Employee Spotlight: John Kim

Title: General Manager, LM Logs

Why did you choose to work at LogicMonitor? 

Two things attracted me to LogicMonitor:

• The People– Everyone I spoke to connected with me as a human first, then my competencies. I believe that doing things that are worthwhile are often challenging, I prefer to share that journey with people who have similar core values.
• The Mission– Our platform ensures that companies succeed in their own business objectives. I don’t think a modern company can succeed with flaky IT systems, regardless of what industry they are in. We not only tell you something is broken, but we can also show you what’s broken and even predict what may break. Having managed a network for a 155,000 employee company, I still shiver a bit when I think about the late-night pages and the subsequent Ops war rooms. We are on a mission to prevent those.

What is the most rewarding part of your role? 

Developing talent is the most rewarding for me as a human, and having a leadership role gives me the platform to identify someone with potential, invest, and watch them do amazing things. I don’t need to be the person in the spotlight, I prefer it when my team is on the stage because they did something transformative for our customers. 

What do you find most challenging about your role? 

Ha! Ask me again in a year and my answer should be different. Prioritization of what makes the biggest impact across as many customers as possible. It has become evident that customers love us and are pulling us into additional products (logs, APM, and cloud monitoring) and features. LM has a proven track record of product execution. With so many opportunities to add customer value, prioritizing what we do now vs. later is the most challenging thing I currently experience. 

What is your advice on how to be successful every day? 

Success is a team sport. Make sure you have a team around you and roll together. If you don’t have a team, create one (and they don’t have to be direct reports). A team doesn’t always have to agree, in fact, I like to debate and if need be argue in the locker room, but when you hit the field you never clip your teammate. Everyone loses. 

Was there a certain moment in your career that you felt was a turning point? 

Finding and keeping my voice-  as an introvert with imposter syndrome, it was the realization that my opinion was just as valid as someone else’s. I promised myself that I would not be the silent introvert in the room, regardless of how often I said the awkward/wrong thing. Making that promise to myself has been the single biggest accelerant to my career. 

If you could choose anyone, who would you pick as your mentor? 

I have two great mentors in my career today. Dug Song (co-founder and CEO of Duo Security) and Thomas Wyatt (Chief Product and Strategy Officer, People.ai). Here is why I think they are great mentors:

• They know me and believe in me.
• They are empathetic and listen (even when I am unsure it makes sense, even to me).
• They give critical feedback and guidance.

If you don’t have a couple, find one quickly. Also, make sure you are mentoring others at the same time as being mentored. 

What about LM Logs excites you the most?

The potential of the business outcomes we can drive for our customers. No one builds logs for the sake of logs (at least I hope not). Instead, logs empower amazing use cases including anomaly detection, unified logs, and metrics. Combining log anomalies with an infrastructure alert saves IT teams a lot of time and frustration by surfacing the logs that have changed, reducing MTTR exponentially (see the war room mission above). 

What are three words you would use to describe LogicMonitor?

Customers, Authentic, Growth.

What do you like to do in your spare time? 

I have many hobbies including adventure travel, foodie (both the consumption and creation), and being an aspiring general contractor for my home remodel. Most recently, I have been learning how to sail a 34’ Pearson sailboat in the San Francisco Bay with my youngest daughter.

What book would you recommend that you have read recently? 

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, I love the book as the classic Asian immigrant experience, with interesting adaptations that highlight Koreans immigrating to Japan, and Korean-Japanese immigration to the US. If you want to see some of the implications of World War 2 in a relatable human way, I would strongly recommend reading this book.