Sally is Head of Engineering at Farewill, a company who helps people deal with death, think wills and funerals. Before that Sally was acting Engineering Director / web discipline lead at UK challenger bank Monzo.
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[00:00:00] Joe: [00:00:00] hi, Sally. It’s nice to see you. How are you doing?
[00:00:01] Sally: [00:00:01] I’m really good. Thanks, Jerry. How are you?
[00:00:04] Joe: [00:00:04] Okay. Good. Really good. Thank you. So, so tell us all a bit about yourself. Tell us who you are and a little bit of your background on your career.
[00:00:12] Sally: [00:00:12] Sure. So I originally started out agency side.
[00:00:15] I was a bit of a generalist, which I guess is what happens when you start as the back end person for a flashy agency. He then goes through a bit of a revolution with action or PI from responsive design and all that good stuff. so I moved into more. Upfront analysis and solutions architecture, and then eventually into management.
[00:00:34] And they ended up in a head of technology role before I started to go and work for myself. And then I did that for about six years and started, well, I, I did a mix of contracts and then started a consultancy business and I then joined Monzo in 2018 to help scale engineering and engineering management.
[00:00:52]I ended up leading, six teams across the operations side of the business and being discipline lead for web. And left this summer had a lovely [00:01:00] break. So had a nice two and a half months off. And, recently joined the death industry, which I like to think makes you sound like some kind of bad-ass assassin.
[00:01:10]but the reality is I’m working for a company now called Farewill as head of engineering. So it’s been a bit of a journey.
[00:01:18] Joe: [00:01:18] Oh, fantastic. Well, I’m looking forward to talking about death later on. It’s obviously it’s a subject that, you know, is important that we should talk about. but it’s nice to have you on the show as well.
[00:01:26] Cause it’s great. Cause we’ve spoken to quite a lot of design and research and product people, obviously. So it’s been great to have your input on all things, technology and engineering as well. So thank you very much for coming on.
[00:01:36] Sally: [00:01:36] No worries.
[00:01:39] Joe: [00:01:39] We’re talking today then about product decisions so that the decision making process, at.
[00:01:44] The companies you’ve worked on. Can you tell us about a recent product decision that you’ve, you’ve been involved in making.
[00:01:52] Sally: [00:01:52] Great. So before I do that, I just want to tell you a little bit about, the context, if that’s the case. So I know that not all of your listeners might be super familiar with Farewill. [00:02:00]
[00:02:00]so fell as a company has a mission of changing the way that the world deals with death. And it was originally focused on online worlds. but now we’ve got a, sort of a real range of products, including things like probate, which has all the legal and financial stuff that you need to go through when dealing with the death and things like funerals as well.
[00:02:18]so we tend to think about kind of. People planning proactively for death and also then the awful situation of having to deal with when a loved one dies. and so in terms of kind of product decisions, I’ve only actually been in the job for two and a half weeks. So I all credit to my colleague, James Maskell who’s sort of helped me think about a couple of really interesting stories, but I think there are a couple of things which, really illustrate some of the unique challenges.
[00:02:46] But it’s we have, when it comes to product decisions and there’s almost sort of two sides to the product problem here. so I think the first one is, is the customer side in terms of it’s a super interesting area when you get [00:03:00] into it. And, in this industry, generally, customers aren’t always treated the best they could be.
[00:03:06]they’re often sort of having to make really important decisions at times of huge distress. and it’s also really expensive. And so the company wants to make everything in this area affordable, but also great, and to be much more about reflecting people’s personalities, but just due to the subject matter.
[00:03:26] A lot of the product decisions can actually end up being very challenging. so let’s take a problem space, which we’re actually growing out at the moment, which is funerals. So something like this, you can’t do an MVP, right? You can’t beta test a funeral. You’ve got one shot to get it. Right. you can’t do things like AB test because you don’t want a family to have a worse experience than another one.
[00:03:51]So in terms of kind of some of the product decisions that we’ve made in that space, we’ve had to be really mindful of how we actually [00:04:00] develop and iterate on those products. So we’ve done things like, testing a funeral end to end ourselves. So everything from. Acting as a customer to, you know, booking the crematorium with the ops team, picking music and all of those good things.
[00:04:15]we’ve even gone down to the, the point of having the funeral and having eulogies read out, having providers working as they was on the day, just to make sure that everything is, you know, is as streamlined as it needs to be. so to help us kind of make those decisions, we, we tend to do a lot of research into both, The, you know, the practical elements of what people need, emotionally to, to get the closure that they need, at these really important times, but then also doing a lot of questioning about how the industry works generally, and you know, what, what we can make better and what technology can actually bring into the mix as well.
[00:04:51] So there’s some really, really interesting things kind of on the, the customer sort of facing product side as it is. but obviously it’s support this. We [00:05:00] build out a lot of tech, And we have a lot of internal tooling, which, is on top of the, the interfaces that the customers interact with. So you can do things like write your well online.
[00:05:10]you can, you know, do other kind of, you know, use your web based interactions. but behind all of that, we’ve invested in building a set of tools that fall under this kind of umbrella that we call backstage. And it’s got some really kind of complex non-linear processes because. With things like probates, every estate is different.
[00:05:31]and it’s actually a really hard product challenge because no law firm has really kind of automated all of this stuff or scaled all of it. So we felt like building internal tooling, gave us a lot of options, to control things ourselves into the future as well. And we balance that with.
[00:05:47] Everything that happens with the customer, you know, over the phone or, or other things like that. just to make sure that we’ve got that, that deep level of empathy as well. So I think in terms of our product decisions, As I say, [00:06:00] it’s really important to not put out something that is an MVP. It’s really important to make sure that we’re not using tech for Tech’s sake and we do get it right where we choose it.
[00:06:10]and we’re also trying to think about how we can kind of challenge norms and build things ourselves that didn’t limit us to more traditional thinking. So there’s quite a lot that drew me into this as you can see, it’s a really interesting space.
[00:06:24] Joe: [00:06:24] It is an interesting space. Isn’t it? I love, you know, I do like that approach.
[00:06:28] You talked about thereabouts, you can’t, you’ve got to be sensitive with people at this really difficult time. Whereas our industry, especially the commercial industry is very focused on AB multi-variant testing all the experiences, but you can’t, you can’t do that in terms of the difficult times that people are going through.
[00:06:43] And, you know, your comment that you can’t MVP a funeral is absolutely right. It’s a challenging world in terms of. The situation where users are in and how they are and how they, how they approach that. So I, it’s a really interesting, it sounds like a very caring approach you’re taking to do these kinds of things.
[00:06:59] So that’s really [00:07:00] interesting. And I love the idea of use of, of kind of doing that, that almost that prototype or that live mock-up of that the whole end to end experience of the team could get an understanding of it. Because again like that must be a real challenge is getting the team to understand what it’s like to go through this experience, because it’s not something, thankfully we go through all that often.
[00:07:19] Sally: [00:07:19] No, absolutely. And I think that’s, that’s one of the challenges as you say, because, these things aren’t always planned and, actually part of the, the backstory in terms of the company being set up was how Dan, our CEO and co-founder, and started off with a sort of really interesting backgrounds that involves engineering and product design and things like that.
[00:07:40]but actually spent some time in Japan, working around, older people. Nobody wants to have these conversations. We focus so much on the superficiality of aging and putting in place kind of plasters over, you know, helping people have to get out of beds, but we don’t get close to [00:08:00] breaching the really meaningful side of the topic.
[00:08:02]and so Dan came back to the UK and got a qualification in well writing and kind of started to look at how we can. really sort of get people thinking about these topics and what, what matters to them. And it’s exactly the same, I think, with, with our, with our team, because, you know, you, you haven’t necessarily experienced something like this until it happens.
[00:08:23] And then the, you know, the importance of the support that you get, the importance of the mindset that you’re in. you can, I think. Prepare yourself to some extent. but then, you know, when, when these terrible things happen, that’s sometimes all goes up to the window. So it’s been really important, I think for the people, that work on these kinds of projects day to day.
[00:08:45] To understand, not only the, the mindsets that our customers might be facing, but also to think about how we can just really make a meaningful difference to people’s lives much sooner as well, and, and get families talking about things and all of that good stuff, really. So it’s, [00:09:00] it’s really rewarding. and I think that it genuinely is a, just a fascinating space to work and really that other people might not have thought about.
[00:09:09] All
[00:09:09] Joe: [00:09:09] right. It’s very interesting. And so does that mean you have a, kind of a sort of special process for making decisions? Do you have any sort of checks or balances in, in there to kind of, because of the sort of sensitive nature of what you’re working on?
[00:09:22] Sally: [00:09:22] Yeah, totally. And I think, so there are different sides of the company.
[00:09:26] So I think there’s, we have a regulated aspect to it, which I’m not gonna be talking about so much. and then there’s the, the general kind of product development, which I think people might be much more familiar with. so in terms of the, in of product development, that’s, our process has really needed to evolve as the company has both in terms of growth and the product range.
[00:09:45] So we now use the system, for general product development, which, we have a company mission and we have our beliefs about where the markets and where we should be going in, about three to five years. And that’s the starting [00:10:00] point for our strategic process. And. Feeding into that. We have a couple of two year goals.
[00:10:06]and so how that plays out is we have, what’s essentially kind of a Kanban board for the company strategy and each quarter, anybody can submit, what’s known as a Deb and, this is based off Spotify. basically have sort of coined this, so it might be quite familiar to some of your listeners. but if you’re not, it’s basically just a framework for proposing something.
[00:10:26]so these individual devs get talked about some prioritized, and if there are bigger things that we might want to build out a team around or multiple teams need to be working on these, get fleshed out into what we call a bet, which is almost like a business plan. it gets pitched back to the leadership team and prioritized against other bats in play.
[00:10:43] So we’ve got quite a lot of structure around kind of the actual, you know, the prioritization and thinking about what we should work on. But then obviously around that as well, we’re going to need to look after our people. So part of what I’m really keen to do is when we’re working on difficult subject matters like this, that our, you know, our [00:11:00] teams have enough support as well.
[00:11:01] And I’m looking to bring in a bit more structure around that side, too.
[00:11:05] Joe: [00:11:05] It’s really interesting that that Spotify approach where I’m talking to somebody from Spotify in a few weeks. So we’re going to talk about that then as well, but I love the idea that. You talked about there where people can, I guess having this, this, this two year strategic plan of what’s coming, that’s a visual thing that everybody can see.
[00:11:19] So everybody in the organization can see what’s happening in terms of that the next two years in terms of what you’re working on and then could make those suggestions and recommendations each quarter. I really love that idea of being able to make that open to the, to the organization itself.
[00:11:35] Sally: [00:11:35] Yeah. And I think it’s important to say that we’ve got that high level, sort of structure in terms of the, you know, the big bats and the company priorities.
[00:11:43] But we do balance that with autonomy to local level too. So each team has got quite a lot of flexibility and that may cause more problems as we scale. but it’s working at the moment. So, you know, teams can really direct how we get to where we need to be. and they can also work in the way that they feel best if they want to [00:12:00] run, you know, their kickoffs definitely, or their documentation.
[00:12:02] So definitely things like that. But I think passive what my role is, head of technology, sorry. Head of engineering, still getting used to it is, is basically to think about how we structure some of the more fundamental decisions around things like how we choose technology, what our standards are, when which is one preach over another and things like that.
[00:12:23] So I think we have kind of decision-making. Both on a sort of accompany level, a team level, moving towards where we need to be, but then we also want to think a little bit more horizontally as well across the difference, the girls that we have.
[00:12:38] Joe: [00:12:38] Okay. That’s interesting. And do you see that too, because again, you’re head of engineering or do you see yourself as working like that then again, across horizontally across all of the teams that are working on each of the individual elements of the product, is that where you sort of see yourself and the engineering team fitting?
[00:12:52] Where’s your. Talk us through that a little bit more.
[00:12:55] Sally: [00:12:55] Sure. So as, as head of engineering, I’m basically responsible for [00:13:00] building the culture and the systems in the widest sense of the word. To ensure that we’ve basically got a really fantastic and highly motivated and sort of skills and happy team of engineers and engineering managers who are able to create all the good stuff in terms of, you know, high quality, robust, scalable technology, which is going to support the business in meeting its goals.
[00:13:23] So for me, it’s kind of a mix of setting the strategy. Promoting good practice within tech, putting those processes in place and helping to support and grow our people. So it is indeed it’s very much kind of cross-cutting across all of the teams that have engineers in, but also kind of working very closely with the rest of the business and the lead.
[00:13:41] So I sit on the leadership team to make sure that engineering can actually kind of influence and help set us up for success into the field. Okay. That’s
[00:13:51] Joe: [00:13:51] really interesting. So I like that way you talk about. Being sort of enabling the teams, working across them in terms of the technology that they need to get, I guess, to [00:14:00] get the work that they need to get done.
[00:14:01] And you mentioned that each of the teams sort of has some sort of level of autonomy there. How kind of, is that autonomy? Is that, can you talk towards that? So do they, are the teams set goals? Are they set problems? How are they sort of the team sort of directed or do they direct themselves? How can you talk us through it a little bit about how that might work.
[00:14:20] Sally: [00:14:20] So at the moment it’s based quite heavily on problem spaces and the different products that we have. not all of which have been announced yet. So we are releasing some more quite scene, but, it’s very exciting in terms of how. We’ve sort of grown the teams, has been very much kind of tied around exactly that.
[00:14:39] So thinking about the business strategy and the, the areas that we know are going to be really big opportunities and sort of, almost like swelling teams and sell, dividing into other ones. So we started off very much kind of focused around Wells and that spits out, into another team. And similarly with one of our.
[00:14:56] Other ones, more recently as well. So each [00:15:00] individual team will have their own goals and we run a quarterly planning. so we’ve just gone through that at the moment. So that’s before I started, but, basically the team. Focuses on, the things that they know they can deliver, for that quarter, whilst also always tie into that longer vision.
[00:15:16] So it’s, it’s a nice balance between, the practicalities of what are we actually going to get done? How long is that going to take? What always kind of tying into something a bit more meaningful, making sure that it’s not just too short-term focused.
[00:15:29] Joe: [00:15:29] Okay. That’s really interesting. I like the idea that again, and it’s becoming more and more common with, with teams that they are.
[00:15:37] Tasked with working on the problem space. And they’ve got a bit more autonomy about how they solve that. But like you say, I think that’s really interesting that you have those quarterly planning sessions that allow you to align and I guess communicate across the whole organization about what everybody’s up to and what they’re working on is really interesting too.
[00:15:53] Sally: [00:15:53] Yeah, we had, I’ve watched the videos back and there was such. A hugely kind of warm and [00:16:00] celebrate every session, where every, every team around the business presented, their vision for the future and, some reflections for the previous quarter and things like that. And, you know, even as somebody who wasn’t watching it live, I really felt that sense of ownership and passion and excitement.
[00:16:16] And it was just so wonderful to kind of come in. And get that, you know, great summary of how everybody’s thinking about different problems. And, to know that everybody is sharing it back and really celebrating each other. So it’s a really lovely thing to see.
[00:16:29] Joe: [00:16:29] That sounds really good. And it sounds like the culture is a really, was obviously attractive to the role and it’s something you’re really enjoying and working with the team there and talk a bit about culture then.
[00:16:38] How, how kind of important do you think his culture is in terms of making decisions in the decision making process as a whole, obviously from this role, but any kind of experiences you’ve had from your long varied career?
[00:16:49] Sally: [00:16:49] Oh, so hugely, as you say, culture’s really, really important. and I think that there are sort of, sort of two sides to it.
[00:16:58] So there’s things that [00:17:00] you might typically think about culture. So, things like hiring really great people who know their stuff, but giving them that trust and autonomy to be able to, to run with that. and that’s, that’s part of the reason that we want equity to be able to submit Debs and things like that, too.
[00:17:15]and then lots of topics that have had tons written about them. so things like psychological, psychological safety, so making sure that, people can call us out if we’re on the wrong track. if everybody thinks that the business is going in the wrong direction, that’s super important. And I think personally, I, I think it’s the end of last year I was recommended.
[00:17:35] The book, turn the ship around, by one of my close friends and I finally read it this year and that really resonated for me is the kind of culture that I enjoy. So it’s very much about kind of building teams who work for one another and not being top-down down. And I think if you’re a top down. It can result in very different types of products and outcomes.
[00:17:54]so I think all of that kind of thing, it does influence the type of products that you [00:18:00] create and, the way that you create them. but the other side to it, I would say is, diversity. So. I’ve believed for a while. any impact that actually technology can have on inclusivity, you know, again, a broad sense, but also how your culture can impact on products in that way.
[00:18:16] So everything, from your approach to things like accessibility to performance considerations, and there are some great tools out there like Tim Cadillacs, how much does my website cost for instance, which actually tells you in real terms, how much a site will cost different people? And then, you know, we’ve obviously seen the sadly all too frequent examples of tech that’s just flat out racist or has unethical consequences and things like that.
[00:18:42] So I think that culture has a huge part in deciding not only what gets made, but how and why, and for who. And so if you don’t actively invest in thinking about it, your products could unintentionally end up as being something very different from what you hope for.
[00:19:02] [00:19:00] Joe: [00:19:02] When you talk about that back. Cause again, you know, often.
[00:19:05] When we talk about skills that tech people should have, it’s all about, you know, the, the skill was about what you can build or what tools you know, or what languages you can program it. And all of those things that are very, I suppose, slightly more tangible and defined within the job market. But I liked the way you talk there about there, that kind of level of diversity in terms of.
[00:19:24] I suppose in terms of thinking and approaches and everything like that, and having the psychological safety measures in place so that not only hiring people who are, who care about what you do, but you’ve got the ability and the space and the, I suppose the culture of being able to say, I don’t think this doesn’t feel right to us, or it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel right to me, is this the right thing we should be doing?
[00:19:45] And having all of that in place must make that I guess, a nicer place to work for everybody, but also. You know, it sounds like it means that you’re building better products and making better decisions in terms of that.
[00:19:56] Sally: [00:19:56] Yeah. That’s always the goal.
[00:19:59]Joe: [00:19:59] can you think back to any [00:20:00] examples in your career before where decisions haven’t gone particularly well, where some things launched and things haven’t gone well, can you talk, talk to that at all?
[00:20:08] Sally: [00:20:08] It’s a great question. And I think there are, there are lots of examples where things haven’t sort of gone too well in terms of product launches and, I think, you know, thinking back to my time, previously at Monzo, before, as it Farewill, we were always very intentional about owning that and talking through things that we, we knew we didn’t get quite right.
[00:20:34] And so I think it’s really, really valuable when you can do that. When you can get an honest conversation going with, with your audience, with your customers. So I think that’s always really valuable. but actually I think. If you take a step back as well. One of the things with my, with my engineering hassle, and that’s really interesting is when you focus too much on releasing the products and always kind of just going for the new shiny thing and getting them out.
[00:20:59] And [00:21:00] so one of the things that I’ve seen, which has maybe a little bit more in the background that doesn’t go so well. Is when you get the balance wrong between kind of prioritizing more foundational technology improvements or investments alongside all of the things that you’re constantly putting out for, you know, more customer facing things say that could be everything from kind of like paying down a more complex piece of tech debt or, you know, choosing to invest in a component library or UI overhaul or something like that.
[00:21:26]and I think that actually kind of, you know, going back to your question about process. The process that you have in place may not be surfacing everything equally. Say, if you have maybe, you know, like a company OKR structure, which has the top level goal. And all the business units have to go up towards that.
[00:21:46]and the, everything that doesn’t directly contribute gets discarded, then that process might be masking some other good stuff that really needs to happen. and equally, if you don’t have the process in place for the company to have the right split between, the time it’s [00:22:00] budgeted. Budgeting for kind of future features and the new shiny things versus BAU and investment and Polish.
[00:22:06] Then a lot of time, you know, the work will never get prioritized. so I think there’s some really interesting conversations. When you think about what hasn’t gone well, Because not only is it just these very public failures as such with product decisions, but then there’s all the things that you maybe don’t hear about because they are just taking over in the background.
[00:22:27]so I think having kind of things like really clear frameworks and a way to kind of be confident in your decision, making clear principles of what you value, Those are really, really important to make sure that you can get that balance. Right. and it also means, I think if you, if you don’t talk openly about these kinds of decisions and when things haven’t, haven’t gone well, You can actually end up being quite frustrating to staff members, because again, there’s one thing kind of failing very publicly in the open.
[00:22:57]but there’s another thing if you end up with very brittle systems [00:23:00] or, you know, tech, that’s less attractive for new people to come in and work on this, stuff like that. So, definitely have seen my share of things that have worked well and things that haven’t gone so well.
[00:23:09] Joe: [00:23:09] That’s really interesting.
[00:23:10] I liked you, you mentioned there about the OKR sort of masking things that should be done perhaps in your organization. Cause you’re right. OTRs can. So that’s objectives and key results. They can often. Driving your organization forward, but if they’re not written in such a way that talks about, like you say, even just things like tackling tech debt or writing down large investments in you technology, especially in the scale-up space, when you’re growing very, very quickly, that stuff can really harm you and hurt you.
[00:23:35] Can’t really see you look at early failures of people like Twitter, where they were not addressing that technological. Issue. And that site was constantly going down, which was a massive frustration for people. But if you focus heavily on user growth and you’re never going to really address the fact that you’re, you know, your technology is going to fall over or could fall over every minute and does fall over all the time.
[00:23:56] Sally: [00:23:56] Yeah, exactly. So I think there’s, there’s different ways when you think about what can go [00:24:00] wrong. it’s not just nobody wanted to buy X thing or it wasn’t profitable. I think, shining your light on some of these. less visible kind of challenges is really important. And it’s an important conversation to have internally as well, to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
[00:24:18] Joe: [00:24:18] You mentioned it a little bit now in terms of frameworks and processes. So sort of co-working with your kind of head of engineering hat on. Are there, is there anything you use in terms of decision making with making sort of making this sort of larger scale tech choices or engineering choices that you might use?
[00:24:35] Sally: [00:24:35] I do. So I tend to, I tend to talk about this individually in different businesses, because I think that each business, might have a different approach to priorities. So there’s cost that kind of, you know, frameworks for thinking about general prioritization. But what I like to do is tie that into what is the, the overall business strategy at any one point in time, because a business that is, you know, really having to [00:25:00] strive for revenue and profitability.
[00:25:02] It’s in a very different situation to a, business’s got loads of money and, you know, it’s kind of work out what to invest back in. Yeah. And has a little bit more luxury in that sense. so I think it’s really important. To kind of balance, more generic frameworks and, balancing that with the, the company strategy, balancing that with the customer needs and also balancing it with some of the cultural elements I’ve talked about before.
[00:25:28]and that’s something that I’m really keen to actually focus on. Farewill warm now because I think we’ve got so many positive things. but as we grow, so we’re, we’re over a hundred people now and we’ve got plans to, to really, grow next year. You start to get to that point where what’s worked for you in the past, in terms of being able to have that conversation of, we both agree.
[00:25:50] This thing is more important than this thing suddenly needs a bit more of that structure in place. so that’s, that’s part of the job that I actually really enjoy. That’s
[00:25:58] Joe: [00:25:58] really interesting. Yeah. [00:26:00] I like that way that you talked about that sort of aligning that decision making to the business overall business strategy has got to be the goal.
[00:26:05] Hasn’t it? So if you’re in that high growth phase or you look working towards profitability, you can’t reinvest in, you know, a huge team of engineers to replatform what you’re doing. Obviously that doesn’t make any sense in terms of doing that. So I really liked that idea. Yeah. Great. we haven’t talked much about competition, so how much.
[00:26:23] Sally: [00:26:23] It’s that in
[00:26:23] Joe: [00:26:23] your experiences, perhaps in your current role or previous roles, have you, has competition played into the decisions that you’ve been involved in making
[00:26:32] Sally: [00:26:32] whenever anybody talks to me about competition? I always think about an anecdote that’s Tom from Monzo used to tell which I really need to find out where it came from.
[00:26:42] I don’t know if it was his only day. I don’t know if it was, but it was about, ice hockey and. The concept of basically having the hockey puck going around and how you can basically follow the hockey puck, wherever it goes, or you can essentially kind of [00:27:00] be the hockey puck and be anticipating things much sooner.
[00:27:04]he tells it obviously a lot better. but there are a lot of features, Yeah at Monzo. When we talk about this kind of anecdote where, you know, Monzo, popularized things like the gambling block and card freezing and unfreezing in the app, and then everybody else wanted that because customers started to expect that and it, you know, these kinds of decisions become the norm.
[00:27:24]and so if you always focus on what everybody else is doing, you’re always chasing that puck. You don’t ever have your own identity. you’re never kind of leading on the work that you could be doing yourself. And I think similarly, you know, with the work that we’re doing at Farewill now, a lot of the time people see technology as this enabler and say, you know, lots of people have tried to take worlds online, but we found that the tech is important, but it’s really our focus on people and the support.
[00:27:53] And everything that we can bring around that that is such a hugely important factor. And that’s kind of where, we feel [00:28:00] like we’re making a big difference. so I think it’s that balance for me, between having a, you know, having an eye on what people are doing and seeing if there’s any interesting things happening.
[00:28:10] But also, you know, very much doing your own thing and I’m of the quite cheesy opinion that actually, if you can do good work and bring up an industry by everybody else starting to do these good things too, it’s ultimately better for everybody. So kind of the more the merrier in that respect a little bit.
[00:28:27] Joe: [00:28:27] I like that. Yeah. That, that store you talk there as well. We both know it’s a, to boot, to British people, murdering an anecdote about ice hockey. Cause we know
[00:28:35] Sally: [00:28:35] yes
[00:28:37] Joe: [00:28:37] to where the puck is going to be. Don’t skate to where the puck is or something like that. I’m sure I’ll be able to get this better in post-production but yeah, that’s, that’s the idea.
[00:28:44] I love the idea. And I think what’s interesting about certainly you and your careers. You’ve worked, definitely worked for organizations like Monzo and Farewill, which are doing that and not focusing heavily on what everybody else is doing. They are focusing on what the customer needs and, you know, looking like you’re creating innovative ideas, but just really just [00:29:00] seeing what the customer wants and giving it to them.
[00:29:01] So I love that idea. cool. Great. Well, pretty much out of time now, Sally, so thank you very much for your time. Is there, is there some, somewhere people can find more about you. Is there anything in particular want to talk about at the end here?
[00:29:12] Sally: [00:29:12] So people can find me on my website, which is sally.dev and I’m Sally late on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I do rarely use LinkedIn, so feel free to stop me, but I may not reply.
[00:29:25]but no, it’s been great. Thank you so much for talking. And I hope this has been interesting to
[00:29:29] Joe: [00:29:29] people. It’s been fantastic. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Cool. Great. Thank you so much. I’m going to stop the recording here on zoom, and I’m going to stop the recording.