Leadership Podcast

Bailey Carlone interviews Josiah Carlone, a supply chain engineer at Intel. Josiah talks about his journey to becoming an engineer, his time in the Air Force, and his experiences in the semiconductor industry. He discusses the skills he learned in the Air Force and how they prepared him for his career. Josiah also talks about his roles at Applied Materials and Intel. He mentions the challenges he faced in gaining trust and respect in his role at Intel. Hello, my name is Bailey Carlone, and today I will be interviewing Josiah Carlone, a supply chain engineer at Intel, who grew up in Vista, California, was a part of the United States Air Force, and now, as said prior, works at Intel. Nice to have you on today, Josiah. Glad to be here. My first question for you today is, how did you become an engineer? It's a very long story. It wasn't a very direct path, it was an indirect path, I did not actually become a degreed engineer until I was 35, but graduated high school, went to the Air Force, Air Force learned electronics, joined the semiconductor industry as a field service engineer, from there I went to Intel, became an actual working engineer, but not a degreed engineer, and then had to get my bachelor's to go with my MBA, and become an engineer. Awesome, and what would you have done if you weren't an engineer? I am not quite sure what I would have done. I've always just picked a path, electronics. I knew coming out of high school was going to be an industry of the future, and so I put myself in the best position possible, and then from there, I just went to where I saw the best opportunities, and the places that I could learn and be effective. Awesome, and what has being an engineer taught you, if it has taught you anything? Being an engineer has really changed my outlook and view on a lot of things, due to the relationships between cause and effect, and this can be applied in almost any industry. The cause and effect, the use of data, and the use of techniques and solutions to solve problems, and I really enjoy it. Awesome, and on the topic of being an engineer, what did you want to be when you were growing up? Growing up in San Diego, and being in the water, and at the beach my whole life, I always felt that I would be a marine biologist, or some type of marine maritime industry. At the time, I didn't know that there was such a defined maritime industry, so I didn't pursue that going out of high school. I stuck with the electronics path. Okay, and when you were a kid, where did you think you were going to end up in the future? Growing up, this is exactly what I thought my future would be, right where I'm at right now. Three kids, three grown kids in college, my career, my family, a long-lasting marriage, and pretty much exactly right where I am. And did you think you were meant for something more than what generations of your family had been doing? Yeah, not to sell them short, I come from a construction family. They all ran their own small businesses, but never really got outside of that, never expanded, never grew, much less none of them had ever left the local area. All my uncles, my grandparents, all grew up in the same place, and I knew that I had to go and learn something different. I knew that I had to go and create a new path for my family that we would eventually get started. Awesome, and obviously, talking about leaving, tell me about your time in the U.S. Air Force and what it taught you in looking for potential jobs. The Air Force was amazing. It was a place that you're being professionally trained, you're learning incredible skills that are transferable to the rest of the world and the civilian world. It gave me an opportunity to grow, it gave me an opportunity to learn, and it really taught me a lot of the fundamentals that I needed for the rest of my career. Building confidence, consistency, getting respect from your peers, following and ultimately leading other people was what I really took away from the Air Force experience. And what jobs did you hold in the Air Force? In the Air Force, I went in as an avionics sensor, so I learned two years of electronics in six months, I learned complex flight systems, laser targeting, designation, FLIR, infrared, a lot of fundamental concepts that are used all around the electronics industry. Awesome, and how does the avionics systems job correlate to what you do today? Really, it's, I don't want to say it's the same, but it's very similar. The job that I have right now as a supply chain engineer is a little bit different than being a mechanical or an equipment engineer like I was previous to this role, but the avionics systems really are just an integrated system that needs to work and it needs to operate with all the other components, when it doesn't, then you need to basically troubleshoot it, you need to solve the problems, you need to be able to analyze the data, and all those things are directly transferred to what you would need to do as an engineer. Awesome, and you kind of touched on this already, but in what way did the Air Force prepare you as a leader? As a leader, the military is very specific, rank designates where you fit in the structure, but if you are somebody that can be trusted, if you're somebody that has the correct level of urgency, if you have gained the respect of being a problem solver and a hard worker and a doer, there's lots of opportunities for you to lead. So you can lead details, which is doing, you know, menial chores, cleaning the routine items that you have to do when you're in the military. Being the leader of that is something that they will do regardless of rank. You can be assistant to certain people based on how hard you work and what you do, and so really it just showed me that, one, you got to have determination, two, you have to work hard, and three, you have to have that consistency and that urgency to getting the actual job done or it won't, or you won't be able to get into those types of positions. Awesome, and what leadership roles, if you had any, did you hold well in the Air Force? In the Air Force, I had multiple leadership roles. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I was a shift leader where I had people that were both my same rank and below were responsible, I was responsible for them, their performance and their development. When I went to Alaska, I was a shift leader and had to lead and develop, document, train multiple airmen that I had under me on my team. Awesome, and how did the roles that you previously stated prepare you for life after the Air Force? Really, like I said, the Air Force is really a quick transition to the semiconductor industry. The one difference, obviously, in the civilian world and the semiconductor industry is you have people of all ages in all places in life, so you get out of the military gung-ho and ready to go and you run into a wide variety of people. Some people don't work as hard, some people are way smarter than they are, capable of working hard. You have people of different age groups, you have people of different experiences, so I was well prepared to come out and do the job, be consistent, work hard, the same principles that I did in the Air Force. But the Air Force really doesn't prepare you for the diversity that's in the civilian workplace. So when I did get there, I needed to make sure that I was a really good follower before I could even begin to start leading. Okay, and after your time in the Air Force, you went and worked for AMAT or Applied Materials. What process did you go through after finishing your time in the Air Force to get a job with Applied Materials? So there's definitely transition services where recruiters, technical recruiters will come to your base, come to your region, and they already know what your career fields translate to. And so the electronics and the avionics directly translates to the skills that are needed in the semiconductor industry. So I actually was able to secure a job before I even left the Air Force. And what stood out on your resume, or what stood out to them as a person, for you as a person? And did they look for any sort of leadership experiences or examples of you being a leader? Yeah, so the whole body of work of being in the military, of working on the complex systems that I did, definitely were a leg up to try to get hired by Applied Materials. But along with your technical interview, there's always a behavioral interview. And your behavioral interview is going to be where they try to really see what you're like as a person and what skills you have. And that includes teamwork skills, that includes leadership skills, that includes problem solving, and handling difficult situations. So I was well prepared because we faced most, if not all, of those scenarios while I was in the actual Air Force. Okay. And after working for Applied Materials, you went and worked for Intel Corporation, or Intel, which is where you currently work. And what jobs have you held at Intel, and what position do you have now? Although we touched on that a little bit. At Intel, I went directly from Applied Materials as an equipment expert, technical specialist, and field service engineer into a maintenance technician role. Intel was determined to hire the best people possible to upskill their teams. Unfortunately, they have a really challenging environment with their factory employees and their maintenance technicians. The maintenance technicians are really interested in keeping their roles and their positions and really don't want somebody new coming in and telling them what they need to do or what they need to learn or how they need to do their job. So this was a challenge. It took some time to gain their trust and respect. I did work on some really critical problem-solving and robot handling situations where I was able to make a big impact and at least justify why they hired me and reached out to me. But the role itself was really not very satisfying and very repetitive and very dictated. And when you did have a problem, if you took it to somebody, they really didn't know how to implement your solution or your suggestion. So you would basically have to make a ready-made solution for somebody to implement, which became very frustrating because I didn't have the resources or the people to be able to make any real, true, long-lasting improvements to the job. So from there, I moved on to an industrial engineering job where I was working on supporting the entire factory, so over 5,000 people in their areas. If they had a problem and they needed somebody to come in, like a consultant, whether it was doing lean manufacturing, whether it was trying to find a new tool or a new device or a new wireless capability, I basically could go and have free reign to try to find these solutions. And that job was very rewarding, but I left that job to take an equipment engineering and systems owner job in China and basically build a brand-new factory from the ground up, a whole new workforce, and train them, get them up to speed, teach them the Intel way of doing business and making that factory successful. So that was a very big turning point in my career because I went from not having a real leadership role or impact to being a systems owner and an area manager to where I had expats and local workers, and I had suppliers, and I had all the associated construction personnel that I had to interact with, that I had to problem-solve with, that I had to work with and develop. So that really changed my outlook on the engineering world and the engineering role, and that's when I truly knew that the engineering role was for me. And so from there I became an equipment engineering group manager and led that for about nine years and then transitioned into the supply chain role that I have now. Supply chain role now is very interesting. Working with very small companies that have very critical technologies that we need to use, but the companies aren't big enough, they're not developed enough, they're not capable enough of operating to Intel's specifications and standards. And so as a supply chain engineer, I need to enable those suppliers to be able to be successful, but also ensuring that it's successful for Intel's research and development. Awesome. And kind of touching on China, you have traveled all over the world with Intel to places like Israel, China, Ireland, Thailand, et cetera. What have you learned from all the places that you have worked? I would say that that is a very diverse group of places to go. At Intel you do have specific standards that need to be followed regardless of where the location is. It could be a stateside location or it could be an international location. I would say the biggest thing that I've learned in my international workings is really situational leadership. There's going to be times where you need to learn and you need to listen and you need to follow even though you are the leader. And then there's other times where you need to step in, you need to take control of the situation because it might not be going the way that it needs to go. And so really each situation is unique. Sometimes you show up to a site and they're functioning perfect, better than you've ever seen before. And in that situation you don't step in to change anything, you step in to learn how are they doing that, why are they doing that, and how can you implement that or improve other areas with those scenarios. So at the end of the day, most people want to be treated with dignity and respect. They want to work hard, they want to do a good job, and if you enable the environment for them to do that, you'll more than likely be very successful. Awesome. And what is one unique leadership tip or trick you learned in one of these places? It could be national, international, or on like a statewide level. Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I learned is that there's lots of different ways to lead. You can be very authoritative, you can be very directive and very prescriptive, you can be lead by example, which obviously if somebody doesn't trust you, they're not going to follow you, so you have to lead by example. But I think more than anything that I've learned and that has led to my biggest successes is actually enabling a team, developing a team, training a team to where they can step in and they can make the same type of decisions that you would make and they can follow the same types of decision making capability that you would make, but not taking away their individuality and their individual, you know, intellect, their individual hard work, their innovative ideas. You have to be able to capture those and build them into a system that is really developed so that everybody can be successful. The more successful your lowest person is, the more successful your highest person is going to be because you're going to be able to do more than you would otherwise be able to do. And you usually foster a much happier work environment when you build a team. Awesome. And now we are going to move on to your supply chain engineering job. And so, as you said, you work as a supply chain engineer, and on their website they state that a supply chain engineer's job is to actively manage our supply chain to help reduce risk, improve product quality, achieve environmental and social goals, and improve overall performance for Intel, our customers, and our suppliers. How would you describe your title as a supply chain engineer and how does it circle back to Intel's statement? So I think that captures a lot of it. I think when people think of supply chain, they think of just shipping and coordinating and logistics of getting something that's needed where it's at. There's definitely a lot more to that. There's a lot of integrative processes that go into that. So as a supply chain engineer, basically there's no limit to what you need to do to make Intel's research and development successful, while also making the suppliers capable of meeting your requirements and supplying you with the latest and greatest generation of technology that is needed. This could be from ensuring that parts are in the right place at the right time. This could mean people in the right place at the right time. This could mean support groups like environmental and safety inspections that have to be done on suppliers and equipment and facilities that allow people to supply equipment, that allow people to supply goods and services. There's a lot of red tape. There's also the technical part of it, the engineering part of it, is you aren't just coordinating getting things in certain places or having suppliers successful. You're actually working on the technology with the research and development team. Research and development team might have an idea, but the supplier might not have any idea what it truly means or what they truly need. And so you interface and are actively supporting the translation of possibly a foreign company that hasn't done any business with Intel in the past with a group of Intel engineers that have only worked with big established companies and things that are commonplace for a big company are often overlooked by a small company because they've never had anything to do on a scale. So your job is really to just keep everything moving forward, keep everything on schedule, and like the last phrase said, basically making customer suppliers and Intel successful. And what is something that you do in your current job that you never thought you'd have to do? One of the things that I have to do on a regular basis that I never thought I'd be doing is actually counseling and giving advice and instructions to CEOs of companies. These are very accomplished individuals, but oftentimes they're disconnected from what the actual company needs to do to make Intel successful. And so you have various layers of management and there's always a limit to what somebody can do and what their decision-making capability is. Sometimes they can't move mountains even though you think they should. And so you have to escalate until you can get to the true decision-maker. And in a lot of these small companies, these decision-makers and these CEOs are the ones that came up with the technology. They're geniuses and you sometimes need to teach them how to work with Intel and how to actually scale their business to meet high demands. And some of these CEOs or these people do not want to listen and they often do not get selected to sell equipment to Intel or be used in our latest processes because they have a hard vision on how they're going to do business and it doesn't really meet with you. So it could be very complex. You could have an awesome product, but a horrible staff or a horrible business. And when you do your evaluations for selections, you have to ensure that these are businesses that you can work with for the next three to five years on that technology because you're going to be stuck with those people once you make those commitments to buy millions of dollars of equipment from them. And how has being a supply chain engineer, how has that been different from the other positions that you've held at Intel? The supply chain engineer is a very huge blend of tactical and strategic planning. So you have to look at everything on a daily basis, but you have to look at how that's going to affect you in three months, in six months, in nine months. You have to evaluate when your supplier is going to have their design, when they're going to have their proof of concept, when they're going to have their first runs. In my previous job, I basically owned all the equipment for my area in the factory, very tactical, very specific on your deliveries, your specific deliveries by shift, your specific deliveries by day. And then you have a roadmap, which is somewhat strategic, but it's not nearly as tactical or nearly as strategic as a supply chain engineering job. So I would say that the factory job is a very tactical, high-paced, output-orientated role, where the supply chain engineer has a blend of that daily tactical, which isn't as critical, but if the daily priorities aren't done, then you'll never reach your strategic goals. Awesome. And the last few questions for the day today are, especially as someone who's up-and-coming in a STEM-based field, what advice would you give to someone who is up-and-coming in the STEM field? In the STEM field, I would say that somebody should learn everything that they possibly can learn. I don't think that the STEM fields are fields where you can go in just skimming by, and just trying to get by, and just trying to do the minimum. I would learn absolutely everything possible for the subjects that I'm learning. The cause and effect, the impacts, I would ask why a lot, and I would learn why. Because a lot of the same STEM skills that you have for one field are applicable to the other field, and so your career in STEM can go in many places. Like, I never thought mine would lead to supply chain, and I never even knew that there was an actual engineering function within supply chain that was critical to people's success, and company success, and supplier success. So I would say the one thing is to be curious, and to learn to the highest capability possible, particularly cause and effects, and why something works a certain way. Not just that you can regurgitate and memorize for a short period of time and then dump, but truly understanding why something's a certain way, so that you could learn it to your best ability. I think that's what I would recommend for anybody going into STEM, is learn everything you possibly can. Well, I think that's it. I think you've answered everything we needed today. This has been Bailey Carlong and Josiah Carlong. See you next time on Leadership Radio.