Richard Billington - CTO at MatsSoft

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Each week, we listen to great technology leaders come on this podcast and share their advice. Now it's time to apply it. We've created a leadership program made specifically for technologists. Watch each week as your people take action and apply this advice, and watch it all through leadership analytics. Visit leaderbits.io to enroll your directors and VPs in the highest quality leadership training program in the galaxy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:28) That's leaderbits.io. Now get excited, because today we are talking to Richard Billington, the CTO of MatsSoft, and we discuss advice for CTOs going through the acquisition process, hiring people who are better than you, and the importance of retaining homegrown talent. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:04) Nice. So it's end of your day.

(Richard Billington at 00:01:06) End of the day, yeah. I thought we'd squeeze in a little conversation before leaving the office. Sun's shining, it's looking quite nice out there, so all good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:15) That's awesome. Yeah. So what did you do today? How did your day go?

(Richard Billington at 00:01:21) Bit of everything. We're really busy at the moment. We're just about to release the next version of our platform. So it's all hands on deck there. We've got some penetration testing lined up for next week, so we're just trying to ensure that we're code complete and all of our testing scripts and what have you, all signed off and we're good to go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:42) Nice. And you're in what part of the UK?

(Richard Billington at 00:01:46) So I'm in a place called Bedford, which is about 75 miles north of London, just between Oxford and Cambridge. So yeah, pretty good location. A lot of tech companies in this area, mainly because of those big universities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:03) Nice. There's a penetration company called Nettitude that has locations out there. Have you ever come across them?

(Richard Billington at 00:02:09) Well, I know Nettitude very well, yeah. My best man at my wedding is one of their lead pen testers. Been with them from almost day one. And I know the owners. I actually organized my best friend's stag do, and the owner came on the stag do. So yeah, I know them quite well. We've used them ourselves a few times, but the most recent tests are being conducted by somebody else. We've used Nettitude a few times, and I always think it's good practice not to just keep using the same company, just in case there's any sort of assumptions that they might make that maybe a new company wouldn't, and therefore your testing might be, they might pick up something that was otherwise missed. So we're using someone different this time, but we recommend them. They're a good company to use.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:52) Yeah, I met them a couple months ago. I flew out to New York. I was working on a project, and they were the ones doing the penetration testing for a security product.

(Richard Billington at 00:03:01) Oh, that's very interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:02) They're super nice. Everybody was really cool. They were at a giant WeWork up in Manhattan in New York, and they had really cool offices and great people. So right when you said penetration testing, I thought of them.

(Richard Billington at 00:03:14) They've done really well. They've grown significantly, and I believe they've just been bought out or taken investment as well. So yeah, they're a good company, good company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:25) So I want you to explain low-code to me, because I love this. When I saw the website and started reading it, I was like, this is brilliant. I love that they have this term. Is that something you guys created?

(Richard Billington at 00:03:37) No, not at all. I'm sure you've heard of Forrester, the research firm. So they refer to this sort of market segment as low-code, whereas Gartner referred to it as high-productivity application platform as a service. So most people tend to go with low-code. It's just much easier to say, if nothing else. But effectively, they are the rapid application development environments of old. So whereas previously you might have had to install a RAD client and you'd have set up some architecture that was going to run it for you, now it's all delivered via the cloud and is way easier as a result. But conceptually, they're very similar. It's all around getting applications stood up quicker without the need for sort of traditional development, where maybe you don't have the team or the budgets to go out and buy that kind of resourcing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:35) That was a great explanation. I'm really curious to know this. I believe you're the third guest that has brought up this BPM software, and I have, just to be blunt, I haven't figured out this BPM software thing. Can you give me an introduction to it? Because I just keep seeing it come up. It's not going away, and I don't super get it.

(Richard Billington at 00:05:01) Okay, so I mean it fills a gap. You know, you've got, I think I saw some report actually by the US Department of Labor that says it's going to be like 1.2 million development jobs that are going to be unfilled by 2020. And you know, all of the research analysts will point to a huge digital skills shortage. So what do you do about that? You know, we need to train more people up. We need to maybe change the syllabus in colleges, high schools, universities to ensure that we're getting a large number of developers through, but that's all going to take time. So these platforms are designed to bridge the gap between what the business knows that they want, but what IT aren't able to deliver them because they just haven't got the resource to get it done. So it's all web-based. Clearly there's a learning curve and some training required for anyone to use them, but conceptually at least, it's a bit like using WordPress to build your websites. You know, you can use these low-code platforms to build business applications. And they won't be the only choice or the right choice for every kind of application that you might need to build, but they're certainly going to fill a gap where you just can't get it done any other way. And we're seeing them used for larger and larger projects. The market segment itself is getting invested into in a huge way. I mean, there was one of our more traditional competitors, OutSystems, took a £360 million, million dollar investment by Goldman Sachs and KKR last week. So you know, there is a lot of interest in the space. It's being talked up hugely by the analysts in terms of a growth sector, and therefore I suppose that sparks interest from the investment community.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:53) You've been around this product world around like quite a while, correct?

(Richard Billington at 00:06:58) Yeah. We built what is now the MatsSoft low-code platform about, well, the first iterations were like 11, 12 years ago. But at that point, they weren't really the sort of platform that we know now. We developed a code base that could be used for anyone who needed to map and manage a business process, and that was the forerunner to the platform that we know now. We rebuilt it about five, six years ago, and we just said, look, what we've got is obviously great, but it's more of a shared code base than a sort of traditional platform that you can just install and build applications upon. And we could see that the market was heading that way and thought, yeah, this is the right time to sort of take all that learning but technically at least rebuild from the ground up. And I think that's sort of set us in really good stead versus some of the competitors that have come onto the space since, like, you know, Mendix, OutSystems, Appian is another good one that IPO'd I think it was last year and has grown ever since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:01) Do you remember when they had these, this is probably like 10, 15 years ago, they had these small utilities for developers that would help them? They'd be like a GUI for creating little applications, and it was sort of like the preview to this whole industry.

(Richard Billington at 00:08:22) Little plug-and-play utilities that got you so far, that did an element of what you might need, but weren't able to sort of produce you an entire end-to-end application. I think most of the competitors in our space have evolved from that in some way, and I think they've then seen the gap in the market for something that is sort of all-encompassing in terms of a business application and have then fleshed that out and built upon it. And yeah, that's what we're seeing in the market today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:50) It's amazing because I love that it should be simple. You know, I haven't looked at it, and I came across those tools when I was looking at alternatives when people would need me to do projects or need something from me. And you know, since I've started writing code 17 years ago, like it's been incredibly in demand, right? So I've never had an issue with getting work writing code. My biggest issues are usually figuring out how to direct someone in the right area, right? Like, I can't help you, but you should go do this. And so I had explored those tools quite a bit to try to give, like, some smart people, say, hey, you probably want this sort of drag and drop, and then it produces PHP code or whatever maybe. But this looks like it's just this whole sector is just appearing to me out of nowhere. When did this low-code word come up? I mean, it has to be in the past five years, right?

(Richard Billington at 00:09:45) It was about five years ago, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:47) Okay, good. So I'm not, I'm not getting that far out of it, right?

(Richard Billington at 00:09:53) And you know, I think you're right. As a coder, you're not going to be out of a job anytime soon. I mean, the demand for coding, I don't know specifically in the US, but obviously UK-based, and I see a lot more in Europe in terms of the companies that are looking to use us because they just can't get the talent. But assuming it's similar in the US, then good coders are at a premium and there's just not enough of them. And there's so much that people want to do. And then you get an evolution like blockchain and loads of good developers switching over to other technologies because they're in demand. And suddenly, if you want .NET development or Java development or PHP development, you've maybe lost 10% of your workforce that are now picking up blockchain development instead. So it's a challenge to find good people to deliver the kind of digital services that everyone just expects these days.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:45) Right. And I don't mind it a whole lot, right? Because it's just job security. Like, I'm a Ruby developer. I took the last seven years in Ruby. Before that, I spent six or seven years in PHP, and before that I was doing more of the low, like low-code literally in the stack. But yeah, it's a great, like, I was talking about it with my wife. We go on these walks with our little girl, and I said, you know, it's a great feeling to know that if I ever want to make a change or do anything directionally in my life, that I always have that skill. It's like that ability, that capability. And then you got your start in web development, now you're the CTO, correct?

(Richard Billington at 00:11:28) That's correct, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:29) So I want you to describe to me that transition, how it happened, and then, you know, we know the struggle of learning the soft skills and thinking differently, because you're thinking like, you tell a computer to do something and it does it. You tell a person to do something and there's a whole person aspect.

(Richard Billington at 00:11:46) Yeah, no, I think that's the challenge. I mean, there's obviously a chapter in that book about, you know, does a developer make a good CTO, or can you be a CTO without a development background? And I would imagine, I mean, you've obviously interviewed a lot of CTOs, there's probably a mix, right? There's some that have come from development and some that just understand technology. You know, I was a developer first and foremost. Almost fell into it, really. I joined an organization as a sort of systems administrator, and it was right at the point where everyone was getting involved in the internet and wanted intranets. So our company said, right, we need an intranet. Who's going to build it? We didn't have the skills internally, so I just went and bought an ASP book, you know, the old-fashioned ASP, not even .NET ASP or anything like that. So just built some intranet and thought, actually, I really enjoy this. This is way more interesting than, you know, installing antivirus on computers and all that. So I wanted to get involved in development instead. So picked up ASP, found another job doing that, then moved into PHP just because there was somebody hiring and sort of stuck with PHP really. I've dabbled in other languages, but that's primarily what I've done. And I joined the company that I'm now at, MatsSoft. And that was at the point where they had this shared code base. It was all around understanding business requirements and then modifying the code base to meet that and deploying the application. And that really exposed me to customers, to capturing requirements, to going out and demoing what I'd done. And I think that really at that point was invaluable in sort of increasing those soft skills, those people skills that you need if you're going to manage a team. And as we grew, I sort of worked my way up, if you like, led a team, became head of development, and then at the point the organization needed it, and at the point of restructure, I became the CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:54) That's amazing. And how large is the company, and then how many people are in technology?

(Richard Billington at 00:13:59) So MatsSoft grew to about 65 people, and we were actually acquired last year. So 65 people at that point, of which about 45 to 50 would have been in technology. So we were very lean. You know, we had some sales and some marketing, some HR and some finance, but we were primarily a technology company. And we didn't really advertise. You know, we picked up some very big customers in the UK that really drove other customers to us that just heard about what we were doing through industry events and so on. That led to some interest in terms of investment or acquisition. And in August last year, we were acquired by an organization called Natterbox that have a sort of largely telephony-based business. They do contact centers there, moved more recently to the cloud, so sort of cloud-based contact centers. And there's a lot of synergies there that will allow us to sort of cross-sell the business applications into those contact center software customers and vice versa. So we're about 250 people now in total, which for a UK software business is large.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:16) For any business, that's a good, that's a really good size. I mean, you really go like from 250 and then you kick up to like the several thousand.

(Richard Billington at 00:15:23) Yeah, that's going to be the next stage of growth, if you like. So that's going to present some more challenges.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:31) Great challenges, though. It's growth.

(Richard Billington at 00:15:33) I was chatting to an investor last week, and they're like, you know, you've been here 12 years, looking at the same sort of set of four walls. You know, what keeps it interesting? But we've evolved so much from the point of which there was sort of three of us in a small office to the point of which there's 65, and now that, you know, 250. Every step presents different challenges. Really, you start from scratch, you start to learn again. You need to invest in both your team and yourself to understand what you now need to do differently based on the fact that the organization looks very different to how it did six months ago. So it's kept it fresh, which, you know, keeps it interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:12) It's all if I'm not growing and I'm not learning, I'm not happy. I've always gotta be moving.

(Richard Billington at 00:16:18) You see, that's where you become stale. And at that point, you know, I'd either look to leave or I'd be looking for a potentially different role in the same organization. But I think if you don't get up in the morning and want to come to work, that's gonna start to show either in the quality of work that you're doing or to the rest of your team. You know, you're not gonna be able to hide that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:37) You can't hide it. 100%. So when you went from three to 65 when you got acquired, did they let you operate pretty much the same way? It's just acquisition with the business relationship, or did it entirely change in the office move? Like, how did that go?

(Richard Billington at 00:16:54) We're still going through that process, but they've largely left us be to an extent. We were purchased because the technology was complimentary. You know? So we had some interest from the likes of the US where it was purely a technology play that would have ripped the technology out and taken it over to the US. There were others where the technology was of interest, but so was the customer in the order book. So then, again, that would have been a different type of acquisition. But this one's been really complimentary. So in terms of the technical team and delivery side of the business, you know, they brought us for a good reason. It was working well. We had some good technology that had just been included on the Forrester Wave for low-code platforms and the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So I think they were conscious that we're doing something right, you know, and it's not just us that think that. It's the industry analysts. So let's not go in there and be a bit too heavy-handed. I'm sure there'll be, you know, some positive influence that they can bring, and we're seeing that already. You know, they've got some brilliant technical guys themselves, certainly in the telephony space, and that's something that we can now look to embed within the platform. So I think it's very much a joint working relationship. At least it has been for now, so fingers crossed.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:15) So you've been there twelve years, so this is one of your first acquisitions. Were you heavily involved? What sort of advice would you give younger CTOs that haven't been through an acquisition about going through that?

(Richard Billington at 00:18:26) Be honest, first and foremost, because you're soon to get found out, you know, post-acquisition if that isn't the case. That's almost a given, you'd hope. I think it's just a case of laying your cards on the table. You know? They're obviously interested in acquiring you for a good reason. So they'd have done a level of due diligence before they approach you. And thereafter, you know, tell them what you do. They might have some valuable input in the way in which things could be done better. You know, they'll have, you would imagine, some experience in the space or some similar technology and technologies within their business. You know, I would imagine it'd be relatively rare that you're being brought and the organization has no understanding of what you're doing or how you do it, because that presents huge risk for them in terms of the acquisition itself. So, you know, leverage what they can bring to the table. Don't see it as negative if they have comments about the way in which you approach things, the methodologies that you use, the technology stack you've implemented. You know, take that kind of criticism as constructive, break it down, understand it, and see if you can learn from it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:37) Nice. And they have a CTO, official CTO title too?

(Richard Billington at 00:19:41) They do. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:42) You get along with them?

(Richard Billington at 00:19:43) I do. Yeah, good guy. His name's Richard as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:46) Oh, that's awesome.

(Richard Billington at 00:19:47) Yeah. He's less around the technology, more around emerging technologies. He's not sort of responsible for the road map in the way that I am of the NetCall product stack. But he does a huge amount of work with market analysts. He investigates sort of bleeding-edge technologies that we might be able to embed into our product sets. So he's that sort of investigative CTO, and he's a hugely valuable resource. So if we've got anything that gets thrown at us in terms of the sales process, then he can go away and spend the time and understand it, investigate it, and come back with the answer that hopefully, you know, allows us to proceed. So, yeah, very complimentary roles up to now, which has been great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:33) That's awesome. So you have a little bit of the product architect still going on in your role?

(Richard Billington at 00:20:38) Yeah. I do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:38) Yeah. That's awesome. You enjoy that?

(Richard Billington at 00:20:41) Yeah. I definitely see myself as a technical CTO. So, you know, an element of product ownership, you know, retained with me. So I've got a product manager, and he manages the product team. But it's quite a collaborative process, so we'll arrange meetings with sales, with marketing, with our delivery teams and say, well, you know, what is it you hear that the platform needs? You know, what do you think it needs? And then we'll combine that with, you know, the market analysis that Richard might do with customers that we invite in that really understand the space because, you know, they've got as good an idea of what they might need for in the business as we do. And if we can play to that, then you'd hope chances of retaining them or growing those accounts are gonna increase as a result.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:31) That's awesome. I love it. And it's really interesting because I'll get people that write questions to the show all the time, and they'll often ask me, like, what's exactly right, like, at this stage? And there's some rules of thumb. Like, when you're at the stage of 65, you shouldn't be writing code six hours a day. Right? Like, that's pretty clear. But what's not clear is the trend. I mean, in the past year, I've spoken to 120 CTOs from startups to Intel to VMware, T-Mobile, like 50, 60, 100,000 employees down to somebody in their garage with their friend making a technology with a CTO label. Right? And so I take lots of notes and really pay attention to the trends. And what I found is when you get to that upper tier of, you know, once you get teams of teams, right, and you really start growing, 65 tends to be a real good growth stage where you're figuring out teams of teams really well. And then I see when they get up in the 200s, they've already figured out teams of teams. And from there, you can go as far as you need to go if you have good culture. Right? Sorry. If you have good culture. But when you get up there, I noticed that the CTOs will pick—some of them will pick different stuff that they like. Like, for example, you said Richard does some market analysis, like product analysis of looking out for the future. Obviously, you do that to some degree. Right? Like, we just do it. But what I found is that the CTOs, when they get up to that level where they get to pick anything and they realize they can pick anything, they always pull a little bit of something they love from before. So I'll see CTOs that have thousands of employees, and they still get a little product architect-y. You know? Because they just really enjoy that process, and they may hire a senior research person. Whereas the other way, you could hire a senior architect and spend a little more time on research. So you just hire the skills with experts that you know need to be done, but you don't have the time to do them.

(Richard Billington at 00:23:43) It's the time thing, isn't it? You know? There's a CTO role is multifaceted. There's so much to do. You can't do everything yourself. Right? And the trick of a good manager, hiring people in that are better at things than you are. Now that's not to say you still can't contribute and maybe do a little bit of development or do a little bit of research, but there's no way, you know, my nine to five, that's never nine to five anyway, would be on any one part of the role. You know? You need a team to back you up. So maybe take the thought that you've had and go away and do the in-depth research you just never get around to doing. And I think one of the benefits of the acquisition has been we've got a much wider group of people now that we can leverage. They are subject matter experts in very specific things. And where required, we can go and bring that into our team for the amount of time it's required, leverage it, and then move on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:39) Yeah. You're smart. I like you, Richard. When I'm out there, we're gonna hang out, man, because I go out there every once in a while and there's a lot—I noticed so coming up for technology, where you're at, it's like there is a lot coming. Like, I hear about your area as much as I do Boston or New York or San Francisco.

(Richard Billington at 00:25:03) Yeah. London's got a huge tech culture. I mean, we've got a big blockchain event the next week, week after next, and it's got 3,000 people. There's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) It's all over Twitter.

(Richard Billington at 00:25:14) Yeah. There's events you could go to every week in and around London alone, and then that's before you reach out to Manchester and Birmingham, places like that. They're all trying to establish themselves as tech hubs because it brings jobs. It brings growth to an area. So they're doing it for a good reason. Like I say, London, I mean, there's events I can attend every week without a shadow of a doubt. Again, it's just picking the ones that are gonna add value that I feel I need to attend versus ones that we can push the team to attend. I mean, that's something we try to do, whether it's the system administrators or even the developers themselves. We'll push them to try and attend some industry events. You know, not all the time. They've obviously got their day job to do. But as part of their own growth, you know, attending those kind of things, broadening their horizons is great for their own personal development. So we do our best to try and get as many of those kind of events in the calendar as possible.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:14) That's awesome. This is a good topic that you mentioned about the growth. A recurring theme I've been discussing with CTOs is how do you identify and grow the leaders? Right now you're in a—or you've just gone through a growth phase. You said you went from three to 65. Right? So as people came on, when you start to hit that 20 and then you get a couple direct reports, and then you hit that 40, and then your direct reports have direct reports and stuff like that. What were you looking for, and then how did you pay attention to the people that needed to move into leadership positions versus the people that were really good at what they did, and you kept them there, and instead you put someone else in the leadership? Like, what were you looking for in that transition?

(Richard Billington at 00:27:00) I think, you know, you can have two people very good at their jobs, and you can teach technology. You can put them on courses. You can increase the skill set. I think training somebody to be a people person that can manage a team is not impossible. I think it's a skill you've either got or you haven't. You know? There are obviously training courses for team leadership and things like that. But I think if you're really a people person, then that'll come through in your day-to-day. And, you know, most of the individuals that have grown with the business that are now heading up teams themselves, they're people people. You can have conversations with them. You can take them into customer meetings. They're just confident, and that's a hard trait to find in technical people. You know, we've all seen the jokes about nerds and you can't send them out to customer meetings. And, you know, to an extent, it's true. And there'll be developers upstairs that just, you know, are not willing to go to customer meetings. You know? That isn't what they want to do, and why force someone to do something they're not good at. You know? So if you have both the strong technical background, but then couple that with some business acumen and the ability to communicate and manage and lead people, then, typically, you rise to the top anyway. I think it's pretty obvious who those individuals are within the organization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:29) So when you have a team of, like, let's say, five technical people, and maybe you're just looking for the leader of those technical people. Like, I know that I transitioned. I was very quiet and very technical, and then I slowly just got a little more open, and I was like, oh, this is kinda cool. And then I did a little bit more and that. And I had this trajectory where I emerged as a leader. And I was—it was up to me to figure out how to—I scienced it, man. Like, I figured it out. I was like, oh, okay. Well, if I pay attention to somebody and listen to them, then they like me, you know. And then I started learning and resourcing myself with these, you know, just keeping stuff around. It's like it's no different than if I'm trying to become better at programming. I keep a programming book around. Right? So I agree that I know what you're talking about, where there are some people that I don't care what you did. You could try to put them in a room and brainwash them. They're not a leader. Right? But I do believe that there's—and I guess I have a perspective because of the people that reach out to the show, because they listen to this for technology leadership. So there's a lot of people in transition that are like—they look for a piece of content. They find technology leadership. They hear me talking with CTOs about how they're leaders and how they handle different situations. And then they write me and say, oh, this is great. I heard so-and-so give this suggestion about how to deal with this, and then I tried it and it worked. So I don't—I think one of the problems was the generic leadership content. Like, the generic leadership training and stuff, I just think it doesn't apply to the technology people.

(Richard Billington at 00:30:19) No. I'd agree. I mean, like I say, you can put people on courses, but I don't think you can make someone a people person. And it's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:25) Oh, no.

(Richard Billington at 00:30:26) It's not even a skill that everyone needs or everyone wants, you know, wants to have. You know, ten years ago, having management in your title was seen as an aspiration. But I just think people have moved away from that a little bit. I think they realized that a lead developer that, you know, might be working with a couple of other developers and, you know, a tester and a BA or whatever, that is a more valuable role than a layer of management that sits above it just making sure that people are in and they're filling timesheets. And, you know, you're doing that kind of sort of generic management layer that you can't get away from. Right? Bigger organizations, you need that tiered management structure. But I think maybe developers, especially, don't necessarily aspire to that anymore. They want to be seen as a lead in their field, an expert in what they do, but they don't necessarily need ten reports under them to give them validation of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) Right. Now I love it when the subject matter experts just get a little bit of the management edge, and then they go really far.

(Richard Billington at 00:31:29) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:30) So I like the path of mastering your craft first. Like, have some value you bring and then lead others to replicate you. Because that's really kind of what it is. When you've mastered your craft at engineering and you, by simply explaining how you think or by performing your work, you get a following because people want to know how you do it so well.

(Richard Billington at 00:31:53) I think that maybe is the difference between a leader and a boss. I think if you're the subject matter expert, if you're seen as someone who's knowledgeable, understands their craft, is very good at what they do, and then you take on a little bit of management, I think you can lead people. Whereas I think if you're just hiring in mid-level management, they're just a boss. They don't really maybe inspire or pull the team along with them in the way that a lead would. We've always had a philosophy of attempting to hire within to provide promotional opportunities to teams.

(Richard Billington at 00:32:30) I think that really inspires a team that they can see somebody has become an expert. They've understood the business. They've done the hard graft. And as a result, they're innovating their way through the business. I think that inspires, especially when you're attempting to bring in graduates. They want to see a career development path. They don't necessarily know what they want to do at that point. If they can see that I can become an expert in development and then maybe I'll become a lead developer, then I could potentially head up a development team, that really gets them going and then it motivates them. And they're more likely to stay with you. Retaining talent is huge if you're going to grow an organization. It's not just the cost of recruitment. It's finding people, which comes back to the digital skill shortage you mentioned earlier.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:16) How do you communicate that path to your people? You have 65 people. How do you say this is the path and this is how you progress down the path?

(Richard Billington at 00:33:28) So we have a good HR function that allows us to mentor the team. We will give them goals. We give them access to management as much as anything. I'm very much one for open plan offices, all sitting in together. I don't like to lock myself away, and anyone at any point can come up and speak to me about pretty much anything. And that's true across the business. There really isn't a notion of a management floor with people sat in bigger glass-fronted offices. That just doesn't exist. So anyone can speak to anyone in the business, the CEO, the CTO, being sat having lunch in the staff room with anyone else. So you just start discussing, talk to people, mentor people. And if they've got problems, you can learn how to address them. If they get frustrated in their role and they need some training, if they feel they're not valued or their contribution to a project wasn't properly identified, then it just comes up in conversation. And I think you can really address issues that might otherwise grow if they have access to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:38) So is there a way to see it like a Google map? Like, I am here and I want to go here, and then track it. Does HR have some sort of form or something?

(Richard Billington at 00:34:49) Yeah, there's definitely understood career progression paths for everyone in the business. Now, we're growing, but there isn't going to be a head of product role for everyone in the business, clearly. So you expect that people will move on to progress their ambitions, right? And I have a philosophy of trying to ensure that nobody ever leaves the business without a handshake and a pat on the back, because I never want to stand in anyone's way. If a developer came to me and said, there's a lead developer role just down the road, the money's a little bit better, the career progression's there, and there really just isn't that role for me in the business at the moment—and as much as I might not want to lose them and I'd almost certainly attempt to keep them—I'd still send them off with a pat on the back because you can't stand in people's way. That kind of policy of trying to stop people will eventually bite you in the ass, right? Because they're going to become demotivated. You're not going to get out of them what you did, and they're going to leave anyway, ultimately. So I think it's really important to have that kind of open relationship with the team where they can come to you and say, "Look, I'm struggling. I can't grow. I don't know where my next move is." And then you can work to see if maybe the path that they thought they were going to take into lead development isn't right for them. But, actually, a BA, a consultant type role, if they've got the people skills, might be another avenue, and then cross-train them. Because if you can retain that talent, it makes it easier to retain customers because that knowledge leaving the business is a nightmare to try and replace.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) Yeah, it's a high turnover cost to lose that knowledge. That's smart, man. I like the way you think. I like how you work and how you operate, man.

(Richard Billington at 00:36:35) Thank you very much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) Was there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about?

(Richard Billington at 00:36:42) No, I don't think so. I mean, obviously I've been through your book, and there was one chapter that particularly grabbed me—the Spaghetti Code MVP Epidemic. Because I think, and I don't want to turn this into any kind of sales pitch for low-code, but one of the things you can definitely do with low-code is fail fast. And whether that's on the road to producing an MVP that ultimately you then retain and keep and you can build upon, or whether it's trial and error, proof of concept, because you can fail that much faster, you can throw things away without the cost that might otherwise have been associated if you've developed it from the ground up using traditional methods. And I thought that paragraph, that chapter really resonated because we have a lot of customers who come to us. They've got a great idea. They might have even tried to do it—traditional development in-house—but, again, maybe couldn't get the resources to do it. And I think low-code is another way of addressing that problem. Build something quickly, see if it's going to work, and then maybe you don't necessarily build it on the platform if that's not the right choice. It may be that you build your MVP, your proof of concept quickly on a low-code platform, but then ultimately develop it using code. I'm not suggesting low-code is by any means the only solution to the problems that are out there. It's just another tool that can be used, and maybe using it and failing quicker as a result reduces cost, time, and effort for everyone involved.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:15) Yeah. Well, I mean, it took me several years to figure out that I can get the same benefit by using a prototyping tool like InVision to work out user experience and find something people would pay for before I actually wrote code.

(Richard Billington at 00:38:34) Definitely. Especially when you couple platforms like this with the agile methodology. You don't want to spend hours capturing requirements upfront like you might have done if you were following a waterfall methodology. But clearly you need to know what you're building. The developers need to know what they're doing. And I think if you can iteratively develop quickly on a platform knowing that the show-and-tell on a Friday, you might scrap them up—you've gone in the wrong direction, you've misunderstood what the client told you—it's still quicker to do that and to start again the following Monday than it is to spend three, six months writing requirements upfront. Because technology markets are moving on so quick, by the end of that three, six month period, your competitor might have already done it. You might have lost market share, or maybe actually what you thought you wanted is no longer relevant now versus six months ago. So you've just got to be able to do things quicker. And I feel really sorry for large organizations that have got to digitize their processes. They've got to keep up with their competition. They've got new lean organizations coming into their space that are eating market share. Because if you've got a big, maybe somewhat bloated organization and you're still trying to get things done quickly, it's incredibly hard. We've seen a number of our customers that have brought this in just as a way of trying to get things done that much quicker—prototype, iteratively develop, then decide, do we go ahead with this and spin up the big machine for big projects? Maybe we still build it on low-code, maybe we won't, but either way we can find out that much quicker. And I think it's a tool that every organization's going to need if they're going to compete.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:22) Well, BPMs to the rescue, my friend. I love it. I'm going to tinker around with a couple of them because I'm curious to see how much they've progressed. I mean, just look at AR and how much that's progressed in the past five years. I bet you that these BPMs have gotten real great.

(Richard Billington at 00:40:41) We've got some e-learning that you can sort of step your way through. You get a trial instance in the platform delivered via the web. If you want access to it, drop me an email.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:50) Oh, excellent. I'm making a little note right here, e-learning.

(Richard Billington at 00:40:54) No, it's good to understand what's out there, right? And I spend as much of my time as I can just investigating the latest trends. We've been looking into all sorts recently. I mean, I mentioned it before, but blockchain seems to come up in just about every conversation with every technologist I have. We're looking to understand where that fits into the MATS platform and how it can be utilized to provide value. So you've got to keep on point, right? You've got to keep learning. You've got to keep understanding. You've got to keep researching and investigating. If you want to know a little bit about low-code, give me a shout and I'll set you up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:31) Amazing. I will hit you up on that. If you got the chance to meet Elon Musk, would you be excited?

(Richard Billington at 00:41:38) Definitely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:40) Me too, man. I mean—

(Richard Billington at 00:41:40) I've read his autobiography.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:42) Oh, yeah? Me too.

(Richard Billington at 00:41:43) Which is interesting because you go through it and at certain points you can't help but think he was a little bit lucky there. He didn't necessarily make the right choice, but things all worked out for him. And it gave him a huge amount of wealth. And what I probably admire about him more than anything is the way he's using that wealth, because he's not just—he's not all fast cars and private jets and holidays. I'm sure he has a bit of that, of course, but he's really investing that money to try and improve the world for all of us. And that sounds a little bit corny almost, but—

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:23) He's brilliant. Like, he literally is making it better for us with his wealth.

(Richard Billington at 00:42:29) Yeah. One of the stories about, he was looking at battery-powered cars, and he was working out the cost was purely—the cost was inhibited by the price of the battery.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:43) Yeah.

(Richard Billington at 00:42:44) Everyone was like, "You just—it's not going to work. The batteries cost too much." And he said, "Okay, I'm going to go make a battery that's cheaper." And he looked at the problem from a different way, and he's going to have an amazing battery production facility over in the US, doesn't he, and one somewhere else, the biggest factory in the world or something?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:04) Yeah, the biggest technical—it's like the biggest actual physical plant in the world. It's the battery factory.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:10) Yeah.

(Richard Billington at 00:43:11) So he's got that. He's producing batteries, and he's now going to use them to deliver the car that he saw as being the future. And then he's got space and he's got everything else, right? So I mean, the guy in terms of technology is living the dream. He can find problems, and he's got the money, the clout, and the intelligence to go away and to solve some problems that are really going to benefit us all. So, yeah, I mean, I'd love to—it'd be one of my three dinner guests I'd invite around without a shadow of a doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:43) Well, if I ever get that opportunity, I'll call you and be like, "We made it happen."

(Richard Billington at 00:43:49) No, that would be amazing. That'd be amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:51) His book is actually right there. It's right there on one of the stacks. But yeah, I love that story that you mentioned when he looked at it and he goes, "Everyone says batteries are expensive. What's the price of nickel being traded at? What's the price of these elements being traded at, so we could just purchase them by the pound and put them together?" And I'm like, that's like the build-buy-hire decisions companies make, right?

(Richard Billington at 00:44:19) Well, he's got the ability to be bold, doesn't he, because of the financial backing he's got. I mean, I was reading something about—I think it was last week—he's put all the contractors at SpaceX on notice. Unless they can convince one of his employees that they are providing value, and that employee will vouch for them, their contracts are terminated the following Monday. And he literally did that process because he felt that they were becoming too bloated. They'd brought in too many consultants, too many contractors, and they weren't providing a level of value. So unless, as a contractor, you could find a full-time member of staff who's going to say, "This guy is important. We need him, and I'm going to personally vouch for him," your contract was ended.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:01) Oh, that's brilliant.

(Richard Billington at 00:45:02) He's got obviously the luxury of being able to implement policies like that, but it's brilliant. It's going to keep people on their toes. Those contractors that retain their contracts are going to make sure they're delivering for them. And if your team's delivering for you, your business is going to go somewhere.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:20) Yeah. Well, it's a brilliant move on his part because to force one human to vouch for another when you're full-time for the organization—there will be people who'd be like, "Man, I just can't do it." And that will cut his bloat, and that will lean up his company and give them more money to hire better people.

(Richard Billington at 00:45:42) It's like if you're a contractor and you're doing a nine-to-five, you're leaving on time, and you're leaving a paid employee in the office, why is that paid employee going to turn around having put the extra hours in to try and drive the business forward and say, "Yeah, keep that guy on his inflated salary so that he can do his nine-to-five and leave me working in the office"? No, thanks. Otherwise, stick around. Back me up. Work with me. If you want your contract today, right, you've got to earn it. I think it's a brilliant policy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:14) Yeah. And the worst case scenario is the contractors that were on the fence are going to step it up hard.

(Richard Billington at 00:46:21) You know, which is what he's hoping for, right? He probably doesn't want to lose them.

(Richard Billington at 00:46:26) He just wants to lose the ones that aren't contributing. So those ones that maybe had got a bit sluggish, they've been there a while, they were coming a bit comfortable, they're going to go back to their A game. They're going to raise it again to make sure that they're retained. Yeah, I really like that. It's policies like that—you can really see his personality coming out in the way that he runs a business. Yeah, I mean it would be great to meet him.

(Richard Billington at 00:46:47) I'd love to see him talk actually at some kind of event. I'd love to try and get that at some point. I don't think he does too many of those kind of events where he's talking, certainly not that I've heard of, but I think that would be really inspiring.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:01) That's awesome. I always try to get close to people. So I figure out how far away I am. So I'm two degrees away from Musk right now, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:11) So my brother's a doctor, and one of my brother's patients is his friend.

(Richard Billington at 00:47:16) That's close enough. Close enough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:18) Yeah. He's on a board of one of their companies. But, you know, before we wrap up, I've got to know this. How far, are you an hour from London?

(Richard Billington at 00:47:29) A little bit less. About forty minutes on the train.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:32) Okay. Because I frequently travel around. So when I'm in London, we'll get together. Do you know Peter Cooper?

(Richard Billington at 00:47:39) Peter Cooper.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:40) Yeah. He has the largest developer newsletter in the world. It's called Cooper Press. It's Ruby Weekly, JavaScript Weekly. Basically, all the frameworks with the word "weekly," and he's got half a million engineers on there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:52) And, oh yeah, it's, I know.

(Richard Billington at 00:47:54) But I'll get to it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:57) Yeah. And he runs conferences. And so I've got together about eight really large technology influencers and contributors in London. And so I was looking at my calendar figuring out when in the next six months I want to go there and get everyone together, hang out, stop by people's offices, do a high five, say hello, because it's really cool to hang out and talk with you. And then the people I really like, I go say hi in person.

(Richard Billington at 00:48:25) Yeah, definitely. I'll, yeah, let me know when you're over. I mean, I'm down in London all the time. We've got a number of customers there, and a lot of events. So yeah, if you're ever over, it'd be great to meet up, have a chat, and have a beer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:38) Awesome. Yeah. Elon Musk calls you up. He's got a time machine. He hasn't shown it to anybody yet. He invites you over to his house, and you get to go on the time machine and go back ten years ago and talk to yourself. What piece of advice would you give yourself?

(Richard Billington at 00:48:56) Oh man. That's a great question. Wow, that's completely stumped me. What advice would I give myself?

(Richard Billington at 00:49:07) I mean, just to keep going. I mean, I look back at the career that I've had, and I think I'm quite fortunate. I don't believe I've made many wrong turns. So I think it's trust your gut, trust your gut feel. There's been a few times where, certainly at the previous company, I could have left. I had other opportunities. Someone approached me about doing some contracting on a very good day rate, and I thought, do I just take the money? It was relatively short-term, but I thought, no, I'm going to stick this out. And it was at that organization that I became a head of development for the first time.

(Richard Billington at 00:49:43) And if I hadn't have become a head of development there, I probably wouldn't have picked up the job that I've got here. And then, you know, everything leads to where I am now. So I'd like to think I've been relatively lucky. So the advice I need to give myself is pretty much just to keep walking down the path that I was on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:00) Love it. A little persistence, hard work, and then growth, man. Look, you can't really go wrong if you're always growing and learning. If you decide that no matter what mistakes I've made in the past, today I'm just going to start growing and learning every single day, you end up in a better place.

(Richard Billington at 00:50:18) Without a doubt. I mean, growth's hard. It's hard to find the time to read all the books you want to read, to attend all the conferences you want to go to. But I think if you can do a little bit every day, then over a course, you know, over a period of time, that's going to add up and it's going to creep your understanding and your abilities overall. So I think it's all about just doing a little bit a day, whether it's working with the team, whether it's reading a book, whether it's attending an online conference.

(Richard Billington at 00:50:50) I've been attending a lot of online conferences at the moment because finding the time to go to London for an event that might be three or four hours, but then you tack travel and everything else out of your diary, is difficult. But just to dial into one of these online webinars that just gives you an hour on a subject, just to start, you know, increasing your understanding of it. I, at a minimum, I'd like to take at least one or two of those a week just to ensure that I'm continually evolving.

(Richard Billington at 00:51:20) BrightTalk. I mean, there's—I'm just signed up to a huge amount of newsletters for subject matters that I'm interested in, and then they tend to find you. Anything that allows me to sign up and deliver me content in terms of subjects I'm interested in, I tend to sign up to and then just pick and choose. I tend to have, you know, maybe ten presentations, webinars, that kind of thing in my diary a week, and then I'll just pick and choose the ones that I can actually attend based on commitments I've got for the business. And the ones that I can't, they tend to then publish them as videos after anyway. So you can then just pick them up and, you know, go to the gym, get yourself on a treadmill, and just listen to it while you're running.

(Richard Billington at 00:52:04) You know, try and make the most of the time that you've got so that it continues your education.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:14) Richard, this has been a fantastic podcast, dude. I really enjoyed this, man. It's really cool hanging out with you.

(Richard Billington at 00:52:21) Good. Thank you very much. Great. And keep in touch. Like I said, if you want access to any of our eLearning, just have a play to understand it yourself, and definitely if you're over in the UK, give me a shout. We'll definitely hook up and go for a beer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:34) Awesome, man. You have a fantastic day. Enjoy your evening, and we'll talk soon, buddy.

(Richard Billington at 00:52:38) Nice one. Cheers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:40) Cheers.

(Richard Billington at 00:52:40) Bye now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:46) Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to help, please take a moment right now to open up the iTunes app and leave a review of the podcast. If you take a screenshot of the review and text it or email it to a friend who needs to listen to the podcast and then CC me, [email protected]—you CC me on the email—I'll send you a copy of the Modern CTO book or give you a shout out on the podcast, whichever you prefer. We're trying to get listed on the top 100 for iTunes, and I need your help in order to do this.