Real Work, Real Life
Real Work, Real Life
Technical Account Manager
On this week’s episode of Real Work, Real Life, I’m talking with Nathan, a technical account manager. Generally, technical account managers are the technical support liaison for clients of software companies. They form and maintain relationships with their clients, help them resolve issues with the products, and make sure they’re are able to use it effectively, which is really important because software can often be a huge investment for a client. We cover so much in this episode, including thoughts on the future of this work with the continued rise of AI, the challenges of working in a service role (even a highly skilled one), the transition from in office to remote work, and how this role fits into the typical software company structure. If enjoyed this episode, you might also like my interviews with Sam, a Customer Success Manager, and Jake, a Software Engineer, you can find them linked below!
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Transcripts are now available here: www.realworkreallife.com
Nathan TAM
[00:00:00] Welcome to real work, real life, where I talk to real people about what they do for work and what that means for their lives. Today, I'm talking with Nathan, a technical account manager. Generally technical account managers are the technical support liaison for clients of software companies. They form and maintain relationships with their clients, help them resolve issues with their products and make sure they're able to use it effectively, which is really important because software can be a huge investment for clients. We cover so much in this episode, including thoughts on the future of this work with the continued rise of AI. The challenges of working in a service role, even a highly skilled one. The transition from in-office to remote work and how this role fits into the typical software company structure. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like my interviews with Sam, a customer success manager and Jake, a software engineer I'll link both of those in the show notes.
I really enjoyed this discussion. And I think you will too. So let's get into it.
Emily: Thank [00:01:00] you so much for being here, Nathan. So what do you do for work?
Nathan: I am a technical account manager, which is a meaningless set of words. Basically what that, and it actually, even in my industry, it doesn't mean the same thing across across different jobs. But what that means is I do technical support at a very high level. For very large corporations like fortune 500 level corporations for a specific piece of software.
If they have problems with the software, they get in touch with me and I'm their guy.
Emily: Oh, okay. So I have interviewed a customer success manager. Where does that fall? Is that similar? Is that related?
Nathan: Very similar. A customer success manager, although it is different for a company, right? Cause I know some people who have a role that says technical account manager, but it's what I see as a, as a customer success manager. In my role, a customer success manager essentially handles the political aspect of it.
which frees me up to just, you know, be [00:02:00] a mechanic and, and break it down to that point. But we, I usually work hand in hand with, with customer success managers.
Emily: Oh, okay. Oh, cool. It's fun to be able to kind of see both sides of that. Are you working primarily with technical people or are you working primarily with like end users on the other
Nathan: Oh, I, I do not work with end users. I avoid end users like the plague. Well, my son, the, the software I support is is cloud based. So it has, so, you know, you do have individuals Who have it on their computers, but they shouldn't really be messing with it. Usually what I'm dealing with, let's say somebody has a a conflict between two pieces of software.
Like they've installed my software and now their other piece of software is running Slowly, they talk to their it, and then their, it gets in hold of me and usually then it v comes man in the middle sometimes. And that's, you know, usually how it shakes out. I talk to it e every once in a while we'll bring the customer, you know, the end user on the phone.
Depending how technical they are, but I mean, you [00:03:00] know, if it's the, if it's the CIO, I don't want to talk to him.
Emily: You just mute them and you talk back and forth and
Nathan: Yeah, yeah, I,
Emily: the chats come in.
Nathan: I avoid the C level as much. Nobody, nobody wants to talk to C level. That's, that's the general part of my job. The, the customer success manager, they have to talk to C level all the time, which is why I'm not one of
Emily: Yes. Okay. That makes perfect sense. And that's kind of a helpful delineation between the two. And I'm actually thinking about my own work interactions with customer success managers. And now, yeah, I get it. I'm I'm there now with you,
Nathan: we're lucky enough that the way that the contracts work is that there's usually like only four or five people at a specific company who can talk to me um, otherwise, cause,
Emily: to speak with you.
Nathan: well, at one of my previous jobs doing this, my previous employer, there was a customer who essentially everybody was allowed to call the TAM.
And this was a, it was a, I can't remember this, but it was a judicial organization or something like that. I think for [00:04:00] like an entire state and everybody had the TAM's phone number. It was the worst possible thing because it's like, Hey, I can't log in. It's like, I'm not even the person to help you with that.
You have called the wrong person. It was a nightmare
Emily: Was the state Wyoming, because if there's one thing I've learned doing this podcast is that Wyoming is like the one outlier in every state that I've ever talked to.
Nathan: I, you know, it was a long time ago, so I can't remember, but it would not shock me. That would, that probably would line up. Yeah.
Emily: Everyone I talk to with licensing requirements is like, yeah, this is true across most states, except Wyoming who does their own super weird thing.
Nathan: I, you know, I don't think I've, I'm trying to think if I've come, I know there's a lot of States I have come across in different divisions and Wyoming is one I don't think I have.
Emily: There's not a lot
Nathan: Like Montana, Colorado, close everything. But why I think I've run the peripheral periphery of Wyoming.
Emily: I love it. So how did you get there? What's your educational background like? [00:05:00] And what sort of education and experience would you need to be in this role?
Nathan: So I've been doing this since 2003 and it was honestly, my, my degree is in English. And it's. Absolutely not necessary in any way,
Emily: Oh, you don't require an English degree to do this job.
Nathan: Well, you know, when I started, it didn't require a degree at all. Most people just came in off the street if you knew anything about computers. Because it was 2003, nobody knew anything about computers. And so if you, if you So if you didn't know anything, you could get hired on what happened with me is I was living in a small town, and I know knew more about computers than anybody.
But that just meant I knew how to pirate Windows XP. And that was it. That was the extent of, but I knew more than anybody else. So I came up to the town I'm in now, which is a much larger town. And I figured, well, you know, I have a college degree now, everybody's going to be clamoring at my doorstep to hire me.
And [00:06:00] that very much not the case. So I, I ended up just going to a tech agency and one of the jobs they had was was technical support. And this is basic level technical support. This is you know, you're when I've got a virus on my computer and who do you call, you call this number. And that's it was a very strange experience because I walk in and essentially it was just a ton of people.
Applying for the same job. And in this temp agency, you could tell, and I get interviewed by the guy who owned the temp agency and didn't know anything about technical stuff at all. So he was asking me questions like, what is the registry? I'm like, Oh, what do you know about the registry? I'm like, I know you shouldn't mess around with it.
He's like, sounds good enough to me. So I kind of stumbled into the job just because the guy who interviewed me had no idea what was going on. And. That job was a nightmare. I mean, that was straight up phone tech support, bottom level. And they train you. It's it's trial by fire. They, they, they tell you this in the training, it's trial by [00:07:00] fire.
We're going to train you for a month. Then we're going to put you on the phones. The typical phone agent doesn't last more than 18 months.
Emily: Oh my gosh. Oh,
Nathan: And here I am 20 something years later, I
Emily: Well, hopefully, I mean, yeah, you move out of the, like, your login. I'm locked out of my computer and up to more, more challenging, specialized questions.
Nathan: have much more challenging questions now, which are mostly everything's broken. I'm like, okay, well, I'll go get a developer and we'll fix it in three months. So that's a lot easier,
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So, if somebody wanted to have this sort of career path now, would they need an undergraduate degree in computer science or something like that? Or is this still the kind of role that you can sort of self train and get up to without a college degree? Mm hmm.
Nathan: you know I think the college degree would be the way to go. And I think internships is how we get young people. Most of the people in my role now [00:08:00] are old. I mean, I'm, I'm middle aged. Most of my coworkers are about the same age. We have a couple guys who are in their thirties, but I mean, that's about as young as we get.
So I think my company, we realized this was a problem. And so we started doing it in, you know, internships to bring people into the company and that had been quite successful. So I think that if you wanted to get into this, into this role, you could do it the way I do it. I did it. I think you can still at a lot of companies find.
Base base level technical support, but I don't advise it. It was rough. the first couple of months I'd wake up at And in nightmares that I was doing my job, I'd wake up and I'm like, why wait, I've already been at work for eight hours. And now I need to go up and go to work. No, it was really, really, really bad.
All right. From my, from my mental health, it was just debilitating.
Emily: yeah. Do
Nathan: So I w I wouldn't advise going that way. If you could, if you could get a degree, get an internship. Go in [00:09:00] that and then that gives you, I think that gives you a lot more options too. I mean, I've been in the support role itself the whole time. There were some options to branch off, but since I didn't really, you know, I don't know anything about sales. I don't know anything about, you know, the actual building of software. So I, I really couldn't spin off into those. I mean, I, I maybe could have, but I just wasn't comfortable doing it. Not with my background of, You know, speaking English.
So I just kind of stayed in the same place, which has worked out pretty well for me, I think in the long run.
Emily: Yeah, and you know, this is, I don't actually know what there is to learn from this, but I have realized talking to a lot of people that you might be able to have a really long and pretty happy career in a field and your first job can be awful. Like, it's almost like. Even if your first job is terrible, but you think you like the tasks, like don't give up because I've talked to so many people who are like, yeah, I've now worked in this field [00:10:00] for 20 years and I love it.
And I'm in a great spot, but my first job was absolutely terrible. You know, a horror show. I don't know what you learned from that because on the one hand I don't really want to tell people like stick it out. It's gonna get better because it can't guarantee that but it
Nathan: I almost feel like part of it is that at least in my role, I felt like I got taken advantage of a lot when I was younger, I would work hours where I wasn't really getting paid. you know, stuff like that. And I know a lot of a lot of young people now very strongly stand against that, which I think is magnificent.
And I know I do that now. Like my boss says, Hey, I need you to stay. I'm like, well, my boss knows better. My boss, you know, my boss knows, no, I'm not going to fly to site. I'm not getting, I don't want to get on an airplane. That's an incredibly stressful experience for me. I don't want to do it. It's not that I don't want to meet, you know, give me a customer that I can drive to and, and we'll talk.
I'm lucky that I have all these people that I'm currently working with. I've worked with for 20 years across multiple companies. And so they know me, [00:11:00] they you know, we, we have a really long, a long, strong, healthy relationship. And I think that's one of the benefits of working with the same people for a gazillion years.
Emily: And being a good coworker for a gazillion years, that's, that's the key right there. I mean, you can't just be with someone for a gazillion years. You have to also like prove yourself and show up all that time, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: people, I don't think. I can think of some specific instances where we have uh, yeah, divested ourselves from some co workers just because we didn't want to be around them anymore. That's actually pretty specific because, so I went I went from a large corporation doing the same kind of job, but it was a very large corporation, I think it was 10, 000 plus employees at the time to a startup. And what happened was, is that the large corporation was being broken up and a whole bunch of things were going on and getting purchased. And, and then the startup, a whole bunch of us moved over to this and we actually, I mean, it was nice having the ability to [00:12:00] go, Hey this person's applying. I'm like, Oh, don't hire them, do not hire them. And that was pretty nice that there were people that we, we very much knew were not. On the same wavelength of the rest of the team, and we could do that. We're a bit bigger now, and that's not really how it works four years, as four years ago. But it was, it was, that was one of the, I think, the nicest things about working at a startup.
Emily: Yeah. Did you like that move from a bigger company toward a start up?
Nathan: So the reason I did that was because I was going to be moved to a work from home position.
Emily: Mm hmm.
Nathan: butterfly, and so the idea of working from home sounded terrible. I mean, I used, I used to do, like, I had a whole, like my favorite project I ever did at my old job is I set up a video game room.
I managed to, I managed to get all this stuff purchased. I, I, and I built this huge video game room. I think we had like five or six giant big screens, all these Xboxes that were networked. We [00:13:00] networked together and we had computers and it was great. And then like maybe three months after I built it, yeah, we're going to shut down this site. Oh, you're killing me. But I mean, that, that was the kind of thing I like doing. That was my favorite project of my entire working career was building this and bringing people, not the stuff I, my day to day stuff that that's just, you know, what I do every day. This was fun. And so I, you know, there was a bunch of other things I would do along that lines.
And so working from home was not something I wanted to do. And so I got this new job and then three weeks or three months later, COVID.
Emily: They're like, jokes on you?
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the weird thing was, is that when they finally had us go back to the office, I didn't want to go back. I wanted, I actually went back, enjoyed it. And, but then I'm like, no, this, this isn't the way that offices were before.
And I don't think offices will ever be like that again. I think there was a, like the gold the golden age of office work or something.
I don't know.[00:14:00]
Emily: I wouldn't have called it that at the time, but I do know what
Nathan: Well, no, especially because, I mean, it was always us versus the man, upper management and I, I was being, you know, I feel like I'm being treated terrible all the time and, but we were so much stronger together as a unit because of that abuse, I guess, really for, for lack of a better
Emily: Trauma bonding. I think it's
Nathan: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, you know, it's funny, the, the, I think it was three years of working from home without having a choice.
And I went back to the office and I'm like, you know, I, I think I do like working from home better. And so now I'm, I'm able to work from home. And it's not just, you know, the thing is I found, and this is the silliest thing, is that the reason I don't like working in the office is because I spend so much time doing nothing.
Emily: Right.
Nathan: so much time where it's like I'm watching, I was just watching the clock. Because I had gotten my day's work done. What do I do now? And you know, the way my work, my way, my job works, there's kind of [00:15:00] a, you know, a firefighter aspect to it, where if nothing's broken,
Emily: Yeah. You're on call, essentially. You have to be there waiting, but there isn't anything to do if no one is calling you, right?
Nathan: right. And if I fix everything, It's fixed. You know, I sure another, another case can come in at any time. I only, I work a strict eight hour shift. I don't, I don't do on call on call. Yeah, I had a, a manager who's like, listen, so you work your eight hours, but you know, your salary. So if we call you outside of those hours, you, you mean we need you.
But if you're drunk, don't answer the phone. Okay.
I start drinking the moment I walk out my truck and into my house. I am,
I'm, I'm drinking from that moment.
Emily: just assume anytime you I'm plowed. Yeah. I mean,
I've timed it
Nathan: kind of been my mind's
sight for work in the
hung over is the only way I know how to work. So
Emily: So, would you, is on call like somewhat common in this role that there [00:16:00] would be other roles you could have where you might have to do a weekend or evenings and rotate that with
Nathan: yeah. yeah. I mean, our managers have to do that. We would, I mean, I I'm lucky enough to have, we have a pretty decent follow the sun system so that, you know, if at the end of my day, if I still have something needs to be worked on, I can, you know, talk to somebody who's in Japan or something and go, okay, I need somebody over here to take this and then they take it and then they pass it to somebody in Europe and the next morning I had to get it back again.
But I mean, some of our smaller organizations, sometimes that's not possible. And, and when I joined this company, we were pretty much moving out of that small organization thing. So we were able to do, I mean, I don't think I would work for a company that would want me to have proper 24 by seven on call because why would you want to talk to me at three a.
m.
Emily: ha ha ha ha
Nathan: am useless. I, the idea of waking somebody up because they know something.
Emily: Right.
Nathan: I'm not that guy.
Emily: Yeah. They
Nathan: I mean, if, I guess if I was a developer or somebody who, you know, wrote the [00:17:00] code, maybe, but I can't imagine why you would want to talk to somebody in technical support at, at, at their 3am. That doesn't make any sense.
And honestly, most of my customers, once I explained this logic, like, oh yeah. Oh, I totally wouldn't want to talk to you at 3am.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: I'll talk to the guy and, and, and, you know, wherever that's
That's
fine, just pick it, just pick it up in the morning.
Emily: Yes. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me and it is. It's like, you know, it's, it's go to sleep. Like what's, go. I mean, I, I'm sure there are urgent things that need to be done in 24 hours a day. That's probably not I don't want to make assumptions about people's 24 hour needs, So that's actually something to think about too. If you were thinking about this path that a smaller company, you might run into more of that than a larger company that can maybe have a little more supportive 24 hour support.
Nathan: so as part of the role I do now, I actually interview people, I do technical pre screen, so essentially I'm the first person they talk to when they apply for the job. And the question that comes up a lot because I'm, I, I, I, I'm [00:18:00] very charismatic on interview calls because I just like talking to new people. And so I become friends with everybody, which isn't really probably the smartest thing to do, but.
Emily: They're just left like, I thought we got along so well. You're
Nathan: Well, and the thing is, is
I have had a lot of them add me and it's, it, it's probably not the smartest thing, but if somebody is interviewing, I'm concerned about their wealth, their mental wellbeing, right?
That is the, like the most stressful kind of situation you've been in. And so I do my best in that role to, to make people feel better. But as part of that, they ask, they'll ask questions at the end of the call that They're the real questions they want to know, like, what is the work life balance? What is your, what is your day really look like?
And I have coworkers who will, who will kind of like, well, you know, and, but I'll, I'll just tell them exactly what it's like, because why would you want to join a job, you know, if, if it's not the right fit for you, it's not the right fit for you. And I think anybody who's applying for the job should be interviewing the company just as much as the company should be interviewing a person who's applying.[00:19:00]
So,
Emily: Yeah, you know, I actually do the same thing when I'm in an interview. If I'm not the hiring manager, especially if you're not the hiring manager, it's like ask away. And occasionally it does. Every once in a while it does backfire. I try to be like truly candid, like, yeah, Please ask, and I want to tell you the answer, but every once in a while I can tell someone like lets the guard down a little too much and I'm like, you're still interviewing, like, maybe if you could continue to put your best foot forward, even if you have to be, just pretend with your questions that you are in your best you,
yeah.
So you do have to be careful both ways, I guess.
Nathan: I think that's true.
Emily: fair to say. Okay. So can we talk a little bit about compensation and benefits? What does that look like? So if somebody were starting out and let's say they were called recent college graduate, what might they make starting out on this field?
And what is sort of the ceiling look like,
Nathan: So it's hard for me to say what the entry level looks like at this point, because it's, it's really, it's re [00:20:00] I mean, there's regional differences. I mean, I mean, if you take the job in San Francisco versus if you take the job in Wyoming um, you're going to have a very different
pay
experience.
Emily: to work. No, I'm just
Nathan: Right.
And, and the thing is, is that the the differences that nobody will tell you the science of why one place makes more than another place. And of course, and you're also competing against people who are outside of this country and the advent with everybody being remote. They can literally be anywhere as long as they're willing to be up this time zone.
So,
I think when I see when I started, I think 35 grand is a number that's in my head
Emily: hmm.
Nathan: years
ago. I'm not sure if that's right. Yeah. I want to say something closer to 60. Would be what I would expect to see.
Emily: Yeah, which would have 60 today.
Nathan: yeah. Yeah. that depends on you, that's
Emily: And that's yeah, let's just assume we're kind of like, medium sized city someplace in the U. S., a right. And in a corporate, in a, in a corporate technical [00:21:00] support level, as opposed to, you know, you know, somebody calling up wanting help with Facebook does there, there's going to be a difference there as well, because you have to have a certain amount of professionalism to even make it into the enterprise, the aspect of it, you know, when you're dealing with actual corporations and it.
Nathan: Man, the things I've, I've seen people get fired over that. It's like, what were you, what were you thinking? You can't, and the number of times I've seen people push the mute button and start swearing out loud and the number of times take that number and it's not nearly as low, the number of people who thought they hit the mute button before they did that.
Emily: Just don't do it!
Nathan: Oh man. It's I've, I've seen that go wrong so many times or, or screen pop ups when somebody else is sharing their screen and you send you send somebody a message in the, in your instant messaging software and it pops up in front of the
customer. I've had that
Emily: the window, not the screen. When will people learn? Yeah.
Nathan: put that, just close that other thing altogether.
But the ceiling so I'm [00:22:00] making around 120. Base pay. And I am one of the lower paid in my organization, as I understand it. Now on top of that, you have regular bonuses which is nice. Um, Look like, you know, 10 to 15 that can add 10 to 15 like that. There's also stock options. Honestly, I hate, I hate the whole stock thing because it's just, it's gambling.
and if you're in a startup before they go public, there's this thing called AMT tax. And nobody seems to understand it. Like nobody in the world. Uh, What I understand is that the first year I got it, I had to pay 40 grand in taxes
Emily: I,
Nathan: zero zero zero zero.
Emily: that tax situation with the With the AMT, I don't, it, Someone, surely Someone,
can
explain it, but it
Nathan: Nobody,
Emily: complicated.
Nathan: I have a relative who is a CPA and was a CPA for many, many, many years. Has no, he goes, I can't [00:23:00] understand that. He taught. At the college level. he, he can't, he just cannot wrap his head around AMT. Nobody understands what AMT is.
Emily: Were you able to, in that case, so you paid tax, Were you able to sell the stock for more than the
Nathan: I haven't sold, I haven't sold any of the stock yet
because the stock was
it.
Emily: have, if you wanted to?
Nathan: I could have sold. Yeah, I had enough stock, but it would have taken a pretty big chunk out of it. The thing, the thing that sucked for me is that we had our IPO and it shot up to 70, right? And that's what price I had to pay the AMT on.
It then went to 30. I was a paper millionaire for like 30 seconds. And then it dropped to 30, but I, but because it was up to 70, that's what I had to pay. Theoretically, at some point, I might get some money back from that tax when I actually sell, because there's no way that I should have to pay that much into it.
But
Emily: don't understand
why you don't have to pay the tax on the [00:24:00] when you
Nathan: When you actually pay it. Yeah, I initially am T was designed for rich people.
I am. And but they never Congress never adjusted the amount of money level. And so as soon as as far as I understand, as soon as you get into six figures, that's when it suddenly hits the fan. Well, I mean, that's not a huge amount of money anymore.
It's not like you could buy a house with that in the same way you could 20 years ago.
Emily: Yeah, I guess
that makes sense, because if you have like a billion dollars in the stock market, I still want some taxes
Nathan: Exactly. Right. When, when, when Elon Musk gets a whole bunch of, of stock options, he should pay tax on that. Sure. That's fine. I am not Elon Musk.
Emily: So would, would this role ever like, Become a CIO, or become a BP, or like, would this role, yeah, so
Nathan: I've I've seen it
happen. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it happen, but I mean, everybody who, who, who [00:25:00] has it happened, it has confront or not confirmation bias, which the bias for when you're survivor bias.
So, yeah. So everybody was like, well, you know, I started, I started on the ground level, this company. It's like, yeah, but how many, Hundreds of thousands did not begin to become the CEO.
That being said, I mean you know, the, the person that the last company I was at, the first CEO, he invented the software. Uh, The guy at the current company I'm at, the CEO invented the software. So, I mean, you, you can do that, but honestly, I think you'd be better off inventing software. If you could figure out how to do
Emily: should think about inventing
Nathan: some, do some
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: software inventing and you know, you'll be the next Elon Musk. Just.
Emily: What's the don't go, just don't go all the way with that and just stop when everybody likes you and you'd be good to go.
Yeah. I don't see what's wrong with that. you talked a little bit about the hours that you typically are working like a pretty regular eight hour shift. Do you feel like you've had access [00:26:00] to different schedule options, Good work life balance, or is this really a like most places you will be working eight to whatever, eight to four with a set break, or is there more flexibility than
Nathan: so with the, with the, the regular base level technical support agent, you're, you're working a schedule. You gotta meet metrics. You gotta, you know, you have to do you have your regular breaks, you have your regular lunch. You have somebody who's really, really concerned about those things. Um, At my level your managers.
No, you're an adult. And especially with, you know, especially in this particular company with my particular group of people I've worked with forever. They, they know they can trust me to put in the amount of time that's needed. And it's not really because the, the number one metric for me is, are your customers happy?
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: And if they are, no other metric is really going to shoot you down.[00:27:00]
Emily: Yeah,
Nathan: I mean, it's like, Oh, well, you know, you're, you're, you're not, you, you didn't solve enough cases fast enough. It's like, well, yeah, that's because. These guys, all of their cases went to development. They had to wait for a new version of the software.
It's like, Oh, well, that's fine. That, that makes sense. Or it's like, well, you know, you, you didn't get to this case. Cause there's a, I can't remember the name of it. First, first touch. Yeah. First cut. The first time you touch a case. So customer customer makes a case and you reply to email, right? There's a, there's a timeframe and there's a, there's a service level agreement for how fast you'll respond.
And, you know, it's like, Oh, you didn't meet your service level agreement. Oh, it's like, Oh, you know, it's because these guys keep opening cases in the middle of the night. And I don't see them until the morning. And the people who are supposed to pick them up, didn't pick them up. It's like, Oh, well, that's fine.
Is your customer happy? Like, yo, they're not happy about that. And then I told him to stop making cases in the middle of the night and everything's fine.
Emily: Solved. Problem
solved. Yeah.
Nathan: Yeah.
Emily: Thinking just one quick question that I missed in the kind of compensation piece. Would a role like this typically [00:28:00] have sort of the regular benefits? Like you mentioned stock options, but would you have healthcare and paid leaves, short term, long term disability,
Nathan: We have all the regular stuff. And then I, we have which is becoming more common in the industry, is we have unlimited time off.
Emily: What do you think about that?
Nathan: So that's not really what it is. Mean, the reason, the reason,
Emily: untracked time off. That is,
seems
to,
Nathan: not that
either.
I mean, there definitely seems to be a limit. I haven't found it yet. And I've been trying to find it a little bit. I mean, there there's, it's like, listen, you can't just say unlimited time off and then, and because at some point you're going to be pissed off about this. Uh, I mean, if, if I literally say, okay, all of it, I
Emily: Right.
Nathan: all of the time off because who wouldn't, right? I sure pay me my, my lip, my basic, you know, my entire wage. And my job is to not come and do any work. I mean, [00:29:00] that's, I don't know too much about business, but that doesn't sound like a good business decision. I understand the conversion because I had a company that did the conversion and they were spending a lot of money.
Keeping all of this in, especially in my, we would, I think we would go 240 hours. You could bank.
Emily: Yep.
Nathan: And above that, you just wouldn't accrue anymore, but that's 240. A lot of people use that as a severance,
Emily: Right.
Nathan: So if you got laid off, you had 240
Emily: part of your compensation. Yeah, they owe
Nathan: And, and, you know, and, and some people just won't take time off.
Nathan: And so with this, I think more people, I don't know if more people are taking time off or less people are taking the time off. but it isn't really tracked. At least it's not tracked. And I think that really is really company to company. And I think for me, I mean, I I'd have a car if, if I got to a point where it was a problem, I expect my boss would, would go, Hey, you're maybe back off on the unlimited time off.
So it's, [00:30:00] it's, it's an interesting thing and I like it. I do like it better than the whole accrual thing, because if I want to take time off, I just take time off. I just don't worry about it.
The other thing we have at my company, which I think is super cool is, well, I kind of think is, I would have thought it was super cool about, you know, several years ago.
But we have 16 weeks of parental leave for both the father and mother, or, you know, however that shakes out and that's also for adoptions.
Emily: Ugh. So
Nathan: if 16 and now my company's headquarters is. Technically based in the U. S. But we're we came from overseas. And so I think that's one of the reasons we have that.
We also have 12 days off regular days off a year, which is more than I think the standard calendar, the standard U. S calendar. And that's because a lot of our compatriots overseas have that many days off, so they wanted to make it even so we get, we get some kind of unusual days off when we get Juneteenth.
Which of course nobody had off until just recently, but we get that off now. We had indigenous people's day weekend off, which not many people get off. We get good Friday [00:31:00] off
Emily: What?
Nathan: because they had to find 12. And I guess
Emily: They're like, fine, good Friday.
Nathan: it, cause it's always on a Friday, right? Cause I mean, you couldn't, you could do groundhog day, but that would be any day in the week, good Friday, always on a Friday.
So, you know, always get a long weekend. So that's another thing. So there are benefits to working for a company that, that is while maybe headquartered in the U S. Their mindset is more European.
Emily: Totally. I would like to make a formal request that all holidays be recognized on a Monday or Friday. I don't think that's too much to ask. I don't want to do any more mid week holidays.
Nathan: Yeah. 4th of July being on a Thursday this year, I'm going to, I assure you that is going to be the least attended Friday in the history of, of days people are supposed
to be working
Emily: are we doing this anymore? Can't it be? Same with Halloween. Halloween is the last Saturday of October. You heard it here first. That's when we're
Nathan: like that.
Emily: Yeah.
It's not so hard. I, fixed it for you got my vote.[00:32:00]
I I, so thinking about that, do you have a sense of like roughly how much vacation time you take?
Yeah.
Nathan: I usually, I mean, I usually take, I want to say around a month.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: I usually take, I take four weeks. It's hard to remember, you know, it's hard to remember how it plays out. I honestly, I don't keep that much track sometimes I'll go, but the thing is, is when you have it this way, you go, well, I could take, okay, I need to take two days off the whole week.
And I, and I mean, this, this year, it's like, well, you know, we're going we're going camping. With the family, I, I, I only need three days off. I'm going to take the whole week because why wouldn't I, if I'm going to do the work to get a backup for all of my accounts, I might as well just, just do the whole thing.
And then like, you know, I have some family coming up at the end of summer and they're going to be up for like three or four days. I'm like, I'll just take the whole week off. I'll, I'll prepare,
Emily: Yeah, you need that time on either end.
Nathan: you know? And I'll tell you, I take a lot less sick [00:33:00] days off than I used to partially because I work from home. And partially because it's like, yeah, I don't feel well and I wouldn't want to go into an office, but if my commute is the three minutes it takes me to get up into this room from my bedroom and I don't have to put on pants, you know, it's, that's, that seems fine.
Emily: That is the, the driving in sick to an office. This happened to me a couple of times where I'd be like, I feel okay. And then I would get into the office and I'd be like, Oh no, I feel bad. I need to get out of here. But at home, if you're sitting at home and you can kind of take breaks when you need to and get water and like, if you need to rest a little bit, I can usually get a pretty full day and working.
And then it's like, you know, save that time for other times. But
Nathan: It at least gets a low hanging fruit, like the easy stuff to do. And you just like, yeah, you know, I'm not that big project I was going to work on. I'm maybe I'll leave that until tomorrow. But, you know, I, and that means, cause in my position, I have to get a backup for every one of my customers. I mean, I have currently I'm, I'm, I'm carrying five [00:34:00] customers.
I've carried, I mean, I've carried up to 12 Which is I mean, compared to some people in a, in a CSM role, I've seen those people carry like 30 or 60, which could be insane. But with, with, you know, five or something like that, each one of those, I gotta, I gotta convince somebody that they want to back me up and they want to deal with this customer stuff on top of their own, I mean, the, the downfall on that 16 weeks of, of people having paid time off.
Is that somebody's got to back them up for 16 weeks.
Emily: Right.
Nathan: person for one account where that account was their only account. They had one account because it was so big. So for 16 weeks, I was doing two jobs at once. That sucked. That, I almost quit. That, that almost put me over the edge. Although frankly, I think if I had gone to my boss and said, Hey, I'm going to quit.
This is too much. He would have said, okay, well, let's, let's take some of
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: then.
Emily: And some of that also is like, that sounds like a staffing issue. Like they should have, you should have enough [00:35:00] people that when someone is out for 16 weeks, it doesn't quite, it's a challenging thing, I
Nathan: I, I have a team of like 30 people and of them, I mean, like 10 of them have had children
and and most, well, most of them are my, you know, in their, are midlife guys and some of them are having kids at midlife, two of them I
know are the same age as me and I'm like,
Emily: just going for it
Nathan: kids, I'm getting them out of the house now, it's, that's, that's the stage of my life, I'm, I'm, I'm New ones.
I, ooh, that's a, that's a big commitment. I don't want another dog. I don't know another kid sounds nuts.
Emily: Are you sure
Nathan: I love my children. I love them more than anything, but I loved them when I was, I loved raising them when I was much younger. I don't have the energy. I don't have any of the stuff I need anymore. certainly don't have the patience.
Emily: Yeah, it's uh, it's always interesting, you know, you don't really think about [00:36:00] discussing your family planning mishaps with your colleagues but then every once in a while someone will have like Two or three kids who are in middle school and they'll have a new baby and you're like, oh really? How's that?
Nathan: I got a lot of friends that, when that happened. Yeah,
Emily: That sounds nice. Cool. Takes all kinds, but yeah. Okay. How do you view the prospects in this field?
Is this a, is there plenty of work in this field or is it sort of. Hard to get into. What do you think?
Nathan: So a lot of the jobs are going overseas, so it is a more difficult field to get into. Now. One of the benefits, there's something called FedRAMP, and what that is, is for some specific organizations that work with the federal government, only people who are on US soil can, can take their calls. And so there is still those jobs, you know, jobs for people on that front.
The other concern I have, and it, and it, it's a very significant one, is AI.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: They're, I mean, I'm [00:37:00] essentially a person who knows how to Google things better than the person who's calling me up. Not Google, but you know, I can search, I can
I'm good at searching things. I mean, anybody in it is, Oh, good at searching things.
And we know how to talk to computers with AI. It's making it so everybody can talk to computers. And so that re I mean, I, I, I want to, I'd like to ride this out to retirement.
And I I have some concerns that I might not be able to, but then again, if I'm not able to, then a lot of people in my industry aren't able to, and.
I, I mean, honestly, with, with, with AI being as it is, I don't know how a lot, I mean, I don't know how enough jobs are going to be there for people. There's just too many, there's just too many jobs that can be done with AI that, I mean, the only way out of it I see is a living wage for everybody. And then we get to just to be YouTubers all the time.
Uh, Yeah. Which seems fine. I'm okay with that.
Emily: Yeah. I, you [00:38:00] know, in some ways I am interested to see what this podcast is like reflecting in 10 years, because it does feel, it feels like a little bit of a time capsule to me that we're
right in this weird, not that AI is brand new today, but it hit this all of a sudden. A cultural awareness around the time I started to do this.
And most people I talk with are like. You know, if it comes up in conversation, most people I talk with are like, well, that's not gonna, I don't think that's going to impact this field. And a lot of them, I'm like, I don't know, I think it might. But where I, where I actually think it's going to be the hardest is entry level people.
Like I could see someone like you still having a role, even with really advanced AI, but will there be the people who become you someday?
Nathan: And if there isn't, how do we feed into it? So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of big questions. I mean, it's, it's, it's an interesting time. [00:39:00] Which I I'd rather not be part of.
Emily: And yet I
Nathan: I like, I like uninteresting times where people just give me a paycheck and then that's all there is. But yeah, no uh, yeah, the AI question is, is really big.
And frankly, I mean, the only place I see AI not being able to make an impact is in physical labor. I mean, you know, where it, like, if you're a plumber or if you, if you, you know, if you work with your hands somehow, that. I can see AI not being able to get into that because they're in the, you know, they're in the cloud, they're they're out clouding,
Emily: yeah,
Nathan: not to get too crazy, but you know, Boston dynamics is making some pretty impressive robots though.
So how long is that going to be viable? Once you, once you cross that AI with the robots, we're living in the future. Let's get some spaceships and
Emily: My good to go. my theory that I'm curious to see, I don't, as you said, I'd rather not know if this is true or not, but my theory is that I think one of [00:40:00] the things that will be the last to be done by anything but a human is like childcare and infant care and, and I am teaching because I think society will have a really hard time, would have a really hard time ever letting go of humans doing that, but it's also one of the like least valued.
roles in society. So it's like, when is that going to change?
Nathan: I don't know. I see a lot of parents handing their kids, their phone when they want.
Emily: Well, that's a whole
new
Nathan: some parents. Yes. All parents.
Maybe not.
Emily: about daycare.
Nathan: Yeah.
Emily: I it, right now I cannot conceive of a world where we wouldn't That wouldn't be staffed completely by humans, or almost completely by humans.
Nathan: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I, that being said, I think you could have, I don't want to, I sound like some kind of a crazy futurist,
Emily: No, I need the crazy futurist
Nathan: keep
Emily: lot of people I talk to are like, No, it's going to be fine. I'm like, Okay, I don't
Nathan: okay. So [00:41:00] here's keep in mind, I work with a group of people and myself included where I was on a call last week. And I'm like, how many of you can touch Star Trek memorabilia? From where you're sitting right this instant.
Emily: And everyone is like, Me?
Nathan: The answer was far higher than zero.
Emily: Oh my god.
Nathan: I literally have two starship enterprises, five feet away and a series and the original series communicator right in front of me.
Emily: Are you allowed to have just one? I mean, I feel like you have to have a bunch.
Nathan: well, I mean, once you get one, it, it just snowballs. I, so many of my hobbies go that way, but yeah, no, I think, I think you make a soft, fluffy robot. I mean, I, I, my daughter, I had a, had a toy 20 years ago. That I prefer, I plugged it into the computer and I told it all of her favorite things. And it would sing songs with her name and she loved that thing.
I don't think it's much of a jump to make it so that thing moves around. And if she's [00:42:00] in danger, it will wave its arms wildly screaming, Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson. And you know, I, I, we're, we're living, I mean, the future's coming fast.
There's a lot of, stuff.
Emily: I understand the Luddites, I think. I get it, you know? I get the, I get the why, why you might, you know, destroy the machines, fight against. But they didn't succeed, so.
Nathan: I, I mean, I spend a lot of time in the desert,
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: but I have to come back at some point and it's, I mean, there's no denying I, I mean, I'm, I'm worried for my kids, what their, what their future looks like. And I don't think my parents ever had that worry for me.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: So, I mean, what kind of, what kind of planet are they getting?
And I'm not, I don't feel real good about that. So then again, you
Emily: We'll just close it there. No, I'm just kidding.
Nathan: and
on that that's, I, I was thinking about, you know, part of the idea behind doing this podcast was I want to be sort of feel more equipped [00:43:00] to help guide my own kids in their career paths. And right now I do feel that way. I feel sort of like. I feel I tend to have a little bit of like, it's going to work out some way.
Emily: That is my kind of governing. I wouldn't call myself a total sunny, cheery optimist, but I do have this, like, it will, things will work. Something will happen and it will be okay. But I can't really envision what that is. And that is a weird place to be that if I was talking to an 18 year old right now, I, I don't feel a lot of confidence in being like, yeah, totally do this.
That's no, no. Questions. That's a great career path for you because there's so much influx and I don't know, it's a tough one.
Nathan: I mean, plumbing,
Emily: Yeah, I think, I mean,
Nathan: everybody needs, everybody needs indoor plumbing.
Emily: Yes, plumbing, HVAC, all of those types of roles do seem, and I think it will take an awfully long time before robots can do, you know, residential plumbing. [00:44:00] That's gonna be quite a while, I would guess,
Nathan: mean, I have friends, I have friends in that industry. And I mean, there, you have a shelf life in that industry. I mean, you're, you, how, you can't, there's only so long you can crawl underneath houses and things like that. And I have, you know, some friends who've been lucky enough to go into more of a managerial role in that, where they manage the young kids or they train the young kids.
and that's something.
But,
Emily: work. It's manual work. You're dealing with clients. There are things about it that I wouldn't I might not necessarily be like Yeah, totally, go for it. But if we're just trying to escape the robots, it's a good one.
Nathan: yeah. I mean, my mindset was like, I should be able to buy a robot and then send him to do my job. And then that's, then I win. Right. Because I don't have to work. I just make sure I maintain the robot. My job is robot maintainer, robot goes and does the work I get paid. That's the only way it makes sense. I read a lot of sci fi. None of this, none of this is, is going in a good way. I don't know. [00:45:00] It's, I have concerns. I mean, I, I
Emily: too much
sci fi.
Nathan: I was around, I was around for Y2K and frankly, I, that was the high point of my faith in humanity, right,
because we thought everything was going to come crashing down and in the last moment. Humanity pulled together
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: and it was a false alarm, but they, but we tried, you know, we, the things that were important, we, we, we got them fixed
in time.
Emily: And that's, wasn't that true about Y2K that it, in hindsight, it was easy to be like, oh, people overreacted, but actually if the head, there hadn't been such a concentrated focus on it, it could have been quite bad. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: Yeah, no, that's totally true. I, I wasn't in the industry then, but I talked to a lot of people who were, were staying up all that night with, with the computers and, and like, and most, you know, they did all, they did all the updates that were required, that were provided. They did all the right things, but they were staying to make sure.
Emily: Yeah. And
if they hadn't done all those things.
Nathan: it could have been [00:46:00] really bad. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would have been a fire sale. We would have had, you know, nuclear power plants not operating correctly and
Emily: it's cool.
Nathan: nobody could
call the police. Yeah. So that, that was the high point of my faith in humanity. Subsequent years when we have had similar
emergencies, I don't,
yeah, I don't, I don't feel like we're meeting those criteria so much anymore.
So
Emily: Oh no.
Nathan: yeah,
Emily: Listen, I, we've, we've got to, let's get back to a positive note for just a second and then we can turn it back around, which is. What is something about your job that you love, particularly if you think people are surprised by it, but it can just be anything, something about your line of work that you've found you've really enjoyed, including just the lifestyle aspects of it.
Doesn't even have to be the task.
Nathan: there's two things that spring to mind. One is that now that I work from home, it leaves me plenty of time to work on my YouTube channel. Which my boss knows it's okay.
Um, because like we were talking to earlier, I have all this downtime. Well, now with [00:47:00] that downtime, I just go to this other computer over here.
And then I can just, you know, I can, I can spend it doing, doing
something else while waiting for.
Emily: into the middle distance in a cubicle.
Nathan: Or wandering around doing something completely unrelated in, in the, you know, like building a video game room in the, in my office.
Emily: In my office. Yeah.
Nathan: so I mean, I think while, you know, there's that whole thing I, I'm always hearing from on the internet about all, all, all these people who work from home, they never do their job.
And it's like, no, I, I do my job a lot better and a lot more effectively now, but when I'm not doing my job, I'm using that time more effectively for myself.
Emily: Right. There's a lot
Nathan: it's a win win.
Emily: offices.
Nathan: There's an incredible, and that was the other thing I found when I went back is how much time I did waste just sitting around with a bunch of guys talking.
And when I'm doing that, I'm not at my computer. I can't tell if, if an email came in. Well, I can, cause it's on my phone now, but back then,
Emily: right?
Nathan: back then it wasn't a big deal. So, I mean, that's one aspect. [00:48:00] The other, you know, the, the more, the more The better answer, I guess is that I really enjoy having relationships with a lot of my customers.
Some of my customers, I don't, some of them are mean people who are mean. And that sucks. But at this level of the, I mean, when, when you're doing the entry level, everybody's mean, right? When you, when you are at the lowest level, everybody, every dentists, especially are so cruel to people on the phone.
And I don't know why.
And you know, what's really weird is that and this is a long time ago, I don't know if this is still true, but people from Texas and Florida, this is 20 years ago, I don't know if it's the same now people from Florida would call up and say, I don't know what you did to my computer, but this is all your fault. But people from Texas would say, I don't know what I did to this thing,
but broken. Very much a, the same kind of feel, right? That, hey, something has gone wrong, but. I did [00:49:00] it versus you did it and it was, and, and it was consistent. Yeah, no, that, that, at that level, that was rough. You have to do things to make it, to make yourself feel better.
I wouldn't charge, we charged when people called in. You had to get their credit card number at the, at the, you know, at that lowest level. And if you had, if you mentioned you had cancer, I would not charge you. That was how I stuck it to the man. Um, My, my grandfather died of cancer. I hate cancer. And if you, you know, I have people call up and it's like, yeah, sorry.
I'm, I'm a little bit off. I had chemo today. I'm like, Oh, you're not paying for this call. Uh, What I need. And there was a trick, right? You would, you would do is you would tell them, okay, so put the receiver down. Cause this is back when you had receivers for um, boys. Yeah. So if you are familiar with a phone that plugs into your wall.
So leave the receiver down, wait 30 minutes, because if you waited 30 minutes, nobody would ever listen to that call.
Emily: Oh.
Nathan: we would, I would just have, and I would just do something else. And then after 30 minutes, I would hang [00:50:00] up the call and nobody would ever look up, they would get a free call.
And that, that was essentially how I, you know, I stuck it to the man, I guess and how it, I made it okay for me. So anyway, at that level. And customers at my level now, though, I, sorry, I got completely off on a tangent there at my level now, though, I'll deal with people and these are, you know, professionals.
What I really like is, is, and I'm not going to name any names of companies, but there's some companies out there that people don't like and working with people who are at those companies, they know people don't like that. They, they don't let, you know, they, they have that they have that kind of. You know, there, some of them are instinctually nicer because they know when they say, Hey, I work for this company, people are going to instinctually cringe or be angry at them.
And I'm not talking about really bad companies. You know, people are polluting the environment. I'm talking like, like software companies or
Emily: Yeah. I think
we can all guess and make some educated guesses.
Nathan: there's software companies here. Cause there's a lot of software companies that people [00:51:00] don't like. And so for some of these, you know, Becoming or government Entities, right.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: And becoming friends with the, you know, having a relationship with these people, because, you know, sometimes maybe people don't like my company so much. And so we, you know, I formed good bonds with that. And you know, I have some people who I've known for decades and after they're no longer my customer, we still keep in touch
Emily: Man. Yeah.
Nathan: and that's, and that's, I think the, the best part of my job is forming those, those relationships with customers on a, on a real person, on a real level.
Not just because, not just because you're my customer, I'm your, you know, and I'm, I'm the guy who picks up the phone, but just because we get along and we're, you know, we're all in this together. And that's, that's the best part. I would say that, you know, and my coworkers, I have an incredible group of coworkers.
I know a lot of people nowadays say, Oh, anybody, you know, it's your, your work, you know, your your coworkers being family is just something that companies do to make you, and [00:52:00] I'm sure in some companies that is. A manipulation thing, but the people I've worked with, I've worked with them for literally decades.
I've, I've been doing this for over 20 years and some of them I've worked with that long and in a lot of them, you know, even if I haven't, I've made so many wonderful friends.
It's difficult. It's difficult making friends after high school in your twenties and thirties. This is something I hear from, from 20 years old time.
How do I make friends anymore?
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: Work. That's the, I mean, my parents made friends through church and stuff
like
Emily: There's no third place anymore. That's the,
Nathan: yeah, yeah. The third place. Yeah. And so most of my friends are through work and they're the best friends I've ever had.
Emily: Yeah. I, that was something about work that I was surprised to learn was I sort of, I sort of think it went in with that mentality of, like, I, this is my job, I'm not going anywhere. going to make any friends here. And boy, it's a long life if that's true for you. Like you, you might as well at the very least make some pretty [00:53:00] good acquaintances if you're going to be there all the time,
Nathan: well, I noticed over the years, I mean, there was, there was work, Nathan, and then there was not work, Nathan, and I definitely tailored my personality. For the workplace. But over the years, I, I'm more work Nathan than I was that other Nathan. And honestly, that other Nathan was kind of a jerk, so it's okay.
Emily: into the one best Nathan.
Nathan: I mean, the, the whole thing where, you know, learning empathy, being able to, to talk to people and and, and calm and be able to calm people down. I mean, and make it so people aren't angry at you and make it so that they understand that you're, you're here to help them being able to do that. Is a skill that I didn't have when I first started this, I just faked it.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: And, and now I, I am that person I am, you know, I'm
yeah. I mean, I was before I started this job, this, you know, this career, I was a very different person. I mean, I was [00:54:00] 27. I mean, who is, who hasn't changed in that amount of time? But in that time, I've really, I've, I've changed a lot and I think it's made me a much more compassionate person and a much more you know open person.
I think, I think I'm a lot, I'm a lot better at sharing who I am. Cause that's how you get people like you.
Emily: and that has a lesson in it too, right? That like your work is going to change you for most people. So what, in what way do you want to be changed? Because some things will do, you know, some fields will do different things to you
Nathan: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: Yeah. And I'm, I'm happy. My mind may change me in a better way. Cause I mean, it very well could have changed me in, in a worse way. I mean, there, there are a lot of jobs out there where. You have to do horrible things to people like tow their cars or, you know, evict them or stuff like that. God, I wouldn't, I couldn't imagine how that breaks somebody down.
And my job at its core is to help people.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: So that's
nice. I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not a doctor. I'm not, I'm not helping them in that way. Cause the [00:55:00] blood and guts gross, but
Emily: No, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: I'll fix your computer. Sure. That's you're having a better day. We're all
friends. It worked out good.
Emily: It's a good outcome. It is a good outcome. Yeah, I love that. So not to get too negative right away, but here we go. One more negative question.
Um,
Is there anything that's tough about it that you either didn't expect or you didn't anticipate how challenging it would be?
Nathan: Pretty much the, the, the other side of that, the people who, who just want to demand things from you who don't, who treat you, I find this more when dealing with people from other cultures, because I deal with people from cultures all over the world, but there's definitely you are in the service industry, you serve me.
I don't like that one bit.
Emily: Right.
Nathan: And I've honestly, I've seen that I talked with a went back when we were in the office. One of the smartest things you learn to do when you work in an office is become friends with everybody who works in any kind of facility role because those guys are the best and they can hook you up with all.
So [00:56:00] I knew guys, everybody who, anybody who worked in the building in that role was one of my friends.
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: I mean, not in a completely sincere way. I
love all these guys. But one of them was telling me a story. He's like, yeah, he, he came in, he was in the break room and he's cleaning it up. The guy looks at him.
He goes in, in my culture, or he, Guy walks into the break room and he's all, Hey, good morning, as you do.
And the guy goes, am I in my, he goes in my culture, you would not be allowed to speak with to me. And he walks out.
I'm like,
Emily: Yikes.
Nathan: awful. And I was very close to going, tell me who that guy is. I'm going to go punch him in the face. It was a story in the past, so it's like the guy was no longer there, but man, I just, how, how, yeah, that, that, that, that kind of attitude where, and it's like, we're all in this together, man, at some level, we're all people, and that's just rough that, that I think is the worst part, and it doesn't happen very often.
Um, But it happens often enough where, I mean, it [00:57:00] happened last week. it made me feel pretty bad and that was a pretty bad week. And it ruined my whole week because of it. It was just, you know, Hey, do this thing. I'm like, it's so not my job and you, and you aren't even putting in the effort to know what I do for you
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: to care.
Emily: Right.
Nathan: And that's, that's probably the worst part. It doesn't happen much, but it does happen from time to time. You, I mean, that's, that's just like, you run across good people. You run across bad people.
Emily: Yeah. That's a, no, that's a good example. And it is, it's hard to shake that stuff off, I think, too. And just like carry on with your day. Yeah. All right. This is the last question I have for you. What is one piece of advice generally about work that you would give your younger self? Yeah.
Nathan: Invest and never have to work. Put all of your money in Googles and yeah, honestly, if I had the choice between working, And just never working. I would have gone. The thing is I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I do like the YouTube thing.
But that's [00:58:00] mainly just because it it motivates me to do things that that are fun. Honestly, you gotta have hobbies. Don't make yourself all about work. and I know some people have to do it I mean people that are like teachers it just it envelops you. But work is work and life is life and Guy used to tell me do your eight and hit the gate and and I always really I always kind of really liked that
I don't, I don't like the idea of letting your work define you
Emily: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: teachers, all on the same paid enough of those three. But independent of that, Yeah, unless you're something that is really, really, you know, it is your hobby. If you get paid to do your hobby, it's awesome. Good for you. But otherwise, the whole, the whole idea where you know, do your dreams. You can be anything when you grow up. That's, that's not true. There's lots of things you can't be. I mean, I'm, [00:59:00] there's the amount of things you can't be is way higher than the amount of things you can be.
Emily: I can't believe you didn't get invited to speak at the high school graduation. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan: that's a whole other, I used to write for the school paper, don't get me started on this tangent. Yeah, no, I think that you can't be anything, but you can get a job that will pay the bills. and we'll be satisfactory. I think really satisfactory is the most you can really hope for in most jobs.
Cause even if you, I mean, even if you're an astronaut, well, maybe not an astronaut, maybe if you're like your zookeeper, at some point you have to shovel the poop. Right. Nobody wants to do that. There are parts to every job that you're not going to like. And if you envelope, if you make yourself entirely about that job. So, you know, I have one of my, I have more hobbies than I know what to do with. Yeah. It's honestly, I probably have too many, but I feel like I'm a lot more interesting person because of it. And when I go and talk to my friends, we don't talk [01:00:00] well, okay. We talk about work as well. I, all my friends work together, but we don't only talk about work and that's, I think that's important
Emily: Yeah. And the
idea of retiring is like, it's going to be fine. You have tons to do. I think there's plenty of people that, you know, scream into retirement and are like, Oh no,
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't think that's going to be a problem for me, but I'll tell you. Waiting for retirement is starting to be a concern for me, right? Cause I'm, I'm creeping up on 50 and my body's not doing what I wanted to. I mean,
Emily: Yeah.
Nathan: like I go to Cedar park or a Cedar park. Yeah. The roller coaster park in Ohio.
Right. I can't do roller coasters anymore. I used to love roller coasters.
Emily: I think you're what's it called? Not your center of gravity. Yeah. It gets worse for all
Nathan: Yeah. When, when you hit 40, everything goes sideways.
Emily: Yeah. Oh no.
Nathan: Yeah, no 40. If you want to do crazy things, if you want to jump out of an airplane, If you want to do bungee cord, bungee jumping, if that's even still a thing, do it before
Emily: I, I have like a year [01:01:00] and a half.
Nathan: Well, get to it.
Why are you doing this podcast thing?
You should be jumping out of airplanes and bungee jumping out of a face.
Emily: I think, I think that ship has sailed for me, I'll be honest. But that is a good message. I have one and a half years to do the rest of the stuff. So
Nathan: Yeah. And then, and then it's all downhill. Then it's just motor homes.
Emily: and then that's it for me. Yeah.
Nathan: Oh, I've been driving a lot in my forties and I, I love driving. I love driving so much more now than I did when I was younger. I used to love driving when I was young, but eight hour trips were like, oh, that's too much. Now an eight hour trip is like that.
Okay. we're
Emily: Yeah. That does check out for older men that I know. They do seem to not at all be fazed by a good long drive.
Nathan: Yeah. It's, it's very nice. And I live in a place where you can, you can do that.
You can just drive for
Emily: Just keep on going. Well, I think that's as good a place as any to stop. Thank you so much for your time, Nathan. This was
Nathan: you're very welcome. Yeah. I had a good time too.
Emily: All right. I'm going to [01:02:00] hit stop recording.
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