table. Cool. You can take the plates away. But it's so hard because a lot of us, especially a lot of us who are prone to tech or neurodivergent, like, if I want it done right, I have to do it myself, right? And what we can do is just like, hey, if it's put away, don't stress it, man. If the forks in the spoon thing, it's okay, I promise. If the plates are where the bowls go and the bowls where the plates go, it less than matters. It is so inconsequential, right?
And letting those things go, there are some things that matters. Obviously, you don't want to put the knives pointing up. That's dangerous, right? But for other stuff, like, hey, the towels are folded in quarters instead of thirds. Like, oh, okay. Like, fine. You know, like, I don't I'm not going to stress about those. Kinds of things they're put away, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. It's stuff that you don't have to do because someone else did that.
TIM: What the real thing that that comes down to is getting perspective and prioritization of, like, concerns, right? Everything can't be important. If everything's a big deal, then you end up doing it all yourself, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, I so agree with you, because I am totally that person who...I will sometimes...like, my husband will refill the dishwasher and I'll rearrange his stuff, and there are times where I'm just like, no, I don't care. That's fine. He's doing it, not me. The whole burden of the world does not have to fall on me. I'm not always successful at it, but I'm trying to train myself because yeah, otherwise you'll just drive yourself mad. You don't have to be perfect at everything, and nothing has to be done your way exactly as you said, it just has to be done.
TIM: Like I said, you go and have that conversation, and say, "Look, I'm at capacity, and I can't keep doing this. I'm going to need you to pick up the slack here." I'm all these things I've been doing, I'm going to need you because I know you can, right? Take a little time away from that. Do these things. I need you to pitch in, right? Because they need to get done, right? And then you're asking them to do that. And what you're going to do is not freak the fuck out if something's not exactly how you like it, because it's actually not a big deal.
ADRIANA: Yeah, true. And it's about, again, asking for help, because sometimes your other half will be like, "la la la la la"
TIM: Oblivious. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Right? Whether it's your partner or your kids, sometimes they're just doing their thing. You got to just like, "Can you please do the thing for me? Because I cannot right now."
And you know what? They'll say yes, most of the time.
TIM: Yeah. And it's like and it's like, you know, kids don't like these chores. I'm like, hey, I need you to take care of this. Or can we or can we get this taken care of? Like, it's going to take a little bit of day. It's really going to help me out because I've got this, this, and this and this. I was like, look, hey, if you want to go here and do this thing, I'll go do this thing, right? And the thing I do is like, hey, if you want to go rewrite this architecture and record this thing, that's fine. I would love for you to do that, right?
And I'll take care of the dishes. I feel like there's a skill gap there, and you're fully capable of taking care of these dishes. And it's funny because the way that I reward and incentivize my kids for that and the way I extend them grace when they do things right, that's the hardest thing it is for me to do for myself, right? Extend myself grace because I didn't do this thing exactly right, but it's okay. Or to reward myself in a healthy way for like, hey, man. As a means of recognition for like, yeah, I did this thing, and it was hard, right. A thing that I've been really working on that with my therapist, I really discovered. And when she told me this, I was in tears because it was so impactful.
She was like, there's this thing called a glimmer, right? And so I don't know if you've heard of this before, but a glimmer is the opposite of a trigger, right? So where triggers, they trigger like a trauma, like a trauma response or something, like negative, right? A glimmer is like a trigger, but for positive things, for self love or things you love, things that remind you of good stuff, right, or make you feel positive. So I look for like, I have triggers, but I find and make glimmers, right? Sometimes they happen. I'll give you a great example just on the driving home from TMS today, I was, like, singing a song that's a favorite of mine. And one thing TMS has done is made me a better singer and made my penmanship better. And I haven't figured out why, but it does. And so I was like, man, I'm really singing this song. Well, that's really good. I'm a pretty good singer. Little things like that and that just like, yeah, man, I get okay, that's hot. Just little things like that make an impact. So I collect those things and I write them down, right?
Keep a little highlight reel or whatever. These are things I've taken the time to recognize in myself, to help myself out, right? Because I feel like we do this really well with other people. Well, to some extent, and not so well with ourselves. We as a culture I think I've said this before, even on here, we as a tech community are awful at recognizing accomplishments.
ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yes.
TIM: We're terrible at it, right? Okay. A company might give you a bonus or something like that, but we'll recognize, like, hey, this person is the most impactful, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? But it's I've been like, people who like, hey, man, they really pulled this thing off, or they were instrumental for this. Like, this thing. We don't recognize the people that chop wood and carry water that well. And we should. And I don't know how we do it, but we should.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I think we just need to get more in the habit of giving each other kudos.
TIM: Yeah, this person's really...Sorry, go ahead.
ADRIANA: I was just going to say, I think one of the things that we need to do is just really...in not just celebrating each other, but also ourselves. I know I get into this horrible rut of, like, I accomplished this great thing, right? Like, say I get accepted, my CFP got accepted at Blah Conference. Five minutes of celebration, and then I get depressed right away because I'm like, this is my peak.
TIM: Yeah.
ADIRANA: I am never going to achieve anything else beyond that. And that's, like, very self-deprecating behavior. So I like your idea of writing down your little pick-me-ups, your little glimmer points, because I think we need to get into these more positive habits. Otherwise, it's so easy to fall into a funk.
TIM: It is part of the work I've done, right? And I think it helps is to really recognize, like, oh, man, this is what this means, right? I've watered my plants for, like, a week. I'm like, oh, it's not great little things and recognizing it's like anything else. You know how when we have an outage, we start figuring out how to instrument around that and we have things like, uhoh, this thing is at capacity, this thing is disk full. This thing is page errors. We can do that for ourselves. We can literally have Observability for...
ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yes.
TIM: ourselves, and we probably should. Observe the human. And not even just for ourselves have other people, like, hey, my network of people, I have told them, if check in on me and if this is this mention it. Like, bring it up. Like, hey, how are things going? Right? If I haven't gone to Jiu Jitsu in a couple of days, something is wrong.
And it's like things like, have, you know, keep the people around you aware of that and keep yourself around that, like logs, journals, whatever. Like, hey, I haven't it's been a few days since I did this. I'd probably need to check in.
ADRIANA: Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned if you haven't gone to Jiu Jitsu for a couple of days, time to check in, because I kind of felt the same way with...rock climbing is my happy place. I love it. It just makes the stress go away. But I had a point a couple of weeks ago, which is when all of the emotions started just crowding in, and I found, like, now, all of a sudden, my safe place, my happy place, was no longer my happy place, and it was a place of stress. And I had to walk away from my happy place for a bit because I was in mental distress. I did not feel like I was in a good place. And when your happy place is threatened like that, I feel like that is like an alarm bell. It's like screaming at you, there is a problem.
TIM: Yeah. And it's it's weird because I had that with Jiu Jitsu. Whether it's gym drama or anything else like that, it's like, man, something's going on, because I'm not looking forward to this. And I do. I think that when we talk about going back, that notion of Observability and then touching back about what we talk about what leaders should be doing, there's a level of Observability you have to have into your employees as far as, like, hey, in your 1:1 check-ins, like, "Hey, how are things going? What's your capacity? Like, what can I do to help?" And if you notice that folks are running however you measure task doing or productivity, quote, unquote, or just experience, right? Keep tabs on that.
And then be like, hey, I noticed that things aren't going you're kind of a little bit off, and that's fine. It's not a problem yet or anything. I wouldn't say yes, it's not a problem, but I just noticed things are different. I just want to know, see where you are, see what I can do to help, find out what you need, what I can do to help, and giving people that space to do that and also actually doing it, don't just let them say it. You actually got to do it. Helps out a lot. It makes people feel supported.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And you really nailed it. Like, just giving them space. It's not just like lip service, because I think a lot of companies will pay lip service to mental health issues, but won't actually action anything. And I think that's why it's also so important that you have companies, I think, are embracing more of this idea of taking a mental health day, and that being embraced also through managers who are like, yes, you need to take that mental health day. That is not a problem. You do what you need to do because otherwise you end up with people who are just so burnt out they can't do what they need to do.
TIM: Yeah. That has long-term effects in your businesses, whether it's turnover, whether it's not, quote, unquote, productivity or velocity, but how efficient are your practices, how good is the product you're putting out versus how often are you deploying things like that? These things affect your organizational resilience. And we're still fresh off some of the impacts, the worst impacts of the pandemic. And a lot of companies realize they don't have organizational resilience, right?
That people are sick, people have problems, and we don't know what to do. We don't have to handle or manage it, especially if we can't observe them from day-to-day at their desks, right? And a lot of companies punted on the difference between management and leadership, and the companies that punted on that are ones that are now we have to return to office. I'm like and if you are a leader or somewhere and you have made the decision that people have to return to office, that is for you, not for your people. Understand that a lot of companies, they work just fine, do amazing work with primarily remote workers, right? Your culture doesn't allow for that. And that's a leadership problem.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, it gets me whenever you start hearing these back to the office mandates, because we obviously proved for, what, two, three years that we did a pretty damn good job of working from home. And now it just feels like people are using the excuse of, like, oh, well, you need FaceTime or whatever, just to justify the fact that I spent millions of dollars on a new office and I look like a giant ass.
TIM: Sell it.
ADRIANA: Right? For real.
TIM: Sell the building, rent it out. Yeah, turn it into residential, man. There's a lot of people that need homes right now, you know what I'm saying?
ADRIANA: Yeah. So true. Yeah. Even in Toronto, where I'm at...mega, mega housing crisis. And yet you've got all these people, all these organizations with back to the office mandates for these downtown high rises just like, turn them into freaking condo buildings.
TIM: You...there's also, like, the other congestion, like, infrastructural problems you create by having. But I think more than anything else, it's also like people who have built an environment at home that really works for them, and then you tell, hey, I need you to come back into this open office. Hard floors, LED lighting, fluorescence, like, no, I'm...not blah desks. I'm not here for that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.
TIM: No control over your environment. Yeah, I would rather not. And that will have an impact on people's mental health, like, for folks that are not into talking to everybody. And what I think is so funny is like, well, people got lonely. I'm like, great, those people can come back into the office.
ADRIANA: Yep. Yep.
TIM: I'm not saying don't have an office, but if you want to go in there, go in there, get around the other people, right? You don't have to force everybody to do it, man. I promise you, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: If people won't go into the office without you forcing them to come in the office, that should tell you something.
ADRIANA: Yep. Oh, yeah. I totally agree. And then I feel bad for the poor folks who are mandated back to the office. Like, oh, you have to go back, like, three days a week, and then they go to the office to go to Zoom meetings. Great. I could have done that at home. Thanks. And now I have to dress fancy to sit at an office for a Zoom meeting.
TIM: I think a long story short is that we can go a long way in kind of recognizing where people are with mental health. We go a long way to helping people out with that. But most importantly, the thing we need to do is we need to talk about it and talk about it earnestly and what's in vulnerability and talk about like, this is what works for me, this doesn't work for me, things like that. Maybe I'll have you on for a stream or something like that.
One point, because I definitely am going to talk about psychedelics and mental health and how that's helped me. But people have interest in it. But do we talk about it? Because I know when I was coming up it was like, oh, if you do psychedelics, you're going to be some stoned out hippie on the streets. I'm like, I make a lot of money in my job. There are a lot of stigmas we have to break on how people medicate and self-medicate and how they deal with things. And I think that the better environment we set up for folks to have these conversations, the more illuminated we'll all get.
ADRIANA: And that's why I'm so very happy that you were able to come on and share your stories and struggles around mental health. Because we need to keep these communications channels open so that more people can feel comfortable about sharing their stories, so we can help each other as a community and destigmatize this whole thing around mental health. Because healthy mind and body equals healthy human.
TIM: Yeah. A rising tide lifts all ships. You create a good developer experience by giving them an experience. It has to be a holistic view on developer experience. You can give them all the tools in the world you want, but if they're sad as fuck, right, it doesn't matter.
ADRIANA: Yeah. And it's reflected in your organization's outward persona, right? It really is. It's like when you bake angry, it comes out in your baking. Code angry, it comes out in your coding or whatever.
TIM: Yeah, I love that because I think about my grandmother when she would argue with my granddad because my grandmother's Mexican when she would argue with my granddad and she would make salsa or chile. We knew as soon as we heard them arguing that we were going to be in for it. At dinner time, we knew we were in for it.
ADRIANA: Oh, my God.
TIM: Boy, she was cooking mad.
ADRIANA: Damn. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, do you have any final parting thoughts or advice or anything that you want to share with our audience?
TIM: I think, honestly, talk about your mental health struggles as openly as you feel comfortable and if you don't feel comfortable, reach out to some folks who have said that they're open to talking with you. I am always open to it. I may not have the capacity at that time and I'll let you know, but I will be like, hey, yeah, let me talk about I'm happy to hear about it, right? Just talk to somebody. Start there, right. And understand that you are not alone. You don't have to deal with this alone. If your support network is not doing what it needs to do, then I don't want to say get a new support network, but widen your net, right?
There are folks out there that will bear the burden with you. For sure.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's really important to remember that there are good people out there who are willing to help us out, so making sure that you connect, find those people in your life.
TIM: Yeah, absolutely.
ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tim, for geeking out with me today yet again. Y'all don't forget to subscribe.
TIM: Thank you, Adriana. I really appreciate it.
ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, no problem. Y'all don't forget to subscribe. And be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time....
TIM: Peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA: Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vilella. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the Socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available.
In Canada, If you're in immediate danger or need urgent medical support, call 911.
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call Talk Suicide Canada at 1-833-456-4566. Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
For residents of Quebec, call 1-866-277-3553 or visit suicide.ca.
In the US, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org . To learn how to get support for mental health, drug, and alcohol issues, visit FindSupport.gov.
ADRIANA: A note to listeners. This week on Geeking Out, we will be talking about mental health issues, including suicide and suicide ideation.
Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today for the second time...I am super happy to welcome back Tim Banks. Welcome back, Tim.
TIM: Hey, Adriana. How's it going?
ADRIANA: Not too bad. And I'm so excited that you agreed to come back for a second show because of something that you posted online recently that just like I don't know, it kind of got me, like, all verklempt thinking about, like...it was on mental health. And I'll let you open up the conversation.
TIM: Sure. And I'm sure there's probably one at the beginning episode, but just the content warning, talk about things like mental health, self harm, suicidal ideation and attempts and stuff like that. So just understand that this is going to be a real and raw. I'd been working on my mental health and been talked about.
I've been in therapy and stuff like that, and treatment for depression like medicine and stuff like that. And I've been open about that. But I had a couple of life events happen that kicked off a pretty bad depressive spiral that was already in the middle of a depressive episode that resulted in a suicide attempt at the beginning of July, which was obviously unsuccessful, but only barely.
And I don't want to use a wake-up call because it's really more than that. It was like I really have to focus on nothing but my mental health for a while. Like nothing but my mental health. I had to do that. And it was things like having people, my network of friends inside in Tech and outside of Tech, but definitely some folks inside of Tech who, you know...I can't be alone.
They were driving like half an hour to come stay at my house for the entire day or two days or three days, right, to I wasn't alone because I couldn't be alone. They were calling, they were sending stuff, they were sending food and things like that. I had my mom come into town and just help me out and just really focusing on nothing but myself, my own mental health. And even that, I mean, that was just the beginning. There was a lot that has to be done.
And the reason mostly that that had to be done is because I had kicked that can down the road for so long, right? And there are things I could have been doing, should have been doing, could have been more diligent about or conversations I could have had earlier down the line that would have probably not come to this point. And they say everything happens for a reason, and I'm sure it was, but I would sure hope that I wouldn't have to endure all of this for that reason.
For everyone who's listening, I am, night and day dramatically better. So I've been going through treatments called transcranial magnetic stimulation after I finished intensive outpatient DPT therapy, still on my antidepressants and just been really doing a lot of work.
And I feel mentally and emotionally better than I have probably any time in my adult life. And I'm almost 50. But the hard part is this was not like a sudden thing.
The very last part of it was sudden, right? But the road to get to there was long, right? And as I look back, I realized that there's, like I said, a lot of stuff I should have been doing, should have been focusing on a lot of red flags that I realized now, that I wasn't okay, right?
But there's levels of marginalization that sometimes made it difficult to see or recognize or talk about. And it's funny because the one way the patriarchy screws men over specifically, is that we have this weird thing about not talking about our feelings or emotions unless they're anger, but we can't talk about being hurt. We can't talk about being sad or scared or stuff like that. We're socialized to not do that. We're socialized to, quote, unquote, be strong for the family or whatever like that. And that's bullshit.
ADRIANA: Yeah, I totally agree.
TIM: Can't do that.
ADRIANA: Yeah. And I think it's so important for us to have these conversations out in the open because there's so many people suffering in silence on a daily basis. And it's so nice to hear that you had such a wonderful support network when things got really bad for you, that you had people who really wanted to make sure that you were okay and were taken care of, which is so nice. But I think that comes from being open about our mental health issues as well.
TIM: Yeah. And I think it was interesting because I was not only open about it to the community, but also to my family, especially my children. Father of five, and I have four under 18 that stay with me from time to time. And this happened while they're with me. I've had conversations about my mental health before, but I tell them I am sick, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: I'm sick and I can't do the things that I was used to doing or that you would like me to do right now. I can't. And having those conversations when my littler ones are like...they don't really know how to categorize it. They just know that I'm not well. My older ones kind of understood, and I've talked to them more in depth about that kind of things because I want them to understand that they're probably at some point going to go through this.
Mental illness can be genetic, or...however passed down it is, it can be passed down. So I don't want them to feel like I don't understand or that I don't want them to ever feel like they can't talk about these things with me, right? But also understand I'm at a very crucially low capacity, critically low capacity.
So I'm going to have to ask you to self manage some things or take care of some things or talk to one of my adult friends and your adult friends that we have in your life or other folks like that to help you out. Obviously, as it's gotten better, my capacity has increased and they've noticed. But having that conversation saying, like, I understand you have these expectations, right?
This is what I'm capable of delivering right now. And right now capable of delivering is near zero. And being frank about that. And that's the thing when you tell people, it's like, "Hey, I am not okay." I'm not only not okay, but I have been faking and struggling and masking for so long that I have far beyond depleted, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: And we do that, especially neurodivergent folks. We will a little be the walking wounded. We'll just be held together with bobby pins and bubble gum, just making it through there because we are so used to masking. People who suffer abuse are used to masking, right? You just cover it up and hide it over. And we should probably not do that. But also we have to give people space and safety. These are the buzzwords that actually are important.
But people have to have space and safety to feel like they can talk about these things, right? That was really why I was okay talking about at work. I called a couple of friends I had from the hospital...called Kat Cosgrove, who's a good friend of mine, and I was like, "Hey dude, here's the deal..." She was absolutely wonderful.
And then I just got a lot of stuff done for...in ways that I was thinking about, "I'm going to lose my job or something's going to happen." And she just mobilized in a way beyond what you would do just for a coworker, but for someone who is a friend. And I cannot be grateful enough to have her and other folks like her in my life.
And so I think going out and being that vulnerable and saying to somebody like, "Hey, I really need this help. This is where I'm at and I need this help," and having that person take the ball and like, "I got it."
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: So building the support networks are important and it's so funny. We talk about in tech, we spend a lot of time and money and have a lot of resources and tooling so we don't have to talk to each other and we should talk to each other more and not about tech. I draw my beat constantly is that tech...the actual tech is the least interesting part about our jobs, right? It is about people. It is about connections, it's about communication.
ADRIANA: It is so true. And I think having those lines of communication open with our friends and family is so important. And also, I think back to my parents' generation where talking about mental health issues is so taboo. Like, "Oh, that person's crazy." They're going to be...There's so many negative connotations associated with mental health issues from that generation to the point where then people won't seek the help that they need, and then there's the tendency of passing that mentality down to your kids, so then they sort of see mental health treatment as like, "Oh, no, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken." Okay, so, yeah, you're broken. Fix it.
TIM: It it the phrase you're looking for is generational trauma. And that's exactly what it is, especially among marginalized communities or immigrant communities like that. But think about it. Like in our parents' times, they didn't really have mental health care as a thing that you could walk around and have if you were crazy. You went to a place where crazy people went. That's literally how they thought about it, right? And then you were stigmatized forever after that point, right? And so we've come a long way since then as far as the resources and tools that are available to us.
But we have come a long way, I mean, objectively in how we talk about it. But also, I don't know if we address it really with the seriousness that it is, because it goes to like, "Hee hee...I'm on antidepressants" as like as a stand up bit, right, to, "Oh, we should watch out for suicide."
And there's a long way between those two that we should really be talking about. And so I'd mentioned to you before and mentioned other things that the treatment I underwent, transcranial magnetic stimulation, I only knew about because one of my friends in tech told me about it after.
She was like, "Oh yeah, I see what you went through. This really helped me and you should look into it." Right?
And that treatment has been life-changing. But I've also talked about meds. Like, I have a conversation about what meds I'm on, and people are like, "Oh, I've done this and look for this," or "This has worked for me." Other folks like, "Oh, you're on this. I should try that."
Because we do that for code, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, true. So true.
TIM: We do that for literally anything else. Why can't we do that for our own mental health?
ADRIANA: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's really just, like, keeping that dialogue open, and I guess...being curious, too, right? Asking the questions, "What are the things that I can do to improve my mental health?" And sometimes that can be like research on your own or asking friends, like posting it out to the community...I think anything like that. To get that information right, we have to arm ourselves with information and try to squash the disinformation, because that's the other thing that will go, right?
TIM: It is...it is really bad sometimes. Or the stigma is like, oh, the right wing Twitter, if you're on SSRI, is like, oh, you're on...Like half the country, I feel like is on SSRI sometimes, but it's not really that. It's not that bad. And there are more people that, you know, walking around on mental health medications than you would ever imagine or who are having things to deal with, whether it's epilepsy or whether it's ADHD or whether it's other neurological conditions.
That are separate from your kind of traditional mental health things, but still things that they have to deal with that have side effects that have diminishment of their available capacity. And in the end, when we talk about it from a practical standpoint on teams, when my depression and my anxiety are really giving it to me, right, my mental and emotional capacity is exhausted, right? I don't have it. And now that I don't have it, I'm like, "Wow, I've got capacity for days." Right?
And so recognizing that as a thing, the practical matters, how can we do as people in business, tech and leadership, you probably want to get a gist of how folks are doing, right?
"Hey, how are you doing?"
"What's your capacity like?"
And in a very judgment-free way, it's like, hey, man, look, you don't have to be all in depth of your employees lives and have to request information that they don't necessarily feel comfortable giving you, even if you make it a safe space, right? But you can just say, "What's your capacity?"
So that way I know how to task you or give you fewer tasks (more of the point) so that you can focus on stuff. Like, "What's your capacity like?" And if it's low, what can I do to help you?
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely.
TIM: If you just ask those two questions in your 1:1s, right? That's a lot. Like, "What is your capacity?" And if it's low, what can I do to help
ADRIANA: And those are definitely conversations that we don't hear enough of. And then you end up in situations where there's a lack of empathy, right, because you don't fully know, well, you know, this person isn't performing up to their full capacity because there's all this other shit going on, right? But you haven't had that conversation. So now it's just like this resentment.
TIM: Like, this person should be doing more. They're not doing this or compared to doing whatever, right? And you don't know what they have going on, and they don't necessarily need to tell you, right? Obviously, if someone has a long-term low capacity thing, let's talk about this and see what it is.
But there could be...maybe there are a lot of things you can do that involve, hey...that don't involve necessarily, like butting into people's mental health. Burnout is a thing, and it happens, right? And burnout will affect your capacity. So it's like you, as a leader, need to be more mindful of what your team's capacity actually is, right? Instead of what they want it to be, or what it, quote unquote, should be. Of what it actually is, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely.
TIM: And this goes very much into a business and like, leadership kind of aspect, because we run our people at Razor's Edge for, quote, unquote, productivity developers, right? We are pushing for more and more and more and more and more productivity without adding the number of people, mostly, especially when they say, oh, we're in this, quote, unquote, preparing for this economic downturn, which is bullshit, because there isn't one. But but ideally they'll say, "Oh, we need to get this and we need to do this." "We need to meet these numbers," or whatever. But you, as not a manager but as a leader, need to understand what your team's actual capacity is, right? Especially you've been running over or at capacity for an extended period of time. You have to rest, you have to recover, you have to push back on things. Everything can't be the top priority, and that's what leadership is, right?
And say, like, "Hey, all right, hey, we really need to ease off the throttle."
"We need to come in here, get some maintenance."
We need to, like, "Hey, on-calls have been really brutal." We got folks who haven't had vacation in six to eight months, right? We've got folks we need to regroup, we need to let folks rest. We need to put the yoke down for a while, right?
Or just eats up...[inaudible]...and go into like, and we have this notion of velocity that's fueled by gamification and metrics that said, "Oh, if we do this fast, this number commits."
We have to have more and more and more velocity and more and more and more and more, quote unquote, productivity, right?
ADRIANA: And then you eventually hit a wall.
TIM: And you lose empathy with it. Yeah. And you can't understand why you keep squeezing this rock and no water comes out.
ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. And it reminds me of I remember when I was a manager, I was drawing upon...trying to draw upon some of the negative experiences that I experienced, having crappy managers who didn't care about my mental health and vowing that I wasn't going to let that happen to me. Making sure that your direct reports are okay, right? Like asking the question, "Are you okay?"
Making sure that if you notice that they haven't taken any vacation for a long time, like, buddy, you need to take some vacation. You absolutely need to. And I think the other one, too, is as a manager, I think it's important to advocate for your direct reports, but also encouraging your direct reports to advocate for themselves. Because sometimes it can be so easy to just ask more and more and more of them and lose sight of the fact that you might be burning them out. And so kind of teaching them, encouraging them to call you out and say, "No, I've had enough. I can't do this anymore."
I think it's really important to have those kinds of conversations, and I think it's part of making that safe space with your team as well, so that they do feel comfortable enough so that they can come to you and say, "No, I'm tapped out. I can't do any more."
TIM: I think also but it's hard, especially if you're running at diminished capacity. You already have a lot in your plate to summon up, to muster up that gumption, to be like, okay, I need to push back and work. I think we should...early. But when people are in it, I'm all for like, hey, so anybody can advocate for anybody, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah. Yeah.
TIM: If your work spouse or your best kiki buddy over there at the water cooler or the person you bullshit with around in the group chat, whatever, if they know something's up, you can advocate for that, especially that person has more privilege, has more seniority, has more whatever, more ability to withstand any pushback, right? They'd be like, "Hey, you know what Adriana needs? She's going to need some time. You need to take it easy on her for just a little bit. Like, I'll take some things, assign some out. We can push that. That's not important. That can do it, like, things like that.
And then you as a boss have to be like, word, right? And obviously, like I said, if it's for a couple of few weeks, whatever, we can figure out if it's something that's long-term, then there...you know...you can take some time off, take disability, whatever, but like, to understand that that this is not okay, we'll get to it eventually. No, this is acute. This is a need. This has now become a priority, right? When someone is having problems, that is a priority, right? Because no feature you're going to launch is going to be worth more than what could happen to people if we do not give them the time to rest, recover, and focus on their mental health, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: Somebody's like, oh, yeah, we launched this feature, but three of our developers swallowed bullets. I'm like, okay, wow, I'm so impressed with your velocity. We need to do a better job of putting the people first. And it's not just devs, it's operations folks, it's finance folks. Salespeople, I think, probably are very stress and anxiety-driven, and I think we don't appreciate that enough as sales as developers, because we get salaries, a lot of them get paid on commission. So there's a lot of anxiety around that and there's a lot of pressure on them, right? And a lot of that we can fix. Culturally, fixing the sales culture is probably never going to happen, but we could hope. But that said, you can still, especially as a leader, you can fix that culture in your company, right?
You can have realistic stuff, you can have realistic expectations and also leave time for your people to be people, right? And so, I don't know. I am fortunate to be where I was. I was fortunate to be my company at Dell with the people I was working for. But if I was with there are other companies I work for, I know that I would not have had the support that I had here. And it sucks, right? Also, because I know that I've been here, I've been in this almost 50 I've been in the industry now. It's my 27th year. If someone who's junior may not have felt the ability or like, they could say, "Hey, I really need this time release," whatever.
So that's why it's important that we who've been there for a while advocate for the other folks that may not be able to advocate for themselves.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, because I think back to my very first job out of school, and I worked for a consulting company, and the hours were absolutely brutal, and I hated my life. And I got to the point where I was still living with my parents, and my mom was like, every day, "Are you coming home for dinner?" I'm like, "Mom, I'll tell you when I'm coming home for dinner, because the default answer is no right now, because we're working ridiculous hours."
And then I finally hit a point where I'm like, I just cannot take this anymore. And I spoke up for myself. Like, everyone else on the team was dying, but I was just like, I don't care. I'm going to speak up. And I remember getting a bit of a reprieve, but boy, did I feel guilty because I'm, like, the only person complaining about it, which is terrible.
TIM: It is and also, there's that thing of, like, leadership by example. Like, if you want to have your people have healthy relationship with work, you should probably have a healthy relationship with work. And I've talked in the past about the idea of divorcing my self worth from my job, which helps a lot, because that way it's like, hey, work is work, and I can like, work, and I love my job, right?
But it is not me. It's not who I am. It's just what I do for a living, right? It is not what I would do if I was rich right now, you know what I'm saying? But once you can do that, once you can compartmentalize the things that are they're part of your life, but they're not your life. Once you can compartmentalize those, it gives you clear to focus on that kind of stuff.
Like, if you're worried about my career, I was like, I promise you, I don't care so much about my career as I just want to get paid. Right? But I don't have to be a superstar. I don't be a rock star. I just want to make money, right? I make the money. I don't care. You know what I mean?
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.
TIM: And so, that's helped because I know that when I have really been invested at work, like, personally in the politics and all of that is devastating for my mental health.
ADRIANA: It's exhausting. Yeah.
TIM: Because there's so many things outside of your control. Yeah.
ADRIANA: It's so exhausting. I mean, honestly, that's one of the reasons why I went from manager back to IC. I'm like, no thanks. I just want to be off in my little corner doing my thing.
TIM: It is great that people can step into those roles, because those are necessary things. But also, you still have to approach them, like I said, with a healthy relationship to work and with your job know?
ADRIANA: Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. Yeah. Because you can still get wrapped up in the job regardless of what position you're in. And I can speak for myself. I have been talking about...in my circles, having a healthy having that work-life balance, which is super important to me. But I'm also sometimes the worst at it. I finish work and I can't stop thinking about it.
And then something happened to me this summer where my mental health took a toll, where it just got to the point where I was having a physiological reaction to all the things that were accumulating. And then on top of that, I lost my mom last year to cancer, and it's coming up on the one-year anniversary of her death. And so all of these things accumulating, this anniversary coming up, and me just realizing that I've been hustling so hard and haven't had a chance to stop, and constantly thinking about work and body's, like, "Hey, guess what? You're done."
I had to take some steps to take care of myself. I promptly found myself a therapist, which I'd been putting off for years because I had a bad relationship with a previous therapist. So that kind of scarred me like, he was an asshole. And so I didn't go to therapy for years, but I'm like, "No, I need a therapist." I need to put processes in place to basically end of the workday. You're done thinking about work.
TIM: Close the laptop and done.
ADRIANA: Now it's time to think about non worky things. So, yeah, I mean, putting this shit off does not do you any favors whatsoever.
TIM: You know what's funny is that my ability to compartmentalize work has been greatly enhanced by working at home than by going into an office. Because when I'm commuting to work, I'm still thinking about work, right? Commuting back from work, I'm still thinking about work. I'm thinking about the whole process of getting ready to go to work. I'm thinking about work, right? But it's like when I walk into my office door here, I'm working. When I close the laptop, I'm not working. And that context switches so fast.
ADRIANA: It yeah...it's funny. I don't have a problem with switching off from the working from home. Same thing. Like, just because I'm working from home doesn't mean that...(now I'm not) thinking about the work things.
TIM: I look at, like, playing Call of Duty. Like, look, I have an Xbox. Call of Duty is right there. But if I'm not playing Call of Duty, I'm not thinking about Call of Duty, right? You know what I'm saying? I'm not like, OOH, Call of Duty is there to think about. I have a KitchenAid, right? I'm not thinking about baking because my KitchenAid is sitting right there. Right? Okay, cool. I'm not in the kitchen. I don't think about KitchenAid. I'm not even thinking about it. Maybe the context of what am I going to cook tonight? But I'll do that at the time of thinking about it. And so that's why I have this room set apart. Now, obviously, I have the space to have my own office, but you can have your own routine to do that. But I think what's more, the point that I'm trying to make is that one of the things that has helped me out is having these routines, right? Having these boundaries set and then being able to like, hey, this is my boundary. Like, my laptop is closed. I am done. I'm not going to look at this rest of the day.
Some people don't have their stuff on their phone. So you'll have two phones, whatever it is. Right. But have boundaries around what you're going to do. And that's not just for work, obviously.
That's on other stuff. There's people that like...I am this person, people are going to come to me, and I'm going to solve all the problems and do a lot of emotional labor. And it's difficult for me to say, like, "Hey, I don't have any more"...you know what I mean? I don't have any more capacity left in me. You're going to need to go to somebody else for that.
I feel you. That sucks so much. I don't have it right now. I can't pour from an empty cup. And a lot of us do that, especially women with children, right? You all have to do so much. Not that men don't ever, but we all know that women, by and large, have to do a lot of the emotional labor when it comes and physical and manual labor when it comes to the household and taking care of kids and stuff like that. So you're context switching, but you don't ever really get to turn off
ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely. And I definitely felt that more like when my daughter was really young and I had to have to rush out of the office to pick her up from school, and I'm like, but I haven't finished solving this problem. And then it's like, well, never mind. Time to start job number two, you know? Mom mode enabled.
TIM: Yeah, and it's it's harder when they're little. But also, I think one thing that helped me is that, you know, me and my ex, who we co-parent with, we've been very good about raising adults, right? The kids have responsibilities. They have stuff they got to do, like, hey, man, look, you're ten years old. You know how to empty a dishwasher. I'm not doing that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, totally.
TIM: Right? There you go. Have at it. You want to use the Xbox? Cool. You're going to learn to put the silverware away, and little things like that help. Because in essence, what I'm doing is I need to delegate these things to you because I don't have the capacity to do it all, at least not for a long period of time, right? And a lot of times we feel like we can't do that. Why? Because, oh, you're supposed to be able to do all this. You're supposed to do this, you're supposed to do all that. No, it's supposed to get done. I don't have to do it. Right. There are other people who consume from this who eat at the table. Cool. You can take the plates away. But it's so hard because a lot of us, especially a lot of us who are prone to tech or neurodivergent, like, if I want it done right, I have to do it myself, right? And what we can do is just like, hey, if it's put away, don't stress it, man. If the forks in the spoon thing, it's okay, I promise. If the plates are where the bowls go and the bowls where the plates go, it less than matters. It is so inconsequential, right?
And letting those things go, there are some things that matters. Obviously, you don't want to put the knives pointing up. That's dangerous, right? But for other stuff, like, hey, the towels are folded in quarters instead of thirds. Like, oh, okay. Like, fine. You know, like, I don't I'm not going to stress about those. Kinds of things they're put away, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, totally. It's stuff that you don't have to do because someone else did that.
TIM: What the real thing that that comes down to is getting perspective and prioritization of, like, concerns, right? Everything can't be important. If everything's a big deal, then you end up doing it all yourself, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah, I so agree with you, because I am totally that person who...I will sometimes...like, my husband will refill the dishwasher and I'll rearrange his stuff, and there are times where I'm just like, no, I don't care. That's fine. He's doing it, not me. The whole burden of the world does not have to fall on me. I'm not always successful at it, but I'm trying to train myself because yeah, otherwise you'll just drive yourself mad. You don't have to be perfect at everything, and nothing has to be done your way exactly as you said, it just has to be done.
TIM: Like I said, you go and have that conversation, and say, "Look, I'm at capacity, and I can't keep doing this. I'm going to need you to pick up the slack here." I'm all these things I've been doing, I'm going to need you because I know you can, right? Take a little time away from that. Do these things. I need you to pitch in, right? Because they need to get done, right? And then you're asking them to do that. And what you're going to do is not freak the fuck out if something's not exactly how you like it, because it's actually not a big deal.
ADRIANA: Yeah, true. And it's about, again, asking for help, because sometimes your other half will be like, "la la la la la"
TIM: Oblivious. Yeah.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Right? Whether it's your partner or your kids, sometimes they're just doing their thing. You got to just like, "Can you please do the thing for me? Because I cannot right now."
And you know what? They'll say yes, most of the time.
TIM: Yeah. And it's like and it's like, you know, kids don't like these chores. I'm like, hey, I need you to take care of this. Or can we or can we get this taken care of? Like, it's going to take a little bit of day. It's really going to help me out because I've got this, this, and this and this. I was like, look, hey, if you want to go here and do this thing, I'll go do this thing, right? And the thing I do is like, hey, if you want to go rewrite this architecture and record this thing, that's fine. I would love for you to do that, right?
And I'll take care of the dishes. I feel like there's a skill gap there, and you're fully capable of taking care of these dishes. And it's funny because the way that I reward and incentivize my kids for that and the way I extend them grace when they do things right, that's the hardest thing it is for me to do for myself, right? Extend myself grace because I didn't do this thing exactly right, but it's okay. Or to reward myself in a healthy way for like, hey, man. As a means of recognition for like, yeah, I did this thing, and it was hard, right. A thing that I've been really working on that with my therapist, I really discovered. And when she told me this, I was in tears because it was so impactful.
She was like, there's this thing called a glimmer, right? And so I don't know if you've heard of this before, but a glimmer is the opposite of a trigger, right? So where triggers, they trigger like a trauma, like a trauma response or something, like negative, right? A glimmer is like a trigger, but for positive things, for self love or things you love, things that remind you of good stuff, right, or make you feel positive. So I look for like, I have triggers, but I find and make glimmers, right? Sometimes they happen. I'll give you a great example just on the driving home from TMS today, I was, like, singing a song that's a favorite of mine. And one thing TMS has done is made me a better singer and made my penmanship better. And I haven't figured out why, but it does. And so I was like, man, I'm really singing this song. Well, that's really good. I'm a pretty good singer. Little things like that and that just like, yeah, man, I get okay, that's hot. Just little things like that make an impact. So I collect those things and I write them down, right?
Keep a little highlight reel or whatever. These are things I've taken the time to recognize in myself, to help myself out, right? Because I feel like we do this really well with other people. Well, to some extent, and not so well with ourselves. We as a culture I think I've said this before, even on here, we as a tech community are awful at recognizing accomplishments.
ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yes.
TIM: We're terrible at it, right? Okay. A company might give you a bonus or something like that, but we'll recognize, like, hey, this person is the most impactful, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? But it's I've been like, people who like, hey, man, they really pulled this thing off, or they were instrumental for this. Like, this thing. We don't recognize the people that chop wood and carry water that well. And we should. And I don't know how we do it, but we should.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. I think we just need to get more in the habit of giving each other kudos.
TIM: Yeah, this person's really...Sorry, go ahead.
ADRIANA: I was just going to say, I think one of the things that we need to do is just really...in not just celebrating each other, but also ourselves. I know I get into this horrible rut of, like, I accomplished this great thing, right? Like, say I get accepted, my CFP got accepted at Blah Conference. Five minutes of celebration, and then I get depressed right away because I'm like, this is my peak.
TIM: Yeah.
ADIRANA: I am never going to achieve anything else beyond that. And that's, like, very self-deprecating behavior. So I like your idea of writing down your little pick-me-ups, your little glimmer points, because I think we need to get into these more positive habits. Otherwise, it's so easy to fall into a funk.
TIM: It is part of the work I've done, right? And I think it helps is to really recognize, like, oh, man, this is what this means, right? I've watered my plants for, like, a week. I'm like, oh, it's not great little things and recognizing it's like anything else. You know how when we have an outage, we start figuring out how to instrument around that and we have things like, uhoh, this thing is at capacity, this thing is disk full. This thing is page errors. We can do that for ourselves. We can literally have Observability for...
ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Yes.
TIM: ourselves, and we probably should. Observe the human. And not even just for ourselves have other people, like, hey, my network of people, I have told them, if check in on me and if this is this mention it. Like, bring it up. Like, hey, how are things going? Right? If I haven't gone to Jiu Jitsu in a couple of days, something is wrong.
And it's like things like, have, you know, keep the people around you aware of that and keep yourself around that, like logs, journals, whatever. Like, hey, I haven't it's been a few days since I did this. I'd probably need to check in.
ADRIANA: Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned if you haven't gone to Jiu Jitsu for a couple of days, time to check in, because I kind of felt the same way with...rock climbing is my happy place. I love it. It just makes the stress go away. But I had a point a couple of weeks ago, which is when all of the emotions started just crowding in, and I found, like, now, all of a sudden, my safe place, my happy place, was no longer my happy place, and it was a place of stress. And I had to walk away from my happy place for a bit because I was in mental distress. I did not feel like I was in a good place. And when your happy place is threatened like that, I feel like that is like an alarm bell. It's like screaming at you, there is a problem.
TIM: Yeah. And it's it's weird because I had that with Jiu Jitsu. Whether it's gym drama or anything else like that, it's like, man, something's going on, because I'm not looking forward to this. And I do. I think that when we talk about going back, that notion of Observability and then touching back about what we talk about what leaders should be doing, there's a level of Observability you have to have into your employees as far as, like, hey, in your 1:1 check-ins, like, "Hey, how are things going? What's your capacity? Like, what can I do to help?" And if you notice that folks are running however you measure task doing or productivity, quote, unquote, or just experience, right? Keep tabs on that.
And then be like, hey, I noticed that things aren't going you're kind of a little bit off, and that's fine. It's not a problem yet or anything. I wouldn't say yes, it's not a problem, but I just noticed things are different. I just want to know, see where you are, see what I can do to help, find out what you need, what I can do to help, and giving people that space to do that and also actually doing it, don't just let them say it. You actually got to do it. Helps out a lot. It makes people feel supported.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And you really nailed it. Like, just giving them space. It's not just like lip service, because I think a lot of companies will pay lip service to mental health issues, but won't actually action anything. And I think that's why it's also so important that you have companies, I think, are embracing more of this idea of taking a mental health day, and that being embraced also through managers who are like, yes, you need to take that mental health day. That is not a problem. You do what you need to do because otherwise you end up with people who are just so burnt out they can't do what they need to do.
TIM: Yeah. That has long-term effects in your businesses, whether it's turnover, whether it's not, quote, unquote, productivity or velocity, but how efficient are your practices, how good is the product you're putting out versus how often are you deploying things like that? These things affect your organizational resilience. And we're still fresh off some of the impacts, the worst impacts of the pandemic. And a lot of companies realize they don't have organizational resilience, right?
That people are sick, people have problems, and we don't know what to do. We don't have to handle or manage it, especially if we can't observe them from day-to-day at their desks, right? And a lot of companies punted on the difference between management and leadership, and the companies that punted on that are ones that are now we have to return to office. I'm like and if you are a leader or somewhere and you have made the decision that people have to return to office, that is for you, not for your people. Understand that a lot of companies, they work just fine, do amazing work with primarily remote workers, right? Your culture doesn't allow for that. And that's a leadership problem.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, it gets me whenever you start hearing these back to the office mandates, because we obviously proved for, what, two, three years that we did a pretty damn good job of working from home. And now it just feels like people are using the excuse of, like, oh, well, you need FaceTime or whatever, just to justify the fact that I spent millions of dollars on a new office and I look like a giant ass.
TIM: Sell it.
ADRIANA: Right? For real.
TIM: Sell the building, rent it out. Yeah, turn it into residential, man. There's a lot of people that need homes right now, you know what I'm saying?
ADRIANA: Yeah. So true. Yeah. Even in Toronto, where I'm at...mega, mega housing crisis. And yet you've got all these people, all these organizations with back to the office mandates for these downtown high rises just like, turn them into freaking condo buildings.
TIM: You...there's also, like, the other congestion, like, infrastructural problems you create by having. But I think more than anything else, it's also like people who have built an environment at home that really works for them, and then you tell, hey, I need you to come back into this open office. Hard floors, LED lighting, fluorescence, like, no, I'm...not blah desks. I'm not here for that.
ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah.
TIM: No control over your environment. Yeah, I would rather not. And that will have an impact on people's mental health, like, for folks that are not into talking to everybody. And what I think is so funny is like, well, people got lonely. I'm like, great, those people can come back into the office.
ADRIANA: Yep. Yep.
TIM: I'm not saying don't have an office, but if you want to go in there, go in there, get around the other people, right? You don't have to force everybody to do it, man. I promise you, right?
ADRIANA: Yeah.
TIM: If people won't go into the office without you forcing them to come in the office, that should tell you something.
ADRIANA: Yep. Oh, yeah. I totally agree. And then I feel bad for the poor folks who are mandated back to the office. Like, oh, you have to go back, like, three days a week, and then they go to the office to go to Zoom meetings. Great. I could have done that at home. Thanks. And now I have to dress fancy to sit at an office for a Zoom meeting.
TIM: I think a long story short is that we can go a long way in kind of recognizing where people are with mental health. We go a long way to helping people out with that. But most importantly, the thing we need to do is we need to talk about it and talk about it earnestly and what's in vulnerability and talk about like, this is what works for me, this doesn't work for me, things like that. Maybe I'll have you on for a stream or something like that.
One point, because I definitely am going to talk about psychedelics and mental health and how that's helped me. But people have interest in it. But do we talk about it? Because I know when I was coming up it was like, oh, if you do psychedelics, you're going to be some stoned out hippie on the streets. I'm like, I make a lot of money in my job. There are a lot of stigmas we have to break on how people medicate and self-medicate and how they deal with things. And I think that the better environment we set up for folks to have these conversations, the more illuminated we'll all get.
ADRIANA: And that's why I'm so very happy that you were able to come on and share your stories and struggles around mental health. Because we need to keep these communications channels open so that more people can feel comfortable about sharing their stories, so we can help each other as a community and destigmatize this whole thing around mental health. Because healthy mind and body equals healthy human.
TIM: Yeah. A rising tide lifts all ships. You create a good developer experience by giving them an experience. It has to be a holistic view on developer experience. You can give them all the tools in the world you want, but if they're sad as fuck, right, it doesn't matter.
ADRIANA: Yeah. And it's reflected in your organization's outward persona, right? It really is. It's like when you bake angry, it comes out in your baking. Code angry, it comes out in your coding or whatever.
TIM: Yeah, I love that because I think about my grandmother when she would argue with my granddad because my grandmother's Mexican when she would argue with my granddad and she would make salsa or chile. We knew as soon as we heard them arguing that we were going to be in for it. At dinner time, we knew we were in for it.
ADRIANA: Oh, my God.
TIM: Boy, she was cooking mad.
ADRIANA: Damn. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, do you have any final parting thoughts or advice or anything that you want to share with our audience?
TIM: I think, honestly, talk about your mental health struggles as openly as you feel comfortable and if you don't feel comfortable, reach out to some folks who have said that they're open to talking with you. I am always open to it. I may not have the capacity at that time and I'll let you know, but I will be like, hey, yeah, let me talk about I'm happy to hear about it, right? Just talk to somebody. Start there, right. And understand that you are not alone. You don't have to deal with this alone. If your support network is not doing what it needs to do, then I don't want to say get a new support network, but widen your net, right?
There are folks out there that will bear the burden with you. For sure.
ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's really important to remember that there are good people out there who are willing to help us out, so making sure that you connect, find those people in your life.
TIM: Yeah, absolutely.
ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Tim, for geeking out with me today yet again. Y'all don't forget to subscribe.
TIM: Thank you, Adriana. I really appreciate it.
ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, no problem. Y'all don't forget to subscribe. And be sure to check out the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time....
TIM: Peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA: Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Vilella. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the Socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.
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