Welcome to episode 241 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_) – two technology professionals with backgrounds in IT Operations and Sales Engineering on a mission to help others accelerate career progression and increase job satisfaction by bringing listeners the advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 1 of an interview with Ken Collins, discussing his focus on quality of output in his work, how early exposure to technical community shaped his career, his decision to become technical and pursue programming, and learning methods that have proved valuable to him along the way.

Original Recording Date: 08-12-2023

Topics – Meet Ken Collins, Quality and Process vs. Knowledge, The Fruits of Maternal Community Sponsorship, The Self-Taught Programmer, Learning Methods, Play to Learn

2:38 – Meet Ken Collins

• Ken Collins is a principal engineer at Custom Ink and has been with the company for around 10 years. He’s been programming for 15-16 years at this point, starting as an engineer and gaining expertise from there.
  • You can follow Ken on social media platforms (normally with the handle metaskills). Find him on Twitter @metaskills.
  • Ken has been recognized as an AWS Serverless Hero and is interested in all things cloud related with a heavy focus on AWS Lambda.
  • Ken has worked on open source projects related to the Ruby programming language and the Roby on Rails framework. You can find Ken on Github at metaskills.
  • Ken tells us lately, similar to many others, he’s been focused on AI (artificial intelligence).
• Ken had a paper route as a young man and worked to design graphics on Xerox computers as a 15-year-old.
• Previously working as a graphic artist setup Ken’s career in the early 2000s to work for a digital media and ad company called Stratum New Media. Ken was in his early 20s at the time.
  • These companies understood that they could put media online, track it, and understand it.
  • Ken took a role in project management (or middle management) focused on running different projects. He was not a creative in the role, and Ken says he did not know technology other than maybe how to code a HTML page.
  • Ken didn’t have a lot of empathy at the time or a lot of knowledge. Much of it was figuring out how to get things accomplished based on the company’s tendency to sell things and figure it out as they went. During this type there was a lot of hype.
  • Older companies would put the creatives together and tell them to figure things out, but for a media company, they had to put the creatives together with the technical people.
  • Previous work on optimizing print and production methods helped Ken land the role at Stratum.

6:04 – Quality and Process vs. Knowledge

• When did Ken realize he enjoyed creative type work?
  • To take an example, right now in Ken’s work with generative AI technologies he’s using something called a RAG or Retrieval-Augmented Generation which extends the AI model with data it does not have with some prompt embedding and extraction techniques.
  • Ken has built the above and has been having a lot of fun putting polish on the user interface (or UI) – changing colors and sizes of text boxes based on what a user does.
  • “I’ve always liked putting the finishing touches on things, so I think maybe the answer to the question is one of quality versus creative design….So I think the word is quality, not necessarily creative.” – Ken Collins, on doing creative work
  • When Ken was a project manager at Stratum, he didn’t feel like the output of creative and technical teams was always of the quality he felt it should be.
  • John says this sounds like Ken is crossing over into user experience (a differentiated term in our industry from user interface that refers to a good feeling someone gets when using a product).
  • Ken mentions quality can also be efficiency. At the time when he worked as a graphic artist, ads would go in a paper book similar to the yellow pages. Many companies needed to optimize the process of putting ads into this.
    • Ken shares a story of going deep into using RIP software for this kind of project and then later was able to use it again at Custom Ink as part of the t-shirt screen printing process.
  • Ken thinks quality is often determined by whether something is efficient or works well (like UX / user experience), but we should also consider whether something provides business value (which is the 3rd leg of the triangle). Ken won’t sacrifice any one of these for the others. When you create something there is always a goal.
  • Nick suggests another element here in that reaching a certain level of quality in a process or the output from it can provide a considerable sense of accomplishment and meaning.
• How did Ken provide feedback to others and teach them to put more quality into their work?
  • There has been a constant struggle for Ken with the “I can do it” mentality over the course of his career (which has taken him through lucky chances, making connections, and growing).
  • Ken feels technology can allow one person to do / accomplish so much.
  • Ken isn’t sure he has enough career experience to really speak to how to elicit greater quality from people in large teams.
  • Ken struggles with process vs. knowledge and whether process alone can get you to the outcome you want. It certainly did not while Ken was at Stratum. He remembers sometimes getting a product that would barely meet customer requirements in its functionality.
  • “Yeah, I definitely haven’t figured out how to really sort of do that, but I’ve been leaning more toward knowledge and less process and then trying to figure out how to give people purpose and context to let them grow towards that knowledge.” – Ken Collins, on knowledge vs. process
  • John likes the idea of invoking someone’s passion in their work. Process can provide a good framework, and it may be that we don’t need to follow someone’s specific process so much as making sure our process meets specific quality requirements / standards.
  • Nick suggests we cannot focus so much on the process that we don’t have the knowledge or forget the overarching goal of what you’re doing.
  • Ken thinks the context of the teams matters also. A team at a startup will be less process and more goal oriented, while teams at large organizations could be more focused on process.
  • Ken shares a story from around 5 years ago (before he became a principal engineer). When he didn’t see value in the work he was doing which others had deemed important, he reached out to a VP at the company to give that feedback.
    • This VP shared with Ken that the work was for the Custom Ink lab and the importance of people having an emotional feeling when using the product (for their business or for their family) to design t-shirts.
    • Once Ken understood the goal and the intent, he communicated what the team was doing was not the way to achieve the desired outcome and made a suggestion for a better way to get there (which later won Ken an innovation award at Custom Ink).
    • “I’ve always wanted to try to do that for other people, to give them that really sort of visceral, emotional context and purpose. It can’t be purpose alone, right. There’s got to be some strategy. You can’t say ‘I want to win the chess game’ and that’s enough. There are certain ways to move the pieces to get that to happen.” – Ken Collins
    • Nick suggests communicating the goal and how people can contribute to it or asking people for ideas on how they can contribute helps create more engagement in getting to the outcome.
  • Ken wishes he knew these things earlier. He was a young product manager, and it wasn’t his role to be quite so thoughtful when it came to outputs. The internet was still very new.

15:24 – The Fruits of Maternal Community Sponsorship

• When asked about finding communities to be a part of during this time in his life, Ken tells us he kind of worked to get fired at Stratum.
  • Ken worked for a “New Jersey aggressive” manager with very little empathy, it caused a lot of friction.
  • Ken was eventually terminated but says it was a good thing for him. He embraced the change and learned HTML and CSS.
    • “Ok, I am going to try to start getting technical.” – Ken Collins, on his mindset after leaving Stratum
• There was a short time spent as a marketing director, but after that Ken really wanted to learn programming. Due to his mother’s influence, Ken was exposed to technology at a young age.
  • Ken remembers attending disk notching parties as a young man when computers were just taking off and how it formed a little community shaped by the social interaction and shared interests.
  • Ken felt it was time to seek out another community like the ones he was exposed to in his youth and found a Linux group to attend.
  • At one particular meeting Ken ran into an old friend who had started an internet service provider (which that this time would have been a competitor to AOL). Ken mentions making that connecting started something which has become a theme in his career.
    • “It’s this idea that I know my career is always going to be changing and evolving….I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that it’s going to be through influences with the help of people that I meet along the way.” – Ken Collins, on the importance of connections to others in our career
    • Ken points out a dualism between being able to do anything and not being able to do it alone. This stresses the importance of meeting / finding people, talking with them, and learning from them.
  • The friend Ken ran into at the Linux user group (Mark) ended up giving Ken his first programming job at a time when Ken was not a programmer. While a bit of a risk on both sides, Ken feels it was the connection to a friend and the risk he personally took to pursue something else in his career.
    • Ken highlights the fact that so many opportunities over the course of his career have happened as a result of making connections, each time resulting in growth whether the connection helped him or he helped someone else.
• Ken wrote this blog post about his mother’s influence on his career.
  • Ken is from Portsmouth, Virginia and tells us it is a sister city to San Diego, California when it comes to being a Naval town.
  • In the 1960s, Ken’s mother was one of the first female engineers in the Naval shipyard. Pictures of her were used for public relations and recruitment for engineering as a male-dominated industry.
  • Ken’s mother had the “I can do it myself” attitude also. She kept bringing computers home when Ken and his twin brother were younger.
    • Ken remembers coming home from summer camp to find an Apple IIE as one example.
    • She would hold software parties at the house with other computer enthusiasts. Ken remembers helping to get ready for these parties.
  • Ken also remembers going to the Mac (Macintosh) user group in the 1980s.
    • This was another user group Ken reached out to later in life which ended up creating a connection.
  • “I think her love of computers, her love of doing the things she liked to do was a huge inspiration on me.” – Ken Collins, speaking to his mother’s influence on his career
  • John points out the pattern we’re seeing across different guests – associating oneself with a community, participating in that community, giving back to that community, and then making connections with others.
    • Those who follow the pattern outlined here often got something back from the community they gave back to when making career / job transitions or looking for guidance.
    • The genesis of this pattern for Ken was his mother’s sponsorship of community.
    • The inspiration for Ken’s blog post referenced above was reflecting back on his mother’s influence and wanting to highlight matriarchal influences many of us have but perhaps do not recognize.
    • “My dad had buddies. He never had communities. It was just always a few buddies, but my mom was definitely more into the communities.” – Ken Collins, on his mother’s participation in technical community groups
  • Ken remembers sitting in the back seat of the car going to the Mac user group with his mom in the 1980s, and the Mac was in the front seat with a fastened seatbelt.
  • John and Ken share some fun historical context on notching 5.25" floppy disks by hand to write more data.

23:51 – The Self-Taught Programmer

• During a period of months living in the friction that existed between Ken and his boss, Ken learned to stand up for himself.
  • Sadly, even employer / employee relationships can be abusive.
  • Ken did not come from a wealthy family, and at the time, switching jobs was quite risky.
  • There are unemployment laws in Virginia that protect people who have been terminated from a company, allowing them to use the unemployment funds to retrain and re-enter the workforce. That’s exactly what Ken did.
  • Ken says he tried to resign the right way, but the HR department encouraged him to take a couple weeks off instead. The time off was at an all-inclusive Caribbean resort that was available at no cost through his employer’s partnerships (which of course did not fix the root problem).
• Many times we idolize others who appear to be successful (billionaires, those who have achieved impressive feats, etc.).
  • “You’re just looking at somebody who has rolled the dice a bunch of times and has ended up being favorable.” – Ken Collins, on our perception of successful people
• There is a lot of work to increase your luck when it comes to continuing to “roll the dice” and doing different things according to Ken. As he does different things, Ken feels very fortunate in the career opportunities he’s had over time.
  • “I always tell people ‘don’t do what I do. Make your own luck. Do your own things different ways.’” – Ken Collins
  • Ken tells us he is self-taught and didn’t go to a college. However, people listening may have a different journey entirely and might need to make their luck in a different way with a bootcamp certificate or a certification, for example. And that’s ok. The way Ken made his luck for job transitions or what he calls his “dice roll” may not be what you need to do.
• John mentioned people who are extremely successful might be good at some things, but it might something make the person think they are good at everything.
  • What if we asked someone who became a billionaire from starting a business for advice on starting a small business?
  • Likely when the billionaire started their business the landscape was different (economic conditions, technologies, people available to work, etc.). We could probably learn some strategic lessons from the billionaire, but how many tactical lessons could we extract? There might not be as many of those due to differing holistic contexts.
  • John really likes the fact that Ken doesn’t fall into the pattern of “I did it this way, so it is an eternally valid way of doing it for everybody.”
  • Ken does a lot of open source work which gets him some visibility also. It’s easy to see what he’s doing from his metaskills GitHub page.
  • Ken doesn’t feel anything should be distilled down from the top as a statement such as “if only you did this you would be a millionaire like me.”
  • Something that’s worked for Ken that he would constantly recommend to others is making the connections with others and helping people out.
  • Also, Ken says helping teach and share knowledge helps him learn it. This process can also lead to making connections.
  • Ken feels he may be slightly introverted. After a couple of hours talking with a group of people he is ready to go home.
    • “I need to fill the batteries up, but I sort of exhaust them quickly at the same time. But the connections are worth it, ultimately worth it.” – Ken Collins on making connections and energy management
• Going back to the Linux user group interaction that led to a new job for Ken…did he communicate that he wanted to make a shift in his career?
  • Ken says he came in as a strong candidate in addition to the relationship with his friend.
  • Ken was already reading books about programming and trying to build out his own application. He was also attending conferences and talking with and learning from people. Ken calls this “doing all the right things to educate” himself.
  • Ken had a working portfolio when he reached the first interview. Once he got there it was a matter of connections.

30:46 – Learning Methods

• “I have this really bad habit of learning a lot so that I can know a little.” – Ken Collins, on his learning processes and seeing the pattern happen over and over again
• Ken references a T-shaped engineer or a T-shaped body of knowledge with a broad expertise at the top of the T and then a very deep expertise in an area.
  • Ken also refers to his knowledge like a Banyan tree shaped body of knowledge. A Banyan tree has roots that grow up and become trunks themselves. Ken says he might not actually need every trunk in his tree of knowledge.
  • Listen also to the way Chris Williams describes the term T-shaped engineer in Episode 229.
  • Ken’s friend Mark who eventually hired him as a programmer was very good at finding the one thing he needed to learn to accomplish a task and focusing heavily on that one thing. Ken, on the other hand, was more interested in learning about everything in a " knowledge sphere" and then make his own decisions on how to navigate it.
    • Using this methodology Ken ends up learning more than he needs to learn, but it helps him gain adjacent knowledge. He will from there try to find out what he really needs to know (which he again refers to as Banyan tree learning or Banyan shaped knowledge).
    • Ken provides an example of spending 2 weeks learning 5th level database normalization when he was learning to program. He didn’t need to go as deep as he ended up getting to accomplish a task.
    • Ken has seen other people be able to acquire new skills better, and the feedback from Mark was similar when he provided the job opportunity for Ken. It was not feedback Ken needed to take, however.
  • Ken tells us the learning practice he shared above has helped him move into different places.
    • Getting the strong “trunk knowledge” from technologies like serverless with AWS, databases with Rails, or AI (retrieval augmentation and embedding) provides adjacent knowledge that is good for solutioning and architecting.
  • Nick likes the idea of starting big / broad and then narrow in on the exact concept / item needed to do something. And it’s also about getting better at the time it takes between starting broad and getting down to specific required learning.
    • Sometimes you don’t know what learning is required.
    • Ken says this is lot like his learning of AI technologies right now. So many out there want you to buy something in this space.
    • “It’s hard to figure out what’s needed and what’s not and what’s sort of the brass tacks of the solution and the architecting.” – Ken Collins, on determining the required learning to work with AI technologies
    • Maybe instead of required learning we need the required dependencies for the learning item.
  • We’re really talking about how you / we learn.
    • “Things are changing fast, and they always will. So how you learn and how you solve problems is if not more important than what you know as a certain language….” – Ken Collins, on learning in this age
• Was the theme of learning why Ken chose the name metaskills?
  • Ken had just read a chapter in a Ruby book about metaprogramming. He decided to go get a domain and felt he needed to be blogging.
  • At the time Ken was still heavily influenced by The Cluetrain Manifesto and its tenants of marketing.
  • Buying the domain and claiming the name was really more of a branding exercise based on learning Ruby metaprogramming idea. Overall, it has worked out positively for Ken.
  • Ken describes himself as focusing on the meta, which entails things like asking why we’re doing specific work or what the purpose of the work is.
  • “It’s not the skill of programming but the skill of skill acquisition.” – John White, speaking to the theme of this part of the discussion with Ken
  • Ken feels like this theme of learning or the skill of skill acquisition played out in his first programming job, but he also had some dead ends.
    • At one time Ken thought he was going to be a Drupal programmer, but he ended up not needing to become an expert in it or pursue it in greater depth.
    • After this came Adobe Flash and motion graphics, which didn’t pan out across the industry.
• Another part of learning is knowing when to stop. Ken wishes he had more check-ins with peers going through the same thing as a check point.
  • John refers to this as a baleen whale method of knowledge acquisition. When not focusing on the exact thing you need, there is potential for getting distracted and walking down dead ends. Maybe over a long period of time this approach is net beneficial.

37:05 – Play to Learn

• Ken would caveat here that he believes in a form of play that shows itself in tinkering.

  • “There’s value in play. There’s value in exploring.” – Ken Collins
  • Corporations may call this hill climbing or doing something for the learning / experience. Be sure to read the linked article by Lisa Blanchard.
  • Ken says they have embraced this idea at Custom Ink. They try to get many of the engineers to dedicate their Fridays to tinkering with something (or “play”). This could result in meeting a product need that isn’t visible to people in upper management
  • “Go learn. Learn for the business value, but also just play around. And sometimes, you’ll get lucky….It’s just really playing around creatively and technically on both ides of a problem.” – Ken Collins, on the importance of play in learning and a little perspective on how he does it
    • Ken describes his method of play like building a transcontinental railroad from two different sides and then seeing if the sides can connect / meet.
    • Nick compares this to sampling a number of foods at an Asian buffet and only after that constructing the ideal plate of food based on the experience (assuming knowing what you would like or not like when you walked into the buffet was not possible).

• Mentioned in the Outro

  • Special thanks to former guest Chris Williams for suggesting we have Ken on the show. Please reach out to us on Twitter if you have a suggestion for a guest!
  • Do we take time to reflect on the influence on our career our parents or other have had and feel gratitude? Probably not often.
  • Ken knew to have a portfolio of work ready when he started pursuing jobs as a programmer. Do we have a portfolio of work ready for our next interview? Remember work in your home lab counts here!
  • Your path may be different than Ken’s or others on the show. You might need to take the approach Kenneth Ellington did in Episode 239 when he spoke with a cybersecurity director and got suggestions for progressing into the field.
    • If you aren’t sure what you might need to be doing or studying to get into a next role, try doing some informational interviews with hiring managers. Listen to Episode 169 with Mike Wood for more context.
  • Ken mentioned trying to determine when to stop when you go deep learning in an area. Michael Levan addressed this in Episode 183 and that we should (hopefully) enjoy the process of learning.
  • When is the last time you tinkered with something (a form of play) just to learn? Try taking 30 minutes to do that this week.

Contact us if you need help on the journey, and be sure to check out the Nerd Journey Podcast Knowledge Graph.