Episode 4 - Technical Co-founder talks about finding his social tribe in retirement

Listen to Owen O'Malley, previous LinkedIn, Hortonworks/Cloudera and Yahoo technical leader talk about the logic he applied going into his next chapter.  The historical landscape of big data in Silicon Valley is also discussed.  

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Welcome to the next chapter Conversations, a podcast about real life stories from people designing a meaningful second act or retirement. My guests will talk about inflection points and the paths they took to their next chapters in life. The goal for the podcast is to create more dialogue and build community around the R word. A word that was really hard for me to wrap my head around when my own journey into my next chapter began. My guest is a founder and pioneer in the software industry. He's credited with being the co-founder of two successful data management companies. For our technical listeners, he's an expert in Hadoop, HBase, and MapReduce with a specialty in open source development. For those of you that aren't techies, Map Plus Reduce can be used for complex problems, allowing you to break down large quantities of data into smaller consumable blocks. It provides reduced computational time, filtering out unwanted data, and allows you to analyze large data sets very quickly. Owen and I met about 10 years ago when he was principal engineer, and I was the human resources partner for him and his team. Owen is passionate about developing scalable and reliable big data technologies. I admired him for many things, but of particular note was his passion for distributed systems and ensuring our solutions are trustworthy, highly valued in the industry, and to our customers. I also appreciated that Owen is a very smart man and he helped me understand the business. I am not a math person, I'm more of a psychology and communications person. He would draw out and explain to somebody that is not really good with that stuff just how the business works. And I always really appreciated that about you. So thank you for that. I've asked Owen to join the podcast to share his story about his next chapter. I'm curious to hear what he's learned and can share with our listeners. Welcome to the podcast, Owen. Thank you for being with us today. Let's begin with you telling us about yourself. I was a co-founder of Hortonworks, was one of the first committers on the Hadoop project, which is an open source distributed big data platform. It's probably the canonical big data platform. Yeah. The one that led to everything being in Java. I'm passionate about software. Actually, both my parents were programmers. They both started really early. They met on the Apollo project. And at that point, there weren't university programs that had computer science in it. So NASA took physical scientists and trained them how to use computers. My dad was a physicist, my mom was a chemist, and they learned computers working at NASA, and that's when they met each other. Wow. Wow. So it's in your DNA. I'm a second generation programmer. Well, do you want to tell us your age? 50. Okay. How long you've worked, since what age, and then tell us a little bit about the last full-time company where you worked. Okay. I graduated from UCLA and then I went to UC Irvine for my PhD. I was working the whole time through grad school, although most of it working for my research advisor. I was working at LinkedIn for the last three years, which actually was down from where I was at Hordeworks. I took a reduction in title because the work was interesting and the pay was good, and the title didn't matter as much to me. Part of the story of how I got to Hordeworks was through Yahoo. But when I went to Yahoo, I had a competing offer from Google. And the Google offer was a better financial offer, but Google wouldn't tell me which team I'd be working with, what technology I'd be working on. They were going to decide that once I accepted their offer, where Yahoo is like, you'll be working with these people on this subject. And I decided that was more important to me than the better financial offer from Google. So I took the Yahoo offer. Now, Yahoo, what they wanted was the work that directly led me to working on Hadoop. And then tell me the story about leaving Yahoo and being uh, you know, founder. Okay. So the the story of us launching Hortonworks, basically, Rob Beardon was at Benchmark Capital, one of the VC firms, and he wanted to get invested in big data. So he talked to the big data companies that were out there, which at that point were MapR and Cloudera, and he realized that neither of them was driving the technology themselves, right? They were using the technology that was being pushed by Yahoo. So a very long process of negotiating between us, Yahoo, and Benchmark to spin us out. We started with 22 of the Yahoo engineers. They made it a critical item to get security in there. Yeah. Um, when you think about AI now and you having to distinguish between a real person and a bot, what thoughts do you have about that and those challenges? Security is always hard. I knew the security stuff was actually working when there was a system that I was trying to work on, and I couldn't cut a corner that I traditionally cut by pretending to be someone else to fix some permissions that had gone wrong. And I was like, oh, darn it. This stuff is actually working now. Yeah. But computers have often led to this kind of dilemma of needing to figure out who someone is and making sure that people don't try to use more permissions than they have, right? So security and usability fight each other when we're designing systems. So it's important to make sure the system stays usable, but that you can trust it. The problem with the AI stuff, especially now, is that it looks enough like what a human would produce that it makes it easier for people who are trying to pretend that they're a person to easily generate lots of bad information. For example, there was a government that wanted to get feedback from its users and basically was using how many distinct letters did they get, right? So they would check to see if people are using form letters and just sending them out, and that would count, but not for as much. The problem is with AI, it's easy to have one person generate a thousand different-looking messages. I think a lot of people have a lot of fear about it, right? There is a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear about it, and and not only jobs, but people being irrelevant, and how is the next generation going to get those entry-level jobs? And actually, it's the jobs are important, but even more important are the relationships that you form early in your career with people that help you. And you build up that you build up that trust and rapport. And later on down the road, you meet them or they help you, or you help them. How are those new college grads actually going to get employment? And I think we're starting to see some of that, or at least people are saying that it's out there. I'm not an expert in it. So yeah, there are a lot of challenges right now with it. And companies are trying to adopt the AI stuff. The studies that have been done so far show that software engineers that use AI feel like they're being more productive, but in fact are being slower. And what's a bigger problem to me is that they're generating code that they don't really understand, and they're putting that out into production. So software engineering was about making sure that you understood what the software that you were producing did and how it worked. And by trying to bypass that, it really creates a worse product because you end up with code that no one understands. Interesting conversation. Let's switch into the next chapter. So, do you have a philosophy or beliefs that you rely on that guide your life choices? Yes. Although I feel like that's one of those that you're continually evolving. I was recently on a vacation in Europe, and I was talking to a gentleman that is an interesting guy, and we got talking, and I told him I was just retired. He's like, Oh, I'm gonna keep working until I can't. And actually, what he said was, see, in our society, money is the way that you track success. If you keep working, you get more money, and that defined success for him. And I was like, I really disagree with that. My mom came down with cancer, and I'm sorry. I was really glad that I was retired because I could spend a lot of time visiting her, right? I was really glad that I had the ability to spend the time, right? If I'd been working full-time, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to spend nearly as much time when it was her last year. So there was no way to get more time, right? Time is is the critical factor and your most limited resource. So being able to have time and spend it with the people that are important to you is so, so important. I mean, I was getting a very nice paycheck, and I decided that being able to travel, being able to go do things and decide where I spent my time was most important to me. So that said, I do volunteer, right? I help at the library to help seniors with their phones and their laptops. There's a group of us, and we all help them work through their issues and get them up and running. I also volunteer at a local school with third graders teaching them to code. And their teachers wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't help. And so by helping and going in with the class, I feel like I'm making a difference. Yeah. Did you make the decision to retire before your mom's diagnosis? Yes. Okay. Okay. I actually retired before. What was happening? What made you decide? Okay, I'm done. Well, a couple of things. Actually, my manager at LinkedIn pulled me in. He had decided to retire and to leave. So the job was getting less fun. And I really wanted to start traveling and have more control over my time. So the combination is what dipped my hand. A couple of my friends said that in general, most people stop wanting to do big travel trips by the time they're 70. Now, some people go much later, some people don't get that long. So each year you work past 50 means you're giving up 5% of your travel time. And that combined with the fact that my dad died young, he died at 66. My grandparents died in their 60s. It's realizing that you don't have forever, right? Unlike when you're 20, when it feels like you have forever ahead of you. And I decided I wanted to do it differently. My financial advisor was like, okay, you've got enough. You can retire when you want. My wife had retired, so without either of us having a job, then we were free to travel and invest our time in the things that were important to us. Yeah. My next question did you get advice or have a friend or mentor that helped you with retirement? Yeah, absolutely. My friends definitely helped form that opinion. Hey, you should think about retiring. And they, in fact, also retired. And I encouraged a couple of my friends to retire who weren't necessarily thinking about it. Work is is always work. So it's never lots of roses. You also get some thorns with work. And yeah, so if there are more thorns, then it becomes easier to throw the switch. Did they take your advice? They did. They did. Okay. All right. And now they get to travel lots too. And actually, the trip that we have planned with them to Antarctica and Peru. So how fun is that? Oh, wow. Exactly. So now you have your retirement tribe now to hang out with. Exactly. I love it. I can't wait to hear about it. I might have to call you and see how that is. Okay. So tell me about the psychological aspects of leaving full-time work. Anything you miss, transitions or rough patches that you had on the psychological aspect of not working full-time. It's a little bit awkward when people ask what you're doing. You're like, oh, I'm retired. I miss the social stuff of having a group of people that you're working with all the time. Now that said, you've got more time for your friends. And so that's good. And lots of my friends or people that I've worked with over the years. But there is definitely a transition where you need to figure out how you define yourself when you're not in a job. Right? They'll go to systems engineering meetups and get into interesting conversations. And they always are like, oh, where are you working? Like, oh, I'm retired. But that's okay. They can respect the fact that I'm still doing interesting things and interested in exciting topics because I'm willing to go to meetups, right? It's not like I'm sitting at home watching TV all the time. Just because you're retired doesn't mean that you're not current and that you don't have something interesting to contribute. And I agree with you. When I first retired, I couldn't even say the retirement word. I don't lead with that obviously anymore. But at this point, I've gone past there. I've gotten to the place where I am comfortable leading with it. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I do too. I'm on that journey. I'll tell them it at the end, like we'll talk about business or something. This weekend we got invited to the workday suite for the 49er game. And so Day's uh HR ERP system, right? I started asking them what they're doing with AI. We got into this really interesting conversation. And two of my five kids are in HR, right? And one of them, she implemented workday at her company. And I told him that. So the whole conversation, he thought I was working full-time still. And so I was asking him questions, and then he's like, Oh, where do you work? And I said, Oh, I'm retired. But I didn't lead with that, right? So we still had an engaging conversation. So but my point is I think you would have had an engaging conversation even without putting off discussing that you're retired. True. I probably would have talked about my own experience with the software or something more, yeah. I don't know. What three things would you tell your pre-retirement self about retirement? I'd say whatever your choice is about when to retire, be deliberate about it. Think about what you're doing. Don't let yourself fall into, oh, everyone keeps working and so I want to keep working. Think about what you're trading off. Don't stress about it. You will find things, lots of things to entertain you and to keep you mentally active and busy. Go out and find them. Third thing is volunteering is great. If you can find people that you can help, that's a great thing to do. And it gets you some more social time. Anything you think you would advise people to not do? Don't stress too much. But how do you not stress about not having enough money, even if you talk to a financial planner, who knows what's going to happen? And how do you not stress about what you're gonna do in retirement? Because if if a major component of your life has been work and you've gotten a lot of joy, satisfaction, relevance out of that, how do you not stress about letting that go? So there is absolutely part of that. And my financial advisor was really worried about me retiring because so many men build so much of their ego around their job and their work. And suddenly having it gone could be a concern. Now, for me, there were some, but not as much as he was afraid of. Oh, make sure to keep your social connections, right? Don't let the social connections wither. Spend time with your friends, not less. Don't worry about whether you'll be seen as irrelevant. And I mean, financial stuff, of course, you can always have more money, right? But you can't get more time. It's about understanding the trade-offs. The other thing is having the financial planner and getting that relationship going so that you have someone else looking at your finances to say, okay, this is doable, or uh it's a little dicey for you to retire at this point. Yeah, a lot of people in retirement, a part of the financial component is to sell their home and move someplace less expensive so they can live comfortably. Did you and your wife discuss a move? And how was that conversation? We've discussed it, but because our kids have moved back to the area, being close to the kids is really, really nice. And so it would be hard to consider being very far away from where our kids are, especially once they start having kids of their own. If there are grandkids around, my wife will very likely want to be near the grandkids. And so will you too, right? So will I, yes. Absolutely. I love kids, actually. Well, you're volunteering at the school, you're you're doing so much for children. So my wife and I had were dating, and actually we're getting close to getting married at that point. And we went to a wedding, and the people sitting next to us had their toddler. I proceeded to play with the toddler, and then I took the toddler around and was entertaining the toddler so that the mom and dad could go dance. And the mom told my wife that, wow, he's a keeper. He's just playing with these kids just because. Yeah, I like kids. Uh, seemed to be a good grandpa or papa or whatever you want to be called. Exactly. I hope so. Yeah. What brings you joy and satisfaction now? I like teaching people things. That's part of why I like helping at the library with the technology and with the third graders. I've started taking photography classes too. I really enjoy that. Oh, nice. Yeah, I think the creative side is really fun. You have to have a learner mindset if it's something you've never done before. But I I find it a lot of fun to try new things. And I just tell myself, Lisa, be patient, because I'm not necessarily the most patient person. And it's going to take a couple tries, maybe more, until you get it, until it clicks. So anything else that you're thinking about in retirement, do you have like a to-do list or a bucket list or hey, I think I'll get into doing something else there? There are things that are interesting and that I'm interested in kicking the tires of. So we'll see. Yeah. Anything in the technology space? Are you like that door's closed and I want to go do other creative, you know, volunteering aspects of life. I keep thinking about writing some games for iOS just because I enjoy doing that. Um making some nice free apps would be good. Oh, uh sign me up to be a beta person. I will I will try them out. Because I think everybody does the Wordle and the Sudoku and the New York Times games. Sometimes I'm like, uh, like I'll do this. I kind of like something new. Are you going to come up with a new game or are you going to take an existing game and put it online? What are you thinking? I really like Splendor Duel. Actually, doing a Splendor Duel as an app would be really nice. actually. Of course, using another game that you have to be a little careful with the IP, right? Yeah. You don't want to get the game manufacturer mad at you. Yeah. Or you could go to them and say, hey, I've got this idea. Can I develop it for you? And the they'll either say sure, yeah, and do it themselves or right. Yeah. But I can see you creating a new game too or something that's a maybe a combination. So well good. Any any other insights? Because you're having fun when you and I first talked you just resonate positivity and joy in this in this next phase of life. You're super relaxed, but you're having fun. You're laughing all the time. Any insight as to how others can potentially create that for themselves? I like the way you expressed it as keeping a learning mindset. Now that is part of why I loved programming because you have to keep learning. You want to keep that up. You want to continually be learning new things finding things that are interesting. Every December there's a man that releases Advent of Code which is a set of programming puzzles that he releases one per day. And he used to do one for the first 25 days and this year he decided that was too much for him and so he cut it down to 12. But those are just fun right it's fun to to get in there and program these challenges and I was following one per day up until day 12 the last day and then I was like oh what it really wants is this data structure that I implemented once but I haven't done in a long time and then I looked at the research so I was going off to Donald Newth who's a professor at Stanford and seeing what he's done on that recently and he's continued to work on it and made improvements and so I've got myself into this huge deep dive of understanding what Donald Newth has been up to for the last couple years. Okay did you solve it though? So I solved the first 11 days but I haven't solved day 12 yet because I'm still working you have to solve you've come this far you've got to do 12 I I will do 12. I just want to to to understand news stuff so and then use it to solve day 12. Right and so oh that's so fun. Yeah keep learning is is absolutely critical. Yeah well thank you this is so much fun I hope you enjoyed it and had a good time wow I appreciate Owen joining the podcast and sharing his story as a second generation engineer who became a big data co-founder. It was cool to hear about his thought process when he made the decision to become an individual contributor. Many people think about their careers in terms of moving up the hierarchy. Instead Owen followed his enthusiasm for technology and joined forces with people he enjoyed working with hearing his perspective about AI and software engineering, especially around security and usability gave me some insight into AI software development. A lot of us are still learning about it so I hope you found it insightful too. Owen's story debunking the myth that money is the way people should track success in life was thought provoking. I'll leave you with a final thought from a Danish philosopher who was quoted as saying I must find a truth that is true for me. What is your truth? Do you have a next chapter story that you'd like to share? If so we'd love to hear from you. Go to next chapter conversations dot com and send us a note go to next chapter conversations dot com powered by GoDaddy and send us a note. Thank you for listening go out and make your next chapter amazing