You’re only as good as your last good deed – Nick Weaver – Ep 73

John Mark Troyer – The Geek Whisperers

Nick Weaver has a full stack beard

Nick Weaver is the Director, SDI Labs at Intel. He has written a lot of demos in his time. How did he get from IT geek to exploring cloud management and automation for Intel?

Nick is so awesome our show notes can only consist of transcripts of things he said on the podcast:

2:01 You make dumb decisions and then you make more dumb decisions and more dumb decisions and then accidentally making a good decision? That was kind of my 20’s.

3:32 Sometimes you make people mad if you actually make things better.

4:18 Wait a minute! I’m good at this and those guys suck, so screw you guys.

4:36 I’m one of those people, if I see somebody bullying somebody who is junior, I’m not very nice to them.

5:12 Some people in IT, they like to build mansions. You shouldn’t be building mansions. You should be building places for other people to live in and you move on to the next thing.

8:54 The first EMC demo: If you had a good vision to do something, and you took the responsibility to execute it, they’d let you go do it. And I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, to be bold enough to say it, and then I had amazing leadership

9:56 How did he know how to do it? “The older you get, I think the more you kind of start to wonder, wait a second, how do I tick? Why do I do that?”

11:01 Did I know I could actually pull it off? No. I was taking a huge risk and I was scared, you know, out of my pants. And don’t get me wrong. You should have my wife on the podcast and have her explain where she literally had to come bring me food because I wouldn’t eat for 20 hours from sitting and trying to work with one stupid problem. And a lot of times the problems were things where I just didn’t understand the domain. Something that would be really simple to somebody else. But I refused to give up, because I had to get this thing done.

11:31 At EMC at the time, and it’s infected me now because it’s just how I want to work, there was just this camaraderie thing, right? It wasn’t like I was just doing this for myself. Chad did a great job of saying, “Hey, we’re all in this together, and you represent each other,” and I met these guys and girls and they were amazing, and they were such a great team, and I wanted to do something for them too. … It wasn’t like Nick Weaver did this, it was like The vSpecialists – our pre-sales team just build a keynote demo!

15:08 I’ve had people come up and compliment me out of the blue. And I appreciate that, but what I want to hear is, I like the part where they say, “Dude, you made something easier for me.” That’s the part I appreciate. I don’t want to ever get addicted to the idea that people think I’m awesome, because you’re only as good as what you affect them with. … You’re only as good as your last good deed.

21:34 There was this point where the only way to get better at what I was, was for me to stop being the only one. And it was really yo stop being the hero.

27:48 It’s every day you wake up. It’s like what are you going to do today that’s going to be interesting? Are you going to challenge yourself or are you just going to skate through and entertain yourself?

33:19 I worked under Chad Sakac who is just like a monster, right? The guy can just, like, communicate, he can make people feel good about themselves, he can figure out any technology at the drop of a hat. The guy is amazing. And I wanted to be like him – I still want to be like him. But the biggest thing I realize is that I want to be like him the way I am.

35:38 Just don’t look at somebody else and say “I want to be them.”

36:48 Never ever judge somebody too early. Never meet somebody, assign what you think they are, and not give them a chance. Two reasons: Number 1, your’e an asshole. Number 2, you have no idea how positive that person may affect your life, and you completely cut that out of your life.

Nick’s blog: Nickapedia
Nick’s Twitter account: @lynxbat