Switching Careers AFTER Being A Manager? - Principal Software Engineering Manager AMA

it's like the number one streaming spot for me and it's saying it's not going through come on it says it's streaming to YouTube it says there's people on the chat but also it says that uh oh okay it is saying my stream is live now okay just the software is being a bit of a pain in the butt um welcome this is going to be a little bit different uh usually I do these based on my newsletters uh this one is out of the ordinary because it's actually not based on a newsletter article and um that's okay so I wanted to talk about um something that someone had requested so uh I think it was on one of my YouTube videos uh actually it might have been on not my main Channel I have a uh I have three channels and one of them that I think that this request came on was from my code commute YouTube channel code commute is where I am vlogging from my car uh and I just kind of do a stream of consciousness of like software engineering topics and the topic is about careers after being in a management position awesome thanks Justin Bentley for letting me know should be good I do appreciate that um kind of I've had it before where I've gone to start streaming and like I noce partway through like you know one of the platforms is off completely or something silly like that so thank you um but yeah this person had sent in a request and we're going to be going through that today uh so this is just a reminder for for folks that are tuning in Live or if you're watching the recording of this um please like feel free to submit questions and stuff I'm happy to leverage them as topics um you know obviously it helps me if you have questions whether that's in the chat or you want to follow up with topics like it helps me because then I know that uh you and other people are interested in different topics right like I could blab about whatever and you're not going to want to watch it if you're not interested so I'd rather I'd rather you submit things I'd rather you ask questions I'd rather like tailor this to be what you want so that it's valuable to you so um the best part of Mondays thanks and infected FPS good to see you um yeah well that's uh that actually that means a lot to me so I do appreciate that but yeah uh infected FPS knows send stuff in the chat if you want to engage I will be watching chat and because this time in particular I'm not going to be referencing a newsletter article um it will be a little bit easier for me to notice the chat going on too uh and because I said that I should have the Instagram chat should actually go live on Instagram see I knew this is going to happen uh for full transparency right before I got on this I pushed like three commits to Brand ghost which is the the app that I'm building so I was just talking with uh the other developers and I was like oh crap I got to push these things up and get on stream um so I'm a little flustered but um with that said let's get into the topic for today so um again this was a submitted topic and the way that this question came in came with a little bit of uh perspective from the person that submitted it so I'm G to share it with you based on like not only the question but also the context that they provided which I think should explain a little bit about how they're approaching things so um their question was really around like okay so I'm an engineering manager and uh sort of a typical engineering manager path is like you start off as a developer right so you're an individual contributor uh you're a developer working and you go through a few years of this you kind of work up to being senior and so on so forth and not every developer obviously uh because it is a role change but like it's pretty for engineering managers it's common that you start this way as a developer and then uh take a a career change and for this individual that was certainly the case they said this is my path and became an engineering manager been working as an engineering manager for a while and now I've been laid off okay so uh unfortunately there's been a lot of you know Tech layoffs especially in the past couple years so this is not uh not something that I want to take lightly I want to be able to share insights and perspective but it's uh like this is the situation that was sort of given to me so this individual has been laid off they've been an engineering manager and the question to me was essentially like how do I navigate this and the extra context that I want to provide that they said was uh number one so if I want to go apply for engineering manager positions I feel like and I don't even know if they said feel like I think it was more like asserting that so this is like an assertion that they made like engineering managers are promoted uh generally promoted from within so the likelihood of me being able to get a job as an engineering manager as an external hire like that feels like it's not going to work out so that was sort of one assertion if I can call it that or like some perspective or context that they shared and then the second was they were saying okay but if I'm not going to be able to get an engineering manager job um should I go back to being an like an IC like an individual contributor and so just some additional perspective here like for this person because they spent their career working up through being an individual contributor then did the role change this might feel like a step back for them to go to being an individual contributor but I want to have a disclaimer here that that's not necessarily the case like going from an engineering manager back to an IC is not uh necessarily a step back like quote unquote step back um so even at Microsoft there's lots of places like this like at Microsoft there's individual contributors that are much higher level than me it's just like the career path that they chose right so um so this person was saying okay well if I want to go be an IC again like what the heck is that going to look like because like I can't like on my resume like what am I going to put there right because I've been an engineering manager like it's going to look like I'm not technical so you can or at least for me when I was receiving this I'm like okay you can sense that they're they're uneasy and they feel like they're kind of set up for failure here now because they're not going to be able to to even get it like I don't want to say even get a job as a individual contributor I don't want to make it I feel like I'm minimizing things when I say that and that's not the intention but they're basically saying like I'm screwed right I can't get a manager position and even if I wanted to go back to being an IC like that's going to be hard and I don't stand a chance so I thought this is a really interesting question and um I wanted to start by talking about the one side of it so this is going to be a little bit of stream of Consciousness so so if you uh and I'm hoping that people can chime in in the chat especially as more people and stuff are joining the stream but uh I just want to mention again that if you have experience in sort of like a either a career change or a role change where you feel like you're kind of going back and forth so maybe it was like you were a developer you tried being a manager a project manager some other role then you went back if you've had experience like that please feel free to share it in the chat because I think it's uh super helpful for other people to see this so I'm going to I'm going to start diving into some different thoughts but the first one I want to talk about is the first point that I mentioned around this individual kind of making the the assertion that most engineering managers are for are promoted from within now I don't have stats on that so I actually statistically don't know if that's true but I I don't think it is and at least for my own experience that has not been the case like at all so um so someone on Instagram uh Bitcoin to the Moon nick uh yeah I guess it it do be doing that uh it do be going up and then it be going down and then it'll go back up again so my lived experience with uh on the engineering manager side in terms of like promote from within versus external hire has very much been external hire so uh for myself I started off as an individual contributor and early on was sort of promoted from within right I was given an engineering manager position and this was actually the only time I've ever been promoted in my entire career which is interesting I have a YouTube video on that if you want to go check out my channel to find it it's how many levels to principal um but that's the only promotion I've technically ever had was just being given that title so um that was one promotion from within that I've experienced um beyond that so even me coming to Microsoft me coming to Microsoft meant that I was an external hire as an engineering manager um to Microsoft right so there's an example of an external hire when I switched teams at the beginning of this year um that team had open roles so they hired me from within Microsoft but that technically people could have applied from the outside too so that was hiring in from outside of the team it was not internal team promotions the team that I left uh at Microsoft they actually did do internal promotions when I left they hire or they uh promoted promoted uh career change role change they're the same level I believe so you know just role change for them but that's an internal promotion to a manager right um oh man I don't I didn't recognize the handle on on Instagram uh I actually still don't know jdub AG 416 I I can't see who what's your full name because I can't click on like the the icons so tiny they're referencing like a a a high school rock band that I was in it's me Nick it Jeremy awesome yeah okay good to see you man it's been a very long time but I was in a rock band called emulator and I was terrible on the guitar and I still am and I haven't touched the guitar in ages but uh that's crazy that's uh such a throwback okay so before I was distracted by Jeremy just kidding Jeremy um so in these situations right there was there's examples of people being promoted internally there's my examples of like being externally hired um and both are possible right so I I The Meta point that I want to get across here and I'm going to continue is like the meta point is that you're I I feel like this individual is kind of gatekeeping themselves when they're saying like hey you know only management positions are going to be internal hires they're almost like kind of screwing themselves over if they're going to give up before they even try looking I don't think that that's fair now the other part that I wanted to share because I gave you some Microsoft examples before Microsoft I was working at a uh digital forensics company and it was very much a startup when I started there so I was like one of the first eight people that was there and that company in particular did I don't I don't I'm not trying to sound like I'm talking about them poorly but like we I don't want to they did a bad job of promoting internally I don't want to say bad they didn't do it often I guess is what I would say uh their the philosophy very much seemed to be uh bring on external talent and so that was uh thanks Jeremy I do appreciate it keep up the great work you know nothing about development that's okay that's why I'm here to try and share with people about my experiences so so this startup they very much leaned into bringing on like external hires right and the philosophy that I would often hear from leadership was like uh referred to it as like building the bench strength and I don't think they meant like your bench press strength although that would have resonated better with me but I think like building up a roster right of having like top talent being brought in so I can I can understand that but I think um I think something that I really think is not done or was not done sufficiently there was being like promoted from within so My Philosophy personally is like it is such a good opportunity to promote from within and I think that it should be done a lot more because if you have individuals that are operating at a higher level they're not they're not given the compensation and then told to go do that they're not given the title and then go do that they're literally already demonstrating the characteristics of being able to do that role because they are doing it so like finding people that are that like motivated and willing and capable of going to do that I feel like it's a Miss to not promote them it's a miss and I think that you end up having a risk when you bring on someone external and they're saying oh look this person's going to be so great do you know that from one interview from their just their resume um and I can tell you from my experience it has not worked many times we've had very bad people brought in we've had people that have done like net negative to an organization being brought in so it's entirely like any hire it can be a gamble right so I think personally that we should lean more into like uh internal promotions for sure so I get where this person's coming from where they have concerns around this but I do think that they're kind of uh shooting themselves in the foot right they're they're being their own gatekeeper so to this individual that is concerned about hey I've been laid off as an engineering manager I don't think that I'll be able to get another engineering manager position because like companies only do internal promotions I just don't think that that's true um I think there are plenty of opportunities still to be hired in externally so that's the first thing I wanted to talk about and I think the the rest of the talk will probably FOC focus on the other whole side of this um so hopefully that makes sense if you're not an engineering manager and you're like how does this apply to me um I would say just change the roles around right so if you are doing any role I think the again meta point is that if you are making assumptions about what's available without actually you know putting in the time and applying if you've already been applying you might have some some of this feedback coming in where like hey it feels like there's not a lot available different story right I don't know I don't have counts of every job posting in the market and stuff but I would say that it's you're not doing yourself a favor by making an assumption first so say if you're an aspiring uh software engineer right and you're saying well there's already it's already crowded I guess I just better not like yeah I mean honestly with that attitude yeah probably shouldn't if you're already telling yourself you're not going to be able to do it then like it's you're probably not but like why don't you just change the framing why don't you say yeah it's probably going to be tough it's probably going to be competitive but that means I have to work hard right like it's just the framing so again don't set yourself up for failure before you start okay now a couple of interesting things um I wanted to share yeah I wanted to share one example I'm going to try to generalize it um a lot but uh even in the last few years I do know of because I want to talk about this other side of things this um the second part of that was hey what happens if I want to consider going to be an individual contributor so I had uh so there's a unique experience and I don't think that it's common but I it's possible cuz I literally have seen it in the past few years where an engineer was brought on so an engineer was hired on and they had a lot of Prior experience being an engineering manager but they were brought on as an individual contributor uh within like a very short period of time this individual contributor was promoted and then within a very short time from that they did a so same level but a role change into an engineering manager position and then started managing engineering teams and so the sort of uh extra information is like I I know that when this person was hired the hiring manager was very aware of their prior experience and was like I want this person to be an engineering manager like I know they will be a good fit for it and this individual uh I don't know like I wasn't part of the interview but this individual opted for this individual contributor position and I'm assuming that they like they weren't they couldn't be guaranteed it but I'm assuming that they were uh at least aware that there was this growth path like hey if you if you are awesome at this like there is the potential for a management position um you know in this area so I feel like that conversation was had and they did an awesome job they were like a complete rock star so um everything kind of fell into place and then they ended up getting their role changed into a manager and they were literally demonstrating tons of technical skills and uh tons of amazing leadership traits so they were an amazing hire and then that kind of worked out so my point here is like before I dive into this whole other side of like should I go back to being an IC this individual literally was like you know I'm switching and like like I don't know because I never talked to them about it I don't know if they saw it personally as a stepping stone to be like I know that this is the outcome and I'm just going to go for it or if they were like no I'm okay being an IC and if that happens to work out great now another example is like because I I want to share with people and this is why I'm hoping I see more people have joined the stream if you have experience doing a role change and then switching back if you have an experience like that feel free to share it in the chat because I think that it's helpful for other people to see like that's possible um one another one I wanted to share from Microsoft is like when I got hired onto Microsoft there was a There Was An Architect and uh he was not directly on our team but he was in our org so I got to interact with him a whole bunch when I started and he had told me that he was like a an engineering manager at one point um and then went back to like an architect like individual contributor position and then he I don't know if he switched again to being an engineering manager um but like he has he has gone back and forth and like he's he's a much higher level than I am at Microsoft and just as an example like this is someone that's kind of gone back and forth in their career and it hasn't been an issue so I I'm trying to provide these examples because the way that this question was framed to me and I'm going to repeat it just for people that are joining the stream was this individual has been engineering manager for a while so they're no longer an individual contributor software engineer they've been a manager for a while they get laid off and now they're concerned about their their possible sort of uh career future and the whole one side of it um the whole one side of it is like um sorry I lost my train of thought the whole one side of it is that they don't feel like they're skilled enough to go back to being an individual contributor sorry my my brain's not totally on uh must be Monday so this led me to think of okay like what are some other things we can be talking about here because this individual feels like hey I've been doing management for a while therefore I'm not going to have good experiences to share so I was thinking okay like if I had to imagine myself getting someone's resumee for example and they were an engineering manager and I saw that they were applying for an individual contributor role what things would I want to see on that or what things would stand out to me and again this is all just my perspective so I'm not saying it's like I don't know like it's scientifically proven or everyone's going to agree with this um in fact I'm sure lots of people will disagree um but my perspective on this is that as an engineering manager there's plenty of awesome traits that overlap with like what we would look for in someone who is a senior software engineer or a tech lead type of level and I think that that's something you can really lean into in your resume because you will have so much experience doing that in fact that will be a huge competitive advantage over anyone applying for that role so even if you were like a tech lead on different projects and stuff as a senior software engineer if you have a manager who's coming in from many years of experience that has been doing that successfully again this is all making an assumption that someone was doing this successfully odds are that they were helping manage multiple projects at the same time for many years so you could be able to demonstrate some really good um project leadership at uh like on your resume which I think is a great opportunity and then it made me think too like okay so if we're talking about resumés and trying to stand out like I wonder if this person feels like hey look I didn't go code up the solution to this thing like my teammates were doing that like the people I was managing were doing that so like what can I put on a resume and I've talked about this with people at work I'm pretty sure I've talked about it on stream or in videos but um I think people have this misconception that like when a project is being complete um that like only like you have to take the the um the credit for that project being delivered and then like divide it up like evenly so for example if two people worked on a project like only the total amount of credit only you can do like 50% and 50% or split it so it adds up to 100 but the reality is it's not really how it works like the total amount of credit is technically like perceived uh you know uh impact is like it's over 100% so like I know that mathematically doesn't make sense but hear me out so it doesn't mean that if you're helping out on a project that all of a sudden you're stealing someone else's credit towards that project it doesn't it doesn't work that way so that's the the philosophy that I want you to have when you're thinking about this stuff so if you're in a position where you are leading others whether that's a you know project manager um could be an engineering manager Tech lead if you have other people that are carrying out some of this work that doesn't mean like you get zero impact and only the people who type the code get the impact in the inverse right it's not like you led the project and that way you get all the impact and the people who type the code get none no like you all contributed you all get impact for you all get credit for doing it so I don't know if this individual was doing the same type of thing where they're like kind of like self-sabotaging which is it's unfortunate but I get why that happens but but I would say like hey look if you worked if you helped lead your team on awesome projects put that on your resume it's like you don't want to like I'm morally against like embellishing where you're like taking credit for stuff that didn't actually happen um I don't think that that's good people do it but truly if you were helping lead projects and your team was successfully able to do something if you participated in that from a leadership perspective that's fine to go on a resume just be ready to talk about it right like I think that's a good uh a good like uh way to judge what you're putting on your resume if you write it down and someone's like oh tell me about that and you're like uh like I I don't know like I join the first meeting and that's it like yeah maybe don't put that on your resume that's probably a pretty crappy thing but if you were participating the whole way helping organize it you were leading other people like you don't you didn't have to be the person to go type the code it's okay so again recommendation for this person is like if you're thinking about your resume uh number one you can have lots of stuff from like a leadership perspective running projects that could look really good and number two is you can still talk about the impact that you had on the projects that were successful it's not it's not wrong like I I literally have to do this type of thing when I uh do my performance uh well we call them connects at Microsoft where we're like talk about our accomplishments and then we share those with our manager and have conversations about them like we need to talk about our impact and I don't code at work like if you're watching this video you probably know that I put out like C videos and tutorials and stuff like I code all of the time outside of work but my role at work is not writing code so if I'm not physically like typing code to go contribute to the projects like does that just mean that I have no impact no like I'm enabling my team to go do their work successfully so like that's the impact I can talk about the projects that are successful for the people that I'm leading so I just want to remind people that like you can do this type of things so those are two things on a resume that I think can look really good they're not going to screw you over it's not going to look bad I don't think it's going to make again as an engineer or a hiring manager I'm not going to go see ooh like this person was an engineer manager now they're applying for an IC role I'm not going to go like oh I guess things aren't working out haha like there could be a million reasons for it and again if your resume has things that I'm looking for again this is just my perspective if your resume has things that I'm looking for the qualities of someone that's more senior that's great like that could really stand out and you could have some awesome competitive Advantage but there is probably an area that I think that you will will have some struggles and I don't think that it's the resume I think that in fact your resume could look really awesome compared to many people especially if you're trying to get into more like senior software engineering roles because you will be demonstrating so many of these other skills that aren't just code but this is exactly where you might struggle so this is going to look different for every single person and I don't want to sound like I'm being prescriptive here it's not my intention so I do think that it's very very helpful for you to remain technical as a software engineering manager uh I have shared this perspective many times before and I will keep sharing it until this changes at some point in my life if it does but to this day one of the best leaders that I've ever had was not someone who wrote code in fact I don't know if they've ever written code I don't know if they could write code I just know that they didn't um were they technical they were technical enough but they were one of the best leaders I ever had because they were a great people leader they were great strategically in the business and the product area and for all the areas that they weren't like super technical like at least to be able to talk about code modules and things like that like they were so good at communicating that they would just let you know like hey I need like explain it different way and we would just meet somewhere where we could understand each other on a technical level and so that's what I think like from an engineering manager's perspective the more technical you can be probably the more helpful it is for you to communicate things effectively work with your team more effectively but I don't think that it's a requirement that you're like I'm going to go whip out like visual studio and write up some code like so for me personally I I've already said it on this stream like I don't W code at work but I love to program and I will program every day outside of work but that's how I remain technical that's my way to do it so that's why I'm saying I'm not prescribing that some people will say like Nick like I leave work and I don't want to think about code or software like I want to just be with my family I have these other Hobbies I want to be with my animals whatever it is right and you are absolutely welcome to do that it's not for me to say whatever right but I would say that if you're finding that you're not able to remain technical in your role at work you may want to like find ways to enhance this maybe it is through work that you can do that that's great um maybe it means that you do need to carve out a little bit of extra time outside of work that could work for you I don't know I know what works for me and I love to build software outside of work that's how I continue to learn so my point here is that if this if this individual and if you're someone else kind of going through this experience where you're like hey I'm an engineering manager am I going to be screwed if I'm laid off or how is that going to work I I think like I would recommend try to find ways to remain technical because when you're about to go back into applying for jobs it's probably going to come up and be under a little bit of scrutiny when you're interviewing so um the that I think people are going to struggle with is the interview part specifically the technical interview many places and I'm not saying I agree with this it's just kind of how it happens to be many places even for engineering managers uh are going to do like a coding interview like I had to do coding interviews at every big tech company except I don't think I did one on Amazon I don't think I did so coding interviews and then like system design both of those and those are both um a practice skill so coding questions generally look like Elite code style questions which I don't think are a good representation of uh almost anything except lead code but they come up a lot so if you're an engineering manager and you're like okay I used to be a developer I haven't had my hands directly in the code for five years if the first interview you go into they're like hey we got a coding problem for you and it's a lead code question um I would say like you're you're probably going to fail it probably and like it doesn't mean that you're not smart or you're not technical it's just like you haven't practiced that and like when I was applying to Big tech companies like I had I don't even know if I'd ever done lead code ever because I just thought the idea was kind of pointless because I'm like it I've seen the problems I don't really line up for me and how I think about software engineering but I had to go practice them because I knew that was going to come in the interviews and it did so I was practicing them and the same thing for system design I'm like I'm pretty confident in my abilities maybe not um maybe not from the same perspective as someone who's been around to different big tech companies doing stuff in the cloud but I'm like I I can I can figure out my way around but I'm like I still have to practice these and the cont text if you're not familiar with some of my background the context is when I was doing those interviews I was an engineering manager for 8 years at that point and I was still writing software at work every single day for eight years so I was a very Hands-On technical manager I still had to go practice those things so I would say again if you're an engineering manager trying to look for a transition like this brush up on those things like I honestly think that will be the big biggest struggle now some places may just interview completely differently and I would certainly hope that's the case because I just don't think that those types of interviews are effective but I would recommend like go brush up on that stuff because it's probably going to feel pretty painful and it's going to feel unfair but it's something that you can practice before you go do it um one of the last things I wanted to talk about regarding this is like sort of the the opportunity and um from my perspective so again I was trying to put I was trying to think about this from different angles and I was like okay now what if I was this person so if I was this engineering manager so I'm at Microsoft now if Microsoft laid me off right now I said hey Nick sorry no job I said okay I got to go looking um for me personally because this person's kind of going back and forth between like should I be an em should I be an individual contributor um for me personally I would not go be an individual contributor and that has I want to be very clear that doesn't mean that I think that I'm above that doesn't mean that I think that I'm better than that it's just not what I want to do for my career plain and simple I don't want to do that I wouldn't feel fulfilled and I would be trying personally to apply for engineering manager roles if that meant that I had to wait longer I would keep waiting until I was was able to interview and land an engineering manager role that I liked now I don't mean for that to sound like privileged I guess I'm just saying that if I had to like I'm fortunately in a position so this is a little bit privileged where I'm not rushing to go get a job I could survive for a bit um but I know that if I went back to an individual contributor role I would not feel fulfilled in my job again doesn't mean I'm better than that it's just not a fulfillment thing for me now what could be very different for other people and I don't know the question submitters situation is if they're like hey I've been laid off and like I desperately need to get work like right now or else like we can't afford the mortgage or you know supporting your family if you're in that situation then I would say like yeah like right now in front of you you might have these two options where you could consider both so I think that's like that's a beneficial thing it's not it's not bad like you could go hey I'm going to go looking for engineering manager roles because that's sort of where my career has been that's what I want to be doing I assume and okay as a bit of a safety net if I have a different version of my resume that I can lean into more of the technical side uh any experiences I have that way that showcase that like I would apply for individual contributor roles as well so from again the person that asked me this I would say to that person like I think number one if you're not in a good spot in terms of finances supporting your family feeling safe that kind of thing I would recommend if you like try to lean into both of those opportunities because I think that's probably going to give you more chances at success now if you're not in that position if you're not like panicking and trying to just get employed as fast as you can I would personally because this is the situation that I would currently be in I would say I would only apply for things that I want to feel fulfilled in because I know that if I went into something that I was like this isn't for me I'm going to perform poorly I'm going to be very disengaged demotivated um but that's just I know that about myself so I would say if you can do both and you're open to both then apply to both for sure so I think those are most of the things that I wanted to talk through in terms of like this question that was posed because I think that it's very interesting and uh when I first got it uh I don't know I think the the way that I was perceiving this or like how I thought through it was like I just I don't think that this person is going to have um I think I said it a few times already I think they probably invented some of the barriers for themself and I that feels like you know it's hard to hear that like I don't want people to to think that about themselves it's why I try to put out a lot of like Junior software engineering topics because even for people that haven't gotten into the industry because I don't want them to to see things and be like oh I guess guess I don't have a chance it's like you you literally will not have a chance if you don't take one so if you're interested you might as well at least try to take the chance so I just think that there's too much like uh self-sabotage I think people do this a lot uh we see it a lot with people that are like yeah like programming seems cool but like I don't know math like like I don't I don't not doing math all day if I had to do math every day at work like at an advanced level that wasn't just counting I would not be doing this job like absolutely not um so but I don't think people realize that right so I think you know one of the responsibilities I try to take on is just like looking for these self- sabotage opportunities and being like hey like let's let's clear this up because it's unfortunate like there's so much potential in different people and they kind of stop themselves so but I think that's I think that's it it's going to be a little bit of a short stream so I'm sorry infected FPS if this is the best part here Monday uh uh I feel bad oh I didn't put the chat up I told you I'm falling apart today look there's the chat infected FPS yeah my imposter syndrome held me back for a few years yeah uh if you don't I'm not I don't want to put you on the spot but I'm going to if you want to share like what did that look like for you like what did um what did you feel that like the impostor syndrome was holding holding you back from if you don't mind sharing that because I think imposter syndrome is a really interesting topic to talk through cuz um basically everyone goes through it um people that say it doesn't exist I think uh need a wakeup call um sorry if that's you but you need a wakeup call but I think a lot of people go through it and I think one of the best things is to talk about it because uh you help other people realize like oh like I'm I'm also going through that basically just got comfy in my job looking at other roles and other companies May me feel like I had a ton to learn yeah that's fair right so you're kind of looking at what's going on for you going yeah like I'm doing this it's pretty comfortable right like things things seem good and you're looking at other things going like oh like but there could be a better opportunity there but like oh do I know enough like am I going to be good enough for that uh and then you start questioning like what's going on for you but um I wrote a few weeks ago now maybe a couple months ago now uh this year for sure one of the newsletter articles I put out was about being comfortable like that and I said the article is literally titled something like my my biggest fear and my biggest fear aside from like spiders and probably millipedes millipedes are pretty gross but aside from those two things is like being complacent right and the it's exactly as infected FPS says like in the chat it's it's a fear of mine because number one it comes very slowly like you don't I don't think that you consciously realize like oh I am complacent like today is the day I woke up and I'm complacent I don't I just don't think it happens like that and it creeps up over time and I think for a lot of people in many situations you don't even know that it's happened and like that's a scary thought because for me I do want to make sure that I am growing that I'm able to advance in my career that I have these opportunities and stuff but it's almost like if you're if you're not actively putting yourself into uncomfortable growth opportunities and those opportunities are not being sprung upon you then like it's it's almost like it's gar guaranteed to happen that you're going to grow comfortable and complacent in your role and to me that's very scary um and other people might have a different perspective on this right you might say well like why why do I care why would you care about that if if you are comfortable in your role and you're being more effective like isn't that a good thing and sure like there's I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it I'm just saying that from how I look at Living my own life like that's not how I want to do it so it scares me that that could be something that creeps up also had no other devs in that job to help guide me where I should be learning yeah this is a huge one um this is a huge one and if it's a reminder for people that are watching this right if you're in a similar spot right so his infected FPS said had no other devs in that job to help guide me where I should be learning just want to remind you that if you are a developer or even in your your role if you're not a developer try to remember if you were in a situation like this and how crappy that is and just remember that you can help make that difference for other people right so infected FPS I'm I don't think I need to tell you this but like you could be that person that you didn't have for other people right you could make a difference um I give you an example I was doing a aspiring man manager uh mentorship in Microsoft so uh it's interesting program I'm so glad I found it um because for me like that's I was doing early in career mentorship which was very rewarding and the aspiring manager one was kind of like um it see just seemed like a better fit because like I'm also trying to like help other people kind of like follow the steps that we're right behind where I'm at kind of thing I feel like that's more a little bit more applicable um um so I was doing this and uh the the person like my mentee one of the things that I like really loved to hear that he said was along the lines of like there's so many bad experiences that he had with managers over time that he's like I can't wait to be a manager so I can like basically not do those things so I can do the opposite so that I can be like the better manager that I didn't have to other people and I'm like yeah that's like that's the stuff like that's what we need it's not you know not kind of like continuing the pattern so infected FPS already am now mentoring Junior devs at my current job hell yeah that's the way to go so you know I just want to remind people of that because you can make a huge difference in someone's life um and it doesn't necessarily take a ton of effort on your part right someone like other people are a couple steps behind you and your path and they're they're just looking for guidance right and a little bit can go a long way so I do recommend that if you have the opportunity to do that then uh then you do that for folks um with that said though I think I'm done I think that's it I think it's a short one um so maybe I'll go through my my Spiel of uh of sharing things but um I guess something that's super cool is I just submitted a another course to dome train um so I'm pumped about that so that'll be launching soon um it's another career related course I don't I never know if like I'm like allowed to share the titles and stuff so I just don't but uh it will be launching on uh on dome train very soon Adrian good to see you you're so glad you joined when you did why what was it that I said that you enjoyed um so yeah the that career will be launching soon um that's again from Ryan Murphy and I uh Ryan is a engineering manager yel so we did our first uh career course together for Dome train this is our second one and we got more um I think we have uh spoiler alert about six months worth of courses coming so um next one is going to be a month from now so I got to get started on that and it's going to be super cool so uh keep your eyes peeled for uh if you're looking for for career stuff on dome train uh probably if you if you enjoy like how I teach things and navigate stuff like uh my courses will basically only be uh like career focused uh I'm I'm not switching up what I do on YouTube I'll still be making C stuff because I code in C all the time um so that's not going to stop but at least um from A Chorus perspective it's a lot more for me it's a lot more fulfilling to talk about Career Development and that kind of stuff so uh that will be what I focus on so Adrian to not be complacent in the uncomfortable situations will bring growth yeah something like that slightly paraphrasing no that's that's spot on um that's one I should let me try and find the the article I just want to get it for you um and I think the stupid chat doesn't actually I have to like send it on on LinkedIn directly for you because um the chat like doesn't uh send back to LinkedIn comments which is super dumb so you'll see it in the video and then you can't do anything about it um let's see oh it's Pro now I feel bad it's going to be archived already so um that means if you go to click this if you're not like a paying subscriber then you don't get to see it that's why you should be a paid subscriber to my newsletter see all these fancy sales um no let me let me pull it up I can do this give me one sec um I just want to move some windows around but I just want to pull it up for a second because I I I want you to know that like I think that this is a super important topic give me one second falling apart I got to start my virtual camera I got to switch over to this full screen mode look at that worked first worked first time so this is the see like it's not the spiders it's it's a good good thumbnail right that's my my head when I had hair I guess I have hair right now got to shave my head again but um no this newsletter article uh was really about this topic of like being complacent right so um you can see right here my biggest fear is around complacency so um biggest barriers to growth it can sneak up on you over time right so I talked about this stuff um actually this is a a video from code commute which is my other YouTube channel let me do a little shout out to that so you can check it out if you're interested it's just code commute on YouTube so YouTube code commute so if you're interested uh again it's not going to work you can't click it on uh on LinkedIn it's not going to the comments but that's my other YouTube channel where I do stream of Consciousness like like this video that you see linked here is code commute I just talk in my car while I'm driving to work um but yeah this whole article was really about like for me I've been very fortunate that in my career I've had many forcing functions that have made me un like put into uncomfortable situations because otherwise I just get complacent and I get like scared to do challenging things I don't like being a beginner it scares the crap out of me I don't like feeling like I'm not an expert on something which is not good I'm not saying I recommend that it's in fact the opposite of what I'm saying I I recommend that you try to put yourself in these uncomfortable growth situations right so that you can be forced to learn and get better um so this I think uh yeah anyway I like this article it was a lot of fun to write again this one is currently I'm just being transparent this one is paywalled right now um so if you're ever interested in subscription to it there you go um but this is the like the kind of thing and if you're if you're like hey I don't want to pay for a subscription but this sounds cool like if you subscribe to the newsletter you get all the new ones coming in the future so there's that opportunity but anyway this was the article on that topic um but I think that it's really important because like I said i' I've been lucky in my career that I've been forced into those situations and I think that if I wasn't then I I would have stagnated and honestly I think that I could I would make the argument that if I would have been more proactive about certain things in that regard would I be further ahead in my career perhaps right because EV every single time that it happens it's so uncomfortable and every single time it ends up turning out well um and then the um the YouTube channel like my YouTube channel that's not code commute like my main one is coming in the chat sorry I just typed it out so it's just Dev leader um so there's that one that's so just for transparency and you understand the content that you'll see on both um Dev leader is where I have more uh like all the videos are edited they're more polished so there's programming tutorials there's topics like this as well but they're they're refined right when I'm talking to you right now this is very much like um it's not rehearsed I try to engage with people but it's very much like here's what I'm thinking usually I'm going through a newsletter that I've written about and so Dev leader the YouTube channel will have more polished stuff code commute on the other hand is much more like this uh but a little bit more uh a little bit more all over the place because I'm literally just driving to work right so you'll hear me talk about like crappy tra traffic and people doing stupid stuff on the road while I'm driving like you'll hear everything but the thoughts are a lot more raw so uh the reason I'm explaining this is that if you like the software engineering topics but you actually prefer something that's more just like a raw conversation then code commutes probably a cool thing to tune into but if you're looking for tutorials and more like guided approach to things uh even you know career topics and stuff like that then my my primary Channel Dev leader I would say is uh what I would recommend uh and the best combination is both of course so anyway folks I think that's it um thanks for tuning in I will be streaming tomorrow morning speaking about blogs and newsletters I'm going to be streaming tomorrow morning we're going to be doing more blog migration I'm super pumped uh it's probably not going to get finished tomorrow but here's the explanation so for folks that aren't aware I've been hosting my blog in WordPress on Amazon light sale nothing wrong with Amazon light sale I feel like it's been a great product but uh WordPress I'm done with it uh has nothing to do with all the WordPress stuff in the news these days I didn't even know that was a thing that was going on but uh my blog basically every day to every other day I get uh notifications that come in that basically like the web service is down and I think it's just cuz I got plugins that suck my entire WordPress configuration has files and folders completely locked down so stuff is just busted all the time and it's time to go so uh Stephen gizel finally think I have his name correct has a Blazer blog engine uh hold on can I pull up my let me let me see if this works one sec oh yeah it does so let me okay let me do a couple things here we're going to go to my my current website and I want to explain oh give me one sec okay so this is my current site this is in WordPress just to point out like this is already broken see how there's this weird purple and black like that's not how it's supposed to look that's just that's just broken so I don't know why it's like that I think it's some caching and uh uh minification that's screwing some things up um then I got this blur whatever and then some of the postart here but here's the next weird thing see all this empty space that's also not supposed to be there so I have to go into WordPress like regularly and I'm not doing this because I don't got time to do it but go in there regularly and like clear some cash stuff and then like it gets back to normal but like all this weird spacing like it's not supposed to look like this it's awful and it's it's actually up the funny thing is a couple weeks ago I was doing the live stream on my blog migration and like right after doing that I was getting notifications that my actual blog was down so this website a huge pain in the butt however um Steven has this Blazer blog engine and I have the staging one currently up so this is the new site but there's no post on it yet so um I was trying to get these landing pages working but it's super Zippy I got my courses linked here so I was just trying to make sure that I can get some of this stuff working and then tomorrow's video what I'm going to be doing is if you and I assume most people weren't on the other stream for this but it's 7 a.m. Pacific time so completely opposite end of the day last time I was demonstrating that we could use like uh almost like test driven development like tdd not not exactly but basically taking a blog post from my existing site and we could transform it and then use the testing framework to prove that it's still matching that we didn't regress things and that we're only changing the parts were trying to enhance and that's because the blog posts on this site are not going to be fully compatible with the posts that are on this site so they need to be transformed as they're going through so we were looking at that and I'm going to continue on with that and the work that I did over this weekend I'm just going to go back to you can see my face and not this empty page the work that I did this weekend was making sure all my a resources were set up because I'm still a little bit nervous to stream Azure stuff because I just want to make sure that I'm not like accidentally showing secrets on on stream and doing stupid stuff like that so I set it all up um I've run I've literally already run a migration and pulled in all of my blog posts onto the new site said okay it worked they're all busted and they look bad but it works so then I deleted them all and now what's cool is we can put these things together I can run the migrator and some of the code that we started writing on last stream and that way we have something where we can try it out and go hey did the post look good oh no there's still like a weird formatting thing that we have to go address we can delete all the blog posts again fix the thing up repport them and that way we can iteratively make sure that everything's good um so anyway that's tomorrow morning 7 a.m. Pacific wherever you're watching this right now you can watch the stream the same way unless you're on Instagram and that's because the video is vertical and I can promise you that you don't want to watch a vertical video so um of me coding because it's not going to work so if you are on Instagram uh YouTube channel is youyoutube live coding that's the spot to be tomorrow morning 7 a.m. Pacific and with that said thanks folks thanks Adrien for jumping in the chat infected FPS as always good to see you I appreciate you joining me on a Monday and everyone else take care hopefully see you tomorrow if not I'll see you next week